So, I continue to scribble. In fact, over the past week, I've met...
More than 85 years ago, Russia, the former Russian Empire, lay in ruins. The 300-year rule of the Romanov dynasty ended in February, and in October the bourgeois-liberal Provisional Government said goodbye to the levers of government. Throughout the territory of a huge, once great power, which had been gathering a span since the time of the Moscow principality of Ivan Kalita, the Civil War was blazing. From the Baltic to the Pacific Ocean, from the White Sea to the mountains of the Caucasus and the Orenburg steppes, there were bloody battles, and, it seems, except for a handful of provinces of Central Russia, there was no volost or district where various authorities of all shades and ideological colors.
What is any civil war? It is usually defined as an armed struggle for power between representatives of different classes and social groups. In other words, it's a fight inside countries, inside people, nation, often between fellow countrymen, neighbors, recent colleagues or friends, even close relatives. This is a tragedy that leaves an unhealed wound in the heart of the nation and fractures in its soul for a long time.
How did this dramatic confrontation proceed in Russia? What were the features our Civil war in addition to an unprecedented geographical, spatial scope?
You can learn, see, feel the whole palette of colors, thoughts, feelings of the Civil War era by studying archival documents and memoirs of contemporaries. Also, answers to piercing questions can be found in the works of literature and art of that fire era, which are testimonies before the court of History. And there are many such works, because the revolution is too huge an event in its scale not to be reflected in literature. And only a few writers and poets who were under its influence did not touch this topic in their work.
One of the best monuments of any era, as I said, is bright and talented works of fiction. So it is with Russian literature about the Civil War. The creations of those poets and writers who went through the crucible of the Great Russian Troubles are very interesting. Some of them fought "for the happiness of all working people", others - "for a united and indivisible Russia". Someone made a clear moral choice for himself, someone was only indirectly involved in the deeds of one of the opposing camps. And others even tried to get up over the fight. But each of them is a personality, a phenomenon in Russian literature, a talent, sometimes undeservedly forgotten.
For many decades we have viewed our history in two colors, black and white. Black is all enemies - Trotsky, Bukharin, Kamenev, Zinoviev and others like them, white is our heroes - Voroshilov, Budyonny, Chapaev, Furmanov and others. Halftones were not recognized. If it was a civil war, then the atrocities of the Whites, the nobility of the Reds, and, as an exception, confirming the rule, the "green" who accidentally crept between them - Makhno's father, who is "neither ours nor yours."
But now we know how complex and confusing this whole process was in fact in the early 20s of the 20th century, the process of selecting human material, we know that it is impossible to approach the assessment of those events and literary works in a black and white image, dedicated to them. After all, even the civil war itself, historians are now inclined to consider that it began not in the summer of 1918, but from October 25, 1917, when the Bolsheviks carried out a military coup and overthrew the legitimate Provisional Government.
Estimates of the Civil War are very dissimilar and contradictory, starting with its chronological framework. Some researchers dated it to 1918-1920, which, apparently, cannot be considered fair (here we can only talk about the war in European Russia). The most accurate dating is 1917-1922.
The civil war began, without exaggeration, "on the day after" the seizure of power by the Bolshevik Party during the October Revolution.
I was interested in this topic, its embodiment in the literature of that time. I wanted to get acquainted in more detail with the various assessments of the events taking place, to find out the point of view of the writers standing on the different sides barricades, differently evaluating the events of those years.
I set myself a goal
get acquainted with some works about the civil war, analyze them and try to understand all the ambiguity of this tragedy in our country;
consider it from different sides, from different points of view: from the complete worship of the revolution ("The Defeat" by Alexander Fadeev) to sharp criticism ("Russia, washed with blood" by Artyom Vesely);
to prove on the example of literary works that any war, in the words of Leo Tolstoy, is "an event contrary to human reason and all human nature."
My interest in this topic arose after I got acquainted with the journalistic notes of Alexei Maksimovich Gorky "Untimely Thoughts", which were previously inaccessible to the reader. The writer condemns the Bolsheviks for many things, expresses his disagreement and condemnation: "The new bosses are as rude as the old ones. They yell and stomp their feet, and grab bribes, like the former bureaucrats grabbed, and drive people in herds into prisons."
Soviet readers did not read "Cursed Days" by Ivan Alekseevich Bunin, who called the time of revolution and civil war that way, "Letters to Lunacharsky" by Valentin Galaktionovich Korolenko and other previously banned works.
As a fratricidal war (“why did they go to their brother, slashing and smashing ....”), as the destruction of the “bright culture of their homeland”, the poet of the Silver Age, Igor Severyanin, who was not previously included in school curricula, perceived the civil war and revolution.
Maximilian Voloshin sympathized with both whites and reds:
... And here and there between the rows
The same voice sounds:
Who is not for us is against us!
No indifferent! True, with us!
And I stand alone between them
In roaring flames and smoke.
And with all my strength
I pray for both.
More than eight decades have passed since the Civil War, but we are only now beginning to understand what a misfortune it was for all of Russia. More recently, heroism came to the fore in the depiction of the Civil War in literature. The prevailing idea was: Glory to the victors, shame to the vanquished. The heroes of the war were those who fought on the side of the Reds, on the side of the Bolsheviks. These are Chapaev ("Chapaev" by Dmitry Furmanov), Levinson ("Rout" by Alexander Fadeev), Kozhukh ("Iron Stream" by Alexander Serafimovich) and other soldiers of the revolution.
However, there was other literature that sympathetically depicted those who stood up to defend Russia from the Bolshevik rebellion. This literature condemned violence, cruelty, "red terror". But it is quite clear that such works were banned during the years of Soviet power.
Once the famous Russian singer Alexander Vertinsky sang a song about the junkers. For this, he was summoned to the Cheka and asked: "Are you on the side of the counter-revolution?" Vertinsky replied: "I pity them. Their lives could be useful to Russia. You can't forbid me to pity them."
"We'll forbid breathing if we find it necessary! We'll manage without these bourgeois fosterlings."
I got acquainted with various works about the civil war, both poetic and prose, and saw the different approaches of the authors to the depicted, different points of view on what is happening.
In more detail in the abstract, I will analyze three works: the novel by Alexander Fadeev "The Rout", the unfinished novel by Artyom Vesely "Russia, Washed with Blood" and the story by Boris Lavrenyov "Forty-First".
Alexander Fadeev's novel "Rout" is one of the most striking works depicting the heroism of the civil war.
The youth of Fadeev himself was spent in the Far East. There he actively participated in the events of the Civil War, fighting in the red partisan detachments. The impressions of those years were reflected in the story "Against the Current" (1923), in the story "Spill" (1924), the novel "Rout" (1927) and the unfinished epic "The Last of the Udege" (1929-1940). When Fadeev's idea for the novel "Rout" was born, the last battles in the Far Eastern outskirts of Russia still continued to blaze. “The main outlines of this topic,” Fadeev noted, “appeared in my mind as early as 1921-1922.”
The book was highly appreciated by readers and many writers. They wrote that "Rout" "opens a truly new page in our literature", that "the main types of our era" were found in it, they attributed the novel to the number of books "giving a broad, truthful and talented picture of the civil war", emphasized that "Rout" showed "what a large and serious force our literature has in Fadeev." In "Mayhem" there is no character backstory that precedes the action. But in the narrative about the life and struggle of the partisan detachment for three months, the writer, without deviating from the main plot, includes essential details from past life heroes (Levinson, Frost, Mechik, etc.), explaining the origins of their character and moral qualities.
There are about thirty characters in the novel (including episodic ones). This is unusually small for a work that tells about the civil war. This is explained by the fact that the focus of Fadeev's attention is the image of human characters. He loves to study an individual for a long time and carefully, to observe him at different moments of public and private life.
Military episodes in the novel are given little space. Their description is subject to an in-depth analysis of changes in the inner world of the participants in the struggle. The main event - the military defeat of the partisan detachment - begins to play a significant role in the fate of the heroes only from the middle of the work (Chapter 10 - "The Beginning of the Defeat"). The first half of the novel is a leisurely narration about human destinies and characters, the life orientation of the characters during the years of the revolution. Then the author shows the battle as a test of people. And during the hostilities, the writer pays attention primarily to the behavior and experiences of the participants in the battles. Where he was, what he was doing, what this or that hero was thinking about - these are the questions that worry Fadeev.
"A real person awakens in his best sides when he faces a great test." This conviction of Fadeev determined his artistic technique - to complete the characterization of a person by depicting his behavior in that difficult situation that requires the highest exertion of strength.
If we take a purely external shell of the development of events in the novel "The Rout", then this is really the story of the defeat of the Levinson partisan detachment, because A.A. Fadeev uses for the story one of the most dramatic moments in the history of the partisan movement in the Far East, when the combined efforts of the White Guard and Japanese troops dealt heavy blows to the partisans of Primorye.
By the end of the novel, a tragic situation develops: the partisan detachment finds itself in an enemy environment. The way out of this situation required great sacrifices. The novel ends with the death of the best people of the detachment. Only nineteen survived. But the spirit of the fighters is not broken. The novel affirms the idea of the invincibility of the people in a just war.
The system of images of The Rout, taken as a whole, reflected the real correlation of the main social forces of our revolution. It was attended by the proletariat, peasants and intelligentsia, led by the Bolshevik Party. Accordingly, in "The Rout" the "coal flame" is shown, walking in the forefront of the struggle, the peasants, the intellectual devoted to the people - the doctor Stashinsky, the Bolshevik - commander Levinson.
However, the heroes of the novel are not just "representatives" of certain social groups, but also unique individuals. Before the reader’s eyes, as if alive, are calm and reasonable Goncharenko, hot and hasty in judgments Dubov, willful and addicted Morozka, submissive and compassionate Varya, charming, combining the naivety of a young man and the courage of a Cormorant wrestler, the brave and impetuous Metelitsa, modest and strong-willed Levinson.
The images of Baklanov and Metelitsa, whose youth coincided with the revolution, open the portrait gallery of young heroes, so richly and poetically presented in Fadeev's subsequent work, and especially in his novel The Young Guard.
Baklanov, who imitated the Bolshevik Levinson in everything, becomes a true hero in the course of the struggle. Let us recall the lines preceding the episode of his heroic death: "... his naive high-cheeked face, slightly leaning forward, waiting for an order, burned with that genuine and greatest of passions, in the name of which the best people from their group."
The former shepherd Metelitsa stood out in the partisan detachment for his exceptional courage. His courage is admired by those around him. In intelligence, in the White Guard captivity, during the cruel execution, Metelitsa showed a high example of fearlessness. The vital force beat in him with an inexhaustible spring. "This man could not sit still for a minute - there was all fire and movement, and his predatory eyes always burned with an insatiable desire to catch up with someone and fight." Blizzard is a hero-nugget, formed in the elements of working life. There were many of these among the people. The revolution brought them out of obscurity and helped them to fully reveal their wonderful human qualities and capabilities. The blizzard represents their fate.
Each character in "The Rout" brings something different to the novel. But in accordance with the main theme of the work - the re-education of a person in the revolution - the artist focused his attention, on the one hand, on the ideological leader of the detachment, the communist Levinson, and on the other, on the representative of the revolutionary masses, in need of ideological re-education, which is Morozka. Fadeev also showed those people who accidentally ended up in the camp of the revolution were not capable of a real revolutionary struggle (Mechik).
The particularly important role of Levinson, Morozka, and Mechik in the development of the plot is emphasized by the fact that the author calls them by their names, or mainly devotes many chapters of the novel to them.
With all the passion of the communist writer and revolutionary A.A. Fadeev sought to bring closer the bright time of communism. This humanistic faith in a beautiful person permeated the most difficult pictures and situations in which his heroes fell.
For Fadeev, a revolutionary is impossible without striving for a bright future, without faith in a new, beautiful, kind and pure person. The image of such a revolutionary is the commander of the partisan detachment Levinson.
This is one of the first realistically truthful types of communists in young Soviet prose who led the people's struggle on the fronts of the Civil War.
Levinson is called a man of "a special right breed." Is it so? Nothing like this. He is quite an ordinary person, with weaknesses and shortcomings. Another thing is that he knows how to conceal and suppress them. Levinson knows neither fear nor doubt? Does he always have unerringly accurate solutions in stock? And that's not true. And he has doubts, and confusion, and painful mental discord. But he “did not share his thoughts and feelings with anyone, presented ready-made “yes” and “no.” It’s impossible without this. The partisans who entrusted their lives to him should not know about any discord and doubts of the commander ...
The actions of the communist Levinson were guided by "an enormous thirst, incomparable with any other desire, for a new, beautiful, strong and kind person." He sought to instill such character traits in the people he led. Levinson is always with them, he is completely absorbed in everyday, everyday educational work, small and imperceptible at first glance, but great in its historical significance. Therefore, the scene of the public trial of the guilty Morozka is especially indicative. Having called the peasants and partisans to discuss Morozka's misconduct, the commander told the audience: "This is a common matter, as you decide, so be it." He said - and "went down like a wick, leaving the gathering in the dark to decide the matter for himself." When the discussion of the issue assumed a disorderly character, the speakers began to get confused in trifles and it was already "nothing could be understood," Levinson quietly but distinctly said: "Come on, comrades, take turns ... Let's talk at once - we won't decide anything."
The platoon commander Dubov, in his angry and passionate speech, demanded the expulsion of Frost from the detachment. Levinson, appreciating the noble outburst of the speaker's indignation and at the same time wishing to warn him and all those assembled against excessive decisions, again imperceptibly intervened in the course of the discussion:
Levinson grabbed the platoon leader by the sleeve from behind.
Dubov… Dubov…” he said calmly. - Move a little - you are blocking the people.
Dubov's charge immediately disappeared, the platoon leader stopped, blinking in confusion.
Levinson's attitude towards the masses of workers and peasants is imbued with a sense of revolutionary humanism; he always acts as their teacher and friend. In the last chapter, when the detachment went through a path of severe trials, we see Levinson tired, sick, falling into a state of temporary indifference to everything around him. And only "they were still the only ones who were not indifferent, close to him, these exhausted faithful people, closest to everything else, closer even to himself, because he did not stop feeling for a second that he owed something to them ...". This devotion to the "tortured faithful people", the feeling of one's moral obligation to serve them, which makes one go with the masses and lead them to the last breath, is the highest revolutionary humanity, the highest beauty of the civic spirit, which distinguishes the communists.
But two episodes of the novel cannot but alert, namely the confiscation of a pig from a Korean and the poisoning of Frolov. In this case, Levinson acts on the principle: "The end justifies the means." In this regard, Levinson appears before us, who does not stop at any cruelty in order to save the detachment. Stashinsky, a doctor who took the Hippocratic oath, helps him in this matter! And the doctor himself and, it would seem, Levinson come from an intelligent society. To what extent it is necessary to change in order to kill a person or sentence an entire family to death by starvation! Aren't the Korean and his family the same people in the name of a bright future that a civil war is going on?
The image of Levinson should not be assessed as an ideal personification of the spiritual image of a communist leader. It is not free from some misconceptions. So, for example, he believed that "you can lead other people only by pointing out their weaknesses and suppressing them, hiding your own from them."
A communist acting in the role of a leader is characterized not only and not so much by pointing out weaknesses as by the ability to discover the virtues in the people he leads, to instill in them faith in their own strength, and to encourage their initiative. And just because Levinson acted in this way in most cases, the reader will recognize and recognize in him a typical representative of the Communists who worked among the masses on the fronts of the civil war.
The characterization of the Bolshevik Levinson, one of the main characters of the novel "Rout", as a person striving and believing in the best, is contained in the following quote: "... everything he thought about was the most profound and important thing he could think of, because the main meaning of his own life was in overcoming this scarcity and poverty, because there was no Levinson, but there would have been someone else, if there had not lived in him a huge thirst for the new, beautiful, strong and incomparable with any other desire. good man. But how can there be a talk about a new, beautiful man as long as huge millions are forced to live such a primitive and miserable, such an unthinkable-meager life.
The main idea of the novel - the re-education of a person in the course of the revolutionary struggle - is decided mainly on the image of Frost. Partisan Morozka is a true personification of that mass of ordinary proletarians, for whom only the revolution opened the way to spiritual growth and the restoration of trampled human dignity.
The main features of his character are revealed in the very first chapter of the novel. Frost opposes the fulfillment of the commander's task, preferring a meeting with his wife to "boring government trips". But in response to the commander's demand - to hand over his weapons and get out of the detachment - he declares that it is "impossible for him" to leave the detachment, because he understands participation in the partisan struggle as his vital miner's business. Having set off on an assignment after this stern warning, Frost, risking his life, saves the wounded Swordsman on the way.
In these episodes, the essence of Morozka's nature was revealed: before us is a man with a proletarian worldview, but insufficient consciousness. The feeling of proletarian brotherhood dictates Morozka the right actions at the decisive moments of the struggle: he cannot leave the detachment, he must save a wounded comrade. But in Everyday life the hero showed indiscipline, rudeness in dealing with a woman, he could get drunk.
People like Morozka made up the mass army of the revolution, and participation in the struggle was a great school of ideological and moral re-education for them. The new reality revealed the unsuitability of the old "norms" of behavior. Partisan Frost stole the melons. From the point of view of his previous worldly experience, this is an acceptable act. And suddenly now the commander is gathering a peasant gathering to judge Morozka by public opinion. The hero received a lesson in communist morality.
In the revolutionary struggle, yesterday's slaves regained their lost sense of human dignity. Let us recall the scene at the ferry, when Morozka found himself in the role of the organizer of the crowd, frightened by the imaginary proximity of the Japanese. “Frost, having fallen into this confusion, wanted, according to an old habit (“for laughter”), to frighten even more, but for some reason he changed his mind and, jumping off his horse, began to calm ... He suddenly felt like a big, responsible person ... rejoicing at the unusual his role." So, in the everyday phenomena of partisan life, Fadeev with rare insight comprehended the moral result of the revolutionary struggle, its echo in the human heart, its ennobling effect on the moral character of the individual.
Participation in big events enriched Frost's life experience. His spiritual life became deeper, the first "unusually heavy thoughts" appeared, the need to comprehend his actions and the world around him was born. Before, before the revolution, living in a mining village, he did a lot of things thoughtlessly: life seemed to him simple, uncomplicated and even "fun". After the experience in the partisan detachment, Morozok overestimated his former life, his "careless" mischief, he now tried to get on the right road, "on which people like Levinson, Baklanov, Dubov walked." In the course of the revolution, he turned into a conscious thinking person.
"The Defeat" of Alexander Fadeev, together with "Chapaev" by Dmitry Furmanov and "The Iron Stream" by Alexander Serafimovich, are bright milestones on the way to a realistic comprehension of revolutionary changes in the life and creation of the people. But for all the generality of the novels, each author has his own approach to the topic, his own style of his artistic coverage. Serafimovich depicted the process of the birth of revolutionary consciousness among the masses primarily on the basis of their own experience of the struggle. Furmanov and Fadeev spoke about the great role of the party in organizing the revolutionary struggle of the people and in their ideological and moral education. They showed the beauty and grandeur of the socialist revolution as the beauty and grandeur of advanced ideas that raise the self-consciousness of the masses of the people and direct their spontaneous revolutionary impulse towards a lofty goal.
But the main thing in the novel is its optimistic idea, which is also manifested in the final words: "... you had to live and fulfill your duties", - an appeal that united life, struggle and overcoming, and in the entire structure of the novel, namely in the arrangement of figures, their destinies and characters. Thanks to all this, the novel does not sound pessimistic, it is optimistic. The optimism of the novel is in the belief in the victory of the revolution.
The next work paints the revolution in completely different colors, is remembered by other characters and episodes. This is a book by Artyom Vesely "Russia, washed with blood."
Artem Vesely (real name - Nikolai Ivanovich Kochkurov) belonged to the generation of Soviet writers, whose youth fell on the years of the revolution and the Civil War. They were shaped by a time of great turmoil. The coming of Veseliy to the Reds is quite natural. The son of a Volga hooker, from childhood he "drank hard", combining work - sometimes hard and quite adult - with studies at the Samara Primary School. He became a Bolshevik already in the February Revolution; after October - a fighter of the Red Army. He fought with the White Czechs, then with Denikin, was at party work. Artyom Vesely noted in his autobiography: "Since the spring of 1917, I have been engaged in revolution. Since 1920, I have been writing."
In "Russia, washed with blood" there is no traditional single plot, held together by the history of the fate of individual heroes, there is no single intrigue. The originality and strength of the book - in the reproduction of the "image of time". The writer believed that his main task was to embody the image of a revolutionary, protesting Russia at the front, at train stations, in the steppes scorched by the sun, on village streets, in city squares. The image of time corresponds to the style and language of the narrative, its intense pace, dynamic phrase, the abundance of mass scenes with their many faces and polyphony.
"Russia, washed with blood" is one of the significant works of Russian literature. It reflects with extraordinary force and truthfulness the great upheaval in the life of Russia during the First World War, the October Revolution and the Civil War. .
Starting from the spring days of 1920, when young Nikolai Kochkurov saw through the window of the car the Don and Kuban Cossacks, who were defeated by the Red Army and now, disarmed, marching on their horses, were returning home (it was then, by his own admission, "the image of a grandiose books about the civil war" and appeared before him "in full growth"), and ending with the second half of the 30s, work was underway on a novel that can be called the main book of the writer.
The work took shape as a single artistic whole for a separate edition in 1932. It was then that a two-part division appeared - into “two wings”, and between the “wings” there were sketches, which the author himself interpreted as “short, one or two pages, completely independent and complete stories, connected with the main text of the novel with their hot breath, place action, theme and time ... ".
The action of the first part of the novel takes place in the south: Russian positions on the Turkish front during the First World War, return from the front, civil war in the Caucasus and near Astrakhan. The action of the second part is transferred to the middle Volga. None of the characters in the first part gets into the second: thus, there are no plot motivations that hold both parts together. Each of the two parts is a narrative that is spatially closed within itself.
Closed in space, they are closed in time. The first part covers the initial period of the civil war, when the former nationwide and general ideological institutions were being broken. This is the period when, in the words of John Reed, "the old Russia was gone": "The formless society melted, flowed like lava into the primordial heat, and from the stormy sea of flame emerged a mighty and ruthless class struggle, and with it still fragile, slowly solidifying nuclei new formations". The second part covers the final stage of the civil war, when the whites were already driven away, the "cores of new formations" were structurally identified, a new state power was formed, and this power entered into difficult relations with the peasantry - relations fraught with tragic conflicts.
Consequently, the first and second parts of "Russia, washed with blood" are two moments in the development of the revolution, interconnected according to the principle of historical succession.
The country is upside down. Artem Vesely creates a sense of drama and grandeur by the activity of his speech style, the emotional tension of the plot of the story.
The chapters of the first and second parts open with the author's folklore-stylized beginnings:
"There is a revolution in Russia - the mother of the cheese-earth trembled, the white light became clouded ... ";
"There is a revolution in Russia, all of Russia is a rally";
"There is a revolution in Russia, all of Russia is at stake";
"There is a revolution in Russia - all over Raseyushka, thunderstorms are thundering, downpours are noisy";
"There is a revolution in Russia, all of Raseyushka took on fire and swam with blood";
"In Russia, the revolution - ardor, or, yar, flood, rushing water";
"There is a revolution in Russia - the villages are in the heat, the cities are in delirium";
"There is a revolution in Russia - a flame broke out and a thunderstorm passed everywhere";
"There is a revolution in Russia - from all the world the dust has risen like a pillar ...";
"There is a revolution in Russia - the country is boiling in blood, on fire ...".
Carrying in themselves the memory of the epic archaic, the beginnings give the speech style of the novel the tradition of solemn elation of the narrative, create a feeling of shock at what is happening. At the same time, the plot of the narration is not reduced to the layer of folklore stylization. The reader receives an idea of how the reality blown up by the revolution lives and develops from different angles, as if from different people, sometimes through the vision of a narrator close to the author.
The seventeenth - the beginning of the eighteenth year: a flood of destructive hatred spreads over Russia. There is a terrible in its simplicity story of an ordinary soldier Maxim Kuzhel about how a commander was killed at a rally, on the positions of the Turkish front: "We tore the commander's ribs, trampled on his guts, and our atrocity was only gaining strength..."
This is really just the beginning. Then a series of episodes will follow, in which the reprisals against people personifying the hated tsarist regime become a system, a stable line of behavior, so to speak, a habitual thing - so familiar that killing even a large crowd of curious people is not able to gather - it’s not interesting, you see, we know:
"There are three crowds in the station garden. In one - they played toss, in the other - they killed the head of the station and in the third, the largest crowd, a Chinese girl showed tricks ... "
"A big black-bearded soldier, pushing the people aside and sucking on the last chicken leg as he went, flew like a kite to finish off the chief's station: they said that he was still breathing."
As we can see, the centrifugal tendencies of being predominate - the desire to overturn and trample on all former life. There are no values left - everything goes under a negative sign.
This is still the origins - the story is just gaining height. It is characteristic, however, that in the plot of the novel the sailor ship republic appears as an episodic phenomenon, as a short-term military brotherhood, which, according to Vesely, does not have a social perspective as an independent organizing force: with the death of the fleet, the existence of the ship republic ends; under the influence of the Bolshevik locksmith Yegorov, in response to his "short and simple word", the sailors are enrolled in a detachment and sent to the front, to the ranks of the Red Army.
Artem Vesely reveals the dramatic complexity of social life in the transitional period in symmetrically corresponding episodes of the first and second parts. Contradictions separate Cossacks and settlers in the North Caucasus, rich and poor peasants in the Zavolzhsky village of Khomutovo, hungry cities and a relatively well-fed village.
The soldiers who returned from the front dream of redistributing the Kuban lands on the basis of equality, since "a rich land, a free side" accommodates the Cossack class satiety and, next to it, the humble existence of alien peasants. In the same village, Cossacks and newcomers settle separately, mutually separating themselves according to the principle: poverty - wealth.
"On the Cossack side there is a bazaar, and a cinema, and a gymnasium, and a large magnificent church, and a dry high bank, on which a brass band played on holidays, and in the evenings walking and bawling youth gathered. White huts and rich houses under tiles, planks and iron stood in strict order, hiding in the greenery of cherry orchards and acacias. Large spring water came to visit the Cossacks, under the very windows.
In the novel, it is not by chance that the final composition of the chapter "A bitter hangover" (the first part) and the chapter "Khomutovo village" (the second part) are correlated compositionally. Whites took Ivan Chernoyarov to the market square to hang: "Until the very last minute of his death, he surrounded the executioners with a red-hot obscenity and spit in their eyes." This is the result of "The Bitter Hangover". In the chapter "Khomutovo Village", a worldly bull named Anarchist, who has broken loose from his leash, enters into an absurdly desperate single combat with a grain echelon:
"The locomotive skidded, puffed tiredly, groaned, and dragged its tail with such difficulty that it seemed to advance no more than one fathom per minute. The anarchist whipped himself on the sides with a tail heavy as a rope, with a fluffy dump at the end, threw sand with his hooves and, bending his head to the ground, with a deadly roar, swiftly rushed to meet the locomotive and thrust mighty horns into the chest of the locomotive ... The lanterns were already knocked down, the front end was crushed, but the locomotive - black and snorting - was advancing: on the rise, the driver could not stop. ... A white bone splashed out from under the cast-iron wheel. The train passed Khomutovo without stopping - on the rise, the driver could not stop ... ".
Let's pay attention to the twice repeated "on the rise, the driver could not stop" - this is a signal that the law of historical inevitability is in effect. The carriers of the new statehood come into a tragic conflict with the breadwinners of a vast country, representatives of " earth force", supporters of the" third way ". Terrible in its senselessness, the single combat of a bull with a steam locomotive prepares an episode in which the rebels forge" spears, darts, hooks and hooks, with which the chapan army was armed. "This medieval equipment is also powerless against the technically equipped new government how powerless the Anarchist bull is compared to mechanical force locomotive. The tragic finale of the fate of Ivan Chernoyarov and the death of the Anarchist under the wheels of a steam locomotive going up are symbolic: throwing a mutual reflection on each other, both episodes are at the same time projected onto the development of the epic action as a whole - they prepare the defeat of the "straw force", trying and not being able to find for itself "third way".
The ability to tell the bitter truth about the victims of the tragic conflict revealed the dialectical capacity of Artyom Vesely's artistic vision, which incorporates both "it is impossible to regret" and "it is impossible not to regret", if we use the well-known aphorism from A. Neverov's story "Andron the Unlucky". In how Ivan Chernoyarov, caught in a dead end, dies, how a bull with the meaningful nickname Anarchist falls under the locomotive wheels, how the "chapans" are defeated, the author's cross-cutting idea declares itself, allowing us to speak of "Russia washed with blood" as a novel of tragic intensity .
Tragedy is set already in the introductory chapter "Death trampled down by death." The panoramic image of the all-Russian grief of the First World War appears here as a disaster that falls on individual human destinies:
"A hot bullet smacked the bridge of the nose of the fisherman Ostap Kalaida - and orphaned his white hut on the seashore, near Taganrog. He fell and wheezed, the Sormovo locksmith Ignat Lysachenko twitched - his zhinka with three little guys in his arms would take a dashing sip. The young volunteer Petya Kakurin, thrown up by a land mine explosion along with clods of frozen earth, fell into the ditch like a burnt match - that will be the joy of the old people in distant Barnaul when the news of their son reaches them. He poked his head into a tussock, and the Volga hero Yukhan remained lying there - no longer wave an ax at him and sing songs in the forest. Lieutenant Andrievsky, the company commander, lay down next to Yukhan, and he grew up in maternal caress.
We will not learn anything more about the dead and their families, but the rhythm is set: any war is terrible, contrary to human nature, and a civil war is doubly tragic.
The final lines of "Russia, washed with blood" are also indicative: "Native country ... Smoke, fire - there is no end to the edge!". In the context of the work, we have a novelly open ending: the plot rushes into an extensively unfolded future; life appears as fundamentally unfinished, never stopping, constantly moving forward.
In order to preserve and consolidate "Russia, washed with blood" exactly how novel unity, Artem Vesely makes a bold attempt to bring relatively completed individual destinies and separate, also relatively completed in themselves, destinies of social groups into a special section - "Etudes", which, as already mentioned, act as a kind of spacer between the first and second parts of the novel . Before us is a chain of short stories, each of which is built on an event that has been exhausted by the plot.
The grandiose metaphor in the title of the book is projected onto both the panoramic image of mass life and the close-up image of individual human destinies. Both the title and the subtitle ("Fragment") led the writer to new horizons of boundless reality, which offered new artistic tasks. It is not surprising that, having released the book in several editions, the writer continued to work on it. Artem Vesely wanted to end the novel with battles on the Polish front, the storming of Perekop, he intended to introduce the image of Lenin into the novel, episodes of the activities of the Comintern ...
It was not possible to carry out these plans: the writer, as already mentioned, fell victim to lawlessness. However, we can say with confidence: in its current, relatively unfinished form, the novel took place. He reveals to us the scope of the "popular revolution", its tragic collisions and its hopes.
Not a single writer of those years possessed such powerful confidence in his speech - speech, directly perceived from the people. Words tender and rude, menacing and spiritualized were combined in fragmentary periods, as if torn from the lips of the people. The rudeness and authenticity of some of the cries repelled lovers of the elegant prose of Turgenev's style. Therefore, the remarkable epic "Russia, washed with blood" did not cause lengthy discussions and deep assessments, serving most likely as an example of revolutionary spontaneous prowess, and not an entirely new literary phenomenon. Artyom Vesely tried, and not only tried, but also carried out a romance without a hero, or rather with a mass hero, in which such a plurality of features of the peoples that formed the population of the former Russian Empire that it was not possible to perceive these features as uniting one person. None of the writers of the past and present known to me had such freedom of expressive speech, such a reckless and at the same time strong-willed proclamation. In my opinion, Artyom Vesely could become a completely unprecedented and unheard of Soviet writer, opening the way for the whole language, all the feelings of the people without embellishment and exaggeration, without pedagogical considerations, which is allowed in the structure and style of the work.
For many years the name of Artyom Vesely was not mentioned anywhere, his books were withdrawn from state libraries, generations grew up who had never heard of this writer.
In 1988, Goslitizdat published a one-volume Artem Vesely, since then his works - and above all "Russia, washed with blood" - have been published more than once both in our country and abroad, many readers are rediscovering Artem Vesely. Valentin Rasputin wrote about this in 1988: “The prose of Artem Vesely was a revelation to me even in my student days. Today I re-read it. and in many ways a modern book."
A civil war is a fierce armed struggle for power between different social groups. A civil war is always a tragedy, turmoil, the decomposition of a social organism that did not find the strength to cope with the disease that struck it, the collapse of statehood, social catastrophe. The beginning of the war in the spring - summer of 1917, considering the July events in Petrograd and the "Kornilovshchina" as its first acts; others tend to associate it with the October Revolution and the coming to power of the Bolsheviks.
There are four stages of the war:
Summer-autumn 1918 (stage of escalation: rebellion of the White Czechs, Entente landings in the North and in Japan, England, the USA - in the Far East, the formation of anti-Soviet centers in the Volga region, the Urals, Siberia, the North Caucasus, the Don, the execution of the latter's family Russian Tsar, declaration of the Soviet Republic as a single military camp);
Autumn 1918 - spring 1919 (the stage of strengthening foreign military intervention: the annulment of the Brest Treaty, the intensification of the red and white terror);
Spring 1919 - spring 1920 (the stage of military confrontation between the regular Red and White armies: the campaigns of the troops of A. V. Kolchak, A. I. Denikin, N. N. Yudenich and their reflection, from the second half of 1919 - the decisive successes of the Red Army);
Summer-autumn 1920 (the stage of the military defeat of the Whites: the war with Poland, the defeat of P. Wrangel).
Causes of the Civil War
Representatives of the white movement laid the blame on the Bolsheviks, who tried to destroy centuries-old institutions of private property by force, overcome the natural inequality of people, and impose a dangerous utopia on society. The Bolsheviks and their supporters considered the overthrown exploiting classes to be guilty of the Civil War, which, in order to preserve their privileges and wealth, unleashed a bloody massacre against the working people.
Many recognize that Russia at the beginning of the 20th century. needed deep reforms, but the authorities and society showed their inability to solve them in a timely and fair manner. The authorities did not want to listen to society, society treated the authorities with contempt. Calls for struggle prevailed, drowning out timid voices in favor of cooperation. The guilt of the main political parties seems obvious in this sense: they preferred split and turmoil to consent.
There are two main camps - red and white. In the latter, a very peculiar place was occupied by the so-called third force - "counter-revolutionary democracy", or "democratic revolution", which from the end of 1918 declared the need to fight both the Bolsheviks and the general dictatorship. The Red movement relied on the support of the main part of the working class and the poorest peasantry. The social basis of the white movement was the officers, bureaucracy, the nobility, the bourgeoisie, individual representatives of the workers and peasants.
The party that expressed the position of the Reds was the Bolsheviks. The party composition of the white movement is heterogeneous: Black Hundred-monarchist, liberal, socialist parties. The program goals of the red movement are: the preservation and establishment of Soviet power throughout Russia, the suppression of anti-Soviet forces, the strengthening of the dictatorship of the proletariat as a condition for building a socialist society. The program goals of the white movement were not so clearly formulated.
There was a sharp struggle over questions about the future state structure (republic or monarchy), about land (restoration of landownership or recognition of the results of land redistribution). In general, the white movement advocated the overthrow of Soviet power, the power of the Bolsheviks, the restoration of a united and indivisible Russia, the convening of a people's assembly on the basis of universal suffrage to determine the future of the country, the recognition of the right to private property, holding land reform guarantee of fundamental rights and freedoms of citizens.
Why did the Bolsheviks win the Civil War! On the one hand, they played a role serious mistakes allowed by the leaders of the white movement (they failed to avoid moral degeneration, overcome internal disunity, create an effective power structure, offer an attractive agrarian program, convince the national outskirts that the slogan of a united and indivisible Russia does not contradict their interests, etc.).
Population losses amounted to 25 million hours, taking into account the population decline:
Secondly, given that out of 1.5-2 million emigrants, a significant part was the intelligentsia, => the civil war caused a deterioration in the country's gene pool.
Thirdly, the deepest social consequence was the liquidation of entire classes Russian society- landlords, big and middle bourgeoisie and wealthy peasants.
Fourthly, the economic disruption led to an acute shortage of food products.
Fifth, the card supply of food, as well as essential industrial goods, consolidated the egalitarian justice generated by communal traditions. The slowdown in the development of the country was caused by equalizing efficiency.
There is nothing more terrible in the history of the people than a fratricidal war. Nothing can compensate for the deaths of people - the most valuable thing that a state can have. As a result of the victory in the civil war, the Bolsheviks managed to preserve the statehood, sovereignty and territorial integrity of Russia. With the formation of the USSR in 1922, the Russian civilizational-heterogeneous conglomerate with obvious imperial signs was practically recreated. The victory of the Bolsheviks in the civil war led to the curtailment of democracy, the dominance of a one-party system, when the party ruled on behalf of the people, on behalf of the party the Central Committee, the Politburo and, in fact, the General Secretary or his entourage.
As a result of the civil war, not only were the foundations of a new society laid, its model was tested, but the tendencies that led Russia to the western path of civilizational development were largely swept away;
The defeat of all anti-Soviet, anti-Bolshevik forces, the defeat of the White Army and interventionist troops;
Preservation, including by force of arms, of a significant part of the territory of the former Russian Empire, suppression of attempts by a number of national regions to secede from the Republic of Soviets;
The victory in the Civil War created geopolitical, social and ideological conditions for the further strengthening of the Bolshevik regime. It meant the victory of the communist ideology, the dictatorship of the proletariat, state form property.
Stalin's version of modernization. Formation and development of the bureaucratic and command-administrative system
The Stalinist system of economic management was a means of another modernization of the economy of our state, which was conceived as the creation of a powerful military-industrial complex and a modern technological core, consisting of heavy industry enterprises. We find the main elements of the Stalinist system even under the tsarist regime. The command-administrative system in the heavy and especially the military industry, the regulation of prices for basic goods, the central planning of technological breakthroughs.
So, for example, the GOELRO plan was nothing more than a modified imperial plan for the electrification of Russia. Even in tsarist times, low relative prices for energy carriers and other raw materials were a way to stimulate industry, compensating for an unfavorable climate. In particular, it was low oil prices that made the rapid transition from manual labor and horse-drawn traction to the mechanization of agriculture more profitable.
The task of modernization could only be solved by importing modern technology from the West. The need for a forced breakthrough was due to the fact that the threat of war was growing.
State. power opened up to the Bolsheviks a fundamentally new path of planned industrialization. Knowing the parameters of the main technological pyramids on the basis of Western experience, it was possible to transfer them to Soviet soil, carrying out complex centralized technology purchases abroad. It is the catching-up nature of industrialization, repeating, on the whole, the most successful of the already tested technological solutions of the West, that determined the success of large-scale planning in physical terms.
Technology imports could be financed either through foreign loans or by limiting the consumption of the population and selling the released export goods on the foreign market. The possibility of foreign lending was significantly limited by the refusal of the Soviet government to pay the royal debts. In addition, foreign lending significantly narrowed the scope for investment. The Great Depression made it difficult to export many commodities.
The forced concentration on the export of grain and raw materials led to a significant destruction of the consumer sector: from agricultural production to the industry of consumer goods. At the same time, a very fast and dynamic process of modernization of the country began. It was based on the intensive work of the vast majority of the population, even officials worked around the clock. A sharp decrease in the share of consumption in the total product made it possible in a short historical period to accumulate huge capital and produce something unprecedented - to make a technological leap and practically catch up with the West in key parameters of technological development.
Not everything went smoothly during the industrialization years. Due to carelessness, criminal negligence and due to sabotage, unique technological equipment often disappeared. To raise the quality of work, on December 9, 1933, criminal liability was introduced for the production of low-quality products. The country's unpreparedness for the immediate acceptance of new technologies was largely due to both staff shortages and the human factor. It is impossible to learn new routines right away. It often turned out that the imported technology was unsuitable for Russian conditions and needed to be improved, for which there were not enough qualifications and funds.
Summing up the results of the first five-year plan (1929-1932), Stalin said: "We did not have ferrous metallurgy, the basis for the industrialization of the country. We have it now. We did not have a tractor industry. We have it now. We did not have an automobile industry. We have it now. We didn't have a machine tool industry. We have it now."
Further, the chemical, aviation industry, and the production of agricultural machinery are called in the same way. In a word, Soviet leaders understood where wealth comes from, how to achieve growth in labor productivity, and always tried to grab the key links among the technologies used. The thirties were a time of industrial breakthrough, which cannot be denied. Russia very quickly became one of the largest industrial powers in the world. At that time, many technological breakthroughs were made.
The Stalinist economy at one time found ways to ensure a colossal influx of labor into priority industries.
It turned out that for this it is enough to carry out the following economic measures:
1) limit consumption in the village to a half-starvation level without reducing agricultural production;
2) concentrate and mechanize agriculture;
3) release a colossal number of workers due to the concentration of agricultural production and its mechanization;
4) create a huge supply of women's labor force in industry by influencing the traditional intra-family work order and creating social conditions (by the way, in Russian agriculture female labor has always been used);
5) ensure downward pressure on urban wages and consumption in the city by increasing the supply of labor;
6) direct the released funds to increase the rate of accumulation; 7) increase the efficiency of investment by improving the management of the planned economy.
The next most important factor that led to the rapid development of the country's economy was the clear orientation of the leadership towards the rapid development of technology, and not just declarations about the need to master new technologies or doubling the GDP, but the hard work of the leadership to master the most advanced that was in the world economy.
And if at first technological development was carried out through the import of technologies, then by the end of the 30s, due to the priority development of education and science, the organization of design bureaus, etc., conditions were created for the start of creating their own technologies. Thus, the task of modernizing Russia, which lagged behind the West in its industrial development by 50-100 years, was solved. The whole country began to quickly master new, more and more productive labor skills and habits that had not been updated for decades before.
At the same time, the Stalinist leadership realized that a prerequisite for the success of modernization projects was mobilization development under the strong stimulating influence of the state. In particular, it was necessary to abandon the hope of investing only at the expense of voluntary savings by citizens of part of their income, it was necessary to invest at public expense, increasing fiscal pressure with a clear targeted spending of the collected funds.
Stalin did not allow the consumption of that part of the national income that was necessary to accelerate the development of the country and without which the security of the country would, in the very near future, be in jeopardy. At the same time, a course was taken to maximize the development of the country's natural potential, the use of its own resources. Thus, Stalin solved the tasks of winning the inevitable coming war, preserving the integrity of the country and creating a bloc of allied states that would additionally protect this integrity.
With the formation of new institutions of Russian statehood
For the period from 1992-2000. 6 prime ministers were replaced: E. Gaidar, V. Chernomyrdin, S. Stepashin, S. Kiriyenko, E. Primakov, V. Putin, the average duration of a minister's work was two months.
Formation of a new statehood
Liquidation of Soviet Power The August events of 1991 and the liquidation of the USSR put forward the task of forming the foundations of a new statehood. First of all, presidential structures began to be created. Under the President of Russia, the Security Council and the Presidential Council were created, and the post of State Secretary was introduced. On the ground, the institution of representatives of the President was introduced, who exercised power bypassing the local Soviets. The Government of Russia was also formed directly by the president, all appointments were made on the direct instructions of B.N. Yeltsin, management was carried out on the basis of decrees.
The changes made came into conflict with the provisions of the Constitution of the RSFSR of 1977. It did not provide for the post of president and presidential structures of power. It rejected the very idea of separation of powers, saying that all power in the center and in the localities belongs to the Soviets of People's Deputies. The supreme body of power was the Congress of People's Deputies, and in the intervals between congresses - the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR. The government was accountable to the Supreme Council.
With the start of reforms and their high cost, political opposition to the president's policies is forming in the country. The center of the opposition becomes the Supreme Soviet Russian Federation. The contradiction between the Soviets and the president reached a dead end. Only the Congress of People's Deputies or a nationwide referendum could change the Constitution.
In March 1993, B. Yeltsin, in an address to the citizens of Russia, announced the introduction of presidential rule in the country until the adoption of a new Constitution.
However, this statement caused the rallying of all opposition forces. In April 1993, an All-Russian referendum was held, which raised questions about trust in the President and maintaining his course. Most of the referendum participants voted for trust in the President. On the basis of the decisions of the referendum, the President began to develop a new Constitution.
September 21, 1993 B.N. Yeltsin announced the start of a "step-by-step constitutional reform." Presidential Decree No. 1400 announced the dissolution of the Congress of People's Deputies and the Supreme Council, the liquidation of the entire system of Soviets from top to bottom, and announced the holding of elections to a new legislative body - the Federal Assembly.
The Supreme Council recognized this presidential decree as inconsistent with the Constitution and, in turn, decided to remove the president as violating the Constitution. A.V. was elected President. Rutskoy. B.N. recognized the actions as unconstitutional. Yeltsin and the Constitutional Court. The political crisis led to an armed clash (October 3-4, 1993) between supporters of the Supreme Council and the President. It ended with the execution of Parliament and its dissolution.
Having won a military victory, the President issued a Decree on holding elections to a new legislative body - Federal Assembly consisting of two chambers - the Federation Council and State Duma. According to the decree, half of the deputies were elected from territorial districts, half - from the lists of political parties and associations. At the same time, a referendum was held on the new Constitution. According to the Constitution, Russia was a Federal Democratic Republic with a presidential form of government.
The President was the guarantor of the Constitution, the head of state, the Supreme Commander. He appointed the government of the country, which was responsible only to the President, the President had the right of suspensive veto, to issue decrees having the force of law. The President had the right to dissolve the Duma, in the event of a threefold rejection of the candidacy of the Prime Minister proposed by the President.
The rights of the State Duma were much less than the powers of the dissolved Supreme Soviet and were limited to the function of passing laws. Deputies lost the right to control the activities of administrative bodies (the right to request a deputy). After the adoption of the law by the Duma, it must be approved by the Federation Council - the second chamber of the Federal Assembly, consisting of the heads of local legislative bodies and heads of administration of the subjects of the Federation. After that, the law must be approved by the President and only after that it was considered adopted. The Duma was endowed with a number of exclusive rights: to approve the budget of the state, to announce an amnesty and impeachment of the president, to approve a candidate for the post of prime minister, but in the event of a threefold rejection, it must be dissolved.
In January 1994, the new Federal Assembly began its work. Realizing that normal activity is impossible in the conditions of confrontation, the deputies and presidential structures were forced to compromise. In February 1994, the Duma announced an amnesty for the participants in the August (1991) and October (1993) events. Everyone who committed unlawful acts was amnestied, both on the one hand and on the other. In April-June 1994, a memorandum on civil peace and public accord was adopted, signed by all the Duma factions, the majority of political parties and movements in Russia. The signing of these documents contributed to the cessation of civil confrontation in society.
64!! The modern stage of human development is a colossal change and unification processes in the global economy. These processes at the end of the twentieth century in the economic literature became fashionable to call globalization. But they began much earlier - in the second half of the nineteenth century. The main patterns of the process, which is now commonly called the globalization of the economy, were studied by many scientists of the late 21st - early 20th centuries.
Then this process had a more suitable name for it - the formation of imperialism, as a monopoly stage in the development of capitalism (the word globalization indicates unification, but obscures the question of how exactly and on what basis it is carried out). In this article it is not possible to analyze the richest factual material on the basis of which one can judge with full confidence about the history of globalization in the 20th century. The reader will easily recall, for example, two world wars, which resulted in new divisions of the world into zones of economic expansion and other major historical events.
Give the history of the transformation of one or another capital (bank, company, etc., and all mergers and acquisitions), which had a serious impact on world economy, is possible only in a separate work devoted only to this. Moreover, the interested reader can easily find a lot of information to trace this story. Here I would like to pay attention only to the main stages and trends in the process of globalization as a whole and see (also in general terms) how they determine the functioning of the labor market.
Since at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries the process of globalization (the formation of monopoly capitalism) manifested itself only as the unification of production and banking capital into financial capital and the establishment of the expansion of financial capital, scientists of that time mainly paid attention to the analysis of the activities of banks and the influence of the concentration of financial capital on the development of production. The classic works are "Imperialism" by J. A. Hobson, "Finance Capital" by R. Hilferding, "Imperialism as the Highest Stage of Capitalism" by V. I. Lenin. In these works, with all scientific rigor, it was shown that free competition had come to an end.
Main characteristic modern stage development of the world economy - the transformation of free competition into a monopoly and competition between monopolists. Monopoly becomes over free competition. This gives rise to new contradictions.
The monopoly stage of capitalism, according to Lenin, is characterized by such features:
1) the concentration of production and capital, which has reached such a high degree that it has given rise to monopolies that play a decisive role in economic life;
2) the merging of banking and industrial capital and the creation on its basis of "financial capital", a financial oligarchy;
3) by the fact that the export of capital, in contrast to the export of goods, acquires special significance; 4) that international monopoly unions of capitalists are being created, which divide the world among themselves;
5) the completion of the territorial division of the world between the largest capitalist states.
The trends noted by Lenin further deepened and developed. Their development was accompanied by a number of large-scale global crises and new redistributions of the planet. In the second half of the twentieth century, capitalism, which was formed as a system of international financial capital, where banking corporations gained control over the development of industry, began to turn into a system of industrial capital with international technological chains. industrial production. At this stage of development, capital no longer needs colonies in the old (late 19th - early 20th century) sense of the word, most of the former colonies gained independence (48-60).
This, however, did not change their subordinate position, but only aggravated it. For example, most formally independent countries Latin America throughout the twentieth century were brutally exploited and plundered colonies of American (USA) capital. Neo-colonialism has played an outstanding role in shaping the modern world labor market.
Transnational companies have entered the arena of world competition, which control not only entire industries, but also complexes of related industries. Many industries that do not belong to multinational companies are beginning to play the role of auxiliary, service industries, where the organization of production and the form of labor exploitation are often at a lower level of development than in the "main" industries.
Thus, the essence of the modern process of globalization is the unification of the entire world economy into a single industrial system based on monopoly capitalism. Its main features are the complete loss of independence of national markets and the establishment of the expansion of transnational corporations, whose interests determine the state policy of capitalist countries, competition between monopolies (transnational corporations), reorientation of the world economy to serve the interests of transnational corporations. Therefore, at this stage of the development of the world economy, there is a rapid transfer of production to countries with a higher rate of profit, and on the other hand, a deepening of the global division of labor.
At the end of the twentieth century, as a result of the trends described above, the world division of labor deepened enormously, and the modern world labor market was created. It is characterized, on the one hand, by the deepening of the specialization of individual countries and even continents, and, on the other hand, by the openness of borders both for the transfer of production to countries with cheaper labor and for an increase in labor migration flows, depending on the demand for it in certain countries. other countries. The modern world labor market is a complex unified system, which in turn consists of national markets, but is not limited to them. Changes in the demand and supply of labor in individual national labor markets are a local expression of changes that occur in the structure of the world market, in the world production system.
The globalization of the labor market includes two main trends. The first is the deepening of the specialization of the national production of individual countries (continents). This determines the specifics of supply and demand in national labor markets, and through specialization, includes national production and the national labor market in world production in a specific, defined way. The second is the rapid transfer of production (this may concern entire industries) to countries where the rate of profit is higher. The second trend is the reason for the rapid changes in the structure of national labor markets. This is an increase in the demand for a workforce of appropriate qualifications in the event of a transfer of a certain type of production to the country and, at the same time, a decrease in the demand for labor that was involved in enterprises that became unprofitable in this country and were closed or re-profiled. In each individual country, these processes have their own characteristics and specifics.
Thousands of jobs are constantly appearing and disappearing around the world, and competition between workers in different countries is becoming fiercer. This is a constant source of unemployment, which means the absence or unsatisfactory amount of livelihood for a part of humanity.
The problem of training a workforce that could meet the needs of production also makes itself felt. And this is much more interested in capital than in the fate of billions of people who earn their living by their own labor.
On the one hand, the production of labor power must be as cheap as possible, and on the other hand, it must satisfy a demand that is constantly changing. Here we must note the contradiction between these two demands of capitalism. Cheap training of the labor force is inextricably linked with a reduction in the cost of its training. This entails a decrease in the quantity and a decrease in the quality of knowledge and reduces them to the necessary minimum for the performance of one or another production function (lawyer, programmer, locksmith, assembly line worker). At the same time, every change in demand in the labor market requires people who live off the sale of their labor force to quickly retrain. This becomes a huge problem for narrow specialists, and for industries where there is not enough labor force with the necessary qualifications. The capitalists are losing.
The number of people who are directly employed in the field is constantly increasing in the world. material production, but in the so-called developed countries this share is smaller due to the fact that production from these countries is transferred to countries with cheaper labor. Here, the tendency to a constant increase in the number of employees in the provision of services, and people who perform work on the redistribution of material assets (bank employees, lawyers, managers, etc.) prevails. This trend has served as the basis for creating myths about the post-industrial and information society. The main mistake of their authors is a misunderstanding that the development of social production can no longer be considered on the example of individual (developed) countries, without taking into account the rest of the world, since there are no longer really separate economies.
It should be taken into account that there are two relatively independent segments in the world labor market. The first of these covers a highly skilled workforce that has relatively constant employment and consistently high wages. This is the elite of the world proletariat (USA, EEC, etc.). The second, a much larger segment, predominantly covers the labor force from poor countries, which is in much worse conditions. In the second segment, one can single out workers who illegally migrate to rich countries, since they cannot find work in their homeland that would allow them to have the means they need to live.
By the way, this category includes up to 7 million Ukrainian citizens working in Russia and the EU. Their salary is usually much lower than that of local workers who do the same work. They are in such a position that they do not require the creation of appropriate working conditions and the provision of social guarantees (medical insurance, compensation in case of temporary or complete disability). As a result, illegal labor migrants displace local workers. This is - good soil to spread racist and xenophobic sentiments. Capitalists easily use them to increase discrimination in the labor market based on nationality or citizenship, which makes it possible to lower wages that are already low for this country.
Capital is not interested in how this affects the lives of people working for it, and the lives of their families. The capitalist is forced to constantly look for the labor force he needs, which would cost less. After all, otherwise he will lose in competition with other, more successful and cunning capitalists. And the point here is not at all a bad or good capitalist. And in essence the system of world capitalism.
Political Modernization in Russia: Search for an Alternative
The content of political modernization
In political theory, under modernization is understood as a set of processes of industrialization, bureaucratization, secularization, urbanization, accelerated development of education and science, representative political power, acceleration of spatial and social mobility, improving the quality of life, rationalizing social relations that lead to the formation of a "modern open society" as opposed to a "traditional closed one".
political modernization can be defined as the formation, development and dissemination of modern political institutions, practices, as well as modern political structure. At the same time, under modern political institutions and practices should be understood not as a cast from the political institutions of developed democracies, but as those political institutions and practices that are most capable of ensuring an adequate response and adaptation of the political system to changing conditions, to the challenges of modernity. These institutions and practices may correspond to models of modern democratic institutions or differ to varying degrees: from the rejection of “foreign” samples to the adoption of a form when it is filled with content that is initially unusual for it.
At the same time, it is objectively necessary, on the one hand, to maintain political stability as the most important condition for social development as a whole, and on the other hand, to expand the possibilities and forms political participation, the massive base of reforms.
Two main reasons can hinder the process of political modernization (S.A. Lantsov). The first is lagging behind changes in other spheres of society's life. Such a gap can cause a revolutionary crisis. Another reason is that the level of development of civil society and the political culture of the society may not be prepared for the rapidly proceeding democratization. In this case, there is also a high probability of a crisis situation fraught with chaos, leading to ochlocracy.
Two factors contribute to successful modernization (V.V. Lapkin, V.I. Pantin): the internal readiness of the modernizing society for deep political reforms that limit the power of the bureaucracy and establish adequate “rules of the game” for the main political actors; the desire and ability of the most developed countries of the world to provide this community with effective economic and political assistance, mitigating the burden of ongoing reforms.
The most important indicator of the country's progress along the path of political modernization is the role and place of the legislature in the structure political institutions: representation by the parliament of the interests of all social groups, a real impact on the adoption of power decisions.
Where the formation of a system of representative institutions took place without revolutionary upheavals, it, as a rule, was distinguished by smoothness and gradualness. An example is the Scandinavian countries. In each of them, it took about a hundred years to consolidate parliamentary norms and form democratic electoral systems. In France, the rapid democratization turned out to be too much pressure, which neither people nor state institutions could withstand. Needed new historical cycles, several severe revolutionary crises before the process of creating a stable system of parliamentary democracy was completed in the country.
Among the researchers who were actively involved in the theoretical problems of political modernization, a special place belongs to S. Huntington, who proposed a theoretical scheme of political modernization, which not only most successfully explains the processes that have taken place in the countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America in recent decades, but also helps to understand political history of Russia.
In accordance with the concept of S. Huntington, the social mechanism and dynamics of political modernization are as follows. The impetus for the start of modernization is a certain combination of internal and external factors that prompt the ruling elite to start reforms. Transformations may affect economic and social institutions but not touch the traditional political system.
Consequently, it is possible in principle to carry out socio-economic modernization "from above", within the framework of the old political institutions and under the leadership of the traditional elite. However, in order for the "transit" to be completed successfully, it is necessary to comply with a number of conditions and, above all, to ensure a balance between changes in various fields the life of society. The determining condition is the willingness of the ruling elite to carry out not only technical and economic, but also political modernization.
S.Huntington emphasizes the importance of the middle class, consisting of entrepreneurs, managers, engineers and technicians, officers, civil servants, lawyers, teachers, university teachers. The most prominent place in the structure of the middle class is occupied by the intelligentsia, which is characterized as potentially the most oppositional force. It is the intelligentsia who are the first to assimilate new political ideas and contribute to their dissemination in society.
As a result, an increasing number of people, entire social groups that previously stood outside public life, are changing their attitudes. These subjects are beginning to realize that politics directly concerns their private interests, that their personal fate depends on the decisions made by the authorities. There is an increasingly conscious desire to participate in politics, to search for mechanisms and ways to influence the adoption of government decisions.
Since traditional institutions do not ensure the inclusion in public life of a part of the population awakening to active political activity, public discontent spreads to them. There is a struggle between the modernizing-minded elite and the traditional one, which can take various forms: from violent, revolutionary to peaceful. As a result of this struggle, the old system is being destroyed, new institutions, legal and political norms are being created that can ensure the participation of the masses in political life. The former ruling elite, unable to cope with the problems that have arisen, are being pushed aside by the new elite, which is more dynamic and open to the trends of the times.
Features of modern Russian political modernization
Researchers consider modernization as the main vector of Russia's development over the past centuries, including the Soviet and post-Soviet periods, noting in turn the originality of Russian modernization. However, V.A.Yadov and T.I. Zaslavskaya believe that post-communist transformations and modernization are fundamentally different processes, the study of which requires different paradigms. Although they have common elements, the differences are also significant. Thus, transformation is initially accompanied not by creation, but by destruction: a crisis in science and education, the curtailment of high-tech industries, the drain of the best minds abroad, a deterioration in the quality of life, and so on. Under these conditions, it is hardly appropriate to identify the content of modern transformations with modernization changes.
Nevertheless, after achieving stability, the processes in the country can be characterized as modernizing. The formation of modern political institutions and practices is carried out in parallel with transformational changes, which indicates the simultaneous development of these processes.
According to a number of researchers (M.V. Ilyin, E.Yu. Meleshkina, V.I. Pantin), the process of political modernization in Russia can be generally attributed to the endogenous-exogenous type. characteristic feature This type of modernization is a combination of various own and borrowed institutions and traditions. Due to the weakness of civil society and the exclusive role played by the state in Russia, the modernization of society is constantly being replaced by the modernization of the state - its military-industrial power, bureaucracy, repressive bodies, the public sector of the economy, etc. As a result, the tasks of accelerated military-industrial modernization of the state, strengthening it as a world power were often solved at the expense of anti-modernization, partial archaization and degradation of society.
Reformers, as a rule, cannot count on popular support, since the population is always conservative for the most part and is wary of any change, because the usual way of life is changing. Reformers can only be supported by the most active in social relations part of society that shares its goals. Therefore, the reform of post-Soviet Russia in the early 1990s. carried out in times of crisis. The reformers of the "first wave" were unable to create a solid social basis for the reforms, to establish contact with society. The effectiveness of the reforms themselves, their ability to change life for the better, was also overestimated. As a result, the very concept of reform and the values on which it was attempted to be based were discredited.
The Russian authorities, having sharply limited state intervention in various spheres of society, expected a sharp increase in the activity of citizens. However, the egalitarian, paternalistic mentality of Russian society did not contribute to the emergence a large number energetic, enterprising people who are able to organize their lives on new principles. Economic and political activity people was not enough to bring Russian life in line with European standards.
Political modernization in the early 2000s carried out in more favorable conditions: sustainable economic growth, political stability, a gradual increase in living standards. However, in order to move forward further along the path of political modernization, it is necessary not only to realize the need for reforms, the political will of the reformer, but also to profoundly transform the mentality of Russian society, associated with the assimilation of the experience of modern European civilization.
One of the difficulties in analyzing contemporary Russian political reality lies in the fact that the vital activity of civil society is influenced by the contradictions that arise in the process of public administration in the context of a protracted structural crisis.
Crisis development of Russia in the 1990s. outlined the following main problems, the lack of progress in solving which can further increase tension in society and the political system:
Development of a medium- and long-term strategy for the development of society, the purpose of which will be the sustainable transformation of the existing socio-economic structure and the creation of prerequisites for the organic integration of Russia into the world economy;
Establishing a balance that meets the conditions of modern Russian society between the principles of private initiative and state intervention in the economy in determining and implementing the socio-economic course;
Bringing the professional and intellectual level of the ruling groups into line with the requirements of managing society in the context of its transition to a higher level of socio-economic development, to a political system with a more complex organization;
Qualitative renewal of the main political institutions and the content of their activities, as well as the development of a set of principles and norms of public administration.
A feature of the domestic civilizational development is the fact that Russian society has not experienced such fundamental spiritual and intellectual upheavals as the Renaissance, the Reformation, the human rights movement in the West, which laid the foundations for rationalistic forms of economic activity and the modern system of political representation. In addition, some segments of the social structure of post-Soviet Russia have specific features that have arisen as a result of the most complex interaction of historical-psychological, ethnic, demographic, and cultural-religious factors.
Russian society responds appropriately to modernization impulses coming from above. Among the main characteristic features, one can single out rejection, passive resistance to innovations, the slow accumulation of contradictions and the potential for discontent, a crisis of self-identification, and popular protest facing the past.
Today's Russia is collapsing traditional society
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but no one is sure that the goals, identities and standards of behavior proposed by the political elite correspond to the requirements of modernity. Today we have new, democratic in form, but weak and not yet fully established political and economic institutions. V.V. Lapkin and V.I. Pantin believes that political modernization in Russia will largely be determined by the 2007-2008 elections. and 2011-2012, which will subject the Russian political system to a serious test of strength.
The institutional system that is taking shape in Russia does not guarantee the creation of stable functioning democratic political institutions, since without mass support they are not only not democratic, but also not viable. Therefore, the "power vertical" being built should be supplemented by a "social horizontal" - the interaction of public and political organizations representing the interests of various strata and groups. This combination of vertical and horizontal ties, accompanied by the social responsibility of officials and business representatives, which, according to V.V. Putin, “we are obliged to remember that the source of well-being and prosperity of Russia is the people”, can become the basis for the successful development of political
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Federal State Educational Institution of Higher Professional Education
"North-West Academy of Public Administration"
Department of History and World Politics
Civil War - national tragedy Russia
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Introduction
civil war historiography Bolshevik
Civil War 1918-1920 continues to be one of the most important events in national history. It left an indelible mark on the memory of the peoples of Russia, and its consequences are still being felt in the political, economic and spiritual spheres of our society.
The theme of the civil war occupies a special place in historical and fiction literature, brochures, articles, documentary publications and feature films, in the theater, on television, and in songwriting.
Suffice it to say that about 20 thousand books and scientific articles are devoted to the history of the Civil War. At the same time, it should be noted that many of our contemporaries have formed ambiguous and often distorted ideas about this tragic page in the history of Russia. For some, Pavka Korchagin remains a hero, for others - Lieutenant Golitsyn. Some know the war from the films "Wedding in Malinovka", "The Elusive Avengers" and songs like "Old Man Makhno looks out the window ...", the views of others are based on M.A.'s "Quiet Don". Sholokhov, memoirs of A.I. Denikin, on more accurate historical facts.
Generations of citizens of the USSR were brought up on the heroism and romance of the revolution. In the 1930s, millions of boys in the USSR saw their favorite hero in Chapaev and sang Aleksey Surkov's Cavalry Song.
Meanwhile, memoirs, scientific works were written abroad, odes were composed in honor of the heroes and martyrs of the white movement. Their courage, devotion to duty, loyalty to the unfortunate Motherland in the fight against the Bolshevik monsters, their readiness to bear the martyr's cross through the cellars of the Lubyanka and the dungeons of the Odessa Gubchek were sung.
So, the civil war was seen, reflected, studied from two opposite sides - from the side of the victors and from the side of the vanquished. Distortions and tendentiousness were allowed on both sides. This is natural and inevitable. The wise Romans have long noticed a simple truth: "Times are changing, and we are changing with them."
It is no coincidence that a number of historians believe that "the civil war has not yet become history in the full sense of the word, reconciliation (in Russian society) has not yet come, and the time for balanced judgments has not yet come."
With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the atmosphere of civil war is in the air. Dozens of regional conflicts brought the country to the brink of war: Transnistria, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Tajikistan, Chechnya (December 1994 - October 1996). All this requires restraint, restraint, readiness to compromise from the current political leaders of all countries.
As before, everything that is said, written, sung, filmed, staged about the civil war is permeated with intransigence, i.e. psychology of the civil war.
The purpose of this work: - to reveal approaches to the coverage of the history of the civil war in domestic and foreign historiography; - to show the essence, causes, composition of the opposing forces and the main stages and events of the war; - highlight the consequences and lessons of the civil war, their significance for the current stage of Russia's development.
1. Essence, causes and main stages of the civil war in Russia
Civil wars have been known in history since ancient times. At the household level, a civil war is a war between citizens of one state. The International Encyclopedia of Social Sciences (USA) defines it as follows: "Civil war is a conflict within society caused by attempts to seize or maintain power by illegal means."
This definition fits the civil wars in England (XVII century), in the USA in 1861-1865, in Spain in the 30s. 20th century It also applies to the civil wars of the early seventeenth century. and 1918-1920. in Russia. At the same time, armed struggle always acts as "illegal means". Therefore, a civil war is an armed struggle for power between various groups and strata of the population within a country due to deep social, political, economic and other contradictions.
In relation to Russia - the civil war of 1918-1920. - this is an armed struggle for power between various groups and sections of the country's population, due to deep social, political, economic, national and other contradictions, which took place with the active intervention of foreign states and included military operations of regular armies, uprisings, rebellions, partisan and sabotage-terrorist actions and other forms.
Why did the civil war start in Russia? What are its reasons? Who is to blame for its unleashing, escalation, millions of human victims? The answers to these questions are ambiguous. At present, under the influence of publicists and especially electronic media, the point of view that the Bolsheviks unleashed the civil war has become widespread in Russian society. They allegedly usurped power, killed the most humane tsar in the world, aggravated the confrontation in society and unleashed a fratricidal war in the name of approaching the world revolution.
More reasoned is the point of view of Lenin and the Bolsheviks, enshrined in numerous books and school textbooks of the Soviet period. Its essence: In 1917, workers and peasants came to power in Russia. The bourgeoisie and the landlords did not want to put up with this. But they did not have the strength for any serious resistance to Soviet power. The rebellion of Krasnov-Kerensky, Kaledin on the Don and Dutov in the Southern Urals were easily and quickly suppressed. However, foreign countries organized open intervention, assisted the internal counter-revolution. Thus, international imperialism acted as the initiator and catalyst of the civil war in Russia.
We are well acquainted with this interpretation of the causes of the civil war, but even it is one-sided, biased, and unscientific. The causes of the war cannot be reduced to the guilt of any of the parties in its beginning. Its historical prerequisites should be sought in the state of Russian society before February 1917, when Russia was permanently entering a state of civil war, and the causes - in the actions or inaction of the main political forces of the country in the period from February 1917 to about the summer of 1918.
If we retrospectively evaluate the prerequisites and causes of the civil war in Russia, then they can be reduced to the following:
1. Exacerbation of social contradictions in Russian society, which accumulated over decades and even centuries and deepened to the limit during the First World War. The most acute problems of Russian society have not been solved for decades. In the West, the acuteness of social contradictions was more or less smoothed out. In Russia, violence against the people was the leading principle of the functioning of power.
At the end of the XIX-beginning of the XX centuries. especially noticeable was the stubborn unwillingness of the autocracy to carry out significant reforms of the political and economic system. The conflict between power and society was so deep that the autocracy had no defenders in February-March 1917, they simply did not exist in a country of many millions.
2. The policy of the leading political parties (the Cadets, the Social Revolutionaries, the Mensheviks), which failed to stabilize the situation after the overthrow of the autocracy. The struggle for the army in the conditions of the ongoing war led to its collapse.
3. The seizure of power by the Bolsheviks and the desire of the overthrown classes to restore their rule.
4. Contradictions in the camp of the socialist parties, which received more than 80% of the votes in the elections to the Constituent Assembly, but failed to secure agreement, at the cost of mutual concessions.
5. Intervention of foreign states in the internal affairs of Russia. The intervention became a catalyst for the civil war, and the support of the White Guard troops and governments by the Entente countries largely determined the duration of this war.
6. The grossest mistakes and miscalculations of the Bolsheviks and the Soviet government in a number of important issues of domestic policy (the split in the countryside in the summer of 1918, decossackization, the policy of "war communism", etc.).
7. We should also highlight the socio-psychological aspect of the civil war. The psychology and psychopathology of the revolutionary era largely determined the behavior of every person and large social groups of people during the war years. A habit was formed to first make a control shot, and then check the documents. Violence was perceived as a universal method for solving many problems. Russia has traditionally been a country where the price of human life has always been negligible. In the era of the civil war, the mutual exasperation of people devalued this value as well.
Periodization of the Civil War. The problem of periodization of the history of the Civil War has repeatedly been the subject of scientific discussions. But to this day there is no single point of view. Until recently, the Leninist approach dominated Russian historical science. IN AND. Lenin considered the civil war in two aspects: a) civil war as the most acute form of class struggle (continued in Russia from October 1917 to October 1922); b) civil war as a special period in the history of the Soviet state, when the military question acted as the main, fundamental issue of the revolution (from the summer of 1918 to the end of 1920). The second (Lenin) period Soviet historians of the 60-80s. divided, as a rule, into three stages: 1st - end of May 1918 - March 1919 2nd - March 1919 - March 1920 3rd - April 1920 - November 1920 But there were other approaches: in the war, both 4 and 5 periods were singled out.
During the years of Stalin's rule, naturally, his periodization dominated: the campaign of Kolchak, the campaign of Denikin, the campaign of Poland and Wrangel. In some places, in schools and universities, historical educational maps "The first campaign of the Entente against the Soviet Republic", "The Second Campaign ..." and "The Third Campaign", made in the light of the instructions of Comrade Stalin, have been preserved. But in such a periodization, 1918 falls out.
Western historians give their own periodization of the civil war in Russia: the 1st period - 1918 - is called anarchist; 2nd period - 1919 - the struggle of the reds with the whites; 3rd period - 1920 - the struggle of the Bolsheviks against the peasantry. At the same time, they believe that the victory in the civil war was won by the peasants, since the Bolsheviks abandoned the policy of "war communism" and switched to the NEP.
In the 90s at the institute Russian history RAS Academician Yu.A. Polyakov proposed a new periodization of the history of the civil war in Russia. It covers the period from February 1917 to 1922 and consists of 6 stages:
February-March 1917 - the violent overthrow of the autocracy, the open split of society, mainly along social lines;
March-October 1917 - the failure of Russian democracy in an attempt to establish civil peace, the intensification of socio-political confrontation in society, the escalation of violence;
October 1917 - March 1918 - the overthrow of the Provisional Government by the Bolsheviks, the establishment of Soviet power, a new split in society, the spread of armed struggle (including the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk as one of the factors of the split);
March-June 1918 - local hostilities, formation of white and red armed forces, terror on both sides, further escalation of violence
Summer 1918 - late 1920 - "a big civil war between massive regular armies, foreign intervention, guerrilla struggle in the rear, militarization of the economy (this is actually a civil war in the full sense of these words, although it is more accurate to call this time - the "big" stage civil war).
1921-1922 - the gradual attenuation of the civil war, its localization on the outskirts and the complete end. Of course, the approach of Yu.A. Polyakova is far from perfect. But it represents a higher level of understanding of the history of the civil war in Russia.
Thus, the causes of the civil war in our country cannot be reduced to the search for its unequivocal culprits, but should be considered as the result of a multi-stage process of growing and aggravating socio-political confrontation in Russian society.
2. The composition of the opposing forces and the main events of the "big" civil war
By the summer of 1918, the overwhelming majority of Russian citizens did not want to fight. This thesis can be confirmed by the fact that at the beginning of 1918 no more than 2-3% of the officers of the old Russian army opposed the Bolsheviks.
So, 2341 officers participated in the first campaign of the Volunteer Army (including generals - 36, colonels - 190, lieutenant colonels - 52, captains - 215, staff captains - 251, lieutenants - 394, second lieutenants - 535, ensigns - 668) , and the entire army consisted of 3377 people.
However, as the hostilities unfolded, millions of people were inevitably drawn into the war. And the front of the civil war passed not only through forests and fields, it passed through families, through the souls and hearts of people. Therefore, when characterizing the composition of the opposing forces in a civil war, one should avoid a primitive "class" division into rich and poor.
The composition of the red and white armies was not so different from each other. Hereditary noblemen served in the Red Army, and the workers of Izhevsk and Votkinsk fought under the red banners in Kolchak's army. The bloody meat grinder of the civil war drew people in most often without their desire, and even, despite their resistance, circumstances often decided everything. Much, for example, depended on under whose mobilization a person fell, what was the attitude of certain authorities towards him personally, his family, at whose hands his relatives and friends died. A significant role was played by the characteristics of the region, nationality, religion and other factors.
It should also be borne in mind that the positions of specific individuals, political parties and social strata during the war were not static. They changed - and often repeatedly - in radical ways.
The main struggle during the "big" civil war took place between the Reds and the Whites. But a third force was also very significant, acting under the slogan: "Beat the reds until they turn white, beat the whites until they turn red." In the history of the civil war, she entered under the name "green".
Red. The backbone of this camp was the Bolshevik Party, which created a powerful vertical structure and, under the slogan of the dictatorship of the proletariat, actually established its own dictatorship.
The social base of the Soviet camp consisted of:
Workers of the central industrial region;
A significant part of the peasantry, which in the end largely predetermined the victory of the Reds;
Part of the officer corps of the Russian army (about 1/3 of its composition); petty bureaucracy, quickly making a career under the new government, incl. marginalized strata that seized power.
Some aspects of the creation of the Red Army. On January 15, 1918, the SNK decree proclaimed the creation of the Workers 'and Peasants' Red Army, and on January 29, 1918, a decree on the organization of the Red Fleet was adopted. But the first results of the creation of a new revolutionary army did not inspire optimism. The largest number of volunteers was recorded in peripheral areas under the immediate threat of capture by the whites, and in large industrial centers. In addition, under the guise of volunteers, a significant number of declassed elements entered the Red Army, considering the war as a source of personal enrichment.
In July 1918, the Decree on the general military service of the male population aged 18 to 40 was published. A network of military commissariats was created throughout the country to keep records of those liable for military service, organize and conduct military training, and mobilize the population fit for military service.
By the autumn of 1918, 300 thousand people were mobilized into the ranks of the Red Army, by the spring of 1919 - 1.5 million people, by October 1919 - up to 3 million people, by 1920 the number of Red Army soldiers close to 5 million.
The Bolsheviks paid great attention to the training of command personnel. In addition to short-term courses and schools for the training of the middle command level of the most distinguished Red Army soldiers, in 1917-1919. higher military educational institutions were opened: the Academy of the General Staff of the Red Army, Artillery, Military Medical, Military Economic, Naval, Military Engineering Academy.
At the same time, in the spring of 1918, a notice was published in the Soviet press about the recruitment of military specialists from the old army to serve in the Red Army. As of January 1, 1919, there were approximately 165,000 former officers of the tsarist army in the Red Army.
The so-called policy of “war communism” played a special role during the years of the civil war. It included a number of measures: on December 2, 1918, a decree was promulgated dissolving the committees of the poor, which came into conflict with the local Soviets, seeking to usurp power; On January 11, 1919, the Decree “On the allocation of bread and fodder” was issued, according to which the state reported in advance the exact figure of its needs for grain. But in reality, this meant taking away from the peasants all the surplus grain, and often the necessary supplies; in the field of industrial production, a course was taken for the accelerated nationalization of all branches of industry, and not just the most important ones, as provided for by the decree of July 28, 1918; commodity-money relations were abolished (free trade in foodstuffs and consumer goods was prohibited), which were distributed by the state as wages;
Why was this policy called "war communism"? "Military" - because this policy was subordinated to the only goal - to concentrate all forces for a military victory over their political opponents, "communism" - because the measures of the Bolsheviks coincided with the Marxist forecast of some socio-economic features of communist society.
Describing the policy and composition of the Red forces, it is impossible not to reflect some points related to their policy of "Red Terror". In general, this is a policy of intimidation of the population. For the first time, on a large scale, terror was used against the peasantry on the basis of the decree of May 9, 1918 "On the granting of emergency powers to the food commissar." In the cities, the "Red Terror" assumed wide proportions from September 1918 - after the assassination of the chairman of the Petrograd Extraordinary Commission, M.S. Uritsky and the attempt on the life of V.I. Lenin.
The terror was widespread. Only in response to the attempt on V.I. Lenin The Petrograd Cheka shot, according to official reports, 500 hostages. In the famous armored train, on which Leon Trotsky made his moves across the fronts, a military revolutionary tribunal with unlimited powers worked tirelessly. The first concentration camps were set up in Murom, Arzamas, and Sviyazhsk. Between the front and the rear, special barrage detachments are formed to fight deserters.
What were the whites? White. Usually, under this concept, they unite the entire camp of the counter-revolution, which opposed the Reds. The anti-Soviet camp consisted of:
and the landowners and the bourgeoisie deprived of power and property. Number with family members - about 6 million people;
b Cossacks - about 4.5 million people, united in 13 Cossack troops. Usually this military estate is portrayed as an implacable opponent of Soviet power. At the same time, it should be borne in mind that the Cossacks participated in the civil war and often fought on two fronts, protecting their interests, their special position in the state, which had developed historically and seemed unshakable to the Cossacks from both the Reds and the Whites. Thus, the Don Army was extremely reluctant to leave the Don Cossack Region. The top of the Kuban Cossacks pursued an openly separatist policy aimed at the formation of an independent state. Such aspirations were characteristic of the activities of atamans Semenov and Kalmykov in the East;
l part of the officer corps of the Russian army (about 40%);
the clergy. Only in the Orthodox Russian Church there were more than 200 thousand clergy, many of them fought against the Bolsheviks;
l workers and peasants who lived in the territory occupied by the white armies. At the same time, some were mobilized, others, mainly from among wealthy peasants, joined the ranks of the resistance on the basis of dissatisfaction with the policy of the Bolsheviks;
a significant part of the intelligentsia. This can include the top political parties (Socialist-Revolutionaries and, to a lesser extent, the Mensheviks), and the various governments they created during the civil war.
The White camp was heterogeneous. It included monarchists and liberals, supporters of the Constituent Assembly and an open military dictatorship, supporters of pro-German and pro-Ententine orientation, people of ideas and people without definite political convictions. In terms of civilization, the anti-Soviet camp included both supporters of the traditional path of development and those who advocated the development of Russia according to Western models.
However, extreme monarchists such as V.M. did not find their place in the white movement. Purishkevich, as well as extreme socialists like Kerensky and Savinkov. Due to political differences, the whites did not have a generally recognized leader. The programs of the Whites (Kolchak, Denikin, Wrangel) did not take into account the interests of the majority of the population. Thus, the program drawn up at Denikin's headquarters provided for:
The destruction of Bolshevik anarchy and the establishment of a legal order in the country;
Restoration of a powerful, united and indivisible Russia;
Convening a people's assembly on the basis of universal suffrage;
Democratization of power through the establishment of regional autonomy and broad local self-government;
Guarantee of complete civil liberty and freedom of religion;
Implementation of land reform;
The introduction of labor legislation, the protection of workers from exploitation by the state and capital.
Kolchak's program contained similar measures: Constituent Assembly, market economy, protection of private property, etc. For example, paragraph 3. Kolchak's "Agrarian Declaration" (March 1919) read: Retention of the owners of their rights to land. If we compare it with the Decree on Land, which proclaimed measures that are more understandable and acceptable to the peasantry, then the question is which of the programs will the majority of the peasantry follow? looks rhetorical (Kolchak Alexander Vasilievich (1873-1920). Admiral since 1918. From the family of a naval officer. Member of the Russian-Japanese and World War I, in 1916-1917 - commander of the Black Sea Fleet. At the end of 1918 he agreed become the dictator of Russia. Admiral Kolchak was extradited by the Czechoslovaks to the Irkutsk Political Center in exchange for the unimpeded passage of their echelons through the city. On February 7, 1920, by order of the Military Revolutionary Committee of Irkutsk, Kolchak was shot).
There were also supporters of the so-called "greens" in the civil war. What is this power? Greens. The green movement was not institutionalized. It proceeded quite spontaneously. It acquired its most massive character in the spring and summer of 1919, when the Bolsheviks tightened the food dictatorship, and Kolchak and Denikin restored the old order. Peasants prevailed among the insurgents, and the Russian-speaking population prevailed in the national regions.
Thus, in the spring of 1919, the uprisings engulfed the Bryansk, Samara, Simbirsk, Yaroslavl, Pskov, Smolensk, Kostroma, Vyatka, Novgorod, Penza, Tver and other provinces. At the same time, in Ukraine, the uprising was led by the former staff captain of the tsarist army, N.A. Grigoriev, who fought against the world bourgeoisie, the Directory, the Cadets, the British, Germans and French. For some time, Grigoriev with his detachments even entered the Red Army (6th Ukrainian Soviet division), but then opposed the Bolsheviks under the slogan "For the Soviets, but without the Communists."
The ideas and practices of the Greens manifested themselves especially brightly in the Makhnovist movement, which engulfed a significant region of southern Ukraine. It is characteristic that Makhno and other green leaders did not have a clear program. SR-anarchist views prevailed, the movement was not politically organized. In general, the insurrectionary movement in Russia was doomed, partisan detachments could not resist regular military units (Grigoriev, Makhno, Antonov, Basmachi) for a long time.
When analyzing the events of the civil war, it is necessary to take into account an external factor: the intervention of foreign states in the internal affairs of Russia. The Entente countries refused to recognize the power of the Bolsheviks, but tried to prevent Russia from leaving the world war.
Initially, the Entente tried in every possible way to maintain cooperation with the new government both in Moscow and on the outskirts of the former Russian Empire. At a conference in Paris, the spheres of influence of the allies on the territory of Russia were divided. At the beginning of 1918, the first troops landed in Murmansk, Odessa, Vladivostok and other ports. In March 1918, the Entente decided to support the anti-Soviet forces through military intervention. The goal was extremely clear: "The destruction of Bolshevism and the encouragement of the creation of a regime of order in Russia."
Three directions can be distinguished in the actions of Russia's former allies: 1) encouraging the collapse of Russia by supporting independent governments; 2) sending military contingents to zones of their "vital interests"; 3) providing all kinds of assistance to the White armies and other anti-Soviet forces.
In modern Russian historiography, there has been a tendency to "justify" the intervention or downplay its role in the civil war in Russia. They write that the interventionist corps was not numerous, that the interventionists acted far from Moscow and did not conduct active hostilities against the Reds. By February 1919, there were foreign troops on the territory of Russia with a total number of 202.4 thousand people, incl. 44.6 thousand English, 13.6 thousand French, 13.7 thousand American, 80 thousand Japanese, 42 thousand Czechoslovak, 3 thousand Italian, 3 thousand Greek, 2.5 thousand Serbian.
They spared no expense to fight the Bolsheviks even during the civil war. Only in December 1917 - the first half of January 1918, the volunteer army received: 60 million pounds from England, 500 thousand dollars from the USA, over 1 million rubles. from France and from special sources. England equipped the 200,000-strong army of Kolchak with everything necessary. By March 1, 1919, the United States provided the supreme ruler with 394,000 rifles, 15.6 million rounds of ammunition, machine guns, guns, and medicines. The reasons for such generosity were explained back in 1919 by W. Churchill: “It would be a mistake to think that during this year we fought for the Russian White Guards,” he noted, “On the contrary, the Russian White Guards fought for our cause.”
The role of Germany should not be forgotten either. After the Brest Peace, it occupied an area of 1 million square meters. km with a population of over 50 million people. There were about 300 thousand German troops on the territory of Russia.
Chronicle of the main events of the war. A characteristic feature of a "great" civil war is the confrontation between regular armies. By the end of 1917, the old Russian army had lost its combat effectiveness and practically disintegrated. The support of the Bolsheviks - the Red Guard - numbered more than 460 thousand people, but did not have combat experience, trained command personnel, or heavy weapons.
On December 16, 1917, the Council of People's Commissars abolished all ranks and ranks, introduced the election of command personnel and transferred power in the old army to soldiers' committees and Soviets.
On January 15, 1918, the Council of People's Commissars adopted a decree on the creation of the Red Army and on January 29 - the RKKF on a volunteer basis.
By April 1918, the armed forces of Soviet Russia numbered about 195 thousand people. During the summer - autumn of 1918, 300 thousand people were mobilized into the ranks of the Red Army. By the spring of 1919, the strength of the Red Army increased to 1.5 million people, and by October 1919 - up to 3 million people.
By 1920, the number of Red Army soldiers approached 5 million.
Simultaneously created their armed forces and opponents of Soviet power. In November 1917, the Alekseevskaya organization was formed in Novocherkassk (from December 27 it became known as the Volunteer Army). Its number at the beginning of 1918 was 3377 people, incl. 2341 officer. In April 1918, with the support of Germany, the Don Cossack Army (P.N. Krasnov) began to be created. Armies were also formed in other regions of Russia: in Transbaikalia - ataman G.M. Semenov, in Primorye - I.M. Kalmykov, in Harbin - L. Horvat, the People's Army of Komuch - in the Volga region, the Ural and Siberian armies, the army of the Central Rada in Ukraine, the Muslim, Armenian and Georgian corps in Transcaucasia.
Everywhere two methods of recruitment were used: a) voluntarily; b) forcibly on mobilization. The officer corps of the Russian army in the civil war. Officers form the backbone of the army. This is an axiom. The creation of both the red and white armies was impossible without the involvement of the officers of the old Russian army. As of October 1917, the officer corps numbered approximately 250 thousand, among which about 220 thousand (i.e. 88-90%) were wartime officers. And if the pre-war officer corps consisted mainly of nobles, then by the autumn of 1917, as a result of heavy losses during the war in the combat regiments of the active army, career officers could be counted on the fingers of one hand. In other words, the social composition of the officer corps, especially in the regimental level, has changed significantly: from the nobility, he became a raznochinsk.
How did the officers of the Russian army react to the Bolshevik revolution? Some historians, and especially modern publicists, argue that most of the officers met the Bolsheviks coming to power with hostility. Historical facts show that the position of the vast majority of officers in relation to the Soviet government can be called expectant or watchful-expectant. Immediately after October 25, 1917, 2-3% of the officers came out in the fight against the Bolsheviks. Even in the first campaign of the Volunteer Army at the beginning of 1918, only 2341 officers (including about 500 personnel) participated, and the entire army numbered 3377 people.
When analyzing the position of the officer corps, an important aspect is often overlooked. The collapse of the old army has left almost a quarter of a million officers unemployed. Decree of the Council of People's Commissars on legal and financial position generals and officers were equated with soldiers. War was their profession, and military service was the only source of livelihood for tens of thousands of officers. And many were drawn to the Don, not because they fiercely hated the Bolsheviks and Soviet power, but mainly because they promised service there. Soviet government turned to military professionals only in the summer of 1918, when the construction of a regular Red Army began. By the end of the year, 60 divisions had to be formed. This required about 55,000 commanders of all levels, and only 1,773 red officers could be trained in the courses, suitable only for primary officer positions.
And many officers went to the Red Army not because they firmly believed in the ideals of the world revolution and the future socialist Russia. For most, the reasons for joining the Red Army were more prosaic. But without their participation in the construction and combat operations of the Red Army, victory in the civil war is out of the question. Of the 20 front commanders, 17 were military specialists (including 10 officers of the General Staff and generals). Of the 100 army commanders, 82 were officers of the old Russian army (including 62 were career officers). The positions of chiefs of staff of fronts (100%) and armies (83%) were also filled by military experts (out of 25 NSh fronts, 22 were officers of the General Staff). The commander-in-chief of the armed forces of the Republic was also colonels of the General Staff I.I. Vatsetis and S.S. Kamenev. In general, 53% of the officers of the General Staff served in the Red Army.
In the course of studying the participation of the officer corps in the civil war on one side or another, one should avoid the primitive "class" approach: for the poor, for the rich, for the nobles. According to this logic, the son of the Cossack L.G. Kornilov, son of a soldier General M.V. Alekseev, as well as General A.I. Denikin and many others would have to serve in the Red Army, and aristocrats, hereditary nobles Brusilov, Tukhachevsky, Danilov - to create a Volunteer Army. In life, everything turned out to be much more difficult. Of the 250 thousand officers, approximately 75 thousand served in the Red Army (30%). About 100 thousand (40%) - in the white and other armies. The remaining 30% - turned into a "primitive state", i.e. returned to pre-war occupations or perished, died, scattered across the territory of Russia, emigrated abroad.
The civil war in Russia led to a phenomenal phenomenon, when the troops of the opposite sides were commanded by officers and generals yesterday still united Russian army. So, on the one hand, there were M.V. Alekseev, L.G. Kornilov, A.I. Denikin, A.V. Kolchak, N.N. Yudenich, and on the other hand, their yesterday's brother-soldiers who entered the service of the Soviet government: Commanders-in-Chief of the Red Army I.I. Vatsetis, S.S. Kamenev, Commanders of the troops of the fronts - V.M. Gittis, A.I. Egorov, V.N. Egoriev, P.P. Sytin, M.N. Tukhachevsky, V.I. Shorin; large staff workers - P.P. Lebedev, N.N. Petin, N.I. Rattel, B.M. Shaposhnikov; Army commanders - M.I. Vasilenko, A.I. Gekker, A.I. Cork, M.K. Levandovsky, I.P. Uborevich, R.P. Eideman.
Extremely confusing in modern literature is the question of the size of the armed forces. Often the total strength of the Red Army is compared with the number of troops of a particular white army in a particular operation.
In this paper, the main attention is paid to the most important events: the summer of 1918-winter 1919. - as the apogee of the civil war. The active actions of the anti-Soviet forces opened the rebellion of the Czechoslovak corps. It was formed from prisoners of war of the Austro-Hungarian army in 1917 and, by agreement of the Entente and the Council of People's Commissars, was evacuated to France through Vladivostok. On the night of May 26-26, 1918, parts of the corps, stretched in echelons along railway from Penza to Khabarovsk opposed the Bolsheviks.
In the summer of 1918, about 30 different predominantly Socialist-Revolutionary governments arose in the Volga region, in the Urals and in Siberia: in Samara - the "Committee of members of the constituent assembly", in Yekaterinburg - the Ural Regional Government", in Tomsk - the "Siberian Government". Under the slogan " All power to the Constituent Assembly!” they launched armed operations against the Bolsheviks.
At the end of September, an SR-Cadet government was formed in Ufa - the Directory, which declared itself all-Russian. Then the government moved to Omsk, where on November 18 it was dispersed by Kolchak, who became the Supreme Ruler.
In the autumn of 1918 - in the winter of 1919, the main areas of hostilities were: a) the Eastern Front (functioned from June 13, 1918 to January 15, 1920. The Eastern Front was commanded by: M.A. Muravyov, I.I. Vatsetis, S. S. Kamenev, A. A. Samoilo, P. P. Lebedev, M. V. Frunze, V. A. Olderogge) where the Red Army defeated the enemy and advanced to the Urals, where it united with the troops of the Turkestan Republic. b) Southern Front (functioned from September 11, 1918 to January 10, 1920. Front commanders: P.P. Sytin, P.A. Slaven, V.M. Gittis, V.N. Egoriev, A.I. Egorov ) fought heavy battles against the Don army in the Tsaritsyno and Voronezh directions, and then went on the offensive. However, on January 24, 1919, the Organizing Bureau of the Bolshevik Central Committee demanded that mass terror be carried out against the Cossacks who took part in the struggle against Soviet power. This deprived the Bolsheviks of all support on the Don and led to an uprising of the Cossacks in March. The offensive was suspended. c) in the north - the Red troops defended themselves in the Vologda and Petrograd directions. d) after the annulment of the Brest Peace, Soviet troops occupied Belarus, a significant part of the Baltic states and the entire Left-Bank Ukraine.
Spring 1919-Spring 1920
a) in March 1919, the Kolchak armies (Siberian, Western, Ural, Orenburg and Southern army groups) launched an offensive. But on April 28, the Eastern Front of the Reds launched a counteroffensive (first with its southern flank, and from June 21 with all armies). Kolchak's armies retreated to Siberia, where in January 1920 they were defeated.
To avoid war with Japan, the Soviet troops stopped the offensive. In April 1920, a buffer state was created - the Far Eastern Republic.
b) in the summer of 1919, after the obvious failure of the Kolchak offensive, Denikin launched a campaign against Moscow. The fighting went on with varying success. At first he was on the side of Denikin, then the initiative passed into the hands of the Soviet command. The cavalry raid of General Mamontov largely disorganized the work of the Southern Front of the Reds. However, by the spring of 1920, Soviet troops took Odessa and Novorossiysk. The remnants of the Armed Forces of the South of Russia under the command of Wrangel withdrew to the Crimea.
c) during the battles with Kolchak and Denikin, Yudenich's army, supported by Finnish, Estonian, Lithuanian, Latvian and other troops, tried three times to capture Petrograd, but failed to do so and was ultimately defeated.
Spring 1920-late 1920 After the defeat of the troops of Kolchak and Denikin, the Soviet government received a respite. But she was short-lived. Poland, with the support of the Entente countries, demanded the restoration of the border that existed before 1772, i.e. before the first partition of Poland. Russia did not agree to this. On April 21, Poland signed an agreement with the Ukrainian Directory: a) Poland recognizes the Directory as the Supreme Government of independent Ukraine; b) Ukraine for this agrees to the annexation of Eastern Galicia, Western Volhynia and part of Polissya to Poland; c) all Ukrainian troops are subordinate to the Polish command.
On April 25, 1920, the Poles launched an offensive and on May 6 captured Kyiv. On May 26, Soviet troops launched a counteroffensive, which approached Warsaw by mid-August. This caused some of the Bolshevik leaders to hope that the idea of a world revolution in Western Europe would soon be realized. In the Order on the Western Front, Tukhachevsky wrote: “On our bayonets we will bring happiness and peace to working humanity. To the west!". However, the inconsistency of actions between the fronts and the collapse of hopes for the help of the Polish proletariat led to the defeat of the Soviet Western Front.
On October 12, 1920, a peace treaty was signed in Riga with Poland, according to which the territories of Western Ukraine and Western Belarus passed to it.
During the Soviet-Polish war, Wrangel began active operations. His troops were stopped at Kakhovka and other bridgeheads. At the end of October, the troops of the Southern Front launched a counteroffensive, broke through the Perekop and Chongar fortifications and defeated Wrangel. On November 16, 1920, after the capture of Kerch, the Southern Front was liquidated. Almost 100 thousand people were forced to leave their homeland.
The civil war ended with the victory of the Reds. In April 1920 Soviet troops defeated the White Guards in Semirechye. At the end of April 1920, the 11th Caucasian Army, under the pretext of helping the rebels, entered Baku. The Azerbaijan SSR was proclaimed. In May 1920, the Volga-Caspian flotilla under the command of F.F. Raskolnikov entered the territorial waters of Persia. In June, after the occupation of Rasht, the Persian SSR was proclaimed, which existed for about a year. In November 1920 and February 1921, the same 11th Army occupied Erivan and Tiflis, respectively, and "proclaimed" the formation of the Armenian and Georgian Soviet Republics.
3. Historical consequences and lessons of the civil war
In a fierce civil war that lasted more than 5 years, the Bolsheviks managed to seize and hold on to power. The White movement remained fragmented, heterogeneous, without clear and popular slogans. The absence of an ideology in this movement greatly contributed to its rebirth, and started by "almost saints", it fell into the hands of "almost bandits."
The Bolsheviks, on the contrary, managed to combine the communist ideology (at the level of slogans) with those features of the Russian mentality, in which the new ideology often replaced religion.
What are the historical consequences of the civil war? The civil war led to huge material and human losses. The total amount of damage amounted to 50 billion gold rubles, and human casualties are estimated today at 13-16 million people.
The losses of the Red Army in battles amounted to 939,755 people, about the same amount were the combat losses of its opponents. The rest died from starvation and war-related epidemics. About 2 million people emigrated from Russia. If we take into account the decline in population growth during the war years, i.e. count the unborn Russians, then the amount of the loss can be estimated at about 25 million people.
As a result of the victory in the civil war, the Bolsheviks managed to preserve the statehood, sovereignty and territorial integrity of Russia. With the formation of the USSR in 1922, a Russian civilizationally heterogeneous conglomerate with obvious imperial signs was practically recreated.
The victory of the Bolsheviks in the civil war led to the curtailment of democracy, the dominance of a one-party system, when the party ruled on behalf of the people, on behalf of the party the Central Committee, the Politburo and, in fact, the General Secretary or his entourage.
As a result of the civil war, not only were the foundations of a new society laid, its model was tested, but the tendencies that led Russia to the western path of civilizational development were largely swept away.
During the Civil War, the struggle was for the further development of the country. There were several of these paths. The first is the preservation of Soviet power and its extension to the entire territory of the former Russian Empire, the suppression of all forces that disagree with the policy of the Bolshevik leadership. This path meant the creation of a socialist state, a state of the dictatorship of the proletariat.
The second path is an attempt to preserve a bourgeois-democratic republic in Russia and the continuation of the policy that was declared by the Provisional Government and the Soviets in the spring and summer of 1917: the further development of democracy and free enterprise. This path was mainly advocated by the parties of "revolutionary democracy", members of the Provisional Government and the Soviets - the Mensheviks, the Socialist-Revolutionaries (from the autumn - the Right Socialist-Revolutionaries), the left wing of the Cadets.
The third path was in the interests of the big bourgeoisie, the nobility, the supreme leadership of the tsarist army, and meant an attempt to preserve the limited monarchy and Russia as a "single and indivisible" country, true to "allied obligations."
The most important results of the Civil War: the defeat of all anti-Soviet, anti-Bolshevik forces, the defeat of the White Army and interventionist troops; the preservation, including by force of arms, of a significant part of the territory of the former Russian Empire, the suppression of attempts by a number of national regions to secede from the Republic of Soviets; the overthrow of national governments in Ukraine, in Belarus and Moldova, in the North Caucasus, in Transcaucasia (Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan), in Central Asia, and then in Siberia and the Far East, the establishment of Soviet power there. This actually laid the foundations of the unitary state created in 1922 - the USSR.
The victory in the Civil War created geopolitical, social, ideological and political conditions for the further strengthening of the Bolshevik regime. It meant the victory of the communist ideology, the dictatorship of the proletariat, the state form of ownership.
Lessons from the Civil War. Russian society has two poles of stability: either "the people remain silent" or "resolute and merciless rebellion." Moreover, the transition from one to another takes a little time. In such a mental field, a special responsibility falls on the modern political elite of the country.
Historical experience shows that a civil war is easier to prevent than to stop. But, unfortunately, even today the psychology of the civil war is not only present, but often reanimated, deliberately pumped up by both politicians and the media.
Our society is still divided into reds and whites. And this is a warning sign. The collapse of the Russian army largely contributed to the civil war. And the real state in which the modern Armed Forces of Russia are located makes us think about a lot. Are we ready today to repel the aggression of any, the most powerful adversary? As the results of the war in Chechnya show, NATO aggression in Yugoslavia - concern for the Armed Forces should be one of the priorities in the activities of the modern leadership of Russia.
Conclusion
The civil war was generated by a complex set of social contradictions, economic, political, psychological and other reasons, and became the greatest disaster for Russia. The deep, systemic crisis of the Russian Empire ended with its collapse and the victory of the Bolsheviks, who, with the support of the masses, defeated their opponents in the civil war and got the opportunity to put into practice their ideas about socialism and communism.
Historical experience teaches that it is easier to prevent a civil war than to stop it, which the Russian political elite must always remember. The victory of the Bolsheviks in the Civil War was determined by a number of factors:
The political cohesion of the Bolsheviks, headed by a super-centralized party, and in whose hands was a huge state apparatus, while in the White movement there were inconsistencies in actions, contradictions with the national regions and the troops of the Entente;
The ability of the Bolsheviks to mobilize the masses. In contrast, the White movement, which was largely heterogeneous, failed to rally the bulk of the population under its own slogans.
The Bolsheviks, who ruled the central regions of the country, had a powerful economic potential (human resources, heavy industry);
The superiority of the Red Army over the White in terms of numbers (1.5-2.5 times at different stages of the war);
The defeat of the parties advocating the second path of development was due to the weakness of the social forces behind them, the weak support of the workers and peasants.
The failure of the supporters of the third possible path, despite the unification of military forces, their connection with the interventionists, was historically predetermined, since this path was rejected by the overwhelming mass of working people.
Literature
1. Anisimov A. Denikin's armies before and after the defeat // Military History Journal. 1996. No. 6.
2. Archive of the Russian Revolution: in 22 vol. M., 1991.
3. White business: Fav. Works in 16 books / Comp. S.V. Karpenko. M., 1992.
4. The air fleet of the white armies during the civil war (1918-1920) M., 1998.
5. Wrangel P.N. Memories. In 2 hours. M., 1992.
6. Civil war in the USSR. TT. 1-2. M., 1980-1986.
7. Danilov A.A. History of Russia, XX century. Reference materials. M., 1996.
8. Dolutsky I.I. National history. XX century. M., 1994.
9. Polyakov Yu.A. Civil war in Russia: internal and external consequences//New and recent history.-1992. M., No. 4.
10. Polyakov Yu.A. Civil War: a look through the years. Ufa, 1994.
11. Rybnikov V.V., Slobodin V.P. White movement during the civil war in Russia. M., 1993.
12. Shulgin V.V. Days. 1920.-M., 1989.
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A civil war is a war that goes on inside the country, forcing a father to kill his son, and a brother to kill his brother. This war brings only destruction and suffering. Why is she needed? What causes it? What is the purpose? Two works are devoted to the topic of the Civil War, about the difficult formation of a new life: “The Defeat” by A. Fadeev and “Quiet Flows the Don” by M. Sholokhov.
In M. Sholokhov's epic novel "Quiet Flows the Don" one can see the whole tragedy of a bloody civil war. The book is about the fierce struggle for the victory of Soviet power on the Don, about the life and way of life of the Don Cossacks. They lived freely on the Don: they worked on the land, were a reliable support for the Russian tsars, fought for them and for the state. All families lived at the expense of their work, in prosperity and respect. But this calm, normal life was crossed out by the war.
A very difficult time has come in the life of Russia, which brought great social and moral upheavals. Talking about the fate of Grigory Melikhov and his family, the writer shows these events not only as a misfortune for one family, but also as a tragedy for the whole people. This disaster brought with it pain, devastation and poverty. After the First World War, the Cossacks were drawn into the Civil War. Among all these events, the author especially focuses on the fate of the protagonist of the novel, Grigory Melikhov. The war hardened the peace-loving Cossack, she forced him to kill. After his first murder, when he hacked an Austrian in battle, Gregory could not recover for a long time.
He was tormented by sleepless nights and conscience. The war changed Gregory's life. His fluctuations between whites and reds speak of the infirmity of character, that he is looking for the truth in life, rushing about and does not know “whom to lean against?”. But Grigory does not find the truth either among the Bolsheviks or the White Guards. He wants a peaceful life: "My hands need to work, not fight." But the war took that away from him. The war also brought discord into the Melikhovs' family relations. She broke the habitual way of life of these people. The grief and horrors of the war affected all the heroes of the novel.
Another work, A. Fadeev's novel "The Defeat", also covers the theme of the civil war. Shows people who fell into the partisan detachment. There were many truly dedicated people among them, but there were also those who got into the detachment by accident. In fact, both of them are experiencing a tragedy. Some are disappointed in their ideals, others give their lives for these ideals. Fadeev said that in a civil war “there is a selection of human material, everything that is not capable of a real revolutionary struggle is eliminated, and everything that has risen from the true roots of the revolution grows and develops in this struggle. There is a huge transformation of people." All people in the detachment are connected by the events that happen to them. Against the background of these events, the true character of the heroes is revealed. Testing a person is a choice between life and death. Frost, at the cost of his own life, warns the detachment of an ambush, and Sword, sent on patrol, saves his life in this situation: he abandons and betrays his comrades. He did not realize his place in life, and unlike him, Frost appears to us at the end as a mature, responsible person, aware of his duty to people.
Drawing a conclusion, we can say that a civil war is a cruel and merciless war. It destroys families and destinies of people. This is the tragedy of the country and its people.
Updated: 2018-05-21
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The civil war, in my opinion, is the most cruel and bloody war, because sometimes close people fight in it, who once lived in one whole, united country, who believed in one God and adhered to the same ideals. How does it happen that relatives stand on opposite sides of the barricades and how such wars end, we can trace on the pages of the novel - the epic of M. A. Sholokhov "The Quiet Don".
In his novel, the author tells us how the Cossacks lived freely on the Don: they worked on the land, were a reliable support for the Russian tsars, fought for them and for the state. Their families lived by their own labor, in prosperity and respect. Cheerful, joyful, full of work and pleasant worries, the life of the Cossacks is interrupted by the revolution. And people faced a hitherto unfamiliar problem of choice: whose side to take, whom to believe - the Reds, who promise equality in everything, but deny faith in the Lord God; or white, those whom their grandfathers and great-grandfathers served faithfully. But does the people need this revolution and war? Knowing what sacrifices would have to be made, what difficulties would have to be overcome, the people would probably answer in the negative. It seems to me that no revolutionary necessity justifies all the victims, broken lives, destroyed families. And so, as Sholokhov writes, “in a mortal fight, brother goes against brother, son against father.” Even Grigory Melekhov, the protagonist of the novel, who previously opposed bloodshed, easily decides the fate of others himself. Of course, the first murder of a man deeply and painfully strikes him, makes him spend many sleepless nights, but war makes him cruel. “I became terrible to myself ... Look into my soul, and there is blackness, like in an empty well,” Grigory admits. Everyone became cruel, even women. Recall at least the scene when Daria Melekhova without hesitation kills Kotlyarov, considering him the murderer of her husband Peter. However, not everyone thinks about what blood is shed for, what is the meaning of war. Is it possible that “the rich are driven to death for the needs”? Or to defend the rights common to all, the meaning of which is not very clear to the people. A simple Cossack can only see that this war is becoming meaningless, because you can’t fight for those who rob and kill, rape women and set fire to houses. And such cases were both on the part of the whites and on the part of the reds. “They are all the same ... they are all a yoke around the neck of the Cossacks,” says the main character.
In my opinion, the main reason for the tragedy of the Russian people, which affected literally everyone in those days, Sholokhov sees in the drama of the transition from the old way of life, which has been formed for centuries, to a new way of life. Two worlds collide: everything that used to be an integral part of people's lives, the basis of their existence, suddenly collapses, and the new one still needs to be accepted and used to it.
