Feldman Reds and Whites in the Civil War. Which side did the civilians support? How did they even survive the Civil War? Peace with Germany

Civil war in Russia - armed confrontation in 1917-1922. organized military-political structures and state formations, conditionally defined as "white" and "red", as well as national-state formations on the territory of the former Russian Empire (bourgeois republics, regional state formations). The armed confrontation also involved spontaneously emerging military and socio-political groups, often denoted by the term "third force" (insurgent detachments, partisan republics, etc.). Also, foreign states (denoted by the concept of "interventionists") participated in the civil confrontation in Russia.

Periodization of the Civil War

There are 4 stages in the history of the Civil War:

First stage: summer 1917 - November 1918 - formation of the main centers of the anti-Bolshevik movement

Second stage: November 1918 - April 1919 - beginning of the Entente intervention.

Reasons for intervention:

To deal with the Soviet power;

Protect your interests;

Fear of socialist influence.

Third stage: May 1919 - April 1920 - simultaneous struggle of Soviet Russia against the White armies and Entente troops

Fourth stage: May 1920 - November 1922 (summer 1923) - the defeat of the White armies, the end of the civil war

Background and reasons

The origin of the Civil War cannot be reduced to any one cause. It was the result of deep political, socio-economic, national and spiritual contradictions. An important role was played by the potential of public discontent during the years of the First World War, the devaluation of the values ​​of human life. The agrarian and peasant policy of the Bolsheviks also played a negative role (the introduction of committees and surplus appropriations). The Bolshevik political doctrine, according to which civil war is the natural outcome of the socialist revolution, caused by the resistance of the overthrown ruling classes, also contributed to the civil war. On the initiative of the Bolsheviks, the All-Russian Constituent Assembly was dissolved, and the multi-party system was gradually eliminated.

The actual defeat in the war with Germany, the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk led to the fact that the Bolsheviks were accused of "destroying Russia."

The right of peoples to self-determination proclaimed by the new government, the emergence of many independent state formations in different parts of the country was perceived by the supporters of the "United, Indivisible" Russia as a betrayal of its interests.

Dissatisfaction with the Soviet government was also expressed by those who opposed its demonstrative break with the historical past and ancient traditions. Especially painful for millions of people was the anti-church policy of the Bolsheviks.

The civil war took various forms, including uprisings, individual armed clashes, large-scale operations with the participation of regular armies, guerrilla actions, and terror. A feature of the Civil War in our country was that it turned out to be extremely long, bloody, and unfolded over a vast territory.

Chronological framework

Separate episodes of the Civil War took place already in 1917 (the February events of 1917, the July "half-uprising" in Petrograd, Kornilov's speech, the October battles in Moscow and other cities), and in the spring - summer of 1918 it acquired a large-scale, front-line character .

It is not easy to determine the final frontier of the Civil War. Front-line military operations on the territory of the European part of the country ended in 1920. But then there were also mass peasant uprisings against the Bolsheviks, and performances by Kronstadt sailors in the spring of 1921. Only in 1922-1923. ended the armed struggle in the Far East. This milestone as a whole can be considered the time of the end of a large-scale Civil War.

Features of armed confrontation during the Civil War

Military operations during the Civil War differed significantly from previous periods. It was a time of a kind of military creativity that broke the stereotypes of command and control, the system of manning the army, and military discipline. The greatest success was achieved by the commander who commanded in a new way, using all means to achieve the task. The civil war was a war of maneuver. Unlike the period of the "positional war" of 1915-1917, there were no continuous front lines. Cities, villages, villages could change hands several times. Therefore, active, offensive actions, caused by the desire to seize the initiative from the enemy, were of decisive importance.

The fighting during the Civil War was characterized by a variety of strategies and tactics. During the establishment of Soviet power in Petrograd and Moscow, the tactics of street fighting were used. In mid-October 1917, the Military Revolutionary Committee established in Petrograd under the leadership of V.I. Lenin and N.I. Podvoisky, a plan was developed to capture the main urban facilities (telephone exchange, telegraph, railway stations, bridges). Fights in Moscow (October 27 - November 3, 1917 old style), between the forces of the Moscow Military Revolutionary Committee (heads - G.A. Usievich, N.I. Muralov) and the Committee of Public Security (commander of the Moscow Military District Colonel K. I. Ryabtsev and the head of the garrison, Colonel L. N. Treskin) were distinguished by the offensive of the Red Guards and soldiers of the reserve regiments from the outskirts to the city center, occupied by the junkers and the White Guard. Artillery was used to suppress white strongholds. A similar tactic of street fighting was used in the establishment of Soviet power in Kyiv, Kaluga, Irkutsk, Chita.

Formation of the main centers of the anti-Bolshevik movement

Since the beginning of the formation of units of the White and Red armies, the scale of military operations has expanded. In 1918, they were conducted, mainly along the lines of railways and were reduced to the capture of large junction stations and cities. This period was called the "echelon war".

In January-February 1918, the Red Guard detachments under the command of V.A. Antonov-Ovseenko and R.F. Sivers to Rostov-on-Don and Novocherkassk, where the forces of the Volunteer Army under the command of Generals M.V. Alekseeva and L.G. Kornilov.

In the spring of 1918, units of the Czechoslovak Corps formed from prisoners of war of the Austro-Hungarian army took part. Located in echelons along the line of the Trans-Siberian Railway from Penza to Vladivostok, the corps led by R. Gaida, Y. Syrov, S. Chechek was subordinate to the French military command and sent to the Western Front. In response to demands for disarmament, during May-June 1918, the corps overthrew the Soviet government in Omsk, Tomsk, Novonikolaevsk, Krasnoyarsk, Vladivostok and throughout the territory of Siberia adjacent to the Trans-Siberian Railway.

In the summer-autumn of 1918, during the 2nd Kuban campaign, the Volunteer Army took the junction stations Tikhoretskaya, Torgovaya, gg. Armavir and Stavropol actually decided the outcome of the operation in the North Caucasus.

The initial period of the Civil War was associated with the activities of the underground centers of the White movement. In all major cities of Russia there were cells associated with the former structures of the military districts and military units located in these cities, as well as with underground organizations of monarchists, cadets and socialist-revolutionaries. In the spring of 1918, on the eve of the performance of the Czechoslovak Corps, an officer underground operated in Petropavlovsk and Omsk under the leadership of Colonel P.P. Ivanov-Rinov, in Tomsk - Lieutenant Colonel A.N. Pepelyaev, in Novonikolaevsk - Colonel A.N. Grishin-Almazova.

In the summer of 1918, General Alekseev approved the secret regulation on the recruiting centers of the Volunteer Army, created in Kyiv, Kharkov, Odessa, Taganrog. They transmitted intelligence information, sent officers across the front line, and also had to oppose the Soviet regime at the moment the White Army units approached the city.

A similar role was played by the Soviet underground, which was active in the White Crimea, the North Caucasus, Eastern Siberia and the Far East in 1919-1920, creating strong partisan detachments, which later became part of the regular units of the Red Army.

By the beginning of 1919, the formation of the White and Red armies was completed.

As part of the Workers 'and Peasants' Red Army, 15 armies operated, covering the entire front in the center of European Russia. The highest military leadership was concentrated at the Chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic (RVSR) L.D. Trotsky and the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the Republic, former Colonel S.S. Kamenev. All issues of logistical support for the front, issues of economic regulation on the territory of Soviet Russia were coordinated by the Council of Labor and Defense (STO), whose chairman was V.I. Lenin. He also headed the Soviet government - the Council of People's Commissars (Sovnarkom).

They were opposed by the united under the Supreme command of Admiral A.V. Kolchak Army of the Eastern Front (Siberian (Lieutenant General R. Gaida), Western (Artillery General M.V. Khanzhin), Southern (Major General P.A. Belov) and Orenburg (Lieutenant General A.I. Dutov) , as well as the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the South of Russia (VSYUR), Lieutenant General A. I. Denikin, who recognized the power of Kolchak (Volunteer (Lieutenant General V. Z. May-Maevsky), Donskaya (Lieutenant General V. I. Sidorin) were subordinate to him) and Caucasian (Lieutenant-General P.N. Wrangel) armies).In the general direction, the troops of the Commander-in-Chief of the North-Western Front, General of Infantry N.N. Yudenich and the Commander-in-Chief of the Northern Region, Lieutenant General E.K. Miller, acted on Petrograd.

The period of greatest development of the Civil War

In the spring of 1919, attempts at combined attacks by the white fronts began. Since that time, combat operations have been in the nature of full-scale operations on a wide front, using all branches of the armed forces (infantry, cavalry, artillery), with the active assistance of aviation, tanks and armored trains. In March-May 1919, the offensive of the Eastern Front of Admiral Kolchak began, striking in divergent directions - on Vyatka-Kotlas, on connection with the Northern Front and on the Volga - on connection with the armies of General Denikin.

The troops of the Soviet Eastern Front, under the leadership of S.S. Kamenev and, mainly, the 5th Soviet Army, under the command of M.N. Tukhachevsky by the beginning of June 1919 stopped the advance of the White armies, inflicting counter-attacks in the Southern Urals (near Buguruslan and Belebey), and in the Kama region.

In the summer of 1919, the offensive of the Armed Forces of the South of Russia (AFSUR) began on Kharkov, Yekaterinoslav and Tsaritsyn. After the occupation of the last army of General Wrangel, on July 3, Denikin signed a directive on the "march on Moscow." During July-October, the troops of the All-Union Socialist League occupied most of Ukraine and the provinces of the Black Earth Center of Russia, stopping at the line Kyiv - Bryansk - Orel - Voronezh - Tsaritsyn. Almost simultaneously with the offensive of the VSYUR on Moscow, the offensive of the North-Western Army of General Yudenich on Petrograd began.

For Soviet Russia, the time of autumn 1919 became the most critical. Total mobilization of communists and Komsomol members was carried out, the slogans "Everything - to the defense of Petrograd" and "Everything - to the defense of Moscow" were put forward. Thanks to control over the main railway lines converging to the center of Russia, the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic (RVSR) could transfer troops from one front to another. So, at the height of the fighting in the Moscow direction, several divisions were transferred from Siberia, as well as from the Western Front to the Southern Front and near Petrograd. At the same time, the White armies failed to establish a common anti-Bolshevik front (with the exception of contacts at the level of individual detachments between the Northern and Eastern fronts in May 1919, as well as between the front of the All-Union Socialist Republic and the Ural Cossack Army in August 1919). Thanks to the concentration of forces from different fronts, by mid-October 1919 near Orel and Voronezh, the commander of the Southern Front, former Lieutenant General V.N. Egorov managed to create a strike group, which was based on parts of the Latvian and Estonian rifle divisions, as well as the 1st Cavalry Army under the command of S.M. Budyonny and K.E. Voroshilov. Counterattacks were launched on the flanks of the 1st Corps of the Volunteer Army advancing on Moscow under the command of Lieutenant General A.P. Kutepova. After stubborn fighting during October-November 1919, the VSYUR front was broken, and a general retreat of the Whites from Moscow began. In mid-November, before reaching 25 km from Petrograd, units of the North-Western Army were stopped and defeated.

The military operations of 1919 were distinguished by the extensive use of maneuver. Large cavalry formations were used to break through the front and conduct raids behind enemy lines. In the white armies, the Cossack cavalry was used in this capacity. The 4th Don Corps, specially formed for this purpose, under the command of Lieutenant General K.K. Mamantov in August-September made a deep raid from Tambov to the borders with the Ryazan province and Voronezh. Siberian Cossack Corps under the command of Major General P.P. Ivanov-Rinov broke through the red front near Petropavlovsk in early September. The "Red Division" from the Southern Front of the Red Army raided the rear of the Volunteer Corps in October-November. By the end of 1919, the beginning of operations of the 1st Cavalry Army, advancing in the Rostov and Novocherkassk directions, dates back.

In January-March 1920, fierce battles unfolded in the Kuban. During operations on the Manych and under Art. Yegorlykskaya, the last major equestrian battles in world history took place. Up to 50 thousand horsemen from both sides participated in them. Their result was the defeat of the VSYUR and evacuation to the Crimea, on the ships of the Black Sea Fleet. In the Crimea, in April 1920, the White troops were renamed the "Russian Army", commanded by Lieutenant General P.N. Wrangell.

The defeat of the white armies. End of the Civil War

At the turn of 1919-1920. was finally defeated by A.V. Kolchak. His army scattered, partisan detachments were operating in the rear. The supreme ruler was taken prisoner, in February 1920 in Irkutsk he was shot by the Bolsheviks.

In January 1920, N.N. Yudenich, who undertook two unsuccessful campaigns against Petrograd, announced the dissolution of his Northwestern Army.

After the defeat of Poland, the army of P.N. Wrangel was doomed. Having carried out a short offensive north of the Crimea, she went on the defensive. The forces of the Southern Front of the Red Army (commander M.V., Frunze) defeated the Whites in October - November 1920. The 1st and 2nd Cavalry armies made a significant contribution to the victory over them. Almost 150 thousand people, military and civilian, left the Crimea.

Fighting in 1920-1922 differed in small territories (Tavria, Transbaikalia, Primorye), smaller troops and already included elements of a positional war. During the defense, fortifications were used (the White lines at Perekop and Chongar in Crimea in 1920, the Kakhovka fortified area of ​​the 13th Soviet army on the Dnieper in 1920, built by the Japanese and transferred to the white Volochaevsky and Spassky fortified areas in Primorye in 1921-1922. ). Long-term artillery preparation, as well as flamethrowers and tanks, were used to break through them.

Victory over P.N. Wrangel did not yet mean the end of the Civil War. Now the main opponents of the Reds were not the Whites, but the Greens, as the representatives of the peasant insurrectionary movement called themselves. The most powerful peasant movement unfolded in the Tambov and Voronezh provinces. It began in August 1920 after the peasants were given an overwhelming task of surplus appropriation. The rebel army, commanded by the Socialist-Revolutionary A.S. Antonov, managed to overthrow the power of the Bolsheviks in several counties. At the end of 1920, units of the regular Red Army led by M.N. were sent to fight the rebels. Tukhachevsky. However, it turned out to be even more difficult to fight the partisan peasant army than with the White Guards in open battle. Only in June 1921 the Tambov uprising was suppressed, and A.S. Antonov is killed in a shootout. In the same period, the Reds managed to win a final victory over Makhno.

The high point of the Civil War in 1921 was the uprising of the sailors of Kronstadt, who joined the protests of St. Petersburg workers demanding political freedoms. The uprising was brutally crushed in March 1921.

During 1920-1921. units of the Red Army made several campaigns in Transcaucasia. As a result, independent states were liquidated on the territory of Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia and Soviet power was established.

To fight the White Guards and interventionists in the Far East, the Bolsheviks created in April 1920 a new state - the Far Eastern Republic (FER). The army of the republic for two years knocked out Japanese troops from Primorye and defeated several White Guard chieftains. After that, at the end of 1922, the FER became part of the RSFSR.

In the same period, having overcome the resistance of the Basmachi, who fought to preserve medieval traditions, the Bolsheviks won a victory in Central Asia. Although a few rebel groups operated until the 1930s.

Results of the Civil War

The main result of the Civil War in Russia was the establishment of the power of the Bolsheviks. Among the reasons for the victory of the Reds are:

1. The use by the Bolsheviks of the political moods of the masses, powerful propaganda (clear goals, prompt resolution of issues both in the world and on earth, exit from the world war, justification of terror by fighting the country's enemies);

2. Control by the Council of People's Commissars of the central provinces of Russia, where the main military enterprises were located;

3. The disunity of the anti-Bolshevik forces (lack of common ideological positions; the struggle "against something", but not "for something"; territorial fragmentation).

The total population losses during the years of the Civil War amounted to 12-13 million people. Almost half of them are victims of famine and mass epidemics. Emigration from Russia took on a massive character. About 2 million people left their homeland.

The country's economy was in a catastrophic state. The cities were depopulated. Industrial production has fallen in comparison with 1913 by 5-7 times, agricultural - by one third.

The territory of the former Russian Empire fell apart. The largest new state was the RSFSR.

Military equipment during the Civil War

New types of military equipment were successfully used on the battlefields of the Civil War, some of them appeared in Russia for the first time. So, for example, British and French tanks were actively used in parts of the All-Union Socialist Republic, as well as the Northern and North-Western armies. The Red Guards, who did not have the skills to deal with them, often retreated from their positions. However, during the assault on the Kakhovka fortified area in October 1920, most of the white tanks were hit by artillery, and after the necessary repairs they were included in the Red Army, where they were used until the early 1930s. A prerequisite for supporting infantry, both in street battles and during front-line operations, was the presence of armored vehicles.

The need for strong fire support during cavalry attacks caused the appearance of such an original means of combat as horse-drawn carts - light carts, two-wheelers, with a machine gun mounted on them. Carts were first used in the rebel army of N.I. Makhno, but later began to be used in all large cavalry formations of the White and Red armies.

Squadrons interacted with the ground forces. An example of a joint operation is the defeat of D.P. Rednecks by aviation and infantry of the Russian army in June 1920. Aviation was also used to bombard fortified positions and reconnaissance. During the "echelon war" and later, along with infantry and cavalry, armored trains operated on both sides, the number of which reached several dozen per army. Of these, special units were created.

Manning armies in the Civil War

Under the conditions of the Civil War and the destruction of the state mobilization apparatus, the principles of recruiting armies changed. Only the Siberian Army of the Eastern Front was completed in 1918 by mobilization. Most units of the VSYUR, as well as the Northern and Northwestern armies, were replenished at the expense of volunteers and prisoners of war. The most reliable in combat terms were volunteers.

The Red Army was also characterized by the predominance of volunteers (initially, only volunteers were accepted into the Red Army, and admission required "proletarian origin" and "recommendation" of a local party cell). The predominance of mobilized and prisoners of war became widespread at the final stage of the Civil War (in the ranks of the Russian army of General Wrangel, as part of the 1st Cavalry in the Red Army).

The white and red armies were distinguished by a small number and, as a rule, a discrepancy between the real composition of military units and their staff (for example, divisions of 1000-1500 bayonets, regiments of 300 bayonets, even a shortfall of up to 35-40% was approved).

In the command of the White armies, the role of young officers increased, and in the Red Army - nominees along the party line. A completely new institution of political commissars for the armed forces was established (which first appeared under the Provisional Government in 1917). The average age of the command level in the positions of chiefs of divisions and corps commanders was 25-35 years.

The absence of an order system in the All-Russian Union of Socialist Youth and the awarding of successive ranks led to the fact that in 1.5-2 years officers went through a career from lieutenants to generals.

In the Red Army, with a relatively young command staff, a significant role was played by former officers of the General Staff who planned strategic operations (former lieutenant generals M.D. Bonch-Bruevich, V.N. Egorov, former colonels I.I. Vatsetis, S.S. Kamenev, F.M. Afanasiev, A.N. Stankevich and others).

Military-political factor in the Civil War

The specifics of the civil war, as a military-political confrontation between the whites and the reds, also consisted in the fact that military operations were often planned under the influence of certain political factors. In particular, the offensive of the Eastern Front of Admiral Kolchak in the spring of 1919 was undertaken in anticipation of an early diplomatic recognition of him as the Supreme Ruler of Russia by the Entente countries. And the offensive of the North-Western Army of General Yudenich on Petrograd was caused not only by the expectation of an early occupation of the "cradle of the revolution", but also by the fear of concluding a peace treaty between Soviet Russia and Estonia. In this case, Yudenich's army lost its base. The offensive of the Russian army of General Wrangel in Tavria in the summer of 1920 was supposed to pull back part of the forces from the Soviet-Polish front.

Many operations of the Red Army, regardless of strategic reasons and military potential, were also purely political in nature (for the sake of the so-called "triumph of the world revolution"). So, for example, in the summer of 1919, the 12th and 14th armies of the Southern Front were supposed to be sent to support the revolutionary uprising in Hungary, and the 7th and 15th armies were supposed to establish Soviet power in the Baltic republics. In 1920, during the war with Poland, the troops of the Western Front, under the command of M.N. Tukhachevsky, after operations to defeat the Polish armies in the territory of Western Ukraine and Belarus, transferred their operations to the territory of Poland, counting on the creation of a pro-Soviet government here. The actions of the 11th and 12th Soviet armies in Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia in 1921 were of a similar nature. At the same time, under the pretext of defeating parts of the Asian Cavalry Division, Lieutenant General R.F. Ungern-Sternberg, the troops of the Far Eastern Republic, the 5th Soviet Army were introduced into the territory of Mongolia and a socialist regime was established (the first in the world after Soviet Russia).

During the years of the Civil War, it became a practice to carry out operations dedicated to anniversaries (the beginning of the assault on Perekop by the troops of the Southern Front under the command of M.V. Frunze on November 7, 1920, on the anniversary of the 1917 revolution).

The military art of the Civil War became a vivid example of the combination of traditional and innovative forms of strategy and tactics in the difficult conditions of the Russian "distemper" of 1917-1922. It determined the development of Soviet military art (in particular, in the use of large cavalry formations) in the following decades, until the outbreak of World War II.

The Great Russian Revolution, 1905-1922 Lyskov Dmitry Yurievich

6. The balance of power: who are the "whites", who are the "reds"?

The most stable stereotype regarding the Civil War in Russia is the confrontation between the "whites" and the "reds" - troops, leaders, ideas, political platforms. Above, we examined the problems of establishing Soviet power on the western borders of the empire and in the Cossack regions, from which it already follows that the number of warring parties during the Civil War was much wider. Nationwide, the number of active entities will further increase.

Below we will try to outline the entire spectrum of forces involved in the confrontation. But first, we note that the opposition "white" - "red" only at first glance seems to be an ordinary simplification. In a certain interpretation of events, it has a right to exist, moreover, this is how it was used in numerous documents and publications, and we need to figure out what meaning the revolutionaries of the early 20th century put into these concepts.

The definitions "white" and "red" were borrowed by Russian society from the works of K. Marx and F. Engels, from their analysis of the Great French Revolution. White color was a symbol of the Bourbons - the ruling family, whose coat of arms depicted a white lily. French counter-revolutionaries, supporters of the monarchy, raised this color to their banners. For the enlightened circles of Europe, for a long time he became a symbol of reaction, opposition to progress, against democracy and the republic.

Later, Engels, analyzing the course of the revolution in Hungary in 1848-49, wrote: "For the first time in a revolutionary movement ... for the first time since 1793(Jacobin terror - D.L.) the nation, surrounded by the superior forces of the counter-revolution, dares to oppose the cowardly counter-revolutionary fury with revolutionary passion, oppose terreur blanche - terreur rouge.(white terror - red terror).

The concept of "red" was also borrowed from the French revolutionaries. It is generally accepted that the red banner is the banner of the Paris Commune (1871). The Parisians, in turn, back in the days of the French Revolution (1789) borrowed the revolutionary symbol from the rebellious slaves of Spartacus, whose pennant, raised on the shaft of a spear, was a red Phrygian cap, a long hat with a curved top, a symbol of a free man. Delacroix's famous painting "Liberty Leading the People" ("Freedom at the Barricades") depicts a woman with a bare chest and a Phrygian cap on her head.

The question of designating revolutionary and counter-revolutionary forces in Russia, therefore, did not arise. With one single nuance: in the canonical interpretation, "whites" meant "counter-revolutionaries, supporters of the monarchy." But back in the summer of 1917, this label was pasted to the Kornilovites - however, the propaganda of the Provisional Government characterized the participants in the rebellion in precisely this way, accusing them of striving to strangle the revolution and restore the old order.

In reality, of course, Kornilov did not strive for any restoration of the monarchy - he adhered to republican views, although he understood them in a very peculiar way. But in the heat of the revolution, few people paid attention to such nuances - propaganda pursued a specific goal, hanging labels and intimidating the layman with the newly overthrown tsarism.

Subsequently, the concept of "whites" in the sense of "counter-revolutionaries" was established and actively used to refer to all organizations, no matter what revolution they opposed and no matter what views they held. So, in addition to the White movement itself - the Volunteer Army, the concepts of "White Finns", "White Cossacks", etc., were in use, despite the fact that they were completely different politically, organizationally and in terms of declared goals of the force.

By and large, none of them sought to restore the monarchy, but rational knowledge is one thing, and military propaganda is quite another. And therefore, as you know, the "White Army and the Black Baron" again prepared the royal throne for us.

These nuances in the interpretation of terms must be kept in mind when considering further events. For early Soviet sources, especially for the media and propaganda, "whites" is a generalizing concept. On the other hand, for emigrant sources focused on the history of the army of Kornilov, Denikin and Wrangel, which adopted the definition of "white" as a self-name (in interpretations of "purity of thoughts", for example), this is almost exclusively the Volunteer Army. Finally, we note that in late Soviet mass history, these interpretations practically merged, de facto ousting all other parties to the conflict, except for the conditional red commissars and no less conditional white officers. In addition, the propaganda cliche about the royal throne began to be perceived as an indisputable truth, as a result of which many perestroika mummers "White Guards", marching through the streets with portraits of Nicholas II, experienced acute cognitive dissonance, finally reaching the memoirs of their idols and finding out that the monarchists in the Volunteer Army were persecuted and repressed.

However, let us return to the assessment of the forces involved in the confrontation of the Civil War. As already mentioned, it was sometimes completely opposite ideologically, organizationally, and even in terms of citizenship. All these forces in the course of an armed conflict interacted, entered into alliances, supported each other or were at enmity. Sometimes patriotic white officers, whose main idea was a single and indivisible Russia and loyalty to allied obligations - the war with Germany to the bitter end - gladly accepted help from the Germans. At the same time, another part of the White movement was at war with the nationalists of the outskirts. The units of the tsarist army stationed in Finland, which had not yet been demobilized, entered the fight against the White Finns, many of them stood under the banner of the Red Guard and then joined the Red Army. Socialist governments arose as a result of a revolt of foreign units stationed in Russia, the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries tried to turn the detachments of the Cheka and the Red Army against the Bolsheviks, etc., etc.

The "independent" states on the western border created their own national armies, but these "states" themselves were a base for the "white" units, on which one could always rely, if necessary, retreat for rest or regrouping. So, Yudenich and his Northwestern Army used the Baltic states as a springboard for campaigns against Petrograd. By the way, the already familiar Don ataman, the tsarist general Krasnov, fought in the North-Western Army, whose fate seems to be the embodiment of the chaos of the Civil War in miniature. In October 1917, under the flag of the Provisional Government, he, together with Kerensky, led troops to Petrograd. Released by the Soviets on parole, he returned to the Don, where he concluded a military alliance with Germany. Here, at first, his relations with Denikin's "volunteers" did not work out - both because of separatist sentiments and because of the alliance with the occupying command. However, subsequently the Don Army of Krasnov joined the Armed Forces of the South of Russia, then Krasnov fought in the North-Western Army, emigrated in 1920. During the Great Patriotic War, he went over to the side of the Nazis.