Vol. 7 (2021): Russian Civil War after 1917: multi-level approaches to a conflict and its representation

This article describes and analyses shifts in political preferences among Sevastopol workers during French intervention (November 1918 – May 1919). After outlining the social landscape of the city during the Russian Civil War, this paper focuses on the interactions between workers, foreign sailors and political parties. The aim of this article is to study the Bolshevisation of Sevastopol's working class based on the paths of several local workers. From the distribution of revolutionary leaflets to agitation in cafés, canteens, and factories, and many other illegal activities, what were the Bolsheviks' tactics to rally local workers to their cause?

After the Russian Revolution of February 1917, the definition of the Ukrainian territory became an important issue. One of the major controversies concerned the territorial affiliation of the eastern part of the country, a highly industrialised region located halfway between the Russian core and the Ukrainian periphery of the empire. This article focuses on the split within the Bolshevik Party between supporters of Donbass belonging to Ukraine and defenders of a Donets-Krivoi Rog republic attached to Russia. We show that this was not so much an ideological conflict between the "pro-Russians" and the "pro-Ukrainians" as it was a difference of views on the military and political strategy to be implemented in order to preserve the gains of the revolution and make its expansion possible. Moscow's decision to support the project of a Soviet Ukraine, thereby ruling out any possibility of separation of its eastern region, can be explained both by the desire to solve immediate problems (circumventing the provisions of a peace treaty, strengthening control over local Soviet institutions) and by the search for long-term solutions (advancing the world revolution, guaranteeing the stability of a multiethnic state that emerged from the disintegration of the Russian Empire).

The fate of Russian officers during the Civil War is still an active field of study. The author has compiled a database of naval officers for prosopographical analysis. This statistical analysis of the biographies after 1917 makes it possible to know precisely what percentage of officers joined which political camp, abstained from participating in the Civil War, emigrated or remained in Soviet Russia, what proportion changed sides, etc. In this way it is possible to take stock of their political commitments in an objective way. Although it represents a step forward compared to the often partial and biased approaches that prevailed in historiography, the prosopographical and statistical study is only of interest if it also allows us to question the motivations of the actors, to detail the factors, ideological or career, that determined their political choices and to evaluate their respective influence. To this end, this article focuses on the naval officers who were registered in Petrograd in 1918, at the time of the dissolution of the former Imperial Navy by decision of the new Bolshevik power.

During the 1920s in the USSR, the theme of the Civil War became an essential part of the mass culture of the period, and more specifically of Soviet film production. Produced in a context of shortages – experienced filmmakers and celluloid were lacking –, these films, which portrayed a simplified vision of events, had an essential propaganda purpose for the new Bolshevik regime. This article analyses the reception of these films on the basis of public discussions and opinion polls in cinemas among moviegoers. This work deals with the generational gap concerning the reception of this production: films that aroused the enthusiasm of a young public were often more criticized by the older generations, survivors of the Civil War. Indeed, the latter considered that the productions did not do justice to their sacrifices during those years of conflict. The violence of some shots, the blood on the screen, as well as the fate of the main characters are at the focus of heated discussions. This study focuses on the memory and commemoration of the Civil War in the first post-war decade.

When one thinks of the Ice March [Ledjanoj pohod], one naturally thinks of the Volunteer Army that left Rostov on 9 February 1918 under the command of General Lavr Kornilov to conquer Ekaterinodar. However, the decisive role played from Ekaterinodar by Victor Pokrovskij at the head of the Kuban army, which inflicted heavy defeats on the Bolsheviks as early as January 1918, is too often ignored.

In his writings, my father, Nikolaj von Buhrmeister, an artillery officer of the Guard, tells how he left the front and reached Ekaterinodar at the end of December 1917, with two comrades from his brigade. They enlisted in the volunteer corps that Viktor Pokrovskij formed under the aegis of Kuban’s Rada. With their artillery, they took part in the first victories over the Bolsheviks, but soon the balance of power made it impossible to defend Ekaterinodar. Once the cannons were drowned, the artillerymen formed the escort of Pokrovskij, commander of the Kuban army, in its retreat to the mountains. After constant fighting, it joined up with Kornilov's Volunteers Army. After Kornilov's death and the failure in front of Ekaterinodar, Pokrovskij's cavalry provided cover for this army retreating towards the Don and grew as the Cossack recruitment increased under his leadership. My father vividly describes the episodes of this epic, unusual for a former student of the Page Corps.

The aim of this article is to summarise the new understanding of the role played by the peasantry during the Russian Civil War from 1918 to 1922, made possible by the opening of archives in the 1990s and their incomplete publication by the historian Viktor Danilov and the sociologist Teodor Shanin. Although it does not radically overhaul the perception that one might have had previously of this crucial episode in twentieth-century Russian history, they do modify or clarify it on many points.

First of all, the uprisings against Soviet power, which were much more widespread than previously thought, often played a decisive role in the course of the Civil War and in particular in the decision to establish the NEP. Neither 'Reds' nor 'Whites', the peasants opposed the predatory policies of both.

However, what we do find in the archives are accounts of uprisings, many of which sparked off by the Bolshevik power's requisitioning of wheat by special detachments or forced conscription into the Red Army. These revolts were of varying scope.

Far from being monarchist, the slogans of the insurgents indicate a repudiation of the old regime and an endorsement of the soviets, along with a violent rejection of the Bolsheviks, who were regarded as thieves and profiteers. The archives reveal in detail the violence of the insurgents, but above all the massive repression they suffered.

This article is a publication of a source from the State Archives of the city of Sevastopol, with a preliminary commentary that discusses the relevance of this document to the study of French intervention in the former Russian Empire. It is a precious testimony of a local woman who describes some events in the life of her husband, a French sailor named Jean Lebreton. The latter deserted his cuirassier during the French intervention and settled in Sebastopol. Madame Lebreton, whose first name is unknown to us, relates her misadventures and those of her husband and reveals their tragic fate. In addition, this archive contains two letters from her husband written while the couple was imprisoned in Constantinople in 1921. The study of these documents seems relevant both from a shared history perspective and in the scope of gender studies, in order to address the episode of the Revolution and the Russian Civil War.

During the years 1900–1914, the number of exiled Russian revolutionaries staying in the major cities of Europe to escape tsarist repression increased. Some died in exile. This article is about the funerals of five of them who, apart from the first, were members of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party (SRP), affiliated to the Second International since 1904. The funerals of Pëtr Lavrov (1900, Paris), Pëtr Polivanov (1903, Lorient), Mihail’ Goc (1906, Geneva), Grigorii Gershuni (1908, Paris) and Leonid Shishko (1910, Paris) were the occasion for demonstrations in which the exiles affirmed their convictions and emphasised what made the deceased revolutionaries. Pëtr Lavrov and Grigorii Gershuni were buried in the Montparnasse cemetery near the graves of Communards. Two monuments were erected on their graves. A monument was also erected on the grave of Mikhail Gots in the Carouge cemetery in Geneva. The five funerals mentioned here were attended not only by Russian exiles, but also by representatives of political parties affiliated to the Second International, Russian students, emigrant workers from the empire, and French socialist sympathisers. Among the organisers of these events, the exiled Ilya Rubanovich played a key role. As a member of the central committee of the PSR and a French citizen, he highlighted the links between the PSR and international socialism. These events were occasions of recollection, cohesion, affirmation of a revolutionary identity, internationalist socialisation and the development of a collective memory.

Starting from the Polish director Agnieszka Holland’s film, Mr Jones, The Truth that can’t be hidden forever, this article is the result of an extensive reading of the articles and notebooks of Gareth Jones, a valiant young Welsh journalist who, in 1931, after interviewing Hitler, sets out to interview Stalin. But, when he arrived in Moscow, with a recommendation letter from Lloyd George, he discovered, with the help of a colleague’s confidence, that a severe famine was occurring in Ukraine, and that the regime and nearly all the Western journalists appointed in the USSR were doing their utmost to conceal it.

Gareth’s articles and note-books reveal appalling details of this famine, which was organized to export as much grain as possible. He joined the starving peasants and experienced the famine and its first effects himself. Gareth Jones was then captured by the secret services who offered him a deal : Gareth Jones was released and could return to England, but he had to refute the 'false rumours', otherwise six English engineers who had been specially arrested and charged with espionage would be sentenced.

This article analyzes the process of the Stalinian taboo, and its relaying by Western press just after Jones has proclaimed the truth about the Famine, (and, two years later, has been killed in Manchuria, probably as a vengeance). Then, this article shows the slow progression of studies on this frightening episode of a provoked famine. First, the obstinate cover-up, set up by the American journalist and Pullizer Prize winner in 1932, Walter Duranty, will be studied. Then, the slow progress of knowledge on this period will be examined, from the work of Boris Souvarine and his Stalin (1935) to the research of Robert Conquest published in Harvest of Sorrow (1986), to end with Anne Applebaum's latest book, Red Famine(2017), which raises the question, among others : Does the Great Famine in Ukraine correspond to the crime of genocide?

Today, Gareth Jones’s role is recognized in independent Ukraine, and his niece, author of a book called Gareth Jones, the Manchukuo Incident, published in 1999, has received on his behalf the posthumous Ukrainian Order of Merit.