The party that took power in October 1917 was not the country's largest party. The civil war grew straight out of that gap: the lines shifted within months, friends became enemies, and the same village changed sides three times in two years.
The ballot box, the street and the Winter Palace
On the night of 25 October 1917 the Bolsheviks took the Winter Palace almost without a fight; Kerensky left the city in an American embassy car and never came back to power. But most of the country was not behind this party, and the first thing to show it was the ballot. In the Constituent Assembly elections in November the SRs came first with close to 40 per cent, the Bolsheviks second with 24. The Assembly met on 5 January 1918, passed the land law in the small hours and was dissolved the next day. The law was never applied.
That night the Kronstadt sailors stood with the Bolsheviks. Even so, the first question of the civil war was born here: the party that took power and the voters' largest party were not the same party. The answer to who backed whom has to be sought, then, not along a single line but in a series of choices spread over months.
The Reds: the city, the railway, the bread
The core of the Reds was factory workers, the capital's garrison and the sailors of the Baltic Fleet. In October 1917 most of the front armies either leaned towards the Bolsheviks or stayed neutral; that silence carried the regime through its first months. In 1918 the Red Guards became the nucleus of the Red Army, and Trotsky, building an army from nothing, used former tsarist officers to do it.
As the army grew it hardened. The Cheka was founded in December 1917; on 30 August 1918 Lenin was shot at the Mikhelson factory, Red Terror was proclaimed, and thousands were shot. Tens of thousands of former Austro-Hungarian prisoners fought in the Red Army ranks as 'internationalists'. In October 1919 Yudenich's march on Petrograd was stopped on the Pulkovo heights.
The Whites: an officer's coat, a Cossack whip
In its first months the Volunteer Army was no more than a few thousand officers; most of the rank and file had long since gone home. Kornilov was killed by a shell at the siege of Ekaterinodar on 13 April 1918, and Denikin took over the command. In April 1918 the Don Cossacks rose and in May chose Krasnov as ataman; the Volunteer Army was in the Kuban at the time.
In Siberia Admiral Kolchak made himself 'Supreme Ruler' at Omsk in November 1918; he overthrew the Directory, in which SRs also sat, and had the SR leaders arrested. Most White generals did not openly argue for the return of the monarchy, saying 'victory first, then the people's decision'. In the spring of 1919 Kolchak's offensive was closing on the Volga and Denikin marched on Moscow; in June the Red Army drove Kolchak back beyond the Urals.
The SRs: from the ballot box to revolt
In May 1918 the Czechoslovak Legion rose and held the railway from the Volga to Vladivostok; that opened the way for anti-Bolshevik governments from the Volga all the way to Siberia. Samara fell on 8 June, Constituent Assembly members set up Komuch, and they kept Kerensky out of it. Komuch's People's Army was made up mainly of volunteer officers and peasants; its best-known commander was Kappel, and in August the gold reserve at Kazan fell into his hands. The Legion was Komuch's strongest military support.
In September a Directory was set up at Ufa under Avksentiev, leader of the right SRs, but in November Kolchak overthrew that as well. After October the SRs and the Mensheviks failed to build a common front against the Bolsheviks; Menshevik newspapers were shut down again and again through 1918, and Martov left the country in 1920. Chernov was in hiding in Russia in 1919 and went into exile in 1920.
The Left SRs: from partner to enemy
The Left SRs entered the government in December 1917 as the Bolsheviks' junior partner, taking only a few commissariats. They had won a majority at the Congress of Peasant Soviets in November 1917, and Spiridonova had become its chair. They opposed the death penalty; Commissar of Justice Steinberg tried to limit the Cheka's powers and did not succeed.
When Brest-Litovsk was signed on 3 March 1918 the Left SRs walked out of the government in protest. They wanted a 'revolutionary war' against Germany, but the army had already come apart. On 6 July 1918 they killed the German ambassador Mirbach and rose in revolt; the revolt was put down and Spiridonova was arrested. In November 1918 she was in prison in the Kremlin, escaped once in 1919 and was caught again. Leading figures such as Kamkov were shot in 1938.
The Greens: neither Red nor White
For the peasant the question was land, and in practice the land had changed hands by the autumn of 1917. Peasant land committees divided the great estates among themselves; soldiers deserting from the front went back to their villages and joined the seizures. The Provisional Government could not stop them, and the land law passed by the Constituent Assembly in the small hours was never applied.
Between 1918 and 1921 there were large peasant risings against the Bolsheviks in Tambov and on the Volga, and these were called the 'Greens'. The Antonov rising in Tambov in 1920-21 was tied to the Left SRs and was drowned in blood in 1921. The peasant's hesitation made sense: he wanted to keep the field in his own hands; he drew close to any power that guaranteed it and away from any power that asked for grain.
Makhno: a third flag on the steppe
The anarchist Nestor Makhno, from Huliaipole, was released in March 1917 and went back to his village at the end of the month; in August he took charge of the Committee for the Defence of the Revolution. In April 1918, when Austro-German troops entered Huliaipole, he was at the front; his brother Yemelyan was killed by the occupiers and his mother's house was burned. In June he met Kropotkin in Moscow and Lenin in the Kremlin; the Bolsheviks gave him false papers so that he could return to Ukraine.
In September 1918 at Dibrivka he overwhelmed an Austrian battalion with a few dozen men, and the peasants began to call him 'Batko'. In February 1919 the Makhnovists joined the Red Army's Zadneprovsk division as a brigade. But on 6 June 1919 Trotsky outlawed him; Makhno left the command, fought Denikin on his own, and in September 1919 at Peregonovka brought Denikin's front down from the rear. In July 1919, because of the pogroms, he had Grigoriev killed in his own headquarters.
The Allies: aid, conditions, withdrawal
Allied intervention showed itself most concretely in Baku. Baku was taken on 15 September 1918, and irregular troops then massacred Armenian civilians. General Thomson entered the city on 17 November 1918; he would not recognise the Azerbaijani government at first, then accepted it in practice. In January 1919, with British approval, Khosrov bey Sultanov became governor-general of Karabakh.
While they helped the White armies the Allies time and again set a democratic government as the condition, and the generals always put those conditions off. Russia was not invited to the Paris Peace Conference, and the meeting proposed at Prinkipo never took place. When Versailles was signed on 28 June 1919 Russia was not at the table: a country that had fought beside its allies for four years was left alone with its own civil war in the peace. Kerensky went to London and Paris in 1918 and found no support.
The intervention stayed short and disorderly; what lasted was the emigration. After the civil war hundreds of thousands of Russians went to Europe, and émigré organisations raised money from Allied governments and wealthy émigrés after 1918.