The civil war, which officially began in 1918, is still one of the most terrible and bloody pages in the history of our country. Perhaps, in some ways, it is even worse than the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945, since this conflict presupposed incredible chaos in the country and the complete absence of a front line. Simply put, a participant in the Civil War could not even be sure of his immediate family. It happened that entire families destroyed themselves due to fundamental differences in their political views.
The history of those events is still full of secrets and mysteries, but the average man in the street rarely thinks about them. Much more interesting is another - who was an ordinary participant in the Civil War? Is the propaganda of those times right, and red is a beast-like man, dressed almost in a skin, white is an ideological "mister officer" with the views of an idealist, and green is a kind of analogue of the anarchist Makhno?
Of course, everything is much more complicated, since such a division exists only on the pages of the most radical historical books, which, unfortunately, are still used to desecrate the history of our country. So of all the most difficult periods, the Civil War continues to be the most vague. The causes, participants and consequences of this conflict continue to be studied by eminent scientists, and they still make many interesting discoveries in the field of history of that period.
The first period of the war
Perhaps the most uniform was the composition of the troops, perhaps in the very first period of the war, the bright preconditions for which began to appear as early as 1917. During the February coup, a huge number of soldiers turned out to be on the streets, who simply disastrously did not want to get to the front, and therefore were ready to overthrow the tsar and make peace with the German.
The war was deeply disgusted by everyone. The disregard for the tsarist generals, theft, illness, the lack of all the essentials - all this pushed an increasing number of soldiers to revolutionary ideas.
Pre-war paradoxes
The beginning of the Soviet period, when Lenin promised peace to the soldiers, could have been marked by a complete cessation of the influx of seasoned front-line soldiers into the Red Army, but … On the contrary, throughout 1918, all parties to the conflict regularly received a massive influx of new soldiers, almost 70% of whom had previously fought on the fronts of the Russian-German war. Why did this happen? Why did a participant in the Civil War, barely escaping from the hateful trenches, again want to take up a rifle?
Why, wanting peace, did the soldiers go to fight again?
There is nothing complicated here. Many of the veteran soldiers have been in the army for 5, 7, 10 years … During this time, they simply lost the habit of the hardships and vicissitudes of a peaceful life. In particular, the soldiers are already accustomed to the fact that they have no problems with food (they, of course, were, but the ration was still given out almost always), that all the questions are simple and clear. Disappointed in a peaceful life, they again and eagerly took up arms. In general, this paradox was known long before the Civil War in our country.
The initial backbone of the Red Army and White Guard formations
As the participants in the Civil War in Russia later recalled (regardless of their political views), almost all large formations of the Red and White armies began the same way: a certain armed group of people gradually gathered, to which the commanders later joined (or left their own environment).
Very often, large military formations were obtained from self-defense detachments or certain groups liable for military service, seconded by the tsarist still officers to guard some railway stations, warehouses, etc. The backbone were former soldiers, the role of commanders was played by non-commissioned officers, and sometimes "full-fledged" officers, who, for one reason or another, found themselves in isolation from the units that they initially commanded.
It was "most interesting" if the participant in the Civil War was a Cossack. There are many known cases when the village for a long time lived exclusively on raids, terrorizing the central regions of the country. Cossacks most often deeply despised "uncouth men", reproaching them "for their inability to stand up for themselves." When these "men" were finally brought up "to condition", they also took up arms and recalled all the insults to the Cossacks. This was the beginning of the second stage of the conflict.
Confusion
During this period, the participants in the Civil War in Russia became more and more heterogeneous. If formerly the former tsarist soldiers were the backbone of various gangs or "official" military formations, now a real "vinaigrette" was running along the roads of countries. The standard of living finally fell, and therefore everyone, without exception, took up arms.
The "special" participants in the Civil War of 1917-1922 belong to the same period. We are talking about the so-called "green". In fact, these were the classic bandits and anarchists, who had come their golden age. True, both the red and the white did not like them very much, and therefore they were shot immediately and on the spot.
Independence and pride
A separate category is various national minorities and the former outskirts of the Russian Empire. There, the composition of the participants was almost always extremely homogeneous: this is the local population, deeply hostile to the Russians, regardless of their "color". With the same bandits in Turkmenistan, the Soviet government dealt with almost before the start of the Great Patriotic War. The Basmachi were persistent, received financial and "rifle" support from the British, and therefore did not particularly live in poverty. Participants in the Civil War of 1917-1922 on the territory of present-day Ukraine were also very heterogeneous, and their goals were very different. In most cases, it all boiled down to attempts to form their own state, but such confusion reigned in their ranks that nothing sensible in the end came of it. The most successful were Poland and Finland, which nevertheless became independent countries, having received their statehood only after the collapse of the Empire. The Finns, by the way, were again distinguished by their extreme rejection of all Russians, not much inferior in this to the Turkmens.
The peasants are advancing
It must be said that around this period in the ranks of all the armies of the Civil War there were many peasants. Initially, this social stratum did not participate in hostilities at all. The participants in the civil war themselves (red or white - no difference) recalled that the initial centers of armed clashes resembled tiny dots, surrounded on all sides by the "peasant sea". What forced the peasants to take up arms? In many respects, this outcome was caused by the constant drop in living standards. Against the background of the strongest impoverishment of the peasants, more and more people were willing to "requisition" the last grain or cattle. Naturally, this state of affairs could not persist for a long time, and therefore the initially inert peasantry also entered the war with fervor. Who were these participants in the Civil War - white or red? In general, it's hard to say. The peasants were rarely puzzled by some complex issues from the field of political science, and therefore often acted according to the principle "against everyone." They wanted all the participants in the war to just leave them alone, finally ceasing to requisition food.
The end of the conflict
Again, at the end of this confusion, the people who formed the backbone of the armies also became more homogeneous. They, like the participants in the 1917 Civil War, were soldiers. Only these were already people who had gone through the harsh school of civil conflict. It was they who became the basis of the developing Red Army, many talented commanders emerged from their ranks, who subsequently stopped the terrible breakthrough of the Nazis in the summer of 1941.
It remains only to sympathize with the participants in the Civil War, since many of them, having started fighting back in the First World War, have never seen a peaceful sky over their heads in their entire lives. I would like to hope that our country will no longer recognize shocks like this war. All countries, the population of which in some periods of history fought with each other, came to similar conclusions.
