The Origins of the Russian Civil War

Geoffrey Swain

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317899112
• Subtopic: European History

Concentrating on the turbulent months from February 1917 to November 1918, Geoffrey Swain explores the origins of the Civil War against the wider background of revolutionary Russia. He examines the aims of the anti-Bolshevik insurgents themselves; but he also shows how far the fear of civil war governed the action of the Provisional Government, and even the plans of the Bolsheviks. If the war itself can seem a fairly straightforward line-up of revolutionaries and counter-revolutionaries, this study reveals how complex were the motives of the people who precipitated it.

Chapter One
The Failed White Counter-revolution

On 2 March 1917, in the face of mass popular demonstrations which had been endemic since mid-February, and near universal desertion by the elites of Old Russia, Tsar Nicholas II abdicated. After a bitter struggle, which had begun for some of the participants nearly fifty years earlier, democracy had triumphed. Liberal politicians from the Duma, the national assembly established by the Tsar after the 1905 Revolution, had established a Provisional Government even before the abdication and set themselves the task of administering the country until a Constituent Assembly could be summoned. The Constituent Assembly would then adopt a constitution for the new democratic Russia and elect a new government, an essential task since the Tsar’s Duma was not a democratic body and gave little representation to the mass of Russia’s workers and peasants. These, the vast majority of Russians, since they were denied fair access to the Duma, had formed their own alternative assemblies known as soviets; the Petrograd Soviet held its first formal session on 27 February. Yet despite these twin sources of political authority in post-Tsarist Russia – the dual power of which contemporaries spoke – March was a month of euphoria, and the soviet at first endorsed the Provisional Government, having little reason to doubt its commitment to democratic advance.

By April 1917, however, the honeymoon was over. The leaders of the great mass of Russians represented in the soviets and the members of the Provisional Government, the Duma politicians elected from the property-owners of Tsarist Russia, first realized that they could not necessarily trust each other since their visions of the future of democracy in Russia were essentially very different. The Duma politicians longed for an idealized vision of the British parliamentary system, but without a monarchy, a society which would welcome them retaining their wealth and privilege. The soviets wanted a new democracy, ill-defined but closer to the people, and a society where all privilege and wealth were a thing of the past. It was the realization that in a democratic Russia the soviet vision would ultimately be the one to triumph when all Russians were able to vote which prompted the first moves towards an anti-democratic counter-revolution, the opening gambit of the Whites in the future White versus Red civil war.

In April 1917, within two months of the Tsarist regime being overthrown, counter-revolutionary groups within the Russian Army began to plot how best to overthrow the new democratic government. Six months later, they made their first serious attempt to stem the revolutionary tide when General Lavr Kornilov, Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Army, staged an abortive coup d’état. The plots which developed between April and August involved many of those generals who were to become key players later in the civil war, but that was not their true significance: the essence of these plots lay in their inability to attract any widespread support. Even politicians superficially sympathetic to the generals’ aspirations soon began to question their methods, for those politicians in contact with the generals quickly learned that the military’s programme had no place for democracy but was simply one of counter-revolutionary dictatorship.

Kornilov in April

Firm action by the military was first mooted at the end of April 1917, during the first major political crisis faced by the Provisional Government, a crisis which saw the leader of the liberal Kadet Party P.N. Milyukov forced to resign as Minister of Foreign Affairs, and the political complexion of the government transformed by the appointment of new ministers from Russia’s moderate socialist parties, the Mensheviks (Social Democrats) and Socialist Revolutionaries (SRs), Russia’s peasant socialist party. At the height of this crisis, street fighting occurred in Petrograd, fighting which saw the future White General Kornilov keen to flex his political muscles for the first time.

The crisis related to the vexed question of war aims. The Russian Revolution made it possible to argue that the First World War was a war between the democracies of Russia, Britain and France (joined by the USA) against the imperial powers of Central Europe; but it also raised the question of how tied the new democratic Russia was to the secret imperial war aims of the Tsar agreed with Britain and France, namely expansion in the Balkans. In an infamous note to the Allied governments, the Foreign Minister in the Provisional Government, P.N. Milyukov promised ‘fully to observe the obligations taken with respect to our Allies’, a promise which contradicted the widespread view of the Russian people, reflected in numerous soviet resolutions, that the war Russia was then fighting was a war for a peace ‘without indemnities and annexations’. Milyukov’s concern for the ‘obligations taken with respect to our Allies’ meant honouring commitments to annex the Ukrainian population of Austria-Hungary and occupy Constantinople and the Dardanelles straits. This war aims crisis encapsulated the differing political visions of liberal and soviet politicians. Milyukov seemed to be arguing that the Tsar had gone but Russia would carry on much as before; soviet politicians wanted radical change, especially where war aims were concerned, for only idealism could inspire a war-weary army to remain in the trenches. The crisis created such popular excitement that the Bolsheviks were able to stage their first demonstrations against the government; it presented anti-democratic forces with their first opportunity to discuss counter-revolution.

Many of the soldiers who participated in the first anti-Milyukov demonstration of 20 April were so angry at his action, and so sure that the Petrograd Soviet would support them that they were unaware that the demonstration had been inspired by Bolshevik agitators and had not been endorsed by the soviet. Although armed, this demonstration by members of the Finland and Moscow regiments was accompanied by brass bands, and the rally outside the Mariinskii Palace, where the Provisional Government was then based, dispersed peacefully at 5 p.m. after being addressed by both the Petrograd Soviet leaders A.R. Gots (an SR) and M.I. Skobelev (a Menshevik), and by General Kornilov, then the Commander of the Petrograd Military District. The soviet leaders argued that the crisis could be resolved peaceably, while Kornilov explained:

It is your legitimate right to voice your needs peacefully and in order; but that does not mean coming forward with weapons in hand, you must wait in your barracks for the legitimate resolutions to be made by your legitimate representatives.¹

Trouble began the following day, 21 April, when workers rather than soldiers marched to both the Mariinskii Palace and the Tauride Palace, where the Petrograd Soviet was based, and vociferously repeated the demand for Milyukov’s resignation. They were joined by some sailors from the naval base at Kronstadt and various armed Red Guards, and, unlike on the 20th, were met by a counter-demonstration organized by Milyukov’s Kadet Party. It was a confusing day, with three separate groups of anti-government demonstrators taking to the streets, to be confronted by one group of pro-government demonstrators; the result was two outbreaks of street fighting. Subsequent police reports established that the first incident began around 3 p.m. when the first group of workers, protected by armed guards, crossed the Pdver Neva from the working-class district of the Vyborg Side and marched towards the main shopping street of Nevskii Prospekt. As they approached the corner of Sadovaya Street and Nevskii Prospekt, a group of officers and critical bystanders tried to block their path and prevent them turning into Petrograd’s main shopping street. When they tried to grab a banner with the legend ‘Down with the Provisional Government’ – a slogan never endorsed by the Petrograd Soviet – there was a scuffle, sabres were drawn, and revolvers pulled from their holsters; at that moment a shot rang out from somewhere down Sadovaya Street and the procession forced its way onto Nevskii Prospekt and on towards the Admiralty building.

Angered by the success of the workers at forcing their way on to Nevskii Prospekt, counter-demonstrating officers and officials assembled outside one of Nevskii Prospekt’s premier shopping arcades, the Passage. A second workers’ demonstration was spotted turning into Nevskii Prospekt from Sadovaya Street and the counter-demonstration went to confront it. The two groups met near the Kazan Cathedral, a banner was seized and as the workers began to retreat some of the armed guards moved off the street and onto the pavement, drew their guns and fell to the ground. Three or four shots rang out from the workers’ side, though the counter-demonstrators had soon captured some of the workers’ weapons, and a further exchange of fire took place before the counter-demonstrators let the demonstrators past.

The counter-demonstrators then held the day: they organized a pro-government rally at the Mariinskii Palace, they then marched to a house on the Moika River where the government was meeting in emergency session - the Defence Minister A.I. Guchkov was too ill to move from his bed, so the government met in his bedroom – and organized another pro-government rally outside the Kazan Cathedral. As this started to disperse at around 6 p.m. a third workers’ demonstration arrived, this time entering the centre of town from the Vasilevskii Island district and starting to march up Nevskii Prospekt from the other, Admiralty end. This prompted a second armed clash.

All seemed to be going peacefully, until the demonstrators reached the junction with Sadovaya Street at about 10 p.m. Here counter-demonstrators tried to prevent the demonstrators turning into Sadovaya Street. After talks, in which the workers promised to disperse, they were let through, but the tail end of the demonstration became isolated from its armed guard. The temptation was too much for some pro-government counter-demonstrators who seized a banner from the outraged workers. In the confusion the workers’ armed guards came running back up Sadovaya Street and turned into Nevskii Prospekt with their arms drawn, some firing as they came. These took up positions by the public library, diving to the ground, and shots were exchanged with counter-demonstrators by the Gostinyi Dvor shopping arcade. At least ten shots were fired over a period of some five minutes, before the workers began to disperse. The police later ruled out the theory that this second outbreak of firing had been started by a counter-demonstrating agent provocateur. Although the counter-demonstrators had acted in a provocative manner, it was the ill-disciplined Red Guards who had opened fire first during each incident, and General Kornilov was determined to take what he saw as appropriate action.²

Kornilov, however, did not get his way, and his climb-down was witnessed by another future White general, Admiral A.V. Kolchak. The April street fighting coincided with government moves to complete the work of the so-called Polivanov Military Commission, established after the Tsar’s abdication to try and systematize the network of army committees which soldiers had been establishing throughout the Russian Army. In mid-April the government began to summon key commanders to the capital to discuss various drafts of the proposed Declaration of Soldiers’ Rights, and among the officers summoned to Petrograd at this time was Admiral A.V. Kolchak, the man in charge of the Black Sea Fleet. He was very concerned at the effect sailors’ committees were having on discipline in the navy and made his views clear not only to the Defence Minister Guchkov but to any prominent politician he met; on 21 April he was holding talks on this subject with the veteran Menshevik leader G.V. Plekhanov, the founder of Russian Marxism whose so-called Unity Group of Mensheviks was vociferously in favour of the war, when news of the street fighting reached him. Kolchak rushed from Plekhanov’s house to Guchkov’s house, where the Provisional Government was meeting, and arrived at the very same moment that General Kornilov asked for permission to use force against the armed demonstrators. Kolchak therefore witnessed the clash of wills between Kornilov and the Provisional Government. Justice Minister A.F. Kerensky and Prime Minister Prince G.E. Lvov opposed the use of force and insisted on a negotiated settlement. When Kornilov nonetheless ordered troops to gather outside the Mariinskii Palace, the Petrograd Soviet banned all troops from leaving their barracks without its agreement; it was the soviet not Kornilov that the troops obeyed, a slight Kornilov never forgot.³

Kornilov, as Commander of the Petrograd Military District, had already made clear that he felt a firm line should be taken towards the Petrograd Soviet. Just prior to the April demonstrations he had twice intervened to clip its wings. He successfully prevented Kerensky appointing the Bolshevik A. Taras-Rodionov to the post of Commandant of the Peter-Paul Fortress, and he succeeded in securing military control over the soviet’s radio station. The latter incident was resolved only after extensive negotiation, but once Kornilov had explained to a soviet delegation led by Skobelev that the demand for all radios to be put under military control stemmed from the security hazard implicit in the soviet’s devil-may-care attitude to the use of military codes, it was agreed to compromise; the existing communications director, chosen by the soviet, would be reappointed by order of Kornilov. With this background of difficult relations between Kornilov and the Petrograd Soviet it was no wonder that on 21 April Kerensky and Kornilov should clash at Guchkov’s house. And Kolchak saw at first hand how Kornilov was forced to abandon his firm line as the Provisional Government embarked on what both Kolchak and Kornilov saw as a climb-down. It was the soviet which resolved the crisis by negotiation, and in the process formed a new coalition government on 5 May 1917 in which the ‘soviet parties’, the Mensheviks and the SRs, joined the liberals in government.⁴

The negotiations leading up to the formation of the coalition government saw not only the resignation of Milyukov as Foreign Minister, but also of Guchkov as Defence Minister. Shortly before he resigned on 30 April, Guchkov asked the then Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Army, General M.V. Alekseev, to appoint Kornilov Commander-in-Chief of the Northern Front, so that he would be ‘in the immediate vicinity of Petrograd in view of future political developments’. To Guchkov’s fury Alekseev declined; he felt that this would mean passing over other experienced officers.⁵ Guchkov was not alone among those who identified Kornilov as the man most likely to serve the cause of counter-revolution. From April onwards, a whole series of counter-revolutionary organizations were formed – the Military League by Guchkov himself – and all looked to Kornilov, or if not him Kolchak, as potential leaders.

The first group of counter-revolutionary plotters assembled on 5 April, a fortnight before the Milyukov crisis. The chief instigator was V.S. Zavoiko, the son of an admiral rewarded with a large landed estate for his services to the Tsar. Zavoiko had worked in the oil industry in Baku for the firm Nobel and in other mineral extraction industries in Turkestan and Western Siberia for firms supported by British capital; he also served on the board of the Russo-Asiatic Bank. To a meeting held in his flat Zavoiko invited B.A. Suvorin, owner of the mass circulation newspaper Novoe vremya; B.N. Troitskii-Senyutovich of the International Bank; and Colonel V.D. Pletnev, Kornilov’s adjutant. They debated possible candidates for the po...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Editor’s foreword
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1. The Failed White Counter-revolution
• 2. Lenin Risks a Red-Green Civil War
• 3. Peace for Renewed Civil War
• 4. The British and the Patriotic Socialists
• 5. Defending the Socialist Fatherland
• 6. The Start of the Red-Green Civil War
• 7. Disunity in the Green Camp
• 8. Green Directory, White Counter-revolution
• Conclusion
• Glossary
• Bibliography
• Maps
• Index