The Horror Of Russia’s Civil War
- By Amos Chapple
Rarely seen images captured by American Red Cross photographers reveal one of the darkest periods of Russia's history accompanying the disintegration of an empire.
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"Hungry Russian women" kneel in front of an American aid official in 1922, as the Bolsheviks were emerging victorious after five years of bitter fighting.
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A wounded Bolshevik fighter in 1919
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A woman in Russia's Samara region looks helplessly at her dying husband in 1921.
These are some of a remarkable series of images taken by unidentified photographers of the American Red Cross during expeditions into Russia as civil war and an ensuing famine ravaged the country a century ago.
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A ragged Bolshevik militant after being captured in 1919. The civil war was fought mostly by Russians loyal to (or forced to fight for) Lenin's communist Bolsheviks against a motley collection of militias known as the White Army, who opposed the 1917 communist takeover of Russia's government.
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White Army fighters, some wearing Cossack hats, take up skirmishing positions on the plains of southern Russia.
![A U.S. soldier handing out boots to Russian soldiers freed from a German POW camp. The United States' rationale for sending aid to revolutionary Russia was "First, relieve human necessity; second, enormously increase the probability of keeping Russia [fighting in World War I]; and, third, be the most effective form of American propaganda which can be devised."](https://gdb.rferl.org/5fd2ff1e-6e49-49d3-9a9c-eec7cfa3e801_w1024_q10_s.jpg)
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A U.S. soldier handing out boots to Russian soldiers freed from a German POW camp. The United States' rationale for sending aid to revolutionary Russia was "First, relieve human necessity; second, enormously increase the probability of keeping Russia [fighting in World War I]; and, third, be the most effective form of American propaganda which can be devised."
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A U.S. sentry guarding an outpost in northern Russia in 1919. Many Americans were initially enthusiastic about the 1917 overthrow of the tsar, likening it to their own revolution some 150 years before.
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"American food for Russians" being loaded onto a boat in Hamburg. When 50,000 cases of condensed milk were shipped to Russia shortly after the 1917 revolution, they bore the label "FROM FREE AMERICA TO FREE RUSSIA."
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A Russian peasant "exhausted from starvation" on the steps of the U.S. headquarters in Arkhangelsk in 1918 or 1919. While first adopting a "wait and see" approach when the Bolsheviks seized power, the U.S. relationship with the new communist government soon soured and U.S. troops joined Britain and other World War I allies to back the White Army.
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A U.S. soldier shows off the camouflage jacket worn by a Bolshevik fighter gunned down after reportedly trying to creep up on a U.S. outpost near Arkhangelsk. (Photo via U.S. Army)
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A starving Russian soldier. The context of this picture is unclear, but after Lenin pulled Russia out of World War I, one of the most urgent tasks of the American Red Cross was to tend to Russian troops released from the POW camps of Germany and its WWI allies.
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A Russian soldier having his hair cut. A Red Cross worker claimed the freed soldiers returned to Russia "violently bitter toward Germany, disgusted with the existing Russian government, and grateful toward Americans."
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Bodies uncovered in Kharkiv in 1919 after White Army forces captured the city from the Bolsheviks. The number of people estimated killed during Russia's civil war runs into the millions.
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Treasures from a church sacked by the Bolsheviks in 1919. These wrecked relics were said to have been given to a Red Cross worker so that he could show the world "the irrational hostility of the Bolsheviks to the things which others find sacred."
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Cossack Pyotr Vrangel, one of the most prominent commanders of the White Army forces, photographed in 1919. Vrangel escaped Russia after the eventual defeat of the Whites. He died in Brussels in 1927.
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White Army fighters wearing British Army helmets. While Western allies backed the Whites against the "foul baboonery" and violence of the communist Bolsheviks, the White Army engaged in its own "White Terror." Tens of thousands of Russians were killed by the Whites in often anti-Semitic violence.
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A White Army propaganda poster on display in Kharkiv depicting a cloven-footed Leon Trotsky, the Bolshevik army commander. One White Army general called on Russians to destroy "the evil force which lives in the heart of Jew-communists."
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Bolshevik leaders and their female stenographer after being captured in Tomsk. The men were later executed.
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A soldier from Chicago with a group of children fleeing Russia on a Red Cross boat.
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Russian refugee children who had fled to Turkey in 1920. The upper classes of Russia were dubbed "former people" by the communists and faced a grim future inside Russia as the Bolsheviks tightened their grip on power.
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A starving 7-year-old child in Russia's Samara region in 1921. By the time the war neared its end, Russia's economy had collapsed, crops had failed due to a drought, and the Bolsheviks' "War Communism" that mandated the forcible seizure of grain from peasants left millions of Russians in a desperate situation.
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Victims of the famine that followed, stacked like firewood outside a cemetery in Samara in 1921. Eastern Russia at the time was deemed "too chaotic" for aid operations. The famine would soon add more millions to the number of Russian soldiers killed in World War I and the millions killed in the civil war. (photo via International Red Cross)
