“The Civil War in Russia" Did Not Take Place

At the onset of the XX century, most European empires were anxious about revolutionary political actors. Great powers did their best to cut these parties off from their support bases. And after all, they were right to care – by 1918, revolutions consumed the Russian, German, Austro-Hungarian, and Ottoman empires. But what happened in Austro-Hungarian in a rather orderly manner would shake the remnants of the Russian empire for the next 3-4 years, producing the Soviet Union and multiple new national states at its borders. These events are often called “the Russian Civil War.” We do not agree with this concept, and here is why. 

In 1995, the French philosopher Jean Baudrillard published his book The Gulf War Did Not Take Place. He did not deny the fact that in 1990-1991 there was an armed conflict between the US-led coalition and Iraq. The issue was the nature of the war: it could not be seen as a confrontation between two sides. The balance of power was too asymmetrical, in particular, due to the technological superiority of the coalition.

"The two adversaries did not even confront each other face to face, the one lost in its virtual war won in advance, the other buried in its traditional war lost in advance," Baudrillard wrote.

In other words, the philosopher did not believe that these events corresponded to the concept of "war" at all. It can also be argued that there was never a civil war in the Russian Empire.

But 7 million people (and according to another estimate, up to 10.5 million) died on its frontlines and in its rear. What caused such a gap? It is impossible to agree on the number of dead without a consensus on the concepts.

Let's try to study the history of the concept of "civil war in Russia." This will help us understand why it does not describe the events that began in 1917.

There are discussions about when exactly in 1917 the confrontation on the territory of the former Russian Empire took the form of an armed conflict. Without going into details, we can say it happened after the Bolshevik revolution. Previously, armed violence was not organised and constant. However, after the Bolsheviks seized power and attempted to establish dictatorships, other political actors had no alternative but to fight for power with arms.

In September 1917, Vladimir Lenin mocked other political forces that feared civil war. Only the victory of the "Russian proletariat" in a civil war would solve the dozens of socio-economic problems that had buried the Russian Empire.

Instead, after the revolution in November 1917, Lenin said he did not want a civil war. He said the Russian monarchists had unleashed a "civil war against the revolution." In short, dear enemies, accept the fact that we have seized power.

Why did his rhetoric change? At that time, the Bolsheviks were still a rather marginal political force and did not have wide support among the population of the former Russian Empire. Therefore, Lenin began to use the "civil war" as a tool of deterrence and intimidation.

The leaders of the Ukrainian Central Council also sought to avoid armed confrontation. Therefore, Mykhailo Hrushevskyi used the term "civil war." The Bolshevik revolution pushed the Central Council to create the Third Universal on the formation of the Ukrainian People's Republic. In proclaiming it, Hrushevskyi said that in Russia, "a civil war has broken out and is spreading, and it is already spreading to Ukraine."

Over the next few months, the Bolsheviks attempted to seize power in Ukraine as they had done in St. Petersburg. Having failed, they decided to launch an invasion. Among the Bolshevik forces were ethnic Ukrainians. However, this does not make the invasion of one country into another a "civil war."

For this reason, it is incorrect to use the term "civil war" to describe the events on Ukrainian territory in 1917-1921. A war between a number of different parties can only be a civil war if they belong to the same society. Therefore, in fact, this notion legitimises Ukraine belonging to a larger entity centred in Russia, whether it is the Soviet Union or some form of revived Russian Empire.

That is why Ukrainian historiography uses the concept of the  "Ukrainian War of Independence" (Pershi vyzvolni zmahannia — "First Liberation Movement" — ed.) or the less emotionally charged concept of the "Ukrainian Revolution."

We have covered Ukraine here, but what about other parts of the former Russian Empire? Perhaps there was a "civil war in Russia" on those territories?

The answer to this question can be provided by contemporary Western historians who are revising previous ideas about the "civil war." In 2000, the US historian Rex A. Wade suggested that these events should be considered in the plural rather than artificially creating one continuous event.

After that, historians began to use the concept of "Russian civil wars" more actively. However, they did so uncritically, without deconstructing this concept. They did not pay attention to the fact that not all "wars" are "Russian."

Jonathan D. Smele's book "The 'Russian' Civil Wars, 1916-1926" was a breakthrough. He points out that many armed conflicts of that time can hardly be called Russian. This primarily applies to those conflicts that involved national parties from the imperial periphery — Ukraine, Finland, Poland, the South Caucasus countries, the Baltic States, or Central Asia.

However, even if we are talking about the invasion of such states by the Bolsheviks or Russian monarchists, such a war can hardly be called a "civil war" or a purely "Russian" war.

Smele admits that his conceptual proposal is still a forced simplification that does not convey the whole concept. It encompasses "wars within a single nation, international, intra-ethnic, and inter-ethnic wars and conflicts, wars of independence, and local appendages to the current global confrontation."

In some cases, these armed confrontations were so different from each other that they should not be lumped together at all. Otherwise, rhetorical figures have to be invented, such as Wade's plural wars or Smele's Russianness in quotation marks.

Ukrainian scholars continue to use "Ukrainian Revolution" to refer to events in Ukraine and "civil war" to refer to events elsewhere. Doctor of History Mykola Hlibishchuk drew attention to Smele's proposal, but it has not yet been widely adopted in Ukrainian science. But why is it worth spending time on?

Power affects all areas of life, including science. For a long time, the power imbalance between Russia and its former colonies remained striking. Now, the gap is beginning to narrow in so-called "high" politics, but other areas are lagging.

To speed up these changes, Ukraine needs a broad coalition between civil society and those who have been pushed under the umbrella of the "Russian civil war." This is impossible without attention and respect for the history of other peripheries of the empire.