History of Siberia - Russian Civil War

Russian Civil War

By the time of the revolution Siberia was an agricultural region of Russia, with weak entrepreneur and industrial class. The intelligentsia had vague political ideas. Only 13% of the region's population lived in the cities and possessed some political knowledge. The lack of strong social difference, scarcity of urban population and intellectuals led to uniting of formally different political parties under ideas of regionalism.

The anti-Bolsheviks forces failed to offer a united resistance. While Kolchak fought against the Bolsheviks intending to eliminate them in the capital of the Empire, the local Socialists-Revolutioners and Mensheviks tried to sign a peaceful treaty with Bolsheviks, on terms of independence. The foreign allies, though being able to make a decisive effort, preferred to stay neutral, although Kolchak himself rejected the offer of help from Japan.

For more detailed chronology of the civil war in Siberia, see articles on Siberian separatism, Aleksandr Kolchak and Siberian Intervention

After a series of defeats in the Central Russia, Kolchak's forces had to retreat to Siberia. The resistance of SR-s and waning support from the allies, the Whites had to evacuate from Omsk to Irkutsk, and finally Kolchak resigned under pressure of SR-s, who soon submitted to Bolsheviks.

Read more about this topic:  History Of Siberia

Famous quotes containing the words civil war, russian, civil and/or war:

    They have been waiting for us in a foetor
    Of vegetable sweat since civil war days,
    Since the gravel-crunching, interminable departure
    Of the expropriated mycologist.
    Derek Mahon (b. 1941)

    In days of doubt, in days of dreary musings on my country’s fate, you alone are my comfort and support, oh great, powerful, righteous, and free Russian language!
    Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev (1818–1883)

    Physical force has no value, where there is nothing else. Snow in snow-banks, fire in volcanoes and solfataras is cheap. The luxury of ice is in tropical countries, and midsummer days. The luxury of fire is, to have a little on our hearth; and of electricity, not the volleys of the charged cloud, but the manageable stream on the battery-wires. So of spirit, or energy; the rests or remains of it in the civil and moral man, are worth all the cannibals in the Pacific.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    At last, after innumerable glamorous and frightful years, mankind approaches a war which is totally predictable from beginning to end.
    Frederic Raphael (b. 1931)