You should really read this introduction to the Russian Revolution (Part 3)

Russian Revolution: Trinity

This will the third part of my introduction to the Russian Revolution. I have one more “main” article planned (covering up to August 1918), as well as several articles on more specific topics. The first article started with the February Revolution and ended with the October Revolution. The second article covered what happened in the months that followed the October Revolution. Although some fighting against the Bolsheviks was ongoing in Russian and formerly Russian territory at the time the last essay ended (March 1918), the conflict had yet to develop into a full-scale struggle. This essay will mostly cover the national and ethnic tensions that would come to define the main stages of the Russian Civil War.

Please note, this is not trying to paint a truly comprehensive picture of the conflict. There are many important aspects of this period that I don’t have the space or knowledge to explain. For instance, you could fill up several essays just describing what was happening in Ukraine after the February Revolution. Rather than attempting to detail the rises and falls of the various Ukrainian governments, I give only a brief and high-level description of these events as they relate to the larger struggle between the Red and White Armies.

My goal with this series is to give readers with no background knowledge at all enough detail that, when they read other (more specific) material covering this period, they have a general and relatively complete narrative through which they can frame their thinking. Without this sort of narrative scaffolding, it becomes much more difficult to assess the relative importance of new information or to recognize when someone is being dishonest (which is often the case, even in historical documents).

I’m not going to stick to a strict chronology when it comes to describing these events. With so many areas to cover, it becomes impossible to do this while maintaining anything close to a coherent narrative. Generally, the events I describe in this article end around May 1918.

My priority is painting as clear a picture as possible for people without much background knowledge. However, this essay does presume that you’ve read the earlier two entries in this series. If you haven’t done that yet, please do so now or what comes next probably isn’t going to make a lot of sense.

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And now, to the essay:

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Months after the October Revolution, although Bolshevik political control had solidified over the major cities of European Russia (the western and most populous part of the country, contrasted with the sparsely-populated eastern regions that include Siberia), the grasp of the Red Army, the Bolshevik military organization created in January 1918, on many areas both in and outside of Russia was slipping.

The Russian Empire, formally proclaimed in 1719 AD, had once controlled many non-Russian nations (or aspirational nations). This imperial control of foreign lands under Czar Nicholas II of the Romanov dynasty was made somewhat dubious after the February Revolution, which saw Czar Nicholas deposed and replaced by the Provisional Government. Although the emperor was gone and the new regime was dominated by socialists and liberals, the Provisional Government retained a Russian maximalist character and refused to grant independence to Russia’s subject nations even as the Russian Empire fell apart.

Despite the Provisional Government’s best efforts, the chaos of the February Revolution and subsequent “reforms” to the military introduced by radical leftists caused the complete collapse of the Russian Army on the frontlines of World War I. Although Russia had made some impressive gains earlier in the war (one common misconception concerning the Russian Revolution is that Russia’s military record in WWI was uniformly terrible), as the Russian Army began to disintegrate the German and Austrian militaries (who, together with Turkey, made up the Central Powers—at war against the Allies, of which Russia had been a member) advanced almost without opposition deeper into Russian-controlled territory.

The unchecked advance of the enemy into Russian territory had many consequences. One was the rise of long-simmering nationalist movements in previously-Russian controlled nations like Poland, Finland, Georgia, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, and Ukraine. With the Russians in retreat, nationalists of all stripes saw their opportunity to finally achieve independence.

The most notable (and successful) of these early independence efforts came from Finland and Ukraine. Finland had a unique political status compared to most nations in the Russian Empire: It had been a Grand Duchy for nearly 100 years, ever since Russia had won control of the territory in a conflict with Sweden in 1809. As a Grand Duchy, Finland was still subject to Russia’s financial and foreign policy whims. However, the nation retained a relatively high degree of autonomy within the Russian Empire. Finns were exempted from conscription in the Russian Army and even maintained their own parliment at various periods.

It was this long-standing political tradition that allowed the Finns to capitalize on the collapse of Russia’s government. After the October Revolution, the Bolsheviks had proclaimed the general right to self-determination, including the right of complete secession, for the “Peoples of Russia.” Finland quickly reformed its legislature and issued a Declaration of Independence on November 15, 1917. The Bolsheviks, not wanting to provoke further conflicts at that moment, officially recognized Finland as an independent nation a few weeks later.

As later events would reveal, Bolshevik respect for the independence of formerly-Russian controlled nations was non-existent. The Bolsheviks quickly set up a local puppet party in newly independent Finland, backed with force by pro-Bolshevik Russian soldiers still stationed in the region (who simply refused to leave). Less than a month after it had obtained independence, Finland was heading towards a Bolshevik revolution of its own.

Ukraine is a nation (the expression “the Ukraine” was commonly used during the period to refer to the region divorced from a national context) that is distinct from but has a close and complex relationship with Russia, owing to its shared roots with the modern Russian state. The Kievan Rus', based in the modern Ukrainian capital of Kiev, was the first East Slavic nation (both ethnic Ukrainians and ethnic Russians are part of the Slavic ethno-linguistic group), beginning in the 9th century. Gradually, the medieval power base of this nation and its successors shifted away from Kiev and towards Moscow.

Eventually, regional influence tilted heavily towards Russia and Ukraine fell under Russian control. Although the Ukrainian language and ethnicity always predominated in rural areas, in many urban centers (which often had their origins as Russian frontier forts. Some scholars maintain that the name “Ukraine” originates from a term for “borderlands”) Russian was spoken almost exclusively and the population consisted of significant minorities or outright majorities of ethnic Russians. Some Ukrainian cities, like the strategically important port of Odessa, had been built by Russian monarchs from scratch in sparsely populated areas as colonial projects.

Ukrainian nationalism had been a major intellectual force for decades before the revolutions of 1917, often associated with leftwing or populist opposition to the Imperial government. After the February Revolution, Ukrainian nationalists saw their opportunity and formed the Central Rada of Ukraine, a parliament to represent all the Russian provinces generally considered to make up Ukraine. Although the Central Rada didn’t seek independence at that point (few wanted to risk civil war), its regional authority was grudgingly recognized by the Russian Provisional Government.

When the October Revolution occured in Petrograd, the Central Rada refused to recognize the legitimacy of the Bolshevik takeover and declared Ukraine’s independence from Russia, eventually creating the Ukrainian People's Republic.

The Ukrainian People's Republic (UPR) was dominated by the local branch of the Socialist Revolutionary Party (the political party that had won the largest number votes in the Constituent Assembly before it was dissolved by the Bolsheviks). However, the UPR did not have a professional military. This made defending Ukraine from the uprisings of local Bolsheviks after the October Revolution very difficult. In November 1917, it was only a last-ditch alliance between Ukrainian nationalist forces and pro-Russian monarchist and conservative officers (who had begun gathering in the few major cities not under Bolshevik control as the Russian Army disintegrated) that saved Kiev from a Bolshevik takeover.

In a move that would become commonplace during the Russian Civil War, after the victory in Kiev the nationalists ultimately sought a compromise with the Bolsheviks (who were viewed as a temporary and relatively minor threat) rather than the pro-Russian officers who had always been hostile to their independence. The defeated Bolsheviks were released from prison, after which they immediately set up a Ukrainian Bolshevik puppet government in Kharkov. The pro-Russian military officers who had just helped to defeat the Bolsheviks were surprise attacked by a combined Ukrainian nationalist and Bolshevik force and driven out of Kiev.

Still without a professional army of its own and lacking the expertise of the former Russian military officers, the UPR was poorly-prepared when the Bolsheviks regrouped and launched an even larger uprising months later. Kiev fell under control of the Bolsheviks in February 1918 and the UPR government fled to the countryside.

Another major consequence of the Russian Army’s collapse on the Eastern Front of World War I was the opening of the Pale of Settlement. The Pale of Settlement was a range of territory in the Russian Empire, mostly in Poland, Belarus, Lithuania and modern-day Ukraine, where Jewish people could obtain permanent residence. Outside of this area, it was very difficult for Jews to work, travel, or live permanently.

Conditions of all kinds in the Pale of Settlement were bleak and tensions between Jews and the surrounding ethnic and religious majority populations of these areas (most inhabitants of the region were both Slavic and Eastern Orthodox Christians) always ran high. There had been centuries of offense and retaliation from Jews and non-Jews alike. Frequent anti-Jewish pogroms (a term for riots usually associated with attacks on Jews) as well as provocations from some Jewish “self defense” militias and Jewish-dominated terrorist organizations created a seemingly never-ending cycle of violence. Owing in part to these centuries of bad blood and the numerous legal discriminations placed on them (such as restrictions on employment and admission to schools) by the Russian government, Jews were often drawn to radical leftwing movements both inside Russian territory and abroad.

As the frontlines of World War I drew close to the Pale of Settlement in 1914, the Russian government temporarily lifted restrictions on Jews’ freedom of movement to allow them to evacuate from the warzone. The lifting of these restrictions became permanent after the February Revolution when the Provisional Government ended all legal discrimination along ethnic and religious lines.

The opening of the Pale of Settlement sent tens of thousands of Jews (among many other refugees) into Russia’s major cities at a time when Russia was undergoing its most massive political, social, and economic upheaval in centuries. Unemployed, penniless, and without stabilizing local connections, many of these refugees became prime recruits for radical groups like the Bolsheviks.

High-profile Bolshevik leaders like Party Chairman Vladimir Lenin and Foreign Minister (and later head of the Red Army) Leon Trotsky, who had defected to the Bolsheviks from the Mensheviks after the February Revolution, were Jewish (Lenin being only a quarter-so). This contributed to the popular image of Bolshevism as an almost exclusively Jewish phenomenon, which it was not. However, although the Jewish role in the Russian Revolution is often overstated or oversimplified, Jews were certainly greatly overrepresented in terms of their numbers and influence in revolutionary organizations like the Bolsheviks.

It’s important to note that Lenin, Trotsky, and many other Jewish professional revolutionaries spent only a small part of their lives in Russia or Russian-controlled territory. As members of diaspora radical communities in Western Europe and America, these men were culturally and socially distant from the Jews in isolated villages who were most often subjected to “retaliatory” violence during and after the Revolution.

As nationalist movements grew stronger, particularly in Ukraine, ethnic violence became commonplace against both Jews and Germans.

Germans had played an important role in Russian history for centuries. The Baltic Germans, ethnic Germans who settled in modern day Latvia and Lithuania, had an outsized presence in Russia’s military and nobility. General Pyotr Wrangel, who would play a major role later in the Russian Civil War, came from a prestigious Baltic German aristocratic family.

Owing to their prominent role in Russian high society, the Baltic Germans were considered a loyalist ethnic group and often targeted for repression by the Bolsheviks both during and after the Russian Civil War.

The Dutch Mennonites, ethnic Germans invited to settle the Ukraine’s richest agricultural region by Russian monarch Catherine the Great in the 1700s, were also the target of great repression during and after the Revolution. Dutch Mennonites were ethnically and religiously distinct from the surrounding majority population, and found themselves in a precarious position as Russian society imploded.

Anti-German sentiment ran high in Russian territory owing to World War I. The pre-Revolution Imperial Russian government had tentative plans to deport German settlers in Ukraine to Siberia based on (unsubstantiated) fears that they would engage in sabotage on behalf of the advancing German Army. Czarina Alexandra Feodorovna, wife of Czar Nicholas, was often the subject of cruel (and mostly untrue) attacks from critics of the Czar, who suggested that her German heritage led her to sabotage Russia’s WWI efforts.

The defeated UPR still dominated most areas of Ukraine outside the Bolshevik-controlled major cities. Troops under the nominal control (in reality this force was largely disorganized and lacked a clear chain-of-command) of UPR military chief Symon Petliura launched a reign of terror in the countryside. Petliura’s men would massacre tens of thousands of non-ethnic Ukrainian civilians, particularly Jews, Poles, Hungarians, and Greeks¹, over the course of the Russian Civil War.

Further contributing to the declining humanitarian situation in rural Ukraine was the rise of anarchism as a social fad. The informal anarchist Black Army of Nestor Makhno, a Ukrainian peasant turned guerrilla leader, embarked on a massive robbery campaign targeting the middle and upper classes. These robberies gradually became a full-on ethnic cleansing campaign targeting non-ethnic Ukrainians.

Particularly cruel treatment from the anarchists was directed at German Mennonites. The Mennonites were pacifists, but, owing to their relative prosperity, were frequently the targets of anger from surrounding Ukrainian peasant populations. This resentment of the better-off grew to epidemic proportions as the political turmoil that had overtaken the Russian Empire became a total economic collapse accompanied by mass unemployment, shortages of all goods, and famine.

Mass rapes and executions committed by anarchist bands became commonplace. Many German Mennonite communities were literally wiped off the map. The German Mennonite population in the Ukraine would be largely exterminated by the end of the decade owing to both anarchist massacres during the Russian Civil War and later official repression (indistinguishable from an ethnic cleansing campaign) of Germans by the victorious Bolsheviks.

Although ethnic violence would also flow often from both the Red (targeting Jews² and Germans) and White (targeting Jews) Armies, this was more infrequent owing to the relatively high degree (at least when compared to anarchists and Petrula’s forces) of professionalization within these organizations.

In March 1918, the Bolsheviks signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with Germany and the other Central Powers. The treaty guaranteed the independence of Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus, several Russian provinces in the Caucuses, and Ukraine. Poland was not mentioned in the treaty, though it was understood that Germany (which had occupied Poland during WWI) would set up a friendly government there as well.

Although pro-German governments sprang up in every area occupied by German troops, most nationalist groups held off on participating in them. Virtually everyone was aware that Germany's long-term chances of winning World War I were slim. The soon-to-be victorious Allies had also promised the (likely more expansive) right of self-determination to nations under the Central Powers’ control after the war. This was articulated in American President Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points, a set of idealistic policy principles intended to lay out the Allies’ war aims and peace terms.

In April 1918, the UPR made an agreement with Germany, accepting military protection in exchange for extremely generous allotments of Ukrainian grain to be shipped to Germany, which was entering a period of massive famine as its situation on the Western Front became more desperate.

The Germans had committed hundreds of thousands of troops to clear Ukraine of Bolshevik soldiers in Operation Faustschlag. Fearing that the Germans (who, although they had secretly funded the Bolshevik Party before the October Revolution with the goal of forcing Russia out of World War I, soon grew tired of the Bolsheviks’ frequent atrocities and attempts to expand the Revolution) simply would not stop their offensive when they reached the Ukrainian-Russian border, Lenin elected to move the Bolshevik capital from Petrograd to Moscow.

The path of various anti-Bolshevik efforts was often determined by their either pro-German or pro-Allies orientation. The Germans could offer immediate security and supplies, desperately needed in the early stages of the Russian Civil War. However, after World War I had ended, the Allies were sure to be extremely hostile to any group that had accepted German help.

Meanwhile, in South Russia, the most serious Russian-led effort against the Bolsheviks was coming into being. Escaping Bykhov Prison was a group of high profile officers including Generals Lavr Kornilov and Anton Denikin. Kornilov had been the head of the Russian military before the October Revolution. He had a good reputation owing to his World War I combat record and offered a great deal of legitimacy to the infant counterrevolutionary movement.

Meeting Kornilov’s group in the strategically-important city of Rostov was General Mikhail Alexeiev, also well-respected, who had been Kornilov’s replacement as the head of the military after the Kornilov Affair. Following the October Revolution, Alexeiev had created the underground Alexeiev Organization to smuggle recruits, intelligence, and supplies out of Bolshevik territory.

Although Kornilov and Alexeiev greatly disliked each other owing to a dispute during the Kornilov Affiar (Alexeiev had personally arrested Kornilov over what Kornilov viewed as a disastrous misunderstanding) the two came together in the Cossack-controlled regions of South Russia to create the Volunteer Army and provide a center of Russian resistance to the new Bolshevik dictatorship. It was decided that Kornliov would manage all military affairs while Alexeiev would handle all questions of diplomacy and organization.

The Cossacks are a semi-nomadic and autonomous quasi-ethnic tribal group³ that inhabits the borderlands of Russia. Cossacks are organized into different governing Hosts, each of which is lead by a democratically-elected Ataman, who supervises his Host’s Rada (parliment). Meetings of several different Cossack Hosts are referred to as Krugs, which are usually only called to resolve a single important issue of mutual interest. Although there were anti-Russian separatist tendencies among the Cossacks, Cossacks typically were also hostile to the Bolsheviks.

Cossacks had a major role in Russia’s military, serving as elite cavalry and border guards. Because of their ethnic and cultural distinctions from the Russian majority, Cossacks were also often employed as internal police and riot control by the Russian government. The visible Cossack presence in suppression of leftist demonstrations (both violent and peaceful) had made Cossacks widely hated by Russian radicals, including the Bolsheviks.

Complicating matters, the Don Cossack government in Rostov, led by Ataman Alexey Kaledin (a respected general and politician who had declared martial law in the region at the start of the October Revolution, stopping the local Bolshevik uprising), was mostly ambivalent towards the Volunteer Army. Many younger Cossacks returning from the frontlines of WWI were thoroughly demoralized by their experiences and viewed the Volunteers (some of whom publicly advocated for reentering the war) with hostility. Furthermore, Alexeiev, already well into old age, was dying of an unknown illness (likely stomach cancer) as he attempted to create a coherent military force from scratch on a budget.

The Kuban Ice March was a series of rolling battles fought by the Volunteer Army after it was forced to flee Rostov following the collapse of the Don Cossack government in the face of a new Red Army advance into the region. Ataman Kaledin, despairing over his inability to rally local Cossack resistance, shot himself rather than be captured by the Bolsheviks.

The Volunteer Army marched across the frozen steppe in the dead of winter, pursued by several better-equipped Bolshevik detachments that outnumbered them many times over. The Volunteers, who were mostly former Russian military officers (and therefore had significantly more training, discipline, and experience than the poorly-led and organized Red Army detachments they faced), won countless engagements despite regularly being outnumbered 10-to-1.

There was brutal combat nearly every day of the Ice March. The Volunteers suffered catastrophic casualties even in victory. The Bolsheviks often tortured their captives before execution, leaving a trail of mutilated bodies in front of and behind the advancing Volunteer Army.

On the march, the Volunteers linked up with Kuban Cossack forces under the command of General Pokrovsky, a non-Cossack WWI fighter pilot who had proven himself to be a fearless commander and natural tactician. The Kuban Cossacks were very impressed with Pokrovsky after a miraculous victory in which Pokrovsky personally led the rout of a Bolshevik force nearly 25 times the size of his own.

Although Pokrovsky provided much-needed reinforcements and ammunition, he also brought bad news: his detachment, which included the Kuban Cossack Host’s government, had just fled from Ekaterinodar, the Volunteer Army’s planned final destination. The town, which served as the Kuban Cossack capital, had just been seized by the Bolsheviks.

Many other leaders in the future White Army, a term used to describe the loose alliance of all anti-Bolshevik military forces, would complain about Pokrovsky’s frequent looting of the civilian population and tendency to mass execute prisoners and dissidents. Largely unspoken in discussions of Pokrovsky is his desire to become the Ataman of the Kuban Cossacks, which led him to exercise virtually no discipline over the Cossack forces under his command in order to preserve his popularity.

After weeks of intense fighting, the Volunteers finally arrived at Ekaterinodar. The Volunteer Army briefly besieged the city, however, Kornilov was killed when an artillery shell hit his observation post near the contact line. Command of the Volunteers then fell to General Denikin. Denikin was a competent military leader but lacked the political instincts and personal gravitas of Kornilov. Completely demoralized, the Volunteer Army once again retreated back onto the frozen steppe.

Afterwards the Volunteers began a winding, and much more successful, return trip to Don Cossack territory. The column picked up new recruits (the Bolsheviks had become much more unpopular with the Cossacks after the population actually experienced Bolshevik rule) and liberated dozens of Bolshevik-controlled villages along the way.

When the victorious Volunteer Army finally reached the outskirts Rostov again, they found that the city had been occupied by the advancing German Army.

Although the Germans were not directly hostile to the Volunteers, one of the commonly-stated (and widely unpopular) motivations of the Volunteer Army was to retake Russia so that the country could reenter WWI against Germany. General Denikin in particular was known to be an outspoken critic of the Germans. The German garrison implied that the Volunteers would not be welcome in the city and the Volunteers made no attempt to enter.

Even though this tension did not boil over into bloodshed (as Germany’s position on the Western Front declined, its soldiers in the East became reluctant to fight so far from home, particularly against enemies of the hated Bolsheviks) the standoff created many complications for the Volunteers as they struggled to capitalize on their incredible success in the Ice March. The German occupation force greatly restricted the flow of men and supplies to the Volunteer Army.

The returning Volunteers faced another complication: The rise of a new and powerful Don Army. The Don Army consisted of Don Cossacks who had undertaken a fighting retreat, dubbed the Steppe March, similar to that of the Volunteer Army after the fall of Rostov and Ataman Kaledin’s suicide. Although this group was smaller than the Volunteer Army at first, the Don Army had not suffered the Volunteers’ catastrophic casualties while retreating.

On their march, the Don Army encountered and joined forces with a large column of conservative Russian officers led by General Mikhail Drozdovsky. After the October Revolution the column had spent months traveling all the way from the frontlines of World War I in Romania, through the chaotic battlefields of Ukraine, and back into Cossack territory, with the ultimate goal of joining the Volunteer Army.

The formidable Cossack-Volunteer combined force retook Novocherkassk, the historical capital of the Don Cossack Host (nearby Rostov had a larger population and more commercial activity, but also contained significant numbers of non-Cossacks), from the Bolsheviks. Public excitement from this victory led the Don Cossacks to declare their independence from Russia in the form of the Don Republic. This new Cossack nation was to be led by deceased Ataman Kaledin’s newly-elected successor: The brilliant but extremely ambitious Ataman Pyotr Krasnov.

Although Krasnov hated the Bolsheviks, he did not share the Denikin’s hostility to Germany and immediately sought out German help. The Germans provided the Don Army with stores of weapons and ammunition that dwarfed those of the Volunteers. Furthermore, the local Cossack Hosts called a Krug and agreed to implement conscription among the Cossacks, swelling the Don Army’s manpower to many times the size of the Volunteer Army’s.

It’s likely that Krasnov did not actually want long-term independence from Russia. However, he was well-aware that the existence of an independent, larger, and better supplied Don Cossack force left him in a very strong bargaining position when dealing with the Volunteer Army or whatever other group might claim represent of all of Russia after the Bolsheviks fell.

Unwilling to fight the Germans and conscious of the fact that the Don Cossacks were rallying behind Krasnov, Denikin decided to march the exhausted Volunteer Army back to the Kuban and liberate the cities in that region still under Bolshevik control. The Kuban Cossacks, Denikin hoped, would be less easily seduced by the prospect of independence and German aid.

Just months after the stunning success of the October Revolution, the Bolshevik position in Russia seemed more precarious than ever before. Lenin had been forced to surrender huge swaths of the empire he had just seized to the German Army, which seemed as though it could easily advance into the Bolshevik heartland if it chose to. Furthermore, Russian counterrevolutionaries had finally organized and struck decisive blows against the surprisingly-weak Red Army, which, in spite of its huge size advantage, was paralyzed by incompetence and poor leadership.

Despite these setbacks for the Bolsheviks, the situation for the combined White Armies was also far less stable than their recent military successes might suggest. Major political cracks between the various anti-Bolshevik forces had already begun to show. The counterrevolutionaries couldn’t agree on what they were fighting for, much less how to achieve it. These fissures would only deepen over time.

As more and more factions entered the fray, the stage was set for the former Russian Empire to descend into total war.

But that is another story.

I’ve written a follow-up to this article that covers that defeats the Bolsheviks suffered in Finland and Ukraine over the months that followed, as well as the Revolt of the Czechoslovak Legion in Siberia. You can read Part 4 of the series here.

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1. The Greek presence in the Black Sea region stretches back to ancient times, when Greek city states set up numerous colonies and strongholds to protect their seaborne trade networks. Although for centuries the Greek population in the region was centered around the Crimea, in the late 1700s conflicts between various non-ethnically Russian Christians and Muslim Tatars (the majority population of Crimea at the time) led Russian monarch Catherine the Great to order the relocation of Crimea’s Greek and Armenian populations to settlements along the northern coast of the Sea of Azov, particularly the city of Mariupol.

2. Although Bolshevik leadership had many Jews, most soldiers in the Red Army were oblivious to this fact (along with most aspects of the Bolsheviks’ policies beyond generalized opposition to the wealthy classes and the old Czarist regime). These soldiers saw the Jews they encountered as just another “bourgeois” group whom they had been given license to rob or mistreat by the Revolution. The conspicuous appearance of many Jews (allowing them to be targeted specifically) coupled with their frequent role as merchants (who had goods that could be stolen in “revenge”) expanded the general hostility towards Jews from the Red Army. Bolshevik leadership, despite its heavy Jewish overrepresentation, was also largely indifferent to the plight of the Jews being targeted in the countryside. Most of the Jewish professional revolutionaries with senior positions in the Bolshevik Party were militant atheists who had spent their entire lives in cosmopolitan urban centers. They viewed the more-religious village Jews typically targeted in pogroms as backward and reactionary. However, the Bolsheviks frequently made (both real and fabricated) White Army atrocities against Jews a major part of their propaganda campaigns abroad, even blaming the Whites for crimes committed by the Reds themselves. Foreign powers became reluctant to support the Whites out of fear that their aid would be used to target civilians. The public antisemitism of many major White Army leaders did little to soothe these concerns.

3. The ethnography of the Cossacks can be a little fuzzy. They’re primarily East Slavic, of either Russian or Ukrainian ethnicity (which themselves have fuzzy boundaries with each other). They have greater levels of non-Slavic admixture than either of those two groups owing to their longstanding occupation of Russia’s borderlands with the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Ottoman Empire. It’s best to understand the distinction between the Cossacks and Russians or Ukrainians as more cultural than ethnic, though there were some ethnic differences. Cossacks were never subjected to serfdom (though Cossack Hosts accepted many escaped serfs), had a history of self-government, lived a frontier lifestyle (often accompanied by raiding), and their own unique military tradition. By the 18th century they had been successfully integrated into the Russian imperial state, often serving as cavalry and border guards. This perceived status as a “loyalist” ethnic group made them a target for enormous repression by the Bolsheviks during and after the Russian Civil War. During World War II, although Nazi Germany was largely hostile to ethnic Ukrainians and refused to incorporate them into their ranks, they did classify Cossacks as their own separate ethnicity and nation. Russian and Ukrainian Cossacks volunteered to participate Operation Barbarossa in relatively large numbers owing to the very harsh treatment Cossacks had received in the Soviet Union during the Interwar Period, which amounted to an ethnic cleansing campaign. The Nazi Cossack puppet-state, dubbed “Cossackia,” was headed by (then very elderly) Pyotr Krasnov, the former leader of the Don Army during the Russian Civil War. Cossackia was always a minor project for the German foreign office and only ever existed on paper. Krasnov frequently clashed with other Nazi-backed Russian leaders, some of whom were former Red Army commanders or had slighted Krasnov during the Russian Civil War. Krasnov surrendered to British troops in Austria near the end of the war after being promised that he and the other White Russian exiles under his protection would not be repatriated to the Soviet Union. However, the British went back on their word and handed him and his colleagues over to the Soviets in 1945. Krasnov was hanged after a show trial on January 17, 1947.