The Reds, however, were the complete opposite of the Whites as they were undivided and extremely organised. Leon Trotsky was the Commissar for war during the Civil War. He turned the Red Army into to a disciplined, well trained and well prepared force. He did this by the use of terror and instilling confidence in his army. The use of the death penalty for deserters spread terror through the army and kept them united and focused on defeating the Whites. Trotsky had an unflagging spirit, which kept morale high throughout his army and convinced his soldiers that they would defeat the Whites. The Red Army was completely unified under their communist ideology and therefore would fight as one army not a collection of armies such as the Whites. This allowed Trotsky to organise the whole of his army on all the major fronts. Therefore, unlike the Whites the Reds were well organised, united and confident they could win.
The Whites also had little or no successful tactics. This was mainly due to their ideological divisions and poor communications between the factions of the White Army. Therefore the divisions had no real strategies for fighting together against the Reds. Instead they attacked simply when they thought it was right to and therefore rarely could mount a serious offensive against the Reds, as it was extremely difficult to get the individual factions to attack at the same time. There was even poor tactics within the majority of the factions of the White Army due to the lack of good leadership. Therefore in some cases when the factions went on their offensives soldiers did not know what they were meant to be doing. This therefore caused a large inefficiency
The Reds however were the complete opposite; they had clear and precise tactics. Trotsky kept his army well organised and unified using terror tactics as mentioned before to keep his army together and focused on defeating the Whites. Trotsky had entire control over his army therefore he could effectively organise the overall tactics of the army, whereas no one in the White Army could. This was a considerable disadvantage to the Whites and a large reason for their defeat as the Whites could not use there soldiers to their full potential as each factions would fight on there own whereas Reds fought as one army.
Another big reason for the Whites being unable to win the Civil War was that they found it extremely difficult to conscript peasants. Without the support from peasants the Whites would have a considerably smaller army and therefore it would extremely weaken their war effort. The peasants would not join the White Army as they believed that their newly acquired land that they had been given to by the Bolsheviks would be taken back by the government which would be set up once the White Army won.
The Reds however, found it a lot easier to conscript peasants, as the peasants believed that they would be able to keep their land under Bolshevik rule. Therefore the Red army increased in size considerably by conscripting five million peasants and therefore giving the Red army a much larger army than the Whites.
Another reason why the Whites didn’t win the Civil War was that the Whites didn’t control the very resourceful or networked areas of Russia even though they controlled the majority of Russia. The area the Whites controlled had little industry and poor railway connections as the Bolsheviks controlled the area around Petrograd and Moscow, which had most of the heavy industry and all the railways stemmed from Moscow. The lack of railways meant that communications between the White Armies was extremely difficult and meant that it was also difficult to transport supplies to the armies. The lack of heavy industry also meant that productivity was low and therefore the armies were not supplied well. The size of the Whites part of Russia also presented another problem for the Whites as they had a large front to fight on and therefore with the other problems of communications between divisions of the White Army it was extremely difficult for the White Army to defend their part of Russia.
The Reds, on the other hand, controlled a small area of Russia that was well networked and contained a lot of Russia’s industry. The Reds to improve their supplies to their army changed their capital from Petrograd to Moscow. This allowed the Reds to be able to control their industry and railways far more efficiently as the railways stemmed from Moscow and the main industry was based in Moscow. This allowed the Reds to be able to supply their army with good weaponry, food and clothing, which are all vital in a good military campaign.
The Whites did however gain an advantage over the Reds in having support from the Allies, however this was very poor and filtered out after World War One. However it did help the Reds in some ways as it helped increase peasantry support even further as it allowed the Bolsheviks to look like good Russian patriots due to the hate peasants had of Western Europeans. Overall I believe that the Allied support for the Whites actually was a greater support to the Reds than the Whites as the Allied support was very insignificant in their war effort and did last the whole Civil War whereas it did help the Reds to conscript more peasants and therefore gain a larger army.
I conclude that there were many reasons for why the White Army were defeated in the Civil War by the Red Army. The ideological divisions of the White Army were the biggest long-term cause for the defeat and caused many additional problems for the White Army. The ideology of the factions of the White Army caused these divisions as each political had different views on how the army should be run. The divisions caused other long-term factors such as the poor communications and co-ordination between the factions, which on their own created even larger divisions between the factions than there were already was. Also the poor communications affected other short-term effects such as the poor tactics the Whites used and the poor equipment the Whites had, as the factions could not work together to make enough supplies or to create effective tactics. However the biggest problem the Whites faced was the superiority the Reds had of all of the above factors that meant that the Whites could not win the Civil War.
