Why the Reds Won

CHAPTER 7 · 1918–1920 · The Russian Revolution, 1905–1924

On paper the Reds should have lost. They were blockaded, cut off from the grain and coal and oil of the borderlands, faced by professional officers backed by foreign powers, and at the crisis of October 1919 (scrub one snapshot forward) their territory shrank to little more than the old Muscovite heartland. Yet look at where that heartland was: the Reds held the center — Moscow, Petrograd, the dense hub of railways, the arms factories, and two-thirds of the population. They fought on interior lines, able to shift reserves by rail from one threatened front to another in days, while the Whites w

The turn: Orel, October 1919 — the high-water that broke.

This chapter is one scene of an interactive atlas: the map repaints as the dates advance, campaigns draw themselves, and every chapter argues its causes and consequences — then a field exam asks you to prove it on the map.