Why did the Reds win the Russian Civil War?

When you look at the map of the Russian civil war in 1918, its easy to think that the Reds look thoroughly outnumbered and outgunned, tucked away at the western edge of Russia clustered around the key cities of Moscow and Petrograd. However, for numerous reasons, this was an extremely advantageous position.  These cities were teeming with exactly the kind of people who would be inspired by the Communist message of class struggle - the urban poor or 'Proletariat'. Moscow and St Petersburg alone dwarfed the next five cities combined! Because these people were largely Proletariat and not the often anti-Bolshevik rural peasantry or nobility, the Bolsheviks could make much better use of their people - they put more of them to work in the factories and more of them into the fields with rifles, fielding an army twice the size of the Whites at its peak. Lenins 'War Bolshevism' also allowed him better use of these people by nationalising factories and paradoxically banning strikes. In comparison, the White land was largely sparsely populated, spread out and downright unproductive - it was difficult to coordinate an army so spread out and a great many White commanders become de facto independent warlords, fighting for themselves behind a white banner like Seymonov or, even more extreme, Von Sternberg! In addition to this, the Reds had way more cohesion among their factions. The Reds were united behind a common goal: A Communist Russia. Meanwhile the Whites bickered over their personal interpretations of a post-victory Russia. Would it be a constitutional monarchy? an autocratic dictatorship? Not to mention the ethnic divides in anti-Soviet forces - while Lenin made treaties with those who sought independence, the whites doubled their work by refusing to concede to separatists, scaring away potential allies in the non-Russian groups which filled the country. This lack of unity also hurt their morale, they had little binding and inspiring them in the way the Reds did, as I mentioned earlier. 

Answered by Scott A. History tutor

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