Whereas the whites were disunited, the Bolsheviks maintained absolute unity through Terror. The Tsar and his family were put to death, which removed a focal point for the whites. The Cheka murdered any Whites they found – more than 7000 people were executed, and Red Army generals were kept loyal by taking their families hostage – so the Bolsheviks were united and disciplined towards a single end – winning the war.
Finally, the Bolsheviks had what they needed to win the war. The British, French and American armies were fighting thousands of miles from home, at the end of a long supply line. The Bolsheviks, on the other hand, had control of the main cities of Moscow and Petrograd (with their factories), control of the railways (vital), an army of 300,000 men, very strict army discipline, and internal lines of communication – giving them the advantage in the war. When Kolchak was defeated in 1919, the foreign armies went home. The last white army was defeated in the Crimea in 1920.
Bolsheviks Win the Civil War
After the attempt on Lenin's life in August 1918, the Bolsheviks struck against their real and imagined enemies. They called for death to counter-revolutionaries, and they rounded up and executed eight hundred people. Facing attack from armies that had arisen against their rule, the Bolsheviks were resorting to what some people called an iron dictatorship. This included complete control over the economy, which was put under military discipline. In the fall of 1918, trade became a state monopoly. The death penalty was re-established in the army. Earlier Trotsky and some other revolutionaries had favored its abolition, seeing it as something from tsarist times, but Lenin had favored it, asking how you can have a revolution without shooting people.
The Bolsheviks drafted people into their armies, and Trotsky welded the new Red army into a disciplined fighting force. And in their fight against the anti-Bolshevik armies the Bolsheviks benefited from having let the peasants confiscate lands. Poor peasants with confiscated lands feared that those who wanted to crush the Bolsheviks would force a return of these lands.
Many of the officers in the anti-Bolshevik armies favored monarchy and the sanctity of ownership of property. Their announced purpose of warring against the Bolsheviks was to reconvene the Constituent Assembly and to enforce the laws of the Provisional Government. But in warring against the Bolsheviks, they cared little about winning hearts and minds. They ignored propaganda. These were men unskilled in politics and unmindful that war was an extension of politics. They wanted no part of politics. They made the same mistake that German military planners had made before World War I: they put violence ahead of everything else. And they drove ethnic peoples on the borders of Bolshevik controlled areas into supporting the Bolsheviks against them.
Trotsky's Red Army had various advantages over the anti-Bolshevik armies. One advantage was in human resources. Many who were drafted into the Red Army had little love for the Bolsheviks, and desertions from the army were high, but the Red Army had enough men who believed that they were fighting to change the world and who wanted to defend the revolution against counter-revolution. Another advantage for the Bolsheviks was in military hardware. They were in possession of military hardware left by the imperial army, and in the area they controlled were defense industries. And the Bolsheviks had the advantage of holding a central position. The anti-Bolshevik armies, on the other hand, were scattered and their moves uncoordinated, and they were dependent on what little outside powers gave them in money, supplies and instructors.
The first major threat to the Bolsheviks came from Siberia, in the mid-year of 1919, by an army led by Alexander Kolchak, a former admiral in the tsar's navy. Pillage and murder were perpetrated by those under the command of one of Kolchak's officers: Colonel Sephanov. Hundreds of peasants and townspeople were murdered. And Kolchak's army executed people they found unenthusiastic for their cause. The anti-Bolshevik armies from other directions were not making attacks simultaneous with Kolchak's offensives, and Kolchak's forces could not hold against the full weight of the Red Army. The British began a diversionary offensive in the north, but it was too late to help. The Red Army drove Kolchak's forces back, and Kolchak's army turned into a rabble of individuals solely concerned with their own survival -- officers, wives and mistresses, hordes of soldiers and civilians, rushing eastward.
From the south, but too late to be much help to Kolchak's army, an anti-Bolshevik force 150,000 strong, led by a former tsarist commander, Anton Denikin, drove the Bolsheviks out of the Caucasus region. Late in 1919 Denikin's army came within two hundred miles of . Simultaneously an army from , with British tanks, led by another former tsarist army commander, Yudenich, pushed within ten miles of Petrograd (). The Bolshevik forces rallied and threw Yudenich's forces back. They forced Denikin's army into retreat, and Denikin's army fell to pieces. And continuing their drive southward, in early 1920 the Bolsheviks overran Rostov (at the Black Sea).
In 1920, the Red Army pushed into the , undoing losses agreed to at Brest-Litovsk. Poland's new leaders wished to re-establish their old empire, and they sent armies into the Ukraine -- using war material from France and financing the operation with money from a United States food loan. The Poles took in May 1920. The Bolsheviks retook Kiev in June and sent the Polish army back in a rout. By mid-August, the Bolsheviks had pushed westward to the outskirts of -- causing concern in Britain and France. But within days, Poland's forces rallied, and now it was their turn to send the over-extended Bolshevik forces back.
In August 1920, the Bolsheviks signed peace agreements with Estonia, and , and in October they signed an armistice with the Poles, freeing their armies to finish off their enemies on their southern front. There they drove against the army that had been under Denikin and was now under the Baron Peter Wrangel, a former commander of Cossacks during World War I. In November, Wrangel's army fell apart and fled with civilians to . This marked the end of Russia's civil war.
Moscow still lacked a settlement with Poland. Devastated by the civil war and desiring peace more than did the Poles, the Bolsheviks signed a treaty with Poland on terms favorable to the Poles. The border between the Soviet Union and Poland placed four million Ukrainians and Byelorussians under Polish rule. A huge strip of land that had been a part of tsarist Russia was lost to the Poles -- the area that the Bolsheviks were to retake with the Hitler-Stalin pact in 1939.
Why did the Reds win the Civil War?
Weaknesses of the Whites
Failed to build a power base especially in the 85% peasant population (landowners were restored to their land in areas controlled by the Whites).
Did not gain the support of the national minorities - slogans like 'Russia, one, united and indivisible'. Outdid the Reds on the anti-semitic front - Denikin's army killed 100,000 Jews in the Ukraine.
Failed to use politics or propoganda to gain support. Offered little in effect but a return to the status quo ante and the loss of the gains of the Revolution.
Corruption, decadence and brutality also won them little support.
The use of allied intervention made them seem unpatriotic.
Lack of strong leadership - Kolchak was only nominally 'Supreme Ruler' while one contemporary refered to him as 'soft wax'.
Lack of communication - Kornilov and Alexeev even refused to speak to each other despite having offices in the same building. Being on the periphery forced the White leaders to hold their meetings in Paris.
Lack of co-ordination - Denikin and Kolchak advanced on Moscow 5 months apart in 1919 allowing each army to be defeated one by one.
Militarily, the Reds never faced an army of more than 100,000 at any time and conscription at gunpoint led to a rate of desertion of 80% amongst Kolchak's army
Divided politically between the Far Right, Centre and Moderate Left elements. Some allies, such as the Cossacks were also territorial and would not advance from their areas.
Strengths of the Reds
Built a powerbase; issued 116 decrees between taking power and January 1918 including on peace, land and workers' control
Understood the importance of politics and propoganda - agitprop trains and cinema, propoganda artists like Lissitzky and Moor.
Ideologically united. Strong command structure with democratic centralism used - from January 1919 the authority of the large Central Committee was devolved to two much smaller subcommittees - the Politburo and Orgburo.
Held the Russian heartland, majority of the population and industrial centers as well as the railway hub.
Strong leadership, particularly from Trotsky who could be ruthless, such as in decimating retreating units at Svyazhsk, and inspiring, such as in the defence of Petrograd. Trotsky travelled 65,000 miles during the course of the War to raise morale.
War Communism kept the economy just long enough to fight the war.
At 5 million the Reds had a larger army. It was also, possibly, slightly more determined in that it was fighting for the very survival of Communism. One surrounded Red army at Ekaterinburg marched 1,000 miles over the Urals to escape.
Limitations of Foreign Intervention
Powers were divided by different war aims.
Countries themselves were divided over the conflict - Churchill for example wanted Britain to enter the Civil War in a fuller capacity, Lloyd-George was uncertain.
Ignorance of Russia. For example, Lloyd-George thought Kharkov was a general not a town.
War weariness amongst allied troops following WWI. Corruption and drug abuse amongst Western Officers.
The British sent Kolchak 97,000 tonnes of supplies including 600,000 rifles and 7,000 machine guns, however much of these supplies ended up in the Reds' hands through the black market.
The allies played only a small military role in proceedings, with only the British actually fighting and only then in defensive battles.
The allies were also unused to -40 conditions and the frostbite and disease that that brought with it.
Cause