In the Civil War of 1918-1922, as well as in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945, the question was decided whether or not to be Russia, to live or not to live for the peoples inhabiting its vast expanses.
Unfortunately, at present, society is imposed on the view of the events of the Civil War of the defeated side: the White armies, the interventionists of the USA, England, France, Germany and other Western countries, which tried to crush Russia at all times.
In reality, the Civil War is a feat of the peoples inhabiting the Soviet Republic, who, in conditions of seemingly complete doom to death, saved the country and, ultimately, brought them to the superpowers of the world.
When considering the events of the Civil War through the eyes of the victors, it is obvious that in terms of its significance for the nation, the tension of the physical and spiritual forces of the people, and its sacrifice, the Civil War was a people's war for the preservation of Russian, Soviet civilization.
Victory in the Civil War became possible thanks to the actions of millions of people who believe in their just cause, ready for any trials for the sake of establishing a new life, victory over the enemies of Soviet Russia.
The civil war prevented the dismemberment of Russia by the Western countries and preserved all the peoples living on its territory.
In general, they prefer not to recall the Civil War today, and if they do, then, as a senseless, fratricidal bloodshed. Without a doubt, civil war is a fratricidal war, but not meaningless.
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It would not be a big mistake to characterize the Civil War in Russia as a continuation of the West's conspiracy against our country. Without intervention and funding from the West, the Civil War in Russia could not take place. During the Civil War, Russia fought for the right to live in its own state according to its own laws.
But in recent decades, with all the power of the media, a number of myths about the Civil War have been embedded in the minds of Russian citizens, which do not correspond to the reasons for the events that took place 100 years ago in Russia.
One of these myths is the assertion that the Bolsheviks unleashed the Civil War in Russia. And they claim this, knowing that the Bolsheviks, almost bloodlessly throughout the territory of Russia, established Soviet power in a few months, having triumphantly passed through the cities and villages of the country. With power in their hands, the Bolsheviks were the least interested in starting the war.
The civil war began because the Western countries, which divided the Russian lands between them in the period from February to October 1917, lost the opportunity to rule on the territory of Russia and pursue a policy that was beneficial to them, which can be called the policy of genocide of the peoples living on the territory of the Russian state.
Therefore, the development of events in Russia did not suit the West. On March 9, 1918, British, and then French, American (USA) and Canadian troops landed near the city of Murmansk, which in the summer of 1918 captured Onega and Arkhangelsk.
On April 5, 1918, Japanese troops landed in the Far East near the city of Vladivostok, and then the troops of the British, American and French invaders.
In August 1918, British troops captured the Russian (Soviet) oil-producing city of Baku and invaded the Turkestan ASSR (our Central Asia).
The troops of the German interventionists completely occupied Ukraine, captured the Crimea and Rostov-on-Don, and invaded Transcaucasia together with the Turkish troops. On May 25, 1918, a counter-revolutionary uprising of the Czechoslovak corps, which consisted of former Austro-Hungarian prisoners of war in Russia, began, organized by the Entente countries.
And no one will ask the falsifiers of history by what forces Soviet Russia was going to start the Civil War if it did not have a regular army? It was because of the absence of a regular army by the Soviet government by the summer of 1918, three quarters of the country's territory was in the hands of the interventionists and White Guards. In part of the territory of Ukraine and Transcaucasia, British and French troops took the place of the German troops. Squadrons of England, USA and France entered the Baltic and Black Seas.
On January 15, 1918, the Council of People's Commissars adopted a decree "On the Workers 'and Peasants' Red Army", which accepted volunteers on the recommendation, and only with the beginning of foreign intervention in the spring of 1918 was universal military service introduced.
The assertion that Soviet Russia sought to seize the territory of Poland by force is also a myth, and no one is embarrassed by the fact that it was Poland that attacked the Soviet Republic in 1920.
It was with the forces of Poland, with the help of the White armies, that the Entente made a new attempt to seize Soviet Russia. The Polish army was armed and supplied by the USA, France and England. Simultaneously with Poland, Wrangel's White Guard army from the Crimea, equipped by the Entente, began an offensive.
In the period from 1918 to 1920, the Red Army fought the White armies of Kaledin, Kornilov, Alekseev, Denikin, Krasnov, Kolchak, Yudenich and the previously mentioned Wrangel. All of them were supported by England, the USA, France and carried out the will of these states. All of them were defeated by the Red Army. Why? Because they all fought with Russia, and the West could not defeat Russia in an open battle even once in hundreds of years.
The Red Army did not find the strength and skill to defeat the Polish army, and the latter captured part of the Ukraine and Belarus. In October 1920, an armistice was concluded with Poland. In October - November 1920, Soviet troops defeated the Wrangel army in Northern Tavria and in the Perekop and Chongar regions and liberated Crimea.
The civil war was largely over. But the interventionists and White Guards were expelled from the territory of the Soviet Republic until the fall of 1922. Vladivostok was liberated from Japanese invaders on October 25, 1922. In 1922, the eight-year war with Germany, the Entente and the White armies finally ended.
The next myth embedded in Russian society is the myth that the White armies fought for the tsar, and the Red ones for socialism. It should be noted that the Bolsheviks did not object to this opinion either. But this opinion is erroneous and completely does not correspond to the reality of that time.
There were a small number of monarchists in the White Army, and they were condemned by public opinion. In the war with Soviet Russia, the "whites" did not seek to restore the Russian Empire in the form of a monarchy. They did not fight for the king. For example, in the armies of Kolchak and Denikin, the monarchists carried out their activities secretly, in the words of Denikin himself, "conducted underground work."
The commander of the Don Army, General S. V. Denisov, wrote: “On the banners of the White Idea it was inscribed: to the Constituent Assembly, i.e. the same thing that appeared on the banners of the February revolution … Leaders and military leaders did not go against the February revolution and never ordered any of their subordinates to go this way."
That is, the leaders and commanders of the White Army never called for the protection, restoration of the monarchy in Russia, the power of the anointed of God - the king. As Denisov wrote: "… they never called for the protection of the Old system."
“In other words, the struggle between the Red and White armies was not at all a struggle between the“new”and“old”authorities; it was a struggle between two "new" authorities - February and October … The main leaders - Alekseev, Kornilov, Denikin and Kolchak - were undoubted "heroes of February", and their closest connection (and not "dependence") with the forces of the West was completely natural, at all not “forced”, - wrote V. V. Kozhinov [42, p. 50].
And he continued: “The West has long and even eternally been categorically against the very existence of the great - powerful and independent - Russia and could not allow such a Russia to be restored as a result of the victory of the White Army. The West, in particular in 1918-1922, did everything possible to dismember Russia, in every possible way supporting any separatist aspirations”[42, p. 51].
The claim that the West supported the White Armies' drive to revive a united and indivisible Russia is also a myth. In fact, the West not only supported, but organized in every possible way not the striving for a united and indivisible Russia, but separatist aspirations in Russia and the USSR at all times of our existence.
The West needed white armies only for the capture of Russia, and the Entente left behind the decision of the future fate of the Russian territories and peoples, and none of the white generals who went to Soviet Russia objected to this.
Denikin's armies were able to triumphantly pass through Russia and in October reach Orel not only thanks to the high level of military art, courage and resourcefulness of the Russian people, but, above all, thanks to the good supply of the army by the West.
It is a myth that the leaders of the White armies are independent in making decisions. If Anton Ivanovich Denikin meekly recognized A. V. Kolchak as the Supreme Ruler and readily obeyed him, it means that he unquestioningly obeyed the orders of the Entente.
The myth is the image of Kolchak created by today's whites. Alexander Vasilyevich Kolchak was a direct protege of the West and that is why he turned out to be the Supreme Ruler. Kolchak was proclaimed the Supreme Ruler of Russia immediately after his meeting with US President Woodrow Wilson.
Kolchak's army destroyed a huge number of Russian peasants in the most brutal way. Even his generals sent curses to the enlightened ruler Kolchak through a direct wire - he established such a regime in Siberia.
Kolchak is glorified, films are made about him and memorial plaques are installed for him by haters of both Soviet Russia and today's Russia, as well as ignorant people who do not know the history of their country.
The West took an active part in the preparation of the February Revolution of 1917, unleashed the First World War, the intervention against the Soviet
republics and the Civil War. The West could not have unleashed the Civil War without its allies inside Russia. A. V. Kolchak was such an ally of the West. That is why Western liberals took him to the podium.
How did the commander of the Black Sea Fleet, Crimean Tatar by origin, A. V. Kolchak, became the Supreme Ruler of Russia? In June 1917, Kolchak went abroad and arrived in Omsk only in November 1918. V. Kozhinov writes that on June 17 (30), Kolchak had a secret and important, according to him, conversation with US Ambassador Ruth and Admiral Glennon, as a result of which he found himself in a position close to a mercenary commander.
In August, he secretly arrived in London, where he discussed with the British Minister of the Navy the question of "saving" Russia. Then Kolchak secretly went to the United States, where he consulted not only with the military and naval ministers, but also with the foreign minister. Moreover, as indicated above, Kolchak met with the then President of the United States, Woodrow Wilson.
There are tens of thousands of admirals and generals in the world, but it was with Kolchak that the US president met, and there is reason to believe that with Kolchak's help the US hoped to get, if not all of Russia, then at least Siberia. It is necessary to note the following fact: Kolchak was promoted to admirals not by the Russian emperor, but by the Provisional Government, which actually represented the power of the West in Russia.
Kolchak was under the control of the West. British General Knox and French General Janin with their chief adviser, Captain Zinovy Peshkov (YM Sverdlov's younger brother), who belonged to French Freemasonry, were constantly present with him. There were, of course, other secret observers. These representatives of the West took care of the admiral and his army with all their attention.
Myth-makers are trying to implant in the consciousness of Russian society the American myth that the Red Army destroyed Russia, but every thinking person in Russia, in the name of truth, in the name of the life of future generations, is obliged to understand that the Red Army saved Russia. This is indicated by the entire history of revolutions, the Civil War and subsequent years of the country's development.
Every sane person understood that only the victory of Soviet power throughout the country could revive a single, indivisible and independent Russia.
It is a myth that the Reds shot all the officers of the White Army without trial or investigation. This myth is so deeply rooted in the minds of the people of Russian society that facts indicating that the Soviet government hired all officers and intellectuals who expressed their readiness to serve Russia in Soviet state structures cause distrust.
But it is impossible not to pay attention to the large number of officers of the tsarist army who served in the Red Army. V. V. Shulgin wrote back in 1929: “Almost half of the officers of the General Staff remained with the Bolsheviks. Nobody knows how many rank-and-file officers were there, but there were many “[42, p. 65]. M. V. Nazarov, A. G. Kavtaradze, A. K. Baitov wrote about this (his brother Lieutenant General K. K. Baytov served in the Red Army).
The most carefully verified information is given by the military historian A. G. Kavtaradze, both about the officers of the General Staff and about the total number of officers of the tsarist army who served in the Red Army.
According to the calculations of A. G. Kavtaradze, 70,000 - 75,000 officers of the tsarist army served in the Red Army. The specified number of officers was 30% of the officer corps of the army of the Russian Empire. At the same time, he points out that another 30% of the tsarist officers were generally out of any army service.
This means that the Red Army did not serve 30, but about 43 percent of the available officers by 1918, who continued to be in military service, while in the White Army, 57 percent (about 100,000 people).
About the officers of the General Staff A. G. Kavtaradze writes that out of the most valuable and trained part of the officer corps of the Russian army - the corps of officers of the General Staff, 639 (including 252 generals) were in the Red Army, which was 46 percent - that is, in fact, about half of the officers of the General Staff who continued to serve after October 1917; there were about 750 of them in the White Army.
That is, the facts indicate that almost half of the best part, the elite of the Russian officer corps, served in the Red Army!
Many more officers went from the White to the Red Army than vice versa. It is precisely calculated that 14,390 officers have moved from the White Army to the Red Army (every seventh). Why? Because the officers and generals who really love Russia, filled with state-patriotic consciousness, were not attracted by the White Army, which fought against Russia, destroyed Russia.
And the Red Army was gathering Russian lands together. Revived Russia. I think that most of the officers and Reds considered evil, but incomparably less evil than the white friends of Great Britain, the United States and France. True Russian officers were concerned with the question of the very existence of Russia, and not with the question of, say, whether there will be a parliament in Russia.
The White Army actually fought with its own people for the interests of Western countries. The Red Army fought for the interests of Russia: it brought together Russian lands and revived the Russian state. Therefore, those who really loved Russia ended up in the Red Army.
Such heroic officers as General A. A. Brusilov and General Ya. A. Slashchov-Krymsky, who had transferred from the White Army in 1921, served in the Red Army. He explained his departure from the White Army to PN Wrangel with a protest against leaders such as Prince VA Obolensky, the most influential Freemason, a member of his small "Supreme Council".
Whose interests the White Army fought for can be seen from the title of the article by Ya. A. Slashchov: "The slogans of Russian patriotism in the service of France."
This man changed his mind a lot and had reason to declare by the name of the article that the White Army was serving the interests of other countries, and not the interests of Russia. Kolchakov's general A. P. Budberg wrote on September 1, 1919: “… now for us, whites, a guerrilla war is inconceivable, because the population is not for us, but against us” [42, p. 63].
S. G. Kara-Murza also writes that Lenin did not have to fight the monarchists, they simply did not exist as a real force. Under Lenin, the struggle was not between the Bolsheviks and “old Russia”, but between different detachments of revolutionaries. The Civil War was "the war between February and October".
In particular, he wrote the following: “Here, it must be admitted, the essence of the official Soviet propaganda, which for the sake of simplicity, made a sacred symbol of the word“revolution”, and represented all opponents of Lenin as“counterrevolutionaries”, was also strongly distorted. And the Pokrass brothers even wrote a song for us, like "The White Army, the Black Baron are preparing us the royal throne again."
The Bolsheviks, as life itself soon showed, acted as restorers, revivals of the Russian Empire killed by February - albeit under a different shell. At different times this was recognized by the opponents of the Bolsheviks, including V. Shulgin and even A. Denikin”[35, p. 213]. There were many parties, and each of them expressed the interests of some strata of the population, and the Bolsheviks expressed the interests of Russia.
Russia entered the twentieth century with such a load of accumulated problems that, having hit the country, they led to two revolutions and the Civil War. As you know, the West, to one degree or another, nourished all parties that opposed the monarchy, but the main reasons for the February and October revolutions were within our country. Revolutions in Russia would have occurred even if there were no Western countries in the world.
Russia was led to the revolutions by Russian communal peasants, who considered land to be a public property and did not recognize land ownership as private property. They believed that the earth was given to people like air, and only those who cultivate it can own it. They expected from the king, who loves everyone and who is equally sorry for everyone, that he would divide the land equally. But they did not wait and in October 1917 they "leveled" the land themselves.
V. Kozhinov writes that in 1918-1922, one way or another, 939,755 Red Army soldiers and commanders were killed. As for the losses of the White Army, it did not fight the invaders of Poland, the USA, England, Canada, France, Japan, and its losses should be less.
But with a certain degree of error, it can be assumed that both armies lost about 2 million people. SG Kara-Murza also points to the loss of 939,755 Red Army servicemen, explaining that a significant, if not most of them died of typhus.
The falsifiers call the number of casualties in the Civil War not only inconsistent with statistics, calculations, events, but also common sense. Losses of the civilian population during the February, October revolutions and the Civil War, in my opinion, cannot be accurately calculated due to the lack of registration of Russian citizens who went abroad at that time.
And, as you know, millions of civilians and hundreds of thousands of servicemen of the White Army emigrated abroad.
Most people died not from repression, not from bullets, but from the destruction of the state and economy after February 1917. People died from chaos, the destruction of the existing structure of life, resulting in famine, epidemics of diseases that mowed people down, and criminal violence. When the state collapses, local power goes to all sorts of gangs and groups that create savage terror without any connection with any political project.
SG Kara-Murza, as a scientist who does not believe in myths, writes very carefully about the loss of people: “They say about 12 million people who died in the Civil War” (the indicated number is doubled). The most unfair thing is that the falsifiers are not blaming the West for the death of people, which unleashed the Civil War in Russia, but the Soviet power, the Bolsheviks, who actually saved the nation from starvation by introducing cards and surplus appropriation.
The myths about the repressiveness of the Soviet state are the favorite and most widespread myths of forgers. But in reality, of all the parties that could come to power, the Bolsheviks differed as statesmen and were the most moderate in matters of repression. Trotsky and political figures close to him stood out for their attitude towards repression.
But Trotsky's arbitrariness was restrained by V. I. Lenin, and then I. V. Stalin. The repressiveness of the authorities during the Civil War in Russia cannot be compared with the repressiveness of the authorities of Western countries during the civil wars in these countries.
Much, if not all, has been distorted by the forgers in our Great History. We will have to cleanse ourselves of the dirt they have inflicted for a long time and return the truth to people. And if we look at the facts, we will see how not repressive our revolution and the Civil War were compared to the revolutions and civil wars in Western countries.
Take, for example, not even the official Soviet data, but the data of the anti-Soviet emigration, which formed the bureau and scrupulously kept records of political repressions in the USSR. “According to data published abroad, provided by this bureau, in 1924 there were about 1,500 political offenders in the USSR, of which 500 were imprisoned, and the rest were deprived of the right to reside in Moscow and Leningrad.
These data are considered by foreign historians to be the most complete and reliable. 500 political prisoners after a severe civil war, in the presence of an opposition underground and terrorism - and this is a repressive state? Return, gentlemen and comrades, to common sense, do not twitch on the strings of manipulators”[35, p. 229].
The falsifiers will not say a kind word to Soviet Russia, which returned most of its lands, including those that had gone to Germany under the Brest Peace Treaty.
Russia (USSR) will completely return its lands (except Poland and Finland) during the Second World War of 1939-1945 and will lose most of the named territories, as well as all of Ukraine, the Baltic States, Transcaucasia, Belarus, Bessarabia (Moldavia), Crimea and Middle Asia in 1991.
So far, only Crimea has been returned to Russia. Every inch of land taken from Russia weakens the country, and every meter of territory that is annexed to the country strengthens the state and the security of its citizens. It is not known if the USSR could have survived in 1941, having only today's territory of Russia.
The falsifiers will not tell the truth about why the Red Army won. And the main reason for the victory is associated with the fact that, unlike the whites, the Reds were in an alliance, and not in conflict at that time with the main invincible force of Russia - the peasantry.
The Reds continuously explained the value for the working people of a large, unified state, being able to find compelling reasons for this - instead of the worn out slogan "Russia is united and indivisible." In general, the Bolsheviks were the only party that defended the integrity of the state everywhere. During the Civil War, the country continued to take actions aimed at strengthening and protecting the state.
The civil war is, first of all, the war for the independence of Russia. Every war is terrible, but war between citizens of one country, between brothers and sisters is doubly terrible. For the sake of the lives of our children, we have no right to forget about the role of the West in unleashing the Civil War in Russia.
At present, Russia is again, as in 1918, surrounded on all sides by enemy military bases, significant territories have been torn away from it, Western liberals are again trying to implement the plans of the West inside our country.
In the face of a new threat, we must deal with our history without the help of the West. We must take from it everything that allowed our wise ancestors to defend the honor and independence of their Motherland in the Civil and Great Patriotic War. And in order to understand the history of the Civil War, one must understand the events of the February and October revolutions.
Author: Leonid Maslovsky