What's the leading reason the Bolsheviks could keep an army in the field while the PG could not?

The Bolsheviks could keep an army in the field where the PG could not, mainly because

  • Bolsheviks shot deserters while the PG did not

    Votes: 2 33.3%
  • Russian soldiers were sick of fighting Germans, but were willing to fight weaker Russian opponents

    Votes: 1 16.7%
  • Bolshevik soldiers saw an opportunity to gain property or power by fighting that PG troops did not

    Votes: 3 50.0%

  • Total voters
    6

raharris1973

Gone Fishin'
Donor
Monthly Donor
A decisive factor in the Russian Revolution, especially the Boleshevik one in November was soldiers being sick of the war and deserting/mutinying.

However, from 1918 to 1921, the Bolesheviks controlled an Army to fight and win its war against Civil War opponents and foreign interventionists.

How were the Bolesheviks able to keep control of their troops where prior regimes could not?

While theoretically, all the reasons listed below (and others) could account for it, I'm interested in what you think the *most* important reason is.

Could any other ideological/political alternative to the Bolsheviks in Russia from 1917 to 1921 have maintained a similarly obedient and effective a force as OTL's Red Army?
 

ben0628

Banned
I'm gonna go with none of the above and it's all ideology.

Most Russians didn't support WW1 because they didn't understand why they were fighting (illiterate peasants) and the ones who did know why didn't want to die for the imperiaistic ambitions on an out of touch monarchy.

The civil war however was a war of ideology that average Russians were allowed to have. Combine that with the reasons you listed above and that's why they fought harder and didn't desert
 
None of your questions is an option.

The fact is that the Bolsheviks promised an increase in quality of life and income for workers and a change after the Tsar humiliated Russia twice in the battlefield (first against Japan, then against Germany). The communists had better messaging (your will have a say in the factory/farm through Soviet democracy) than the Whites (whose message basically amounted to "isn't living a life of eternal poverty fun?") and had a concise ideology behind it and charismatic leadership to evangelize marxism.

Also shooting deserters was only done in WWII, after Stalin purged the Old Bolsheviks and implemented his one-man rule.
 
You have to remember the Whites kept an army (or rather armies) in the field for quite some time, too!

A life-or-death struggle about what kind of society Russia was to be was capable of mobilizing *both* sides in a way that the struggle with Germany (which had not nearly the same internal implications for Russian society--at most it would settle which nation would control Russia's western borderlands) could not.
 
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