An update on Russia below. In the interest of keeping this on the shorter side, I’ve skipped over a good deal of stuff that’s going on in Soviet domestic politics, as well as some of the less important separatist rebellions. I do intend to cover these (especially the former), but I also would like to get the timeline to 1919, so I will likely push their coverage forward to the next year.
“To Secure this Beachhead of Worker’s Power”: The First Phase of the Russian Civil War
From the Alternatehistory.com thread “PoD: Longer Russian Civil War(s)?”
casizzle said:
I know most people on this forum don’t think that the white forces had a real chance of succeeding in the Russian Civil War, but is there any way to at least get them to last into 1919? I’m interested in how a weaker Russia would effect the revolutionary period. Supply was obviously a pretty big issue for Kornilov’s armies in Siberia - what if the Japanese launched the planned Vladivostok intervention and took over the Trans-Siberian railway?
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Thalmannian said:
The Vladivostok intervention won’t accomplish anything besides eventually putting Japan in a state of war with the Soviet Union. Unless they intend to push all the way to Central Siberia, there’s no way to ensure that supplies get to the whites. There were a lot of red militias operating in the area, and they had control of most of the bigger towns east of the Urals. It’s also awfully easy to sabotage a railway, particularly one as poorly constructed and with the freight limitations of the Trans-siberian one.
Honestly, the biggest thing you probably need to do is not have Kornilov suffer such a shattering defeat at Petrograd to open the war. The loss of some of the most battle-hardened white officers probably put them at a permanent strategic disadvantage. By the time he reached Moscow, he only had around half the troops he set out with, and didn’t really have any means of raising more beyond conscripting peasants who would desert the army at the first chance.
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ladfromthenorth said:
From what I’ve read, I think the larger issue is that the Germans were just not that interested in fighting the Reds? They managed to (barely) meet their population’s food needs through the plunder of Romania and the food shipments from Ukraine, so they didn’t have that much of a real interest in undermining the Soviets if it meant it would require diverting significant resources from the west. Even the white victory in the First Finnish Civil War was won much more due to the disorganization of the red militias than German aid, which was pretty meager.
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bigeric said:
I read a pretty interesting timeline where a more successful Hetmanist coup in Ukraine leads to more German support for the summer campaign against the Ukranian Soviet republic, and the eventual rapprochement of Germany with the whites. It’s definitely a bit of a Kaiserwank, but the latter bit actually seems pretty plausible to me; the British were barely funding the whites by the end of the year, so I could see them switching allegiances. I mean, they would probably have to agree to a Ukranian state, but would they really be so unwilling to bend on principle that they’d consign themselves to the rubbish-bin?
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ladfromthenorth said:
I do think you probably need to get Britain to be more committed to the fight. Most historians actually think that Admiral Kolchak fought pretty skillfully with the resources he was given, but the British were just too focused on keeping France in the war until Germany exhausted itself and Ludendorff gave up some of his more insane war aims. Maybe if the war was going better for the entente, they’d provide more aid to the whites, but I also think there just was a pretty widespread impression that the cause was doomed? But perhaps if Kolchak and Kornilov were able to properly link up their two fronts, matters would have been different.
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Excerpt from Roger Baumann*, The Russian Civil War(s): A Non-Partisan Guide(Zurich: Axel Springer, 1981).
Following the proclamation of a Soviet Republic in November 1917, the Congress of Workers, Soldiers, and Peasant’s Delegates was called to elect a new government. Bolshevik dominance in the large cities meant that they held a 275-seat plurality in the 680-member body. Not too far behind them were the SR’s, who held a little over 200 seats, and the Mensheviks, with a bit under 150. These latter two parties were divided between a historically larger pro-war, pro-provisional government right and an anti-war, pro-soviet left. In the wake of the failed Kerensky coup, the right-wing delegates came under withering fire and were accused of aiding and abetting an attempt to impose military dictatorship upon Russia. At the behest of the Bolsheviks, a resolution was passed obligating all members of the Soviet to swear an oath to preserve the “Soviet character” of the new government and abandon cooperation with the Kadets and other bourgeois parties. A minority of right-wing Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries walked out of the Congress in protest, further emboldening the left.
The left SR’s initially rejected the Bolshevik proposal for a left-wing socialist coalition, instead favoring a broad national unity government of all the socialist parties. They were outmaneuvered by Martov, who appeared on the verge of securing enough support among left-wing Mensheviks to form a government with his old rivals. Faced with the prospect of being iced out into the opposition, the left SR’s chose to cooperate with Lenin, and later that week the Congress of Soviets appointed 55 Bolsheviks, 26 left SR’s, 14 Mensheviks, and 5 Ukrainian socialists to the Soviet Executive Committee. This body was empowered to act as a legislature; it also chose the members of the crucial Council of People’s Commissars (aka, sovnarkom) which was intended as a primarily executive body but also accumulated increasing legislative authority throughout the course of Russia’s civil wars.
Officeholders of the First Council of People’s Commissars
| Position | Officeholder | Party |
|---|---|---|
| Chairman | Vladmir Lenin | Bolshevik |
| Head of Council-Administration | Vladimir Bonch-Bruyevich | Bolshevik |
| Commissariat of Foreign Affairs | Maria Spiridinova | Socialist-Revolutionary |
| People’s Commissariat for Agriculture | Andrei Kolegaev | Socialist-Revolutionary |
| People’s Commissar of Military Affairs | Vladimir Karelin | Socialist-Revolutionary |
| People’s Commissar of Naval Affairs | Pavel Dybenko | Bolshevik |
| People’s Commissariat for Labour | Julius Martov | Social-Democratic |
| People’s Commissariat for Trade and Industry | Leon Trotsky | Bolshevik |
| People’s Commissariat for Education | Anatoloy Lunacharsky | Bolshevik |
| People’s Commissariat for Food | Matvey Skobelev | Social-Democratic |
| People’s Commisssariat for Internal Affairs | Alexei Rykov | Bolshevik |
| People’s Commissariat for Justice | Prosh Proshyan | Socialist-Revolutionary |
| People’s Commissariat for Nationalities | Joseph Stalin | Bolshevik |
| People’s Commissariat for Posts and Telegraphs | Lev Kamenev | Bolshevik |
| People’s Commissariat for Railways | Victor Nogin | Bolshevik |
| People’s Commissariat for Finance | Vladimir Milyutin | Bolshevik |
| People’s Commissariat for Social Welfare | Alexandra Kollantai | Bolshevik |
| People’s Commissar for Local Self Government | Isaac Steinberg | Socialist-Revolutionary |
| People’s Commissar without Portfolio | Mark Natanson | Socialist-Revolutionary |
The new government was formed shortly after Brusilov’s victory in the Battle of Moscow. When news arrived of a cossack rising in the caucuses, it had to choose between directing Brusilov to pursue Kornilov’s retreating army, or have him swing south to immediately confront the rebellion. Concerned about Ukraine’s growing intransigence, the government decided to send the red relief army south, while Leon Trotsky was tasked with forming a new army to drive Kornilov out of Central Siberia.
Following the declaration of the Soviet epublic, the Ukranian Rada announced that it would not recognize its authority until it called a democratically elected national assembly. This demand was mostly a product of internal Ukrainian politics, which was divided between a minority of so-called “reconciliationists” and a larger grouping of centrist to left-wing nationalists. The former believed that some form of modus vivendi could be reached with the new Russian government, though there were internal disagreements concerning whether Ukraine would remain an independent socialist state in a Soviet confederacy or become an autonomous federal unit of a so-called “Soviet Union”. The hardliners, more politically moderate and more closely connected with the burgeoning Ukrainian military, were unwilling to countenance any compromise and wished to push for full independence under German protection (perhaps a contradiction in terms, but not as they saw it). They hoped that the ultimatum issued to Russia would be refused, which would provide a pretext for declaring independence that the reconciliationists would accept.
Technically, advocacy for the return of the provisional assembly amounted to treason. However, a narrow majority of the Sovnarkom (mostly centrist bolsheviks and left-Mensheviks) supported placating the Ukrainians, and elections for the parliamentary body were held later that month. It was clear to everyone involved that this was a purely symbolic affair. After it met in Petrograd, red guards and left-sr politicians ramped up pressure on the institution until it dissolved itself, recognizing the Soviet as the only authority. Victor Chernov, the leader of the Socialist-Revolutionaries, denounced the extra-parliamentary maneuvering in sharp terms, leading to his temporary arrest and detainment in Petrograd.
In Ukraine, the hardliners forced a measure through the Rada declaring independence several days before the parliament met. They did so, therefore, before they could have known of the threats levied against the centrist SR parliementarians. This led Vynnchenko’s reconciliationists to walk out of the government. While in the opposition, he began advocating a policy of “Neither subjugation to Moscow or Berlin”. In practice, he urged a detente with the Soviet government and negotiations which would permit Ukraine to exist as an independent socialist nation in a customs and defense union with Russia. Given the Petrograd government’s dependence on the national-chauvinist Socialist-Revolutionaries, this was likely a vain dream more than a concrete political possibility.
The defection of the left-socialists dealt a fatal blow to Ukraine’s democratic experiment. Gradually, the army chief of staff Symon Petliura assumed control over the functions of the Ukrainian state, and began expanding the army in preparation for an offensive into Kharkiv and the Donbas. The left-socialists were first marginalized and then repressed; many of them fled east, and joined the Ukrainian Soviet Republic in Kharkiv. Early victories for the newly formed Ukranian People’s Army came in January, when it crossed the Perekop Isthmus and captured Crimea from Kaledin’s battered Cossacks. Later that month, it also wrested control of several cities in the Donbas region from the Ukranian Soviet Republic. Shortly thereafter, Germany formally recognized Petliura’s government, though Ludendorff was concerned with the strength of the Ukrainian People’s Army, and secretly plotted to depose Petliura and replace him with a more compliant leader.
Symon Petliura, the de facto military dictator of the short-lived Ukranian People’s Republic
More sanguine news came from the Caucuses. In late 1917, Brusilov bested a cossack army on the Volga, then advanced and won a series of pitched battles north of Rostov, decimating Kaledin’s cossacks through the skillful use of artillery fire. The remnants of Kaledin’s forces fled south into the Caucasian Mountains, where they assumed defensive positions and regrouped with the officers of the Black Sea Admiral Alexander Kolchak. In February, Brusilov’s attempt to advance further was halted at the Kuban when he encountered a force several times larger than he anticipated. British warships had evacuated loyalist Russians at the Romanian front to ports in the caucuses, where they formed the nucleus of Kolchak’s growing 1st Volunteer Army.
In the east, Kornilov’s National Salvation Army and Trotsky’s newly raised 1st Red Army fought brutal, attritional battles in Kazan and Ufa. Kornilov acquitted himself well in this struggle, managing to inflict several times more casualties than he suffered as he slowly withdrew to defensive positions in the Ural Mountains. He also solidified his rear by gaining control of several small Siberian cities, including Zlatoust, Ekeratinberg, Tyumen, Omsk, and Novosibisk. This task was eased by the rebellion of the Orenburg Cossack Host, which temporarily disrupted Trotsky’s logistics. With returning troops and irregular militias loyal to the old provisional government, the cossacks occupied the key cities of Saratov and Samara, forging a tenuous link between Kolchak’s Caucasian Front and Kornilov’s Central Siberian one.
In March, the Warsaw Treaty was signed and ratified, formalizing the loss of Russian territories in Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, and the Baltics. The Soviet government also pledged to withdraw its troops from Finland and Ukraine, where civil wars were being waged between pro-Soviet red militias and pro-German national independence movements. These would turn out to be rather hollow promises; though a slim majority of the socialist-revolutionaries favored signing a peace, only Spiridinova advocated for adhering to the terms of the treaty, and she only treated this as a tactical, temporary measure. Arms and volunteers continued to flow to the Ukrainian Soviet Republic.
Approximate Lines of Control Two Weeks after the Treaty of Warsaw
Lenin suffered a torrent of criticism from the party’s left for signing a “humiliating” peace. This came predominantly from the regional party newspaper in Moscow, controlled by the defencist left-communist Nikolai Bukharin. Soon, both Bolshevik and left SR comissars on Sovnarkom joined in on the criticism, most prominently Leon Trotsky and Andrei Kolegaev. The defencists pushed for the immediate deployment of Brusilov’s army to Ukraine to quickly crush the pro-German Petliura government and force a fait accompli upon the Central Powers. With the assistance of the left-wing Mensheviks, centrist Bolsheviks, and a faction of antiwar, proto-anarchist SR’s around Maria Spiridonova, Lenin was able to resist these calls for escalation, but they only grew more fervent as victory after victory was won against the whites. They were bolstered by the German emigre communists, who overwhelmingly joined the pro-war, left-communist faction based in Moscow. Rosa Luxemburg accused Lenin of “Betraying the German worker” by making peace with the Kaiser.
Petliura had been forced into an almost equally humiliating treaty. In return for German protection, he was obliged to host Central Powers troops at Ukraine’s own expense and allow these soldiers to administer the requisitioning of grain. Unsurprisingly, he was forced to contend with the accusation that he was a German puppet, which he tried to combat with the use of incendiary nationalist oratory. This is likely what prompted Ludendorff to give the go-ahead for the disastrous Hetmanist coup in early April, which aimed to place the pro-German cossack leader Pavlo Skoropadsky at the head of the Ukrainian state.
The ataman’s cossacks did manage to successfully seize Kyiv on April 3d, but loyalist soldiers aided Petliura in escaping unharmed, allowing him to flee to Zhitomir. Theoretically, Austrian and German garrison soldiers stationed nearby could have taken the large town in a matter of days if the order was given, but, in an exceedingly rare incident, Ludendorff balked. He did not want to be forced to commit to an extensive military occupation in Ukraine when troops were already sorely needed for the western offensives. In the next few days, the vast majority of soldiers in the Ukranian National Army declared their loyalty to Petliura’s government. With Kyiv surrounded, the Hetman surrendered without a drop of blood being shed.
In the resulting chaos, “volunteers” diverted from Brusilov’s red army captured Chernihiv, the remainder of the Donbas, and advanced to the Dnieper river at several locations, while a British-supported expedition of white cossacks landed in Sevastopol, retaking the city almost bloodlessly. The kyiv fiasco, as it came to be called, was a disaster for Germany and Petliura alike. They still had to rely on one another - Petliura for protection, Germany for grain - but now their relationship was mired in suspicion and mistrust. Moreover, Petliura now governed over a much diminished territory, and the fighting required to retake the lost lands in the east would likely decimate crop yields.
Anti-Bolshevik forces were somewhat more successful elsewhere. Armed with British artillery, the 1st volunteer army fought a bloody offensive that retook Rostov in May, while Kornilov captured the town of Ufa west of the Urals. However, the logistical isolation of his army was causing increasing problems; supplies of bullets and artillery shells were both woefully inadequate. Kornilov hoped to move south from Ufa to Orenburg, where he could link up with Kolchak with the aid of irregular cossack battalions. Instead, he was halted on his march south by Trotsky’s numerically superior 1st Red Army, and a counteroffensive forced him into another retreat.
In June, a pincer offensive from Trotsky and Brusilov broke the back of the Orenburg cossack rebellion, cutting off the fragile supply corridor from Kolchak to Kornilov. The latter now began the long march east along the trans-siberian railway, hoping to eventually reach the Pacific. The 1st Red Army followed in the wake of his scorched earth retreat, taking the cities of Tyumen, Omsk, and Novosibirsk in the next few months. For the residents of these towns, this period of time was widely remembered as a nightmarish ordeal; first Kornilov’s soldiers looted and razed the towns, before the Red Army arrived to take what food and goods remained and execute individuals suspected of collaborating with the whites.
Over the same period, Petliura’s army fought indecisive and attritional battles with Red Ukrainian militias near the Dnieper. After Germany warned Russia to evacuate the red volunteer brigades in Ukraine or face a renewed offensive in Belarus, Petliura was able to make additional progress, and took back Melitopol and Chernihiv in August. In September, Kolchak’s 1st Volunteer Army attempted to drive north toward Voronezh; while initially successful, Brusilov and the red Ukrainian militias soon launched a flanking counteroffensive before Kolchak could secure his logistics, forcing him to engage in a fighting retreat deep into the caucuses. Eventually, he would be forced to evacuate his armies to the Crimea. The defeats inflicted on the white forces were hardly sanguinary for Petliura’s government; with mistrust still running high between him and his German benefactor, he would be helpless before a concerted assault from either Trotsky or Brusilov’s armies unless the Central Powers sent more troops.
Germany made clear that another assault on Ukraine from regular Soviet forces would mean the resumption of war. Secretly, a group of left-communists and SR’s conspired to depose Lenin as chairman and launch a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. They were buoyed by funds dispersed by British intelligence services and the failure of Central Powers offensives in the west. The plan was to call an emergency meeting of the Soviet executive committee after a sufficient number of Bolsheviks had been won over to their line, which would elect a new Bolshevik-Left SR Sovnarkom with Bukharin or Trotsky as the chair.
They had made the fatal mistake of underestimating Lenin’s political acumen, who had received news of the plot weeks in advance. In September, he called an emergency party congress of the Bolsheviks and publicized the Entente financing of the “infantile leftist” faction. After the troublemakers were demoted and denounced, the executive committee of the Soviets was called into session. With their left-communist partners marginalized, it was hoped that the left SR’s would continue their support for the coalition government. Instead, in an internal meeting they narrowly voted against participating in any government with Lenin, the consequence of long-brewing discontent with harsh grain requisitions and the persecution of peasants. At this point, many expected the august Bolshevik chairman to resign in defeat. Instead, his old rival Martov saved his government by rallying the majority of the left-wing Mensheviks to join a new coalition. “The tragedy of 1903 redeemed!” read the Internationalist press. The alliance between the centrist bolsheviks and left-mensheviks was a long time coming: they concurred on the key issues of war, nationalities, and grain, and had formed a de facto bloc in the Sovnarkom against the more bellicose left-communists and SR’s.
Officeholders of the Second Council of People’s Commissars
| Position | Officeholder | Party |
|---|---|---|
| Chairman | Vladmir Lenin | Bolshevik |
| Head of Council-Administration. | Vladimir Bonch-Bruyevich | Bolshevik |
| Commissariat of Foreign Affairs. | Adolph Joffe | Social-Democratic |
| People’s Commissariat for Agriculture | Vladimir Milyutin | Bolshevik |
| People’s Commissar of Military Affairs | Joseph Stalin | Bolshevik |
| People’s Commissar of Naval Affairs | Pavel Dybenko | Bolshevik |
| People’s Commissariat for Labour | Julius Martov | Social-Democratic |
| People’s Commissariat for Trade and Industry | David Riazanov | Social-Democratic |
| People’s Commissariat for Education | Anatoly Lunacharsky | Bolshevik |
| People’s Commissariat for Food | Matvey Skobelev | Social-Democratic |
| People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs | Alexei Rykov | Bolshevik |
| People’s Commissariat for Justice | Nikolai Kylenko | Bolshevik |
| People’s Commissariat for Nationalities. | Sergo Ordzhonikidze | Bolshevik |
| People’s Commissariat for Posts and Telegraphs | Lev Kamenev | Bolshevik |
| People’s Commissariat for Railways | Victor Nogin | Bolshevik |
| People’s Commissariat for Finance | Yuri Lurin | Social-Democratic |
| People’s Commissariat for Social Welfare | Alexandra Kollantai | Bolshevik |
| People’s Commissar for Local Self Government | Lev Karakhan | Social-Democratic |
The first business of the new government was to negotiate an end to the explosive situation in Ukraine and the Baltics, where red insurgencies fed calls for Soviet intervention. In German-held Riga, a delegation comprised of Julius Martov, Leonid Krasine, Joseph Stalin, Alexei Rykov, and Lev Kamenev met with Gustave Stresemann and other German diplomats to hammer out a “grand bargain”. The Soviets and Germans both wanted an end to the pervasive frontier violence, the former to permit the consolidation of the new revolutionary state, and the latter so that their efforts could be focused fully on the west. For each side, there was a real interest in securing a deal. At this point, Ludendorff would have preferred full Soviet control of eastern Ukraine if it meant an end to the fighting and more regular grain shipments to Germany. The matter of Kyiv, Crimea, and the territories west of the Dnieper were considerably more vexed; the Soviet diplomats demanded all the Ukrainian territory east of Rivne, which would have put them in position to invade Galicia if full-scale war was ever restarted. Ludendorff wanted to avoid doing anything that would unduly strengthen the Soviet state or reduce its dependency on Germany.
By necessity, the deal reached was a compromise. On the matter of Ukraine, Germany agreed to recognize Soviet sovereignty over all the lands east of the Dnieper, except for a narrow strip running from Kherson to the eastern side of the Perekop Isthmus on Crimea’s northern border. After Petliura’s government was toppled by a German offensive, the Soviets would provide logistical assistance to help dislodge the British-supported white army from Crimea, which would remain occupied by Germany. In return, Kyiv would be ceded to the Soviets, though it would be demilitarized. Rivne, Lutsk, and Ternopil would be incorporated into a semi-independent Polish state under German suzerainty, while the remainder of the lands would form a Western Ukrainian state under joint Austro-German protection. Further north, Germany would recognize Soviet control of Minsk in return for a small indemnity.
In the Baltics, the Soviets agreed to cease arming Estonian and Lithuanian rebels, and in return, Germany would cede the city of Narva and the port of Murmansk, taken earlier in the year by Finnish nationalists. In the south, the Germans agreed to recognize Soviet sovereignty over eastern Armenia, Georgia, and Azerbaijan, on the condition that they be given rights to at least 40% of the oil in Baku. With the British having recently seized the key oil-producing city, the overriding German concern was to make sure the rich oil fields did not remain in their enemy’s hands.
The Soviets also agreed to an expansive plan of reparations, to be paid for primarily with food and minerals. The cession of the grain-rich lands of Ukraine was intended to enable the Soviets to make good this payment, which would be crucial if Germany was to feed its population and continue the war effort. This was the real “blood price” the Soviets were forced to pay in return for the cession of border territories.
The treaty provoked howls of protests amongst both the left-bolsheviks and the SR’s, who accused Lenin of capitulating to German Imperialism. A clique in Moscow composed of Rosa Luxemburg, Nikolai Bukharin, Franz Mehring, Karl Radek, Andrei Bubnov, and Vladimir Smirnov issued a protest in several local newspapers, prompting several of them to be charged with breaking party discipline and threatened with expulsion. No formal censure was made against the German emigres, but in various party outlets they were accused of a lack of gratitude; there was some truth to this, given the effort the revolutionary government expended to traffic propaganda (written principally by the red emigres) into Germany.
With Russia’s food supply devastated by the civil war and an ongoing refugee crisis, there seemed to be little opportunity for actually meeting the treaty conditions without placing significantly more pressure on Russian and Ukrainian peasants. The left-bolsheviks had little ability to organize opposition to the treaty; the vast majority of urban workers were still loyal to Lenin’s government. There was more resistance among the peasantry, who linked the more coercive grain requisition practices to the exit of the left SR’s from the coalition. In the last two months of 1918, peasant unrest spread across Central Russia, presaging the next phase of the civil war.
The new Soviet state was still far from consolidated. While much of Central and East Siberia was under Soviet control, Transcaucasia, Central Asia, and Russia’s arctic north were all outside its sovereignty. Additionally, Kyiv and East Ukraine was run by a semi-independent Ukranian Soviet Republic, which was doggedly resisting the requests for increased grain shipments. In the west, Hetman Pavlo Skorapidskyi’s Ukrainian state, intended to be a buffer between Germany and Soviet Russia, was facing a fanatical national insurgency from the remnants of Petliura’s army, who took to the woods before they could be captured by the Austro-German offensive intended to topple the nationalist government.
Further south, in Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan, authority was divided along ethnic and religious lines. A transcaucasian unity government was formed following the revolution, intended to maintain order and guard against the Turkish and White Russian threats. Its leaders were moderate Mensheviks and socialist-revolutionaries who pointedly refused to swear allegiance to the revolutionary government, but who also resisted calls to declare independence from it. They were a lesser participant in the Treaty of Warsaw, which forced them to cede western Armenia to Turkey. In the months thereafter, the tenuous cross-ethnic alliance disintegrated as Georgia and Azerbaijan declared war on Armenia, seeking to seize border territories. A more healthy Turkish state may have taken advantage of this situation, but it had its hands full preventing a British breakout from Adana. Instead, it was the British who capitalized on the conflict, marching north and invading Azerbaijan on the pretext of defending its Armenian “ally”.
Shortly thereafter, Bolsheviks and left SR’s overthrew the government in Baku, prompting a panicked Georgia to conclude an armistice with Armenia. When a force of around 2,000 British soldiers reached Baku, they were initially repelled by the numerically superior Caucasian Red Army, but they would return later in August with a 5,000 man army that successfully besieged and captured the city. Yet they soon faced a relentless assault from nationalist Azerbaijani militias that made many doubt whether the city was worth holding onto even with the tremendous oil yields it reaped. More worrying signs for the British emerged when a coalition of left-SR’s, left-mensheviks, and Bolsheviks came to power in Georgia and Armenia following Kolchak’s decision to evacuate his army to Crimea. And then, shortly after the signing of the Treaty of Riga, German troops began streaming into Sochi. The first German-Soviet joint military of the Great War was about to begin.
In the final few months of the year, organized white opposition forces outside of Crimea gradually disintegrated. Kornilov’s army, having suffered countless defeats in battle, started to dissolve in the freezing Siberian winter. The remnants of the Orenburg cossack host were crushed with a mixture of terror, propaganda, and repression. Slowly, the eastern half of Russia was incorporated into the new state, though in practice these regions had considerable local autonomy.
Even with the military successes of 1918, the new Soviet government was in an extremely vulnerable position. It was dependent on German goodwill, which was now conditional on the payment of an enormous and domestically unpopular reparations bill. The treaty had not brought an end to the conflict in Central Asia, or, for that matter, the pervasive frontier violence in Finnish Karelia. By any account, the second Sovnarkom represented a much narrower splice of the country; without any SR ministers, it could not claim to speak for the peasantry. For now, the left-SR’s remained loyal to the revolutionary project, but they felt increasingly alienated by the present government. Echoing 19th century narodnik revolutionaries, a minority began to speak of “Going into the country” to help the peasants coordinate opposition to grain seizures and state repression. For Lenin and the Bolsheviks, such talk could only mean one thing: insurrection.
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