Between 1917 and 1921 a devastating struggle took place in Russia following the collapse of the Tsarist empire. The doomed White alliance of moderate socialists and reactionary monarchists stood little chance against Trotsky’s Red Army and the single-minded Communist dictatorship under Lenin.
In the savage civil war that followed, terror begat terror and increasing cruelty. The struggle became a world war by proxy as Churchill deployed weaponry and troops from the British empire, while contingents from the United States, France, Italy, Japan, Poland, and Czechoslovakia played rival parts.
Drawing on the most up-to-date scholarship and archival research, Antony Beevor, prize-winning author of Stalingrad, brings the conflict to life through the eyes of firsthand accounts. From the worker on the streets of Petrograd to the cavalry officer on the battlefield and the doctor in an improvised hospital, Beevor presents an epic account of the conflict that reshaped Eastern Europe and set the stage for the rest of the 20th century.
His book Russia: Revolution and Civil War, 1917–1921 (Viking) is available for purchase.
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