Did the reds win the civil war, or did the whites loose it?

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Emma Dwyer                                                                                Page              5/7/2007

Did the reds win the civil war, or did the whites loose it?

History tells us the Bolsheviks (reds) did manage to eventually seize power over Russia in October 1920, however the question many historians ask is, ‘did the reds win due to their careful planning, strength and unity, or was it purely down to the failures of their opposition, the whites?’. I will be looking at the possible answers to this question in this essay.

The red army consisted of many different groups of people, old provisional government supporters, old tsarist soldiers, nationalists and separatists (who wanted independence) and basically anyone who hated the Bolsheviks and their ideas. The only thing they shared was a hatred for the reds, whereas the Bolsheviks all shared the same views. As you can imagine this made the Reds far more unified and a lot stronger than the whites. The whites could not agree on whether they were fighting for monarchism, republicism or for the Constituent Assembly. This made it hard for them to co-operate and impossible to develop a political strategy. They were also split on their views on national minorities. This is one reason why the whites lost, due to their constant disunity and this was purely their fault.

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One reason however why the reds won, was down to the good leadership and moral boosting Trotsky showed, he traveled up and down the front line in his famous train speaking to the soldiers, providing them with uniforms and ammunition, this really helped the soldiers as he really speared them on and gave them hope of victory. The white leaders on the other hand were disunited, spaced out and by many accounts from white soldiers we are aware that several leaders were cruel and treated the soldiers with contempt which reminded them of the Tsarist rule, due to this ...

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