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The Russian Civil War was fought from 1918 to 1922 . Following the success of the Russian Revolution , the new Russian ( Bolshevik ) government decided to make peace with Germany , as they had promised the Russian people prior to the Revolution. This formal agreement, the Treaty Of Brest-Litovsk , was ratified on March 6 1918 . The negotiated peace was the only option in the eyes of the Bolsheviks because the Russian army was in a chaos when the Germans began their advance in February 1918. The old Russian army had been re-organized in January into the "Workers' and Peasants' Red Army " and was still in disarray. This treaty galvanized a number of anti-Bolshevik groups inside and outside Russia into action against the new regime. For example, Winston Churchill declared that Bolshevism must be "strangled in its cradle". The majority of the fighting ended in 1920, but a notable resistance in certain areas continued until 1922 (e.g, Kronstadt Uprising , Tambov Rebellion , and the final resistance of the White Movement in the Far East ). The Soviet government Historiography traditionally didn't apply the qualifier "Russian" and used the term "Civil War and Military Intervention of 1917-1922". Accordingly, it included the Polish-Soviet War , resistance in Ukraine , as well as Basmachi Resistance and foreign intervention in Central Asia in its definition. OVERVIEW The war was fought for the most part between the "Reds" who were mostly communists and revolutionaries, and the "Whites" , a loose coalition of monarchists, conservatives, liberals, and socialists who opposed the Bolshevik Revolution. Nationalist and Anarchist movements known as the "Greens" , the anarchists alternatively known as the Black Army , played a much smaller part in the war, sometimes harrying both the Reds and the Whites, and sometimes even each other. In addition, the Entente and some other countries intervened on the side of the Whites, further aggravating the civil war. |
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