How the Russian Civil War Led to the 'Red Terror' and Infamous Gulag

'How the Russian Civil War Led to the 'Red Terror' and Infamous Gulag'
Host of History Hit podcast 'Warfare' Dr James Rogers sits down with military historian and author of 'Russia: Revolution and Civil War, 1917-1921', Antony Beevor to discuss the causes and major events of the Russian Civil War between 1919 and 1922.
Listen to the Warfare podcast here: play.acast.com/s/the-world-wars
Speaking in the Three John's pub in Islington, allegedly where Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky met in 1903 and sowed the seeds of one of the most significant revolutions in history, James and Antony cover the bloody aftermath of the Russian Revolution - a civil war fought between those loyal to the Tsar or simply hostile to Bolshevism and the newly formed Red Army under the leadership Vladimir Lenin, Leon Trotsky, Joseph Stalin and others.
But how did Russia descend into such a chaotic conflict? How did the Red Army defeat an overwhelming White Army coalition attacking on three fronts? Where did the 'Gulag' come from? And what made Lenin commit to a campaign of political repression and executions on a scale never seen before, carried out chiefly through the Cheka (the Bolshevik secret police), known today as the 'Red Terror'?
You'll find all the answers in this fascinating interview as well as an insight into how the legacies of this period have re-emerged in today's modern conflict in Ukraine.
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#historyhit #russiancivilwar #gulag #russiaukrainewar

[@wolfu597]

The American Expeditionary Force that landed at Vladivostok, tasked with keeping an eye on the Japanese and what they were up to, consisted of the 27th and the 31st Infantry Regiment. The very same 31st Regiment that would face the Japanese 24 years later, during the battle of Bataan.

[@andrewlane3411]

Thank you James and Antony for these great videos. I have just finished reading Antony’s ‘Russia’ and found these interviews to be very interesting accompaniments to the book.

[@marvogrady9728]

What a great summary. It was engaging and hugely informative. Thanks very much.

[@jimcronin2043]

This is really a very good and interesting documentary. It was much more interesting than I anticipated at the outset. It provides some insight into Russia's behavior in Ukraine today.

[@zombopanda]

They've always been like this.

[@52darcey]

Really? Just like the Germans and Japanese have always been barbaric fascists? Is it possible that the Russians are barbaric because they are so often painted as our enemy? The first casualty of war is the truth.

[@toddpearson2823]

Excellent!!

[@bobapbob5812]

On the site in Yekaterinburg is now a cathedral Dom na Krove. There is a place that recreates the room complete with an icon that belonged to the Royal Family.

[@mikepettersen4554]

The Gulag Archipelago is a great book about the horrors of the gulag system. I highly recommend it.

[@jacob8949]

It's a work of historical fantasy.

[@warrioroflight6872]

​@@jacob8949 Wrong, it's the personal memoir of a man who got some of the historical facts wrong because he didn't have access to all the records. Besides, I find the idea that a man who went to the trouble of writing a three volume epic with eloquent script and mountains of pages just made the whole thing up to be at best, a highly dubious claim.

[@Otto72ish]

Fascinating.

[@TheMoneypresident]

Awesome woodwork

[@michaelmayhood4286]

Thanks! I learned a lot!

[@edge8941]

Interesting and informative discussion.

[@whitewittock]

I like this blokey bite size history format

[@robalberto1583]

That was AMAZING. What a great talk. Such brutality that is part of the Russian identity. Thanks so much.

[@209Richsta]

Except the Bolcheviks weren't Russian

[@jonathanmccartney5809]

Racist

[@52darcey]

This is a fascinating topic and I was looking forward to finding out about the causes and history of the civil war and why so many nations were fighting there, but the conversation was a little bit all over the place alas :/

[@katherinecollins4685]

Very interesting

[@bren768]

Hey did you know that the founder and creative director of this channel/history network is married to the granddaughter of the former richest man in the UK and named his daughter after a Romanov? Anyways, interesting insights about the Bolsheviks! Great video!

[@MikeMckenz]

Who is that?

[@bren768]

@@MikeMckenz historian by the name of Dan Snow, married to a Grosvenor. He features heavily in a lot of the videos on the channel.

[@christinec7892]

They still own about half of Westminster. Her brother is the Duke of Westminster one of the largest land owners in the UK

[@lazerizer6895]

Hmmm, interesting.

[@77Beneboy]

@@bren768 if you watch the video all the way to the end he does the outro

[@j.477]

Nestor machno to be remembered ...

[@combatscape2000]

Very cool video, wish he talk more abt the mahknovia

[@ekesandras1481]

The Czechoslovak Legion was exclusively formed of former Austro-Hungarian solders, who either became POW during the war or switched sides towards the end. They were ideologically very much under the influence of Panslavism, which was spread by Emperial Russia. What they wanted was their own national state, not necessarily a socialist one. They perhaps wanted to get rid of the aristocracy, because most of the holders of estates in Bohemia were either German speaking Austrians or Germanized Czech nobility, that had culturally alienated itself from the common population. But they didn't want to form collective farms, since Bohemia already was a land of small farmers who owned their piece of land. That was due to land reforms and peasant liberalization that happened in Austria already in late 18th until the mid 19th century and the relatively liberal Austrian laws also applied for Bohemia and Moravia. It is interesting to see that the Hungarian POWs in Russia on the other hand mainly joined the Bolsheviks. Because they already had their own nation state. That was not something they were fighting for. Also the nobility in Hungary was almost exclusively Hungarian, not foreign. But Hungary was much more feudalistic, with the nobilty owning large estates, sometimes including several villages. The rural population were not serfs anymore, but still most of them were share croppers who didn't own the land they worked. So they were much more susceptible to Marxist ideas of radical land reforms than the Czechs. It is even said that the execution of the family of the Tsar in Jekaterinburg was done by Hungarian communists, since the Bolshevik leadership feared that Russian soldiers might refuse to execute the order.

[@209Richsta]

Also there was the Green and Black army as well. Not as powerful as the white but they did give the Reds some pushback

[@bentrinker1937]

When you said black armies my mind went straight to the black hundreds not Makhno and his Ukrainians lol

[@bobapbob5812]

Welsh author, poet Sauders Lewis said of Versailles, I realized I fought for every small country except my own.

[@mogts]

"In the west although we had our horrors of the wars of religion in the 17th century and all the rest of it there was an Enlightenment afterwards and a growth in the view of humanism and so forth which never really took place in Russia." This is surely false, Communism is not contrary to the Enlightenment, Communism is an Enlightenment ideology. As John Gray have written: But Bolshevik goals went far beyond installing the work discipline and techniques of mass production of western capitalism. Central among them was realizing the Enlightenment utopia that the Jacobins and the Paris Commune failed to achieve. Russia’s misfortune was not in failing to absorb the Enlightenment but in being exposed to the Enlightenment in one of its most virulent forms. - Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia.

[@acchaladka]

Fair point yet aiming to do it and achieving it are different things. The communists did not actually enact an enlightenment, Mr Gray is saying, but they did enact a Terror. I fail to see how your point changes anything in his argument.

[@chrisbirmingham5132]

John Gray is in the tradition of right-wing "philosophers" going back to de Maistre, de Bonald and beyond. He operates, as this quotation shows, at a level of generality that conveniently fails to recognize how varied and multiple the European Enlightenment actually was and can therefore dump anything into it. As with all right-wing philosophers, it is important to identify what form of society he is advocating, not what game he is playing with the history of ideas. Any old hack can attribute the ills of civilization to some intellectual movement or other. But intellectual movements don't simply "realize" themselves in history. Beevor is right about the Enlightenment, but the video is wrong about Marx and Capital, which ought to have no place on the table in front of the speakers. The Russian Revolution bears about as much relation to Marx's writings as the historical Roman Catholic Church does to the Gospels.

[@209Richsta]

​​@@chrisbirmingham5132 Okay but Lenin himself said the Bolcheviks were like the 20th Century Jacobins and the Red Terror was very similar to The Reign of Terror. Russian Revolution was inspired by French Revolution which emerged after the Enlightenment thought, which came after the Renaissance.

[@peterwaddington7469]

What a shame that Antony Beevor's favourite word appears to be "eerrrrrrmm". Other than that a very interesting and informative interview.

[@peterruane9220]

As he got older … more prominent

[@doop6769]

Guess I'm not the only one who noticed that. I couldn't listen anymore once I noticed it!

[@garylancaster8612]

It's a very British affectation isn't it? I listen to a lot of American media and I don't hear them doing it. It's annoying.

[@ilikemandalorians9861]

Those people have ruined so many lives and countries 😔

[@davidcolley7714]

Clown! Compared to what the American had done they were amateurs

[@ilikemandalorians9861]

@@davidcolley7714 omg you are so right all hail Stalin long live the USSR down with the american empire Is what I would say, were I not able to hold more or less a balanced perspective of the world around me, informed by the observable reality

[@davidcolley7714]

@@ilikemandalorians9861 Observe what the US has done since its very inception. Took the land from the original inhabitants. Stole Texas from the Mexicans. Even tried to take a part of Canada. Used imperialism and subversion to stop the people of central and south America from their own self determination. Even invaded Russia to try and intervene in their civil war. Tried the same intervention with China with the same result. Fought a war against Koreans and couldn't win. Fought another war against the Vietnamese and lost. Even now the Americans engage in hegemony in the Caribbean and Eastern Europe. That's the observable reality

[@ilikemandalorians9861]

@@davidcolley7714 and that’s relevant to my disdain for the soviets because…?

[@twonumber22]

@@davidcolley7714 Sure, but how is the USSR and modern Russia any better? Looks to me like they've always been imperialists, just a little bit worse at it.

[@iam.damian]

I am Czech-Slovak, and this is the first time I heard about Czechoslovak troops being part of the Russian civil war.

[@ppazpppaz8618]

Try reading the WSWS site to understand Stalinism.

[@DrCruel]

They were famous at the time. In the early parts of the war the size of the armies was small, and a 50,000 man force of disciplined, motivated soldiers was formidable. As time went on the Red Armies got larger and larger, overwhelming the Siberian White Army under Kolchak. The Czechs got hold of the Imperial Russian gold reserves, trading these and the fleeing Kolchak to the Bolsheviks for free passage home, which is all they ever wanted.

[@bentrinker1937]

@@ppazpppaz8618 будешь мой why do I need to be indoctrinated into Stalinism to understand Czechoslovakia‘s place in the Russian revolution and civil war?

[@ppazpppaz8618]

@@bentrinker1937 Do you know the difference between Stalinism and Socialism?

[@bentrinker1937]

@@ppazpppaz8618 I fail to see how it’s relevant to Czechoslovakian troops during the Russian civil war. Unless when you saw Czech and thought Cheka and felt the need to Stan Stalin?

[@michaelmayhood4286]

Addendum: I am afraid that, again, we are right back where we started! Reminds me of my cute little hamster running round and round on his wheel! But, unlike we smart people, he knows he's getting nowhere!

[@garylancaster8612]

Are they drinking glasses of water in a nice old pub like that? Very disappointing.

[@helmutsecke3529]

What does that ill spoken interviewer bloke mean by 'hischtory' and 'aschuming'?

[@briantitchener4829]

Just his regional accent I presume.

[@paifu.]

6:40

[@briantitchener4829]

Seems like the Russian character hasn't changed much since those days. Look at Putin and his army in Ukraine.

[@rachelar]

Vladimir Putin Lenin. Reincarnation?

[@rohsnaoks1587]

Many of those who took part in the Red Terror were not ethnically Russian tho

[@deathofasalestactic]

george lucas in the background

[@njgrandma3519]

Now I understand the Russian Revolution!

[@floriangeyer3454]

Do you also understand that the revolutionaries rarely were Russians ?😎

[@georgiosminaios286]

Hate is just not creative and productive!

[@209Richsta]

​@@floriangeyer3454 Yah. Poland, Ukraine, Georgia were where organal Bolchevik and Cheka originated

[@UkrainianPaulie]

Cossacks were fighting russia in 1775. Those were the Ukrainian Zaporozhian Cossacks. They've always despised russians. My great-great Grandfather (Zaporozhian cossack) fled Ukraine due to his fighting for the Whites.

[@SimonAshworthWood]

Despising Russians is psychologically unhealthy, like all racism.

[@olegevstigneev5367]

Тыхоть знаешь ,что не все запорожцы были украинцами? Знаток. Запорожцы с белгородчины.

[@zombopanda]

@@olegevstigneev5367 Белгород - историческая украинская территория

[@olegevstigneev5367]

@@zombopanda А Харьков ,Киев и Чернигов русская.

[@jimplummer4879]

The Poles did not want any part of communism etc.

[@scottb2926]

Felix Edmundovich might disagree…

[@briantitchener4829]

@@scottb2926 Lech Walesa certainly didn't.

[@scottb2926]

@@briantitchener4829 II was facetiously referring to Dzerzhinsky, the first leader of the Cheka, and an ethnic Pole.

[@quakeknight9680]

Your Pilsutski made a mistake not helping Kolchak

[@doctormcgrail]

Why is a copy of Marx’s ‘Capital: A Critique of Political Economy’ on the table in the video? What’s it purpose in being there? Published in 1867 and the product of a study of 17th-19th century political economy it had nothing to do with the Bolshevik Coup d’etat of 1917. Beevor and his interviewer do not talk about it, so why is it there? Just a bit of gaslighting???

[@bentrinker1937]

I think it’s just there was a prop and people associate Karl Marx with the USSR and communism. They should’ve left Nikolai Chernesky’s what is to be done or Lenins version of what is to be done where he argues for a vanguard party, the Bolshevik party on the table

[@NicolasJimenezBarea]

Lenin was a Marxist, and he started the civil war. The foundational marxist text was Das Kapital.

[@robertsmith5744]

Orc vs Orc. . . . . . . and canabalism too.

[@rachelar]

I liked your album "Disintegration" which is what you seem to be recommending

[@waterenglish9501]

looks like a well meaning historian but he's wrong about russia and the true causes of WW1

[@tim13354]

Spoils it all with his analysis of 'Ukraine' at the end. No doubt yet another 'bourgeois historian', but not an unpleasant fellow. Nor, indeed completely devoid of intelligence

[@zombopanda]

What did he say wrong?

[@pyatig]

I love that the western public is discussing something they have no clue about in absolute terms. Can’t really blame you though because of all the lies you’ve been told for over 100 years now

[@tirionfordring8737]

I don't know what public are you talking about here, but Anthony Beever is a world class historian. I'm sure you know so much more because you heard a story from your grandma.

[@Liza03V]

@@tirionfordring8737 Russian grandma who is watching Russian TV.😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂

[@laurancerobinson]

Instead of making a random broad dismissive statement, wouldn't it be more productive to give constructive criticism in order to legitimise your position? What lies were presented here? What presented here are things that the 'west' has no clue about?

[@MrHamtits]

Come on then

[@rachelar]

​@@tirionfordring8737lol Cleopatra was African American lol😅

[@Joseph-fw6xx]

So much for communism

[@holdfast453]

In the 70-s I had the happiest childhood you can imagine exactly there, in communist Eastern Europe. I had a loving mother and a caring father who both worked for the state and no one was thinking about money. The worst thing to happen was the collapse of that society who had moral compass for good and bad. Now there is greed, bestial savage greed, broken single parent families, shrinking ageing population being replaced by alien minorities, and quality of life has actually deteriorated.

[@jeffreyg4626]

@@holdfast453 Thank You. Rarely ever in these western propaganda "films" is there ever anything good said about socialism. Never do they mention that communism stopped the slaughter of the first World War or that the Soviet Union defeated fascism in WW2.

[@bouncer2005]

Lol Beevor … wrong again

[@twonumber22]

It's just hard to listen to someone say *UHHM* over and over.

[@OakInch]

Fine until you got to about the 26:00 mark and started bloviating about how Russia is so Brutal and and worried about being attacked while pretending the West is so enlightened. LOL. Hitler was so enlightened. Azov is so enlightened. 8 years of genocide that the USA funded in Ukraine, so enlightened. Crimean war, so enlightened. Napoleon, so enlightened. I literally laughed out loud.

[@JakeCole1453]

Crimea is Russian. It's not a question, it's a statement of fact.

[@lorenzomcnally6629]

F is NOT. IT IS A SLAVIC ANCIENT PROVENCE OF SLAVIC KIEV SINCE ( 500+/- AD.) WHEN MOSCOW (1100AD+/-) WAS MUD HuTS WITH MURDEREOUS SECOND AND THIRD SONS SWEDISH Princelings as Captains of.... MARAUDING Slavic BANDITS TRYING TO TAKE OVER AND SETTLE SLAVIC CIVIL WARS. IF RUSSIANS WANT TO DIE IN KIEVAN UKRAINE OVER CRIMEA THEY ARE GOING TO GET THEIR WISH. ESPECIALLY AFTER STALIN AND THE HIS HOLDOMOR

[@michaelmazowiecki9195]

Crimea was conquered by Russia only in the 1780s. Earlier, it was part of the Ottoman Empire and before that the Mongol Empire and earlier still Greek and Italian colonies. Crinea's population was native Tatars who were descendants of the Mongols. Russian and Ukrainian settlers were imported especially by Stalin and the Tatars dispossessed and deported to Siberia. Crimea became Ukrainian in the 1950s, so Crimea has not always been Russian, far from it.

[@lorenzomcnally6629]

@@michaelmazowiecki9195 AND KIEV FOUNDED 500 AD +/- MOSCOW 1100 AD +/- In other words. Moscow was mud huts Centuries before Russian Mercenary second third fourth SON princes showed up to settle KIEVAN SLAVIC civil wars. Hence, "MOSCOVITES" to the OG KIEV Slavs.

[@michaelmazowiecki9195]

@@lorenzomcnally6629 the Moscow principality essentially grew as a result of its being the most loyal and effective tax/trubute collection center for the Mongol Empire from 1240 to 1500 CE. It only conquered Eastern Ukraine in 1667, central Ukraine in 1791 and western Ukraine in 1945. Crimea was taken from the Ottoman Empire in the 1780s.

[@lorenzomcnally6629]

@@michaelmazowiecki9195 That's right. Slava Ukraine. Never forget the Holodomor. God bless the Ukrainians. Never forget what Stalin and the USSR did to Ukraine and Ukrainians. I would like to tell you a personal anecfote. My university Chemistry professor was Ukrainian, a woman who survived the Holodomor in Ukraine as a child. Her family were ' Kulaks' tens of thousands of them, originally brought from Germany many generations ago by Katherine the Great. Russian farmers in Ukraine at that time were hideously un productive and irresponsible and essentially stupid. Ukraine was NOT the 'bread basket' of Europe then. It did not achieve that status until her efforts prevailed. It is the HISTORICAL BASIS for Russians of accusing 'Kulaks' of being NAZIS because of this massive increase in agricultural production to immigrant German farmers. Not in like the Pale in Poland. Many Jewish poor farmers rxcell f also. Anti Semitism was every where in those days as usual too. My University instructor was all of these German) Ukrainian and Jewish ancestors. The hatred that Russians have for Ukraine culture and people is derp and wide. Leon Trotsky himself kept that hatred in the beginning to a bare minimum. And, we all know why, he himself was a Western Ukrainian son of a successful Jewish farmer. Stalin HATED with a passion Trotsky, when Lenin died Stalin took over. And Stalin's mission is Putlers today. The complete and unfettered destruction of Ukraine and the ancient SLAVIC original capital and culture of Kiev. His reasoning is exactly Hitler's who invaded the East wherever German/ Russian today is or Was spoken the Empire of Tsarist Russia must dominate and be restored with or without cooperation.

[@holdfast453]

Half of Ukraine IS Russia - the land east of the river Dnepr - Kharkov, Zaporojie, Donetsk, and South along the Black Sea coast - Mariupol, Crimea, Odessa… Ukraine should be a small landlocked nation west of Kiev and the river Dnepr - Lvov, Lutsk, Ivano-Frankovsk. It should be a country divided, just like the island of Ireland.

[@michaelmazowiecki9195]

Typical Russian imperialistic propaganda rubbish.

[@ciarandoyle4349]

The partition of Ireland was and continues to be a dreadfully bad and unsuccessful idea. I wouldn't inflict anything so dreadfully bad on Ukraine.

[@holdfast453]

@@ciarandoyle4349 Yet the UK got away with it - no war, no sanctions, no smear campaign against London. What’s the difference? Difference is, Ulster unionists are majority loyal to UK, whereas southern and eastern Ukraine is mainly Orthodox Russian increasingly oppressed and alienated within Ukraine, one of the most corrupt countries in Europe, and their sons are being forced into the meat grinder of a war they do not want to fight.

[@damirk3]

Gulag was used first in imperial russian i mean one of most famous communists Trostky was there. And also gulag isnt much different to todays US prison system other then that gulag prisoners are treated as humans and arent used to profit one person what forces country to imprison more people(by creating war on drugs laws). Person doring ww2 could exchange prison sentence to being in penal battalion and just by getting wounded (no matter how big wound is) would be free person. And also gulag wasnt just for political enemies but for common criminals like looters, terorrists, anti semites, pedos, rapists and all other scum on earth . Also most of stuff we heard about gulag is from nazis, fascists and anti semites who hated socialist government because they couldnt kill people they wanted to kill.

[@mikepettersen4554]

I read your comment about prisons for profit. I don't agree with that idea at all. Do you think all recreational drugs should be legal such as PCP, Heroin, Cocaine and Fentanyl? I admit the war on drugs hasn't been that effective. But the drugs I've mentioned above need to be stopped because of the incredible harm it does to people.

[@juliankraus1011]

Ridiculous comment.

[@michaelmazowiecki9195]

Typical Moscow propaganda nonsense promoted by Putin trolls.

[@209Richsta]

U mean the same gulag system that Trotsky and Stalin use to escape from quite easily. And why don't u actually come to the US and get locked up before.

[@209Richsta]

​@@mikepettersen4554 If people want to ruin their lives let them. Why should society stop a suicidal person from killing themself???

[@00billharris]

I agree. Russkiepalookaland needs to become nothing larger than all the land one can see from the top otf St Basil's.

[@craigoh1969]

I think you'll find that Australian and Canadian troops were in Russia, too. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allied_intervention_in_the_Russian_Civil_War

[@TheBrettarcher]

the public school vioice boris johnson bollocks