The Russian Civil War

In St. Petersburg on October 25, 1917, the Bolshevik Party stormed the capital city and seized power over the Russian Provisional Soviet regime. That October Revolution began the Russian Civil War, which in three years would cost the largest country in the world more than seven million lives. It was an apocalyptic struggle, replete with famine and pestilence, but out of the struggle a new social order would rise: The Soviet Union. This volume is a chronicle of the three turbulent years that brought the iron-fisted government, which had been operating ineffectively since the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II eight months before, to political power. The author offers a lucid, superbly detailed account of the men and events that shaped twentieth century communist Russia. He draws upon a wide range of sources to recount the military course of the war, as well as the hardship the conflict brought to a country and its people—for the victory and the reconstruction of the state under the Soviet regime came at a painfully high economic and human price.