The Civil War, the beginning of which was officially considered 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 assumed incredible chaos in the country and the complete absence of the front line. Simply put, a Civil War participant could not be sure even of his closest relatives. It happened that entire families destroyed themselves due to 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. What is much more interesting - who was the ordinary participant in the Civil War? Is the propaganda of those times the law, and red is a beastly man, dressed almost in the skin, white is the ideological "Mr. 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 now, unfortunately, still 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 vague . The reasons, participants and consequences of this conflict continue to be studied by venerable scholars, and they still make many interesting discoveries in the field of history of that period.
First period of the war
Perhaps the most homogeneous was the composition of the troops, except perhaps in the very first period of the war, the bright premises of which began to appear as early as 1917. During the February coup, there were a huge number of soldiers on the streets who simply disastrously did not want to go to the front, and therefore were ready to overthrow the tsar and make peace with the Germans.
The war deeply disgusted everyone. The disregard of the tsarist generals, theft, illness, the lack of everything necessary - all of this pushed more and more 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, 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 Russian fronts German war. Why did this happen?
Why did the Civil War veteran, barely escaping from the disgusting trenches, again want to take up a rifle?
Why, wishing peace, did the soldiers go to war again?
There is nothing complicated 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 a peaceful life. In particular, the soldiers are already used to the fact that they have no problems with food (they certainly were, but rations nevertheless were issued almost always), that all the questions were 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 original backbone of the Red Army and the White Guard units
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 units or certain groups of military servicemen, seconded by the tsar’s still officers to guard some railway stations, warehouses, etc. Kostyak were former soldiers, non-commissioned officers acted as commanders, and sometimes full-fledged "officers, for one reason or another, were isolated from the units they commanded initially.
The “most interesting” thing was if the Civil War participant was a Cossack. There are many cases when the village for a long time lived exclusively in raids, terrorizing the central regions of the country. Cossacks most often deeply despised "uncouth men", reproaching them with "inability to stand up for themselves." When these “men” were finally brought “to condition”, they also took up arms and recalled to the Cossacks all the insults. Thus began the second stage of the conflict.
Confusion
During this period, participants in the Civil War in Russia became increasingly heterogeneous. If before the backbone of various gangs or “official” military formations were former tsarist soldiers, now a real “vinaigrette” dangled along the roads of the countries. The standard of living has finally fallen, and therefore everyone took up arms without exception.
The “special” participants in the Civil War of 1917-1922 also belong to the same period. We are talking about the so-called "green." In fact, they were classical bandits and anarchists, who had a golden time. True, both Reds and Whitees did not like them very much, and therefore they shot them immediately and on the spot.
Independence and pride
A separate category is the various national minorities and the former outskirts of the Russian Empire. There, the composition of the participants was almost always extremely homogeneous: it was the local population, deeply hostile to the Russians, regardless of their “color”. The Soviet authorities dealt with the same bandits in Turkmenistan almost before the start of World War II. The Basmachis were stubborn, received financial and “gun” recharge from the British, and therefore they were not particularly in poverty.
Participants in the Civil War of 1917-1922 in the territory of modern 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 eventually came out. 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 the extreme rejection of all Russians, not much less than the Turkmen.
Peasants are advancing
It must be said that around this period many peasants appeared in the ranks of all the armies of the Civil War. Initially, this social layer did not participate in the hostilities at all. Civil war participants themselves (red or white - no difference) recalled that the initial foci of armed clashes resembled tiny dots surrounded on all sides by the "peasant sea".
What made the peasants nevertheless take up arms? In many respects, a constant decline in living standards led to this outcome. Against the background of extreme impoverishment of the peasants, there were more and more people wanting to “requisition” the last grain or cattle. Naturally, such a state of affairs could not be maintained for a long time, and therefore the initially inert peasantry also entered the war with ardor.
Who were these Civil War veterans - white or red? In general, it's hard to say. Peasants were rarely puzzled by some difficult questions 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 simply leave them alone, finally stopping requisitioning food.
Conflict ending
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 people who had gone through a severe 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 begun to fight back in World War I, have not seen a peaceful sky above 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 populations fought with each other at some periods of history came to similar conclusions.