![]() Fifteen million Russians were dead, mostly via disease, famine and massacres (including White pogroms against the Jewish population). The Whites were disunited, rather disorganised, and had difficulty mobilizing people to fight for their unclear vision, being forced to rely on Cossacks as soldiers who themselves wanted independence from Russia, Red or White - not to mention that they had no idea what to do with Russia if they won, since they were a wide alliance of anti-communist forces (ranging from non-Bolshevik socialists over moderate liberals to ultra-nationalists who wanted to kill lots of Jews). Thanks to Trotsky and the state seizing control of the entire Soviet economy to feed the Red Army (which became highly organised and disciplined - the commissars shooting people certainly helped), the Bolsheviks ended up the ultimate victors. This mostly served to make the Whites look like puppets of foreign capitalists and imperialists, which didn't help with their street cred. Western powers like the US, Britain and France sent some troops to help the Whites (because they were fighting against communism, and the enemy of my enemy is my friend). If you want a glimpse of what happened at the time, Doctor Zhivago is best at describing the whole situation. The civil war was hardly two-sided, as the nation was filled with dozens of small nationalist factions fighting for independence and a confusing rainbow of smaller armies such as the Blacks (anarchists), Blues (peasants rebelling against the Reds), and Greens (desperate peasants fighting everybody just for survival). ![]() It was mainly "Red" versus "White" and very nasty, with massacres everywhere the one that shows up most often in fiction is the murder of the entire Romanov royal family, although that was an event of minor importance at the time. This also led to a Civil War, in which the Allied powers, including the Americans joined in. ![]() The Assembly held one meeting before being dissolved. This was first demonstrated in the Constituent Assembly elections, where the Bolsheviks were defeated. After concluding the war on highly unfavourable terms, there was also another problem: not everyone was happy with the new government. They concluded a peace treaty with Imperial Germany, in the process giving up control of Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Ukraine and Poland, which became German puppets and after Germany's defeat, which either became independent or were re-taken by the Reds. They also ended up with the continuing problem of World War I. After Red October overthrew the government that overthrew Tsarist Russia, the Bolsheviks ended up being one of the major players in the world's largest country.
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