Lenin and the Civil War 1917–24

Between October 1917 and Lenin's death in January 1924, the Bolsheviks faced a dual task: to construct a socialist state in the largest country in Europe, and to fight a civil war against a coalition of opponents backed by foreign intervention. This lesson examines the first decrees of the new regime, the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly, the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, the Russian Civil War of 1918–21, the policies of War Communism and Red Terror, the Kronstadt revolt, the introduction of the New Economic Policy, and the political succession problem that Lenin's death produced. The period is pivotal because it is in these years that the political forms of the Soviet system — a single-party state, a secret police, a command economy in embryo — were fixed.

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The First Decrees and the Dissolution of the Constituent Assembly

The Council of People's Commissars (Sovnarkom) passed a series of decrees in its first weeks that were intended as much to consolidate popular support as to effect administrative change.

Decree	Date	Content
Decree on Peace	26 October 1917	Called for an immediate armistice and a peace without annexations
Decree on Land	26 October 1917	Abolished private ownership of land; sanctioned peasant seizure of estates
Decree on Workers' Control	14 November 1917	Placed factories under elected workers' committees
Decree on the Press	27 October 1917	Closed hostile newspapers
Cheka established	20 December 1917	All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution and Sabotage under Felix Dzerzhinsky

Elections to the long-promised Constituent Assembly were held on 12 November 1917. The Bolsheviks had committed themselves to the Assembly before October and could not cancel the vote without a political cost. The results, when they came, were unwelcome: the Socialist Revolutionaries — the peasants' party — won approximately 410 seats, the Bolsheviks 175, the Mensheviks and Kadets the remainder. When the Assembly met on 5 January 1918, it refused to ratify Sovnarkom's decrees; it was dispersed by a Red Guard detachment the following day and never reconvened. Lenin justified the closure on the grounds that Soviet democracy, based on workers' and soldiers' deputies, was a higher form than bourgeois parliamentarianism. In practical terms the dispersal marked the moment at which the revolution became a one-party project.

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The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk

Decree or no decree, peace with Germany could be secured only by negotiation. Talks opened at Brest-Litovsk in December 1917. Trotsky, as Commissar for Foreign Affairs, pursued a policy of "neither war nor peace" — refusing to sign but declining to fight. Germany responded in February 1918 by resuming its advance into the Baltic states and Ukraine. With no army capable of resistance, the Bolsheviks accepted German terms.

The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, signed on 3 March 1918, was ruinous. Russia surrendered:

• Poland, the Baltic states (Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia), Finland, Ukraine and parts of the Caucasus;
• approximately one-third of the empire's population (c. 55 million people);
• approximately one-third of its arable land, half of its industry and three-quarters of its coal and iron;
• a reparations indemnity of 6 billion marks.

Lenin argued that the treaty bought time for the revolution; Bukharin and the Left Communists argued for revolutionary war. The breach over Brest-Litovsk prompted the Left SRs, who had briefly been Bolshevik coalition partners, to leave the government and, in July 1918, to assassinate the German ambassador Mirbach in an attempt to restart the war. Their revolt was crushed. The single-party dictatorship was now unmistakable.

When Germany itself collapsed in November 1918, the treaty was annulled — but by then, many of its territorial provisions had been overtaken by the Civil War.

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The Russian Civil War 1918–21

The Civil War developed out of overlapping conflicts rather than a single front. Its core was a struggle between the Red (Bolshevik) government in Moscow — the capital had been moved from Petrograd in March 1918 — and a constellation of White forces opposed to Bolshevik rule. It was complicated by foreign intervention and by nationalist revolts on the borderlands.

Force	Leadership / geography	Objectives
Reds	Lenin, Trotsky; central Russia, Moscow, Petrograd	Preserve Soviet power; internationalist socialism
Whites — South	Generals Denikin, Wrangel; Don/Kuban Cossack regions	Restoration of a "Russia one and indivisible"
Whites — East	Admiral Kolchak, "Supreme Ruler" at Omsk	Constituent Assembly restored, tsarist officer corps
Whites — North-West	General Yudenich, operating from Estonia	Advance on Petrograd
Czechoslovak Legion	40,000 ex-POWs on the Trans-Siberian Railway	Initially to reach Vladivostok; triggered wider civil war
Foreign intervention	Britain, France, USA, Japan (c. 100,000 troops)	Reopen the Eastern Front; limit Bolshevism
Greens	Peasant armies (notably Makhno in Ukraine)	Against grain requisitioning; local autonomy

flowchart TD
  A[October Revolution] --> B[Civil War 1918-21]
  B --> C[Reds<br/>centre: Moscow, Petrograd]
  B --> D[Whites<br/>periphery: south, east, north-west]
  B --> E[Foreign intervention<br/>Britain, France, USA, Japan]
  B --> F[Greens<br/>peasant armies]
  C --> G[Red Army under Trotsky<br/>5 million by 1920]
  C --> H[War Communism]
  C --> I[Red Terror / Cheka]
  G --> J[Red victory 1921]
  H --> J
  I --> J

Trotsky, as Commissar for War from March 1918, organised the Red Army. His methods were ruthless and pragmatic. Former tsarist officers (c. 50,000 of them) were recruited as "military specialists", supervised by political commissars with the power to countersign or veto their orders. Conscription was reintroduced; by 1920 the Red Army numbered approximately 5 million men. Trotsky travelled the fronts in an armoured train, improvising reinforcements and executing deserters, and insisted on iron discipline.

War Communism — the economic system that sustained the army — is treated separately below.

Despite initial White gains in 1919 (Denikin reached Orel, 250 miles from Moscow; Yudenich came within fifteen miles of Petrograd; Kolchak crossed the Urals), the Reds defeated each White army in turn. By November 1920 Wrangel had evacuated the Crimea. A short war with Poland in 1919–20 ended in Bolshevik defeat at the gates of Warsaw and the Treaty of Riga (March 1921), but left Bolshevik rule over the old imperial heartland intact.

Why the Reds won