THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION

THE NOVEMBER REVOLUTION, 1917
Civil War (1917–20)

Civil War, 1917–20

How precarious was the position of the Bolsheviks was shown clearly by the elections, held on 25th November 1917, to the Constituent Assembly. Voting was by universal and secret suffrage, and the resulting Assembly was thus the most genuinely representative body that Russia had ever known. The Bolsheviks naturally hoped for an overwhelming representation in their favour, but in the event they secured only a small minority of the seats, a large majority being held by more moderate Socialist Revolutionaries.

Though a number of the majority party, fearing interference by the extremists, absented themselves altogether, and though those who met did so under a sense of constraint, the Socialist Revolutionaries elected their own leader, Tchernov, as the Assembly's President and then proceeded to vote down certain Bolshevik resolutions. As a result the Bolsheviks left the Assembly and then declared it to be closed, giving as their reason that it was counter-revolutionary and bourgeois.

Even then the Bolsheviks did not secure control of the country without a long and bitter struggle. Armed opposition to them was led by several Czarist military leaders. In the Ukraine and the Caucasus, in White Russia and the Baltic, and in Siberia, civil war was waged under such leadership. At the same time the Allied nations gave fitful support to the insurgents, hoping thus to restore the Russian moderates. Beginning in December 1917, the civil war continued for three years. More than once the Bolshevik position seemed hopeless because no sooner was one revolt crushed, at the expense apparently of all the Bolshevik resources, when another broke out elsewhere. But somehow in the end the Bolsheviks survived, and by November 1920 they were in control of the whole country.

The victory was an astonishing achievement. Four factors helped to explain it. First was the organizing drive of Trotsky who, with the help of some Czarist officers, evolved a new Bolshevik Army – the 'Red Army'. Second, in contrast to this, the rebellious Generals acted independently of, and at vast distances from, one another, and the help that they received from Allied Governments was insufficient and unreliable. Third, the Czarist Generals, leading ‘White Armies', were associated in the minds of the Russian people with the Czarist regime and with foreigners who were helping them: thus, strangely, the Bolsheviks, though in fact only a minority of the nation, came to be thought of as the (people's party. Fourthly, and closely tied to this consideration, was the peasants' fear that the overthrow of the Bolsheviks would be followed by the restoration of land to its former owners.

Their victorious survival of the civil war seemed to leave the Bolsheviks at last supreme. There was no longer a dangerous rival for power. Moreover they had at their disposal not only the Red Army but also the 'Cheka' as a means of crushing out opposition. Immediately after the November Revolution of 1917 this body of secret police was set up by Lenin to deal with 'counter-revolution and sabotage' in Petrograd. Gradually the scope and authority of the Cheka was widened until it was operating throughout the country, arresting, trying, and shooting any who were considered dangerous to the Bolshevik Government. In its early days its methods were tolerated because anything that threatened the Government's security, at a time of civil war and foreign intervention, was a threat also to the safety of the State. In 1922 the work of the Cheka was taken over by a new organization known, from the initial letters of its title, as OGPU, but in its duties and methods the new body differed little from the old.

Among the earliest victims of the rule of terror was Czar Nicholas II and his family. They had been arrested as early as March 1917, after which they were kept in close and humiliating confinement in various places. Finally they were sent to Ekaterinburg, an industrial town in the middle Urals (now called Sverdlovsk) where the Czar, his wife, and five children were herded into three rooms. The approach of a White Army sent the local soviet into a panic, and by its orders, on 16th July 1918, the whole royal family was pushed into a cellar and shot.

Tragic though this event was, it was only one of countless similar events. Anyone known to be actively opposed to the regime was liable to arrest. Thus many thousands of Russians lived under a constant sense of uncertainty, and thousands fled from the country.