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 was even worse than the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945, since this conflict involved 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 closest relatives. It happened that entire families destroyed themselves because of cardinal differences in their political views.
The history of those events is still full of secrets and mysteries, but the average layman rarely thinks about them. Much more interesting is something else - who was an ordinary participant in the Civil War? Is the propaganda of those times right, and the red one is an animal-like man, dressed almost in a skin, the white one is an ideological "mister officer" with the views of an idealist, and the green one is a kind of analogue of the anarchist Makhno?
Of course, everything is much more complicated, since such a division existsonly on the pages of the most radical historical books, which today, unfortunately, continue to be used to desecrate the history of our country. So of all the most difficult periods, the Civil War continues to be the most troubled. The causes, participants and consequences of this conflict continue to be studied by venerable scientists, and they are still making many interesting discoveries in the field of history of that period.
First period of the war
Perhaps, the composition of the troops was the most homogeneous except perhaps in the very first period of the war, the bright prerequisites 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 conclude peace with the Germans.
The war is deeply disgusting to everyone. The disdainful attitude of the tsarist generals, theft, illness, lack of everything necessary - all this pushed an increasing number of soldiers to revolutionary ideas.
Paradoxes of the pre-war period
The beginning of the Soviet period, when Lenin promised peace to the soldiers, could be marked by a complete cessation of the influx of experienced front-line soldiers into the Red Army troops, 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 Russo-German war. Why did this happen?
Why is a member of the Civilwar, barely escaped from the hateful trenches, again wanted to take up a rifle?
Why, desiring peace, did the soldiers go to war again?
There is nothing difficult here. Many of the experienced soldiers were in the army for 5, 7, 10 years … During this time, they simply weaned from the hardships and vicissitudes of civilian life. In particular, the soldiers were already used to the fact that they had no problems with food (of course, they had them, but rations were almost always given out), that all questions were simple and understandable. Disappointed in peaceful life, they again and willingly took up arms. In general, this paradox was known long before the Civil War in our country.
The original backbone of the Red Army and the 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 subsequently joined (or left their same Wednesday).
Very often large military formations were obtained from self-defense detachments or certain groups of conscripts seconded by the tsarist officers to guard some railway stations, warehouses, etc. The backbone were former soldiers, non-commissioned officers acted as commanders, and sometimes "full-weight" officers, for one reason or another, found themselves in isolation from the units they initially commanded.
"The most interesting" thing was if a participant in the Civil Warwas a Cossack. There are many cases when the village for a long time lived exclusively by raids, terrorizing the central regions of the country. The Cossacks most often deeply despised the "uncouth peasants", reproaching them for their "inability to stand up for themselves." When these "men" were finally brought "to condition", they also took up arms and remembered all the insults to the Cossacks. Thus began the second stage of the conflict.
Confusion
During this period, the participants in the Civil War in Russia became more and more heterogeneous. If earlier the backbone of various gangs or "official" military formations were former tsarist soldiers, now a real "vinaigrette" was dangling 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 classic bandits and anarchists who had a golden time. True, both Reds and Whites did not like them very much, and therefore they were shot immediately and on the spot.
Independence and pride
A separate category - 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 de alt with almost before the start of the Great Patriotic War. Basmachi were stubborn, received financial and "gun"replenishment from the British, and therefore did not particularly live in poverty.
Participants of the Civil War 1917-1922. on the territory of present-day Ukraine were also very heterogeneous, and their goals were very different. In most cases, it all came down to attempts to form their own state, but such confusion reigned in their ranks that nothing sensible came of it in the end. 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 to the Turkmens in this.
Peasants advance
It must be said that around this period there were many peasants in the ranks of all the armies of the Civil War. 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 made the peasants still take up arms? In many ways, this outcome led to a constant decline in living standards. Against the background of the strongest impoverishment of the peasants, more and more people wanted to "requisition" the last grain or livestock. Naturally, this state of affairs could not be maintained 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 on the principle of "against all." They wanted all the participants in the war to just leave them alone, finally ceasing to requisition food.
End of 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 Civil War of 1917, 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 came out of their ranks, who subsequently stopped the terrible breakthrough of the Nazis in the summer of 1941.
It remains only to sympathize with the participants of the Civil War, since many of them, having started fighting back in the First World War, never saw 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 whose population fought each other at some time in history came to similar conclusions.
