The Russian Civil War

By Evan Mawdsley

A commanding chronicle of the three turbulent years that brought the ironfisted Soviet regime to political power In St. Petersburg on October 25, 1917, the Bolshevik Party stormed the capital city and seized power over the Russian Provisional Government, which had been operating ineffectively since the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II eight months before. That October Revolution began the Russian Civil War, which in three years would cost the largest country in the world more than seven million lives. It was an apocalyptic struggle, replete with famine and pestilence, but out of the struggle a new social order would rise: The Soviet Union. Mawdsley offers a lucid, superbly detailed account of the men and events that shaped twentieth-century communist Russia. He draws upon a wide range of sources to recount the military course of the war, as well as the hardship the conflict brought to the country and its people—for the victory and the reconstruction of the state under the Soviet regime came at a painfully high economic and human price.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pegasus Books
• Release date: Jul 12, 2011
• ISBN: 9781453218037

Evan Mawdsley

Evan Mawdsley is Professor of History at Glasgow University. He has written numerous books and articles on Russian history and is the coauthor of The Soviet Elite from Lenin to Gorbachev. He lives in Glasgow.

Reviews for The Russian Civil War

[paul.bentley · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Hundreds of thousands died on the battlefield, tens of thousands more were executed for treason or merely found themselves of the wrong nationality and in the way of two relentlessly unpleasant sides in a war which has been described as the greatest disaster to have afflicted mankind.

Millions died of disease and hunger while fanatics fought over their own peculiar visions of what being Russian should mean. It's an unremittingly depressing and brutal history, but it succeeds by scotching the Stalinist myth that the war for Russia was caused by foreign intervention. It also demonstrates that the White armies' leaders failed, not because they were antediluvian monarchists, but because they were nothing much at all.

[languagehat · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I've read several books on the Russian Civil War, and this is the one I'd recommend as a first approach to the subject. It presents the military developments thoroughly and memorably (and has excellent maps), and has succinct and convincing accounts of the politics involved. The main thing missing is the internal peasant opposition (the "Green" movement), which Brovkin dealt with brilliantly in Behind the Front Lines of the Civil War (after this book's first edition -- in the second edition, Mawdsley recommends it to supplement his own work). A great achievement that I wholeheartedly recommend.

[alibrarian_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A good single volume survey of the Russian Civil War. Mawdsley argues that the Civil War began with the Bolshevik coup as an internal Russian struggle for power. In the end he holds that the Bolsheviks win first by adapting their policies to a more general Soviet set of policies established by the socialist parties collectively in the soviets after the February Revolution. Immediate peace instead of international revolution and land reform instead of collectivization. The socialist competitors lose by lack of armed power to confront the Bolsheviks. With the outbreak of large scale war with White armies, the Bolsheviks have the long range advantage of controlling the heartland with the largest population and industrial base. The Whites never develop any ideological position that would attract workers or peasants to support them. The Bolsheviks had access and the willingness to use the "apolitical debris of the Tsarist state" including the officer corps, the civil service, and the substantial military supplies from the World War. The Bolsheviks were also willing to use Red Terror as a policy, but support generally came from the lack of any other alternative. The Whites could only offer restoration of "order"