Red Victory in the Russian Civil War

It would be disastrously reductive to assume that any single factor contributed more than any other to the Red Army winning the Russian Civil War. Different historians with different ideologies will necessarily take different views regarding this question. However, if the war was most bitterly fought and for the longest time in the westernmost reaches of the Russian Empire, particularly in Ukraine and Poland, then ultimately I think a combination of military, ethnic, and terroristic factors contributed most to Soviet victory.

On the first point, the textbook makes the point well that fighting on widely separated fronts made it difficult for the White Armies to mount offensives with long-term results.[1] On the other side of the battlefield(s), that the Soviets were encircled within the great Russian heartland actually facilitated a more successful defense earlier in the war, with a smaller, constrained theater of operations allowing for greater maneuverability. As M.K. Dziewanowski points out, many Red Army veterans were deployed several times.[2]

Related to this first point is the second point of ethnic factors. Again, as noted in the textbook, the White Army generals, being generally insensitive to the feelings and concerns of non-Russian ethnic groups, lost vital support as a result of vocally assuring Russian supremacy in the event of a White victory.[3] Given the importance of the most ethnically diverse areas of the Empire to a White victory, such rhetoric was a crucial mistake, although it bears mentioning here that the Soviets did not have anything better to offer non-Russians besides the notion of an end to repression as the result of a society rid of religious and ethnic division on the basis of socialism.

Finally, the use of terror was important to both sides, although with different end results. On the one hand, the infliction of ethnic violence by White Armies, particularly in the form of pogroms against Jews residing in the old Pale of Settlement, guaranteed that the sympathies of some minorities would fall to the Bolsheviks, at least in the short term.[4] On the other hand, the pervasive use of terror by the Red Army no doubt played a role in obtaining compliance from the population at large in areas under its control.

Regarding the factors emphasized by different schools of thought, totalitarians have typically been fond of emphasizing the Red Terror as a key factor in Soviet victory. Given the totalitarian emphasis on the most negative aspects of Soviet rule, not to mention Daniel Pipes's de-emphasis of the agency of workers and peasants in the rise of Soviet rule,[5] it is unsurprising that this extremely negative policy of the Red Army should receive attention, although it bears mention that the Soviets were not alone in employing terror. In contrast, being far more likely to consider workers and peasants as fundamentally important actors in the revolutionary process, the revisionists are more likely to emphasize economic matters, making the argument that the Soviets' promise of economic equality motivated and mobilized support for the Red Army. Again, the truth likely lies somewhere between these beliefs.

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[1] M.K. Dziewanowski, Russia in the Twentieth Century, 6th ed. (Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Pearson, 2003), 107-08.
[2] Ibid, 114.
[3] Ibid, 108.
[4] The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe, online edition, s.v. "Russian Civil war," accessed April 21, 2016,http://www.yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/russian_civil_war, para. 3 ff.
[5] Richard Pipes, "Reflections on the Russian Revolution," Alexander Palace Time Machine, accessed April 10, 2016,http://www.alexanderpalace.org/palace/pipesrevolution.html, paras. 13 and 14.