In military history, the Russian Civil War is often brushed into a brief cul-de-sac, after a lengthy treatment of World War One, with the latter conv… - Russian Civil War

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In military history, the Russian Civil War is often brushed into a brief cul-de-sac, after a lengthy treatment of World War One, with the latter conventionally understood as the move into modern and total warfare. That approach is mistaken, not least because it fails to accept the military significance of the Russian Civil War and the modern and total war it represented, but also the degree to which the Soviet Union was born in the experience of civil war, and took on part of its character accordingly. This was a civil war that for long appeared to hang in the balance. For both sides, force was linked to fear in a sense of assault from linked threats, internal and external. The reaction on the part of the Communists was one of unparalleled brutality, although, even without the civil war, the Communists would probably have conducted themselves pretty much the same. Much of the content and tone of the writings before the Russian Civil War of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, the Communist leader, predicted what would happen. However, a dream of violence was superseded by a grimmer reality. Such a trajectory was more generally the case for the establishment of Communist regimes. Others were born in the experience of civil war, including Albania, Yugoslavia, China, Cuba, Vietnam and Ethiopia, and such a trajectory would also have been true for would-be Communist regimes. Moreover, as with the Soviet Union, such civil war frequently overlapped with international conflict. This was frequently presented in terms of revolutionary struggle with imperial and colonial powers.