Russian Civil War

The October Revolution of 1917, which saw the fall of the Tsar and the installation of a provisional government in Russia, was a momentous event in modern history. The rise of a Bolshevik regime under the charismatic Vladimir Lenin shook a world already destabilized by years of global war. But the Russian Revolution was far from the end of the story of Communism's establishment in Russia.

Within months, the Red Bolsheviks came under attack from the reactionary Whites, who opposed the new government. The civil war between these two groups raged for more than two years, leaving millions dead and millions more homeless or displaced. This was far more than a war between Russian factions: troops from more than twenty other countries, including the United States, Great Britain, France, Japan, Germany, and the Ottoman Empire, were directly involved in the destructive conflict.

The Reds' ultimate victory paved the way for the spread of Communism worldwide, and eventually to the Cold War of the late 1940s, when East and West faced off in an armed standoff that lasted more than forty years. Though far less well known than the revolution that preceded it, the Russian Civil War of 1918-1922 did more to shape the modern world.

It was also a conflict where new forms of warfare mixed with much older ones: massed cavalry charges alongside the widespread use of tanks, machine guns, and aircraft. This was no repeat of the static trench warfare of World War I, but a war of movement and change - one that helped reshape military thinking ahead of World War II.

While the Russian Revolution changed the regime in Russia and shook many European nations, the Russian Civil War helped spread the ideology that made Communism a global movement. This is the story of that bloody, brutal, and little-known conflict.