He shows that serfs did not actively participate in the civil war and that the abolition of serfdom was never a rebel goal. Instead, most rebels were petty gentry, professional soldiers, townsmen, and cossacks who were united in fierce opposition to tsars they believed to be illegitimate usurpers.".

This book is the only comprehensive history of the total experience of the Russian Civil War. Focusing on the key Volga city of Saratov and the surrounding region, Donald Raleigh is the first historian to fully show how the experience of civil war embedded itself into both the people's and the state's outlook and behavior. He demonstrates how and why the programs and ideals that had propelled the Bolsheviks into power were so quickly lost and the repressive Soviet party-state was born. Experiencing Russia's Civil War is based on exhaustive use of previously classified local and central archives. It is also bold and ambitious in its breadth of thematic coverage, dealing with all aspects of the war experience from institutional evolution and demographics to survival strategies. Complicating our understanding of this formative period, Raleigh provides compelling evidence that many features of the Soviet system that we associate with the Stalin era were already adumbrated and practiced by the early 1920s, as Bolshevism became closed to real alternatives. Raleigh interprets this as the consequence of a complex dynamic shaped by Russia's political tradition and culture, Bolshevik ideology, and dire political, economic, and military crises starting with World War I and strongly reinforced by the indelible, mythologized experience of survival in the Civil War. Fluidly written, replete with new information, and always engaged with important questions, this is history finely wrought.

Laura Engelstein, one of the greatest scholars of Russian history, has written a searing and defining account of the Russian Revolution, the fall of the old order, and the creation of the Soviet state.

This book is a detailed reference of the twentieth century struggles that were waged across and beyond the decaying Russian Empire at the end of the First World War, as tsarism and democratic alternatives to it collapsed and the world’s first Communist state, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, was born. At the same time, it is a necessary corrective to studies that have viewed events of the time as a unitary “Russian Civil War” that sprang from the Russian Revolution of 1917. Instead, it contributes to the ongoing process of integrating the civil wars into a “continuum of crises” that wracked the Russian Empire and its would-be successor states across a prolonged period. The Historical Dictionary of the Russian Civil Wars, 1916-1926 covers the history of this period through a chronology, an introductory essay, appendixes, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has almost 2,000 cross-referenced entries on individuals, political and governmental institutions and political parties, and military formations and concepts, as well as religion, art, film, propaganda, uniforms, and weaponry. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about the Russian Civil War.

"This volume offers a comprehensive and original analysis and reconceptualisation of the compendium of struggles that wracked the collapsing Tsarist empire and the emergent USSR, profoundly affecting the history of the twentieth century. The reverberations of those decade-long wars echo to the present day--not despite, but because of the collapse of the Soviet Union, which re-opened many old wounds, from the Baltic to the Caucasus. Contemporary memorialising and 'de-memorialising' of these wars, therefore form part of the book's focus, but at its heart lie the struggles between various Russian political and military forces which sought to inherit and preserve, or even expand, the territory of the tsars, overlain with examinations of the attempts of many non-Russian national and religious groups to divide the former empire. The reasons why some of the latter were successful (Poland and Finland, for example), while others (Ukraine, Georgia and the Muslim Basmachi) were not, are as much the author's concern as are explanations as to why the chief victors of the 'Russian' Civil Wars were the Bolsheviks. Tellingly, the work begins and ends with battles in Central Asia--a theatre of the 'Russian' Civil Wars that was closer to Mumbai than it was to Moscow"--Publisher description.

Shortly after withdrawing from World War I, Russia descended into a bitter civil war unprecedented for its savagery: epidemics, battles, mass executions, forced labor, and famine claimed millions of lives. From 1918 to 1921, through great cities and tiny villages, across untouched forests and vast frozen wasteland, the Bolshevik "Reds" fought the anti-Communist Whites and their Allies (fourteen foreign countries contributed weapons, money, and troops—including 20,000 American soldiers). This landmark history re-creates the epic conflict that transformed Russia from the Empire of the Tsars into the Empire of the Commissars, while never losing sight of the horrifying human cost.

The documents in this book were collected from the archives in Rostov-on-Don, and appear here for the first time in print, with commentary from the author.