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various sectors of the russian population were increasingly
compelled to take to arms to defend themselves against the
strong-armed tactics of the new communist dictatorship. as for the
bolsheviks, they did not see a civil war as anything out of the
ordinary. the communist leaders considered the armed confrontation
of antagonistic political and social forces as a justifiable and
legitimate form of 揷lass struggle.?millions of armed, embittered,
and illiterate workers and peasants turned a ready ear to
revolutionary agitators, who stirred up class hatred and incited
mobs of boorish soldiers and sailors to senseless acts of violence. |
from
mid-1918 on the fighting escalated into an all-out war waged by
diverse armed units: from regular armies to numerous guerrilla
detachments and bandit gangs. some thought of themselves as 揜eds?
(the traditional color of communist revolutionaries), or
pro-bolshevik; others joined the 揥hite?(the traditional color of
the conservative supporters of the old order) movement that united
diverse anti-bolshevik forces from monarchists to socialists. others
still, including many members of moderate socialist parties, found
themselves vacillating between the bolshevik commissars and the
white generals. finally, there were disparate peasant detachments
operating in different parts of the country that switched sides
between the reds and the whites or even fought against both of them.
the civil war dragged on for nearly three years until the end of
1920, imposing even greater hardships on the russian people than
those of the world war.
ultimately, the loyalties of the peasantry that formed the bulk of
the population proved decisive for the outcome of the civil war. to
the majority of peasants, the agrarian policies of the white
governments were unacceptable, because they wanted to reintroduce
the old property rights of the landed gentry on the territories
under their control. the peasantry had to choose between two evils:
the grain appropriation and the ban on free trade, imposed by the
bolsheviks, or the restoration of the gentry抯 property rights. the
bolsheviks seemed to many to be the lesser of two evils. the
peasants were convinced that the land that was given to them as the
result of the revolution would remain theirs in case of a bolshevik
victory, whereas the whites?victory would almost certainly mean the
repossession of the land by former owners.
the
peasantry抯 pro-bolshevik leanings enabled the communist authorities
to boost the strength of the red army to five million men toward the
end of the war. the maximal strength of the white armies during the
civil war did not exceed 800,000 men.
