Russian Civil War: Were the Whites Doomed?

One gets the impression from some people that the Reds were the underdogs in the Russian Civil War, that Trotsky must have been a military genius for leading them to victory, etc. See Richard Pipes, *A Concise History of the Russian Revolution,* pp. 235-6 for a quite different view. He argues that if anything it was the Whites "who enjoyed superior generalship and morale. They lost because they were outnumbered and outgunned." https://books.google.com/books?id=5mSkxsos488C&pg=PA235

"The critical advantage the Reds enjoyed was that they were one and their enemies many. They had a single military command that operated under the direction of a political oligarchy. The Whites had no government; their several armies were widely separated and most of the time out of touch with each other. To make matters worse, each of the major White armies was composed of diverse ethnic groups that fought for their own objectives: the Cossacks, in particular, who made up a signficant part of the White forces, followed orders only when it suited them and showed greater concerns for their homeland than for Russia.

"The Reds also enjoyed an immense advantage in that they controlled the center of what had been the Russian Empire, whereas their opponents operated from the country's periphery. This brought the Red Army several benefits.

"To begin with, they had at their disposal far larger human resources than did their opponents because the area they controlled was the country's most densely populated. When the Civil War got under way, the Bolsheviks ruled some 70 million people, whereas Kolchak and Denikin, except for brief periods, governed no more than 8 or 9 million each. In the fall of 1919, when the decisive battles of the Civil War took place, the Red Army had nearly 3 million men under arms: the combined effectives of the White armies never exceeded 250,000. In the critical engagements, the Red Army enjoyed at least a 2-1 superiority in man power and sometimes double that.

"The man power available to the Red Army was not only larger but ethnically homogeneous. The population of Soviet Russia in 1918 and 1919 was nine-tenths Great Russian. The areas of operation of the White armies had a high proportion of ethnic minorities, including Cossacks, who, although Orthodox and Slav, considered themselves a people apart. Russian patriotic slogans did not much appeal to these diverse minorities.

"Another advantage the Red Army enjoyed was immense superiority in military hardware. First of all, the Bolsheviks inherited the rich stores of the Imperial army. An inventory taken by the Communists in December 1917 showed that the arsenals of the old army held 2.5 million rifles, 1.2 billion rounds of small ammunition, 12,000 field guns, and 28 million artillery shells. Nearly all this weaponry went to equip the Red Army. Second, most war industries were located in Great Russia and worked for the Red Army. As a result, in the the final stages of the Civil War, the Red Army attained a higher ratio of artillery and machine guns to man power than had prevailed in the tsarist army. The Whites, who had access neither to tsarist arsenals nor to defense industries, depended almost exclusively on what the Allies, mainly the British, saw fit to send them.

"The Red and White forces differed in another respect that also redounded to the Communists' advantage. The Red Army was the military arm of a civilian government, whereas the White armies were a military force that also had to act as a government. The White generals were ill prepared to cope with this responsibility, for they had no administrative experience and had been raised in the tradition of an army that disdained politics and thought it below an officer's dignity to become involved in them. They believed that injecting politics into their movement would cause unnecessary divisions. Told by one of his civilian advisers that he needed a clear political program and laws to implement it, Kolchak replied, 'No, leave this alone, work only for the army. Don't you understand that whatever fine laws you write, if we lose, they will all the same shoot us?' But the Civil War was primarily a political conflict, a struggle for power and not a conventional war. Their exclusive concentration on military operations, their unwillingness to go beyond rudimentary administration, made the White commanders appear more reactionary than they really were and handed their opponents a powerful propaganda
weapon..."

Now I do not mean to suggest that a Red victory was literally inevitable. Even a side with all the "objective advantages" could lose a war under sufficiently stupid leadership (e.g., those who favored relying on partisan war or who opposed using ex-Tsarist military specialists). But short of such suicidal leadership or much greater western intervention than in OTL [1] the Reds had to be considered the decisive favorites. The fact that it took them so long to win, and that in the autumn of 1919 there seemed to be a real danger that they would lose (though probably this danger was exaggerated; the closer Denikin got to Moscow, the weaker his forces became) should perhaps be considered the real surprise...

[1] As Evan Mawdsley noted, "Contrary to what is often thought...the 'fourteen power anti-Bolshevik
Allied alliance' that was featured in Soviet propaganda was a myth. The Americans were cool about intervention; the Japanese stayed on the Pacific coast. The French gave up an active role after the spring of 1919;...few Allied troops were sent; none fought in the main battles...It is true that Allied munitions and supplies made possible the furthest White advance, but this material only arrived in quantity in the summer of 1919; Kolchak's spring offensive and Denikin's conquest of a south Russian base area came earlier." *The Russian Civil War* (1987), p. 283 https://books.google.com/books?id=LUhXZD2BPeQC&pg=PA283
 
One gets the impression from some people that the Reds were the underdogs in the Russian Civil War, that Trotsky must have been a military genius for leading them to victory, etc. See Richard Pipes, *A Concise History of the Russian Revolution,* pp. 235-6 for a quite different view. He argues that if anything it was the Whites "who enjoyed superior generalship and morale. They lost because they were outnumbered and outgunned." https://books.google.com/books?id=5mSkxsos488C&pg=PA235
Trotsky's 'genius' wasn't afaik strategic but organizational. The Bolsheviks had little governing experience. Their base of support was negligible in a largely religious and agricultural country, and the armed forces had effectively dissolved. The challenge for the reds was mobilizing the superior resources they controlled. But yes, the white armies were at a clear disadvantage.
 
The big problems for the Whites were:

1) Their armies were separated and thus could be defeated in detail. Denkin and Kolchak needed to combine their forces into one front.

2) The Whites had no agrarian program and thus couldn't win over the loyalty of the peasants. I think this is their biggest mistake. The Soviets at least lied about it.

3) The Whites could not find common cause with anti-Bolshevik forces of nationalist persuasion. They wasted time fighting other armies and unable to properly mobilize anti-Bolshevik feelings of others as they did not want to lose the great Tsarist empire. Once again, the Soviets showed better politics by lying about their intent.

4) The most popular party was the SRs which was the only one with any significant military forces. If the Whites had embraced them (or at least lied about it), then they might have done well.

The big Bolshevik advantages were 1) interior lines since their power base was built around Moscow, 2) an organized and ruthless leadership, and 3) superior factional diplomacy since they lied to everyone until they were ready to eliminate them.

If the Whites were better lead in terms of their politicking and linked up their forces, they'd probably be better stationed to win the war. If someone among the Whites had both the prestige and political skill to impose his will among the various anti-Bolshevik factions and rally the people, they could have won. Their problem was mostly political, so I think the OP's assessment is generally correct.
 
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To be honest I thought the fact that the Reds started the Russian Civil War with a major advantage was fairly universal among historians and those who have studied the period, a category that obviously excludes those whose only knowledge of the period is from Soviet Propaganda. The Bolsheviks had genuinely been the underdog but that was in the between the February and October Revolutions, after the success of the October Coup it was theirs to lose.
 
The White tendency to disdain politics was one of their biggest weaknesses, but it wasn't just a generals' disease. The Komuch government (which was technically even socialist) also tried to uphold the dangerous virtues of neutrality and "continuity" when dealing with land reform, industry and so on. What led them to choose this path - I have no idea.

I don't think the ethnic factor was such a big deal. Cossack identity was not national in character, and most Cossacks considered themselves Russian or, occasionally, Ukrainian. And the Reds, in spite of holding central Russia, often found themselves relying on non-Russian units early on, like the Latvian riflemen. The homogeneity would only benefit them in the long term.

IMO, the Reds were not underdogs, but they came close to catastrophe too many times to consider the other side doomed. Not just Denikin's march on Moscow, but the Muraviev revolt, and many other cases.


On another note, I recently came across a book (How Haig Saved Lenin by Brian Pearce) which outlines the German plans for an anti-Bolshevik intervention throughout 1918. These plans had apparently progressed to quite an advanced stage, and were just about to kick off - under the cover of Lenin's own invitation, no less. However, the Allied successes on the Western front prevented it just in time, and Germany was ultimately defeated.

Had slightly different timing led the German Empire to launch its intervention anyway, I think it could have resulted in a quick White victory. With European Russia no longer unified, but split between the crumbling Bolshevik remnants and an utterly unsustainable arch-reactionary German puppet - it would have been easy for the fairly strong and (comparatively) moderate Whites of Siberia and the South to sweep in and depose both.
 
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