Although mortal, existential enemies, both Reds and Whites were united on one point: They wanted the boundaries of the Russia they hoped to control t… - Adam Hochschild

In the Soviet Union, for example, shooting or jailing political opponents at first helped the Communist Party and then Josef Stalin gain absolute power. But after there were no visible opponents left, seven million more people were executed, and many millions more died in the far-flung camps of the gulag.

In a nation so deeply xenophobic to begin with, the ultimately victorious Communists never forgot the foreign troops who had tried to strangle their baby in its cradle.

[T]o fight a complex, mechanized war, a disciplined army responsible to a central command is far more effective than a range of militias reporting to a crazy quilt of political parties and trade unions.