Review/Coming Events Reviewing a wrenching history RED VICTORY: A History of the Rus- sian Civil War. By W. Bruce Lincoln, ' Simon and Schuster, New York, 1989. 637 pages, index, bibliography, 2 maps, 27 photographs; hardcover, $34.95 The Russian Civil War of 1917-1921 was one of the great catastrophes of moder history. It raged through every comer of the former Russian Empire, consumed seven million lives, and left city and countryside in ruins. It also left scars on every aspect of the world’s first socialist revolution. Books about great conflicts often reveal as much about the era in which they are written as they do about the events they describe. After the Civil War, Russian emigre writers poured out an acid hatred of the revolution, and their distorted opinions _ Were accepted at face value by most his- torians, with few exceptions. E.H.Carr’s History of the Bolshevik Revolution, a thoughtful study of the political and economic realities which severely limited the Bolsheviks’ course of action, is devoid of hysterical anti-Soviet ravings, but Carr’s work barely touches on the military aspects of the Civil War period and lacks concrete social detail. This is precisely what Bruce Lincoln provides in Red Victory: a History of the Russian Civil War and, although his chronicle is by no means pro-Bolshevik, it is a balanced and honest account, which reflects the present decline of Cold War hostility. The main features of the Civil War are well known. The infant revolution was al- most strangled at birth, as troops from 14 countries (including Canada) were sent to FLORISTS Flowers for all occasions Telephone: 434-3533 15, 4429 Kingsway Burnaby, B.C., V5H 2A1 We specialize a aoa support the White armies which were mas- sively supplied and financed by Britain, France and the U.S. What Lincoln has done which is new is to flesh out the bare bones of this story with a wealth of detail taken from government documents, military records, memoirs and diaries from archives and libraries around the world, including several in the Soviet Union itself. His ex- haustive bibliography lists over a thousand items. Lincoln constantly reminds us that the Civil War was fought with bitter class hatred that distorted Soviet social development for decades. But his central theme is that the war unified the Russian people under Bolshevik leadership, despite the hardships imposed on workers under “war Communism,” the forced grain requisitions from the peasants, and the systematic Red Terror of the Cheka, the Bolsheviks’ political police. The work- ers and peasants under White rule faced worse conditions, and a far more general White Terror. Lincoln writes: “Eventually, the people - of South Russia came to prefer predictable and orderly exploitation at the hands of the Reds rather than face the capricious and uncontrolled rapacity of the Whites. ... Even as he took Orel at the end of September [1919], Denikin had to shift desparately needed reserves from his front ... as he and his generals turned to make war upon the very peasants they had sworn to save from the abuses of Bolshevism.” In particular, Lincoln details the “incred- ible ferocity” of White pogroms against the Jews, in which “the enemies of Bolshevism committed:some of the most brutal acts of persecution in the modern history of the Western world. ... the Jews of the Ukraine tumed to the Bolsheviks, who shot pog- romists and banned anti-Semitic writings. --. entire Jewish settlements began to follow Red Army units when they retreated rather than face the tender mercies of Denikin’s soldiers.” The profound evils of the Whites also weakened the foreign intervention, since many foreign troops were reluctant to attack the Reds. Lincoln quotes an American ser- geant who wrote in his diary that most Rus- sians supported the Bolsheviks, whom he nicknamed “the Bolo”: “I don’t blame them in fact I am 9/10 Bolo myself.” One highlight of the book is its full des- cription of the Russo-Polish War of 1920- 1921, which has been ignored by too many historians. The Red Army defeated a mas- Visit the USSK For all your travel needs, big or small. Let Globe Tours find the best way for you. GLOBE TOURS 2720 E. Hastings St. Vancouver, B.C. Phone 253-1221 sive invasion and drove the Polish army back to Warsaw, where the Bolsheviks hoped to link up with the Polish working class and carry the revolution into central Europe. But the threat to Warsaw aroused the national sentiments of Polish workers and they rallied instead behind the dictator Pilsudski to break the Red offensive. This disastrous conflict laid the basis for a Polish distrust of the Soviet Union which still darkens their mutual relations. Lincoln is willing to tackle those aspects of the Bolshevik Revolution which are: still controversial. He agrees with’ the Soviet view that, in 1917, only the Bolsheviks of- fered a clear program to end the war with Germany and improve conditions which were deteriorating rapidly under Kerensky, who “promised his listeners everything but gave them nothing ....” Contrary to the Soviet view, however, he claims that the Bolsheviks were morally crippled by the Civil War, when not only sincere revolutionaries joined the party, but also thousands of “radish Communists,” ruthless opportunists “whose red exterior masked a White core.” The party’s internal struggles to root out such people, he claims, played into the hands of Stalin and destroyed party democracy. The most controversial part of the book is its description of the activities of the Cheka in the most horrifying terms, which Lincoln takes straight from the The Red Terror in Russia published in 1925 by the emigre historian Sergei Melgunov. In Let History Judge, dissident Soviet historian Roy Medvedev warned that “the dimensions of the Cheka’s abuses and mistakes have always been exaggerated by ideological op- ponents of the Soviet Union,” which certain- ly includes Melgunov, but Medvedev bases his own sympathetic appraisal of the Cheka on the 1921 testimony of one its main lead- ers, Martyn Latsis, who may have been less than candid. The present controversy about “the dim- ensions of the Cheka’s abuses and mistakes” concems Lenin’s role in these matters, and here again Lincoln’s appraisal of him reflects a post-Cold War reluctance to con- demn Soviet history out of hand: “Again and again, the Bolsheviks had stood at the brink of defeat only to be drawn back from the precipice’s edge at the last and final moment by Lenin’s genius for striking the proper balance between concession, conciliation, and coercion.” In summary, Red Victory is thoroughly researched and vividly written, with a serious and thoughtful intent to understand aconflict which still reverberates in today’s political debates, both in the West and in the Soviet Union. —Glenn Bullard DA