“There were the Bolshevists or “Reds,” rulers of Russia and fully on the defensive, and the counterrevolutionaries or “Whites,” divided into many incoherent groups of former officials, nobles, military men, Westernized liberals, and moderate socialists. . . .

The Boshevist government managed to survive only because of the lack of co-ordination of its enemies—the natural consequence of their utterly divergent aims. On the side of the Soviets were patriotism, enthusiasm, and fear—patriotism to defend the country against foreign invaders, enthusiasm to promote a “classless society,” fear (on the part of the masses, and particularly the peasants) of losing the economic advantages gained throug the Revolution. On the side of the Whites were expert military men, zeal for constitutional freedom, and the vast resources of the foreign interventionists. But the Whites lacked a common objective.”

—Walther Kirchner, on the Russian Civil War, 1918–1920. From A History of Russia, 1948.