The lack of popular support also proved to be destructive for the Whites on a military level. The conscription of peasants demonstrated to be unsuccessful as the White army only had 250 000 soldiers at any one time. The alienation of the peasants by Denikin and his followers who made it clear to them that they would have to give back most of the land they seized in 1917 urged them to desert the battlefields in their thousands or to revolt, which in Denikin’s case, forced him to send troops back from the front and thus weakening his ability to push forward to Moscow. Furthermore, the Whites did not only lack numbers but were scattered around the edges of the central area of Russia, separated by large distances. This made communications difficult, especially moving men and weapons, coordinating the attacks of different White armies and even conscripting men as the areas were not as populated as the central, Red held ones. It may be argued that, initially, in 1919, the Whites experienced success, as they surrounded the Reds in Petrograd and Moscow in October and had more convinced foreign support and encouragement, especially from the Czechoslovak Legion which occupied towns along the Trans-Siberian Railway. However, after October 1919 the Bolsheviks had turned the tide, picking off White armies one by one and thereafter pushing the Whites back until their final defeat at the end of 1920. A solid reason that lay behind these defeats was the lack of military strategies and co-operation as well as the unpopularity of White generals such as Denikin, Yudenich and Kolchak with the peasants. Each general established a regime that he supported in the area that he was in charge of, and considering the various beliefs of groups within the Whites, it was not uncommon for White armies to fight each other. The brutality exhibited by them, again affected the morale of the armies, thus offering them no incentive and determination to fight; The Omsk government, represented by Kolchak, was a militaristic dictatorship that repressed and pushed the people to such a great extent towards Bolshevism that when the Red Army took over in November 1919, it did so with the willing participation of large numbers of peasant recruits. Moreover, one may argue that had the help offered by the Allies been more enthusiastic, the Whites may have been able to mend their military weaknesses, as the supplies sent in 1919 were crucial in allowing the Whites to launch the campaigns they did in 1919. However, the majority of the Western powers lost interest soon after as they dropped their idea of an Eastern Front being re-activated and few men were actually sent to fight, as the figures of country and battle deaths show, with 500 000 for the Russians and numbers not exceeding 400 for the Allies.
On the other hand, the Red strengths were undeniable. Their geographical position allowed them to have centralized control over the internal lines of communication and could make use of the railways, thus being able to arm and manoeuvre their armies, an advantage that the Whites could not enjoy. The central areas they controlled contained the highest concentration of war industries, with 46.3% in Moscow and Petrograd, 38% in the White controlled Urals and Ukraine and 25% in Poland and this meant they could carry on producing war materials and would not run out easily or rely on other powers to supply them like the Whites did. Moreover, having control over heavily populated urban areas also offered the Reds the ability to conscript large numbers to fight, so that by 1921, the Red army had grown to 5 million soldiers, 20 times the size of the Whites. Nonetheless, it was not only the fact that the areas were greatly inhabited that gave the Reds so many men but it was also the universal aim to preserve the revolution that provided the men with the impetus to fight. As Commissar for War, Trotsky’s active involvement in the Reds’ campaigns, travelling in a specially equipped train to the fiercest points to provide support and supplies, enforcing the universal aim, greatly contributed to the performance and determination of the army. He was a central character who brought discipline and professionalism to the Red Army through the introduction of radical innovations; specifically the network of Political Commissars, who were direct representatives of the Soviet power in the Army. Trotsky brought back 50 000 former tsarist officers to train and command army units as otherwise they would have had to “start from scratch” and attached a Commissar to each army unit to ensure that the officers were loyal. The reformation of the army was now based on hierarchy again, which meant that Trotsky put aside communist ideals. However, it proved to be highly effective as he was unwilling to have an army based on “a game of chance, by allowing each unit to decide for itself whether it would agree to advance or to remain on the defensive” like the Whites did. Moreover, each leading figure knew his job, as commanders were in charge of military leadership and commissars concentrated on political and educational work of the army making sure that the army always had the Red objective of the continuity of the revolution in mind, as opposed to the Whites, where the generals had a universal role and thus it was easy for them to lose sight of various aspects. Trotsky even introduced cavalry to the Red Army, as he saw the Whites’ cavalry as a possible strength and “after only a few months, our cavalry could stand comparison with the enemy’s, and subsequently it seized the initiative once and for all.” Trotsky acted as the person in overall charge, holding things together and making the organisation work effectively. He was actively involved in the process through which the army was going, however leaving key military decisions to experts as he admitted he did not have experience in the field, and he seemed to inspire men in a way that other leaders, especially the second class White generals, could not. Therefore, he was the one who motivated the men to fight and save Petrograd from Yudenich’s army when Lenin thought that they would have to give it up.
Nonetheless, although Lenin did not play an important role in influencing the Red Army, he consolidated the Bolshevik state, making sure that the army and factory workers were supplied and able to stimulate the war effort by initiating a tough policy known as War Communism. Lenin took charge of the day-to-day business of the Sovnarkom and decided to take control of the means of production due to the rapid deterioration of the economy in the spring of 1918. The industry was falling apart as workers’ committees were incapable of running the factories and thus this led to shortages of goods. As a result of this, inflation set in, discouraging peasants from supplying foods to the cities as there were no goods to be exchanged for food and paper money was worthless. Therefore, food shortages were also starting to make their way into the Red held urban areas of Russia, so that in February 1918 the bread ration in Petrograd had reached an all time low of only 50 grams per person a day and workers started to flee from the cities, leaving factories short of workers. Thus, Lenin realised that in order to gear the whole economy of Red Russia towards the needs of the army, the workers needed to be fed and kept in the cities to produce munitions. War Communism consisted of a more Marxist approach as all industry was nationalized and workers’ committees were disbanded; private trade was banned as well, and was replaced by the chaotic state trading system which still failed to provide consumer goods and so a black market developed. Furthermore, in order to make sure that the cities were supplied with food, a Food Supplies Dictatorship was set up in May 1918 which established the forcible requisitioning of grain as the standard policy, greatly angering the peasants and discouraging them from planting for the following season which in the long run led to a fall in agricultural production. Internal passports were introduced for people in the cities to stop workers from fleeing to the countryside, a policy that reduced their freedom.
Nonetheless, War Communism may also be seen as an extension of class warfare to squeeze out counter-revolutionary forces. Beginning with the assassination attempt on Lenin, the Cheka launched the ‘Red Terror’, whereby SRs were arrested, along with anarchists and other extreme left groups, while 300 000 prisoners were shot in the cities between 1918-1920. In the countryside, where there was little central control, the local Cheka had power over their own patch and acted as petty tyrants, starving peasants out as they helped the requisitioning brigades; their cruelty proven by the Volga Famine in 1920-21, in which more than 3 million people died. It can be argued that Lenin created a machinery of terror and a police state, as the Bolsheviks set up concentration and labour camps for the opposition. Inevitably, War Communism resistance from the peasants at Tandov Province in 1923 and through the Kronstadt Mutiny, where 30 000 were killed, the memory of the old order and of how the Tsar dealt with opposition was refreshed in people’s minds. Therefore, although the policies were relatively effective in the short term, as they ensured the Reds’ victory due to increased production of munitions, by 1921 the Russian economy was in ruins, with 77% of factories seeing strike action despite the warning of being shot, and hence, with industrial production falling. Even so, War Communism constituted a strength for the Bolsheviks during the Civil War that the Whites did not possess, as they made sure that the army was always supplied and did not need to rely on foreign support.
As War Communism may have pushed some to doubt the socialism that the Bolsheviks were promoting and in order to further determinate the Red Army, the Bolsheviks made wide use of propaganda. They heavily relied on visual propaganda, considering that the Russians had a highly visual traditional culture due to the Russian Orthodox icon, and that about 80% of the rural population and 50% of the urban population was illiterate. The Bolsheviks displayed political posters in public places because they offered a more effective way of using limited supplies of paper and ink to reach a wide audience. “The peasants were taken in by the propaganda” which advocated that the Reds were by far superior to the Whites by publishing a poster showing Wrangel’s hand being cut off while he is crawling at the feet of a Red who is much stronger than him. Moreover, from 1918 on, the Soviet propagandists skilfully exploited the raw fact of Allied presence on Russian soil, despite little effective involvement in the War by the Allies; White generals were depicted as “dogs of war” with the Allies as their owners and such a poster transmitted the idea that the Whites were puppets of capitalism. In order to convince people that the Bolsheviks defended interests of all soldiers, peasants, workers and sailors and that they had full popular support from the working class, they published a heroic poster whereby three representatives of the different categories of people within the working class are keen to come “to the defence of Petrograd”. Moreover, propaganda was a key aspect of Trotsky’s Red Army policy and he recognized the importance of it as he had a printing press on board of his previously mentioned train. Propaganda proved to be such an essential factor of Bolshevik strengths from 1918 to 1921, 3100 different posters were produced and a total of 7.5 million posters, postcards and pictures were distributed so that any person in Red Russia would be surrounded by “the multitudes of posters-in factories and barracks, on walls and railway-cars, on telegraph poles-everywhere”, as an American journalist wrote. Although the Whites had an attempt at propaganda, it wasn’t as effective as the Reds’ as the Reds’, explained Trotsky, “united the Red Army, while disrupting the enemy’s forces, not by any special technical methods or procedures but by the Communist idea which constituted the content of this propaganda.”
In conclusion, at a first glance, it would appear that the White weaknesses were much more responsible for the Reds’ victory in the Civil War, as it may be argued that disunity within the Whites and a lack of a general aim, together with a variety of second rate generals who failed to determine their men and to create unity amongst them, would have propagated even an incapable enemy army to victory. However, in my opinion, Trotsky’s central role in the reformation of the Red Army cannot be underestimated. He established discipline and hierarchical values that, as opposed to the Whites who had various squabbling generals, gave the army an organised structure. Moreover, he clearly understood the importance of propaganda and took advantage of it, thus consolidating the communist purpose behind the Bolsheviks’ actions and determining the army and the rest of the population under the Reds that they were fighting and working for a firm aim. Therefore, the reforms were a crucial aspect of Red victory; War Communism automated Red Russia towards the war effort and its short term success proved to be essential in making sure that the army was supplied, whilst Whites had to rely on foreign support. Hence, without their own strengths, the Reds may have never been able to rise themselves to being superior to the Whites and thus their own abilities played a key role in their success to a great extent. Nonetheless, despite the short term success of War Communism, it proved to be disastrous for the economy and the people of Russia so much that Lenin decided to replace it with a New Economic Policy after the Reds won the Civil War; it was not only War Communism that affected Russia but the burden of the Civil War itself. During the War, central authority disappeared and local areas were left to fend for themselves, while workers’ wages were 2% of their 1913 ones, meaning that standards of living during the Civil War had seriously declined.
