The Civil War in Russia was the war between February and October, two revolutionary projects that were extensions of two civilization matrices. It was a war between two civilizational projects - Russian and Western. They were represented by red and white.
S. V. Gerasimov. For the power of the Soviets. 1957 year
It was a catastrophe much worse than fighting an external enemy, even the most terrible one. This war split civilization, people, families and even the very personality of a person. She inflicted severe wounds that predetermined the development of the country and society for a long time. This split still predetermines the present in Russia.
At the same time, the civil war was inextricably linked with countering an external threat, the war for the survival of Russia - the war against the Western interventionists. The role of the West in the creation and course of the civil war in Russia in modern times is often underestimated. Although this was the most important factor in the course of the fratricidal massacre on the territory of Russian civilization. In 1917-1921. The West waged a war against Russia at the hands of whites and nationalists, in particular, the Poles. Lenin quite rightly noted on December 2, 1919: "World imperialism, which has caused us, in essence, a civil war and is guilty of prolonging it …"
The February-March revolution of 1917 (actually a palace coup, in terms of the consequences - a revolution) was caused by a civilizational conflict, like the subsequent civil war. The project of the Romanovs was generally pro-Western, Westernizing the elite of Russia, the intelligentsia and the bourgeoisie as a whole adhered to a liberal, Westernizing ideology. The people in their mass - the peasantry (the overwhelming part of the population of the Russian Empire) and workers - yesterday's peasants, have retained a connection with the Russian civilization matrix.
However, the pro-Western elite of the Russian Empire believed that autocracy fettered the country's development along the western path. The political, military, administrative, industrial and financial and most of the intellectual elite of Russia tried to make Russia "nice France or Holland (England)". The tsar was overthrown, contrary to the myth created in liberal Russia in the 1990s, not by the Red Guards and Bolshevik commissars, but by representatives of the upper class - prominent politicians, members of the State Duma, generals, and grand dukes. The noble, wealthy estate of the empire. At the same time, many Februaryist revolutionaries were simultaneously Freemasons, members of closed clubs and lodges.
These people had strength and connections, wealth and power, but they did not have complete power in the country. Tsarism interfered with the Russian autocracy. They wanted to destroy the autocracy, reform the archaic political system in Russia and gain full power. That is, the bourgeoisie, the possessing class, following the example of England, France and the United States, should have become the complete masters of the country. Russian Westernizers needed a liberal democracy in which real power belongs to the moneybags, the market - economic freedom. Finally, Russian liberal Westerners just liked living in Europe - so sweet and civilized. They believed that Russia should become a part of European civilization and follow the western path of development.
Thus, the revolution and civil war in Russia was engendered not so much by class as by civilizational conflict. Class interests are only part of the conflict, the visible part of it. Suffice it to recall how the Russian officers (in general, they came from the same class) during the civil war were divided between whites and reds almost in half. So, about 70-75 thousand officers of the former imperial army served in the Red Army - about a third of the entire old officer corps, in the White Army - about 100 thousand people (40%), the rest of the officers tried to remain neutral, or fled and did not fight. In the Red Army there were 639 generals and officers of the General Staff, in the White Army - 750. Out of 100 red army commanders in 1918-1922. - 82 were former tsarist generals. That is, the color of the imperial army of Russia was divided almost equally between the reds and whites. At the same time, most of the officers did not accept the "class position", that is, they did not join the Bolshevik party. They chose the Red Army as the spokesman for the civilizational interests of the majority of the people.
The red project created a new world on the ruins of the old and at the same time carried the beginnings of a deeply national, Russian civilizational project. The Bolsheviks' project absorbed such basic values for the Russian matrix-code as justice, the primacy of truth over the law, the spiritual principle over the material, the general over the particular. At the same time, Bolshevism adopted the Russian work ethic - the fundamental role of productive, honest work in the life and life of the Russian people. Communism stood on the priority of labor, rejected the world of robbery, appropriation, was against social parasitism. The Bolsheviks proposed the image of a "bright future" - a just world, the Christian Kingdom of God on earth. This Russian civilizational basis of Bolshevism manifested itself almost immediately and attracted the people, including a significant part of the officers.
During the civil war, they fought for the truth, on the question of how people live in Russia. February crushed one of the main foundations of Russian civilization - its statehood, killed “old Russia”. The Februaryist revolutionaries who formed the Provisional Government were guided by the Western matrix of development, the Western model of the liberal-bourgeois state. They enthusiastically broke all the institutions of the traditional, old Russian statehood - the army, the police, etc. The destruction of the Russian statehood became the most important consequence of the February Revolution.
Western liberals came to the fore in society, and they destroyed "old Russia." The elimination of autocracy and the destruction of the old Russian army became the basis for the all-Russian turmoil. At the same time, the Bolsheviks, who relied on the workers, began to create a new reality, peace, a new Soviet statehood, an alternative to the Western model that the Provisional Government was trying to build. This gave rise to one of the most powerful social conflicts in the entire history of Russia. The more the new pro-Western government tried to crush the traditional society, which bears the principles of the Russian civilization matrix, the more it met with resistance.
In particular, the peasants went their own way. They already in 1917 began their war - the peasant. After the fall of the sacred (sacred) tsarist power for the peasants, the peasantry began the redistribution of land and the pogrom of the landowners' estates. The peasants did not accept the new government, the Provisional Government. The peasantry no longer wanted to pay taxes, serve in the army, or obey the authorities. The peasants were now trying to implement their project of the people's freemen, free communities.
A civilizational split, not a class one, is clearly visible in the example of Georgia. There, during the collapse of the Russian Empire after February, the Georgian Mensheviks - Zhordania, Chkhenkeli, Chkheidze, Tsereteli, and others took power. They were prominent members of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (RSDLP), Februaryist revolutionaries who destroyed the autocracy and the Russian Empire. Georgian Mensheviks were members of the Provisional Government and Petrosovet. In class terms, the Mensheviks expressed the interests of the workers. Thus, in Georgia, the Mensheviks formed the Red Guard from the workers, carried out the disarmament of the soldiers' Soviets, which were dominated by Bolsheviks and Russians by nationality. The Georgian Menshevik government suppressed the uprisings of the Bolsheviks, and in foreign policy was oriented from the beginning towards Germany and then towards Britain.
The internal policy of the Jordanian government was socialist and anti-Russian. An agrarian reform was quickly carried out in Georgia: the landowners' land was confiscated without redemption and sold on credit to the peasants. Then the mines and most of the industry were nationalized. A monopoly on foreign trade was introduced. That is, the Georgian Marxists pursued a typical socialist policy.
However, the socialist Georgian government was an implacable enemy of the Russians and the Bolsheviks. Tiflis in every possible way suppressed the large Russian community inside Georgia, although objectively Russian specialists, employees and the military were necessary for the young state, which was experiencing huge problems with personnel. Tiflis fell out with the White Army under the command of Denikin and even fought with the Whites for Sochi (How Georgia tried to seize Sochi; How the White Guards defeated the Georgian invaders), although objectively the White and Georgian Mensheviks were to become allies against the Reds. They even had common patrons - the British. And this same Georgian government was the enemy of the Bolsheviks. The essence of the confrontation between socialist Georgia and Soviet Russia was well explained by Jordania in his speech on January 16, 1920: “Our road leads to Europe, the road of Russia to Asia. I know that our people will say that we are on the side of imperialism. Therefore, I must say with all determination: I will prefer the imperialism of the West to the fanatics of the East! Thus, socialist and nationalist Georgia chose the western path of development, hence the confrontation with all Russians (both white and red), and the confrontation between Georgian and Russian socialists.
Poland demonstrates the same example. The future dictator of Poland, Józef Piłsudski, started out as a revolutionary and socialist, an admirer of Engels and the leader of the Polish Socialist Party. And he ended up as an ardent nationalist, whose main point in the political program was "deep hatred of Russia" and the restoration of Greater Poland (Rzeczpospolita) from sea to sea. Poland again became an instrument of the masters of the West in a thousand-year struggle against Russian civilization.
It is clear that a civilizational conflict is only a foundation, a foundation; it does not cancel out the social, class conflict that has matured in Russia. It was associated with the struggle of economic formations. The invasion of capitalism undermined the old feudal, estate society and its statehood in Russia. In this respect, the reforms of Alexander II, especially the peasant reform, undermined the foundations of the old system in Russia, but did not establish capitalism either. The ideology of whites - "capitalists, bourgeois and kulaks", just advocated the victory of capitalism in Russia, the Western model of development. The same forces that were against predatory capitalism, but were for the modernization of Russia, followed the Reds. The way out of the historical impasse that Russia entered at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, and which led to the catastrophe of 1917, these forces saw in the establishment of the socialist Soviet system, a new, but not capitalist formation.
Thus, the revolution of 1917 led to the fact that from the very beginning a civilizational conflict emerged - the Western and Russian civilizational matrices, the conflict of economic formations - the capitalist and the new socialist, and two types of statehood - the liberal-bourgeois republic and the Soviet regime. These two types of statehood, the authorities were different in ideology, social and economic aspirations. They belonged to two different civilizations.
October was the civilizational choice of the Russian people. February, which was represented by the liberal-cadets (the future ideologists of the White movement) and the Marxist-Mensheviks, who considered themselves "the power of Europe", represented the Western model of development, civilization. They quite persistently called the Bolsheviks "the strength of Asia", "Asiaticism." Also, some philosophers, ideologists identified Bolshevism with Slavophilism, Russian "Black Hundreds". Thus, the Russian philosopher N. Berdyaev has repeatedly said: “Bolshevism is much more traditional than it is customary to think. He agrees with the originality of the Russian historical process. Russification and orientalization of Marxism took place”(orientalism, from lat.orientalis - oriental, giving an oriental character). In Russia, Marxism became Russian communism, which absorbed the fundamental principles of the Russian civilizational matrix.
Western Februaryists and whites did not have full support in any major social group in Russia. The pro-Western elite and the intelligentsia of Russia saw the ideal in a liberal-bourgeois republic based on civil liberties and a market economy (capitalism). And the ideal of the liberal-bourgeois state was incompatible with the ideals of the overwhelming majority of the people, except for the social elite, the bourgeoisie, large and medium-sized owners. The peasants have preserved the patriarchal ideal of a family society (Christian commune), living on the basis of conscience and truth. The workers, who for the most part had just left the peasant class, retained the outlook of the communal peasants.
The civil war showed that the people are behind Russian Bolshevism, as an expression of the Russian civilizational matrix. The white project, essentially pro-Western, tried to make Russia a part of a "sweet, enlightened Europe" and was defeated.
