General Denikin, in his Sketches of the Russian Turmoil (Ocherki russkoi smuty), spoke with blunt honesty about the causes of the White defeat. He cited the moral decomposition of the army, the looting and pogroms, which corrupted officers and soldiers alike and undermined discipline. But that was not the main problem. Denikin noted with perplexity that after his troops had liberated an immense territory, "we expected all elements hostile to the Soviet government to rise up. But there was no uprising."107 The commander of the White Army correctly reduced the entire problem of the civil war to what he called "one question": Are the mass of the people sick of Bolshevism and will they rally to our side?108 These were really two separate questions. To the first the answer was yes; to the second, no.
The main reason for the defeat of the counterrevolution in Russia was that its leaders failed to understand the political essence of a civil war. The revolution was led by people with political experience, but the counterrevolution was led by soldiers who had never concerned themselves with political and social questions. In mid-May 1918 Denikin and Alekseev drafted a program entitled 'The Objectives of the Army," which said that the Volunteer Army was fighting to save Russia by (1) forming a strong, disciplined, patriotic army; (2) waging a war to the death against bolshevism; and (3) restoring order and unity to the country. On December 4 the constitution of the Volunteer Army was published. It recognized the laws in effect on Russian territory before October 25, 1917; that is, it recognized the February revolution, and it guaranteed freedom of religion, the press, and assembly and the inviolability of private property. On November 18, 1918, Admiral Kolchak declared in his first appeal to the population that his main aim was "the creation of an effective army, the defeat of bolshevism, and the establishment of law and order so that the people can freely choose the form of government they desire and put into effect the great ideas of liberty that are now being proclaimed throughout the world."109
The primary objective of both Denikin and Kolchak was to create an effective fighting force. Their other objectives were vague and ill defined. The lack of a clear-cut program left an opening for the Red propagandists to attribute whatever they wished to the White generals.
The prime objective in a civil war must be to win the support of the population. The Bolsheviks came to power because they promised peace and land. The first promise was not kept, but the blame for that was laid on the counterrevolution. As for the land, it remained in the peasants9 hands, although the "surplus food appropriation system" subjected whatever the peasants grew to confiscation. Life became much harder, especially in the cities. Hunger, cold, and terror reigned. Nevertheless the new government kept one of its promises: the old ruling classes lost all their privileges. Not only did they live worse than before; they lived worse than the proletariat. Although the workers did not have any material satisfaction, at least they had a psychological one. The promise voiced in the workers' hymn, the Internationale, "We have been naught; we shall be all," was realized in inverted form: those that had been all became naught. This was a verifiable, undeniable accomplishment of the October revolution.
Popular support for the government at that time depended on two key questions: the future of the nationalities inhabiting the former Russian empire, and the future of the land that the peasants had taken. The Whites openly proclaimed their goal of restoring "Russia one and indivisible." Their Russian nationalism clashed with the irresistible growth of local nationalism in the outlying regions of the Russian state, the same regions in which the anti-Bolshevik forces were concentrated. The Bolshevik party concealed its true centralizing aims beneath the slogan of self-determina- tion. (Thus it came out ahead in the competition for popular support on the national question.)
The programs of the White governments dealt with the land question in an ambiguous way. The clause in the constitution of the Volunteer Army referring to the "inviolability of property" could be interpreted as a repudiation of the agrarian reform. On territory occupied by the Whites the land was frequently returned to the large landowners. On Soviet territory, peasant discontent was aroused by government requisitions and the formation of state farms and communes on former estate land, which the peasants thought should be divided up among themselves. A wave of peasant revolts in the Ukraine in 1919 was the direct result of a decree placing "all the large, cultivated holdings formerly belonging to the big landowners" in government hands so that state farms could be organized.110 Such decrees reflected the government's Utopian goal of creating "grain, meat, milk, and fodder factories that would emancipate the socialist system economically from [dependence on] the small proprietor."111 Despite such grievances, when the peasants compared them to the White policy of returning the land to the former landlords, the Bolshevik government came out the lesser evil. The population viewed the White program as a return to the past. The program of the revolution seemed to promise hope. For the majority an unknown future was preferable to the discredited past.
The revolution had a single leader whose authority was recognized by all revolutionaries, and this was one of its greatest assets. The leaders of the Soviet government quarreled among themselves no less than the White leaders and there were no fewer animosities among the members of the Revolutionary Military Council and the Red generals than among the White generals. To the clashes of ambition common to all armies and all wars was added a special rivalry, between the political and the military leaders of the Red Army. "The constant and unending dissension and quarreling among the political leaders about the so-called question of command do us great harm," wrote Commander-in-Chief Vatsetis to Lenin in January 1919. "Some party members, overcome with ambition, seek to occupy high positions of command despite their lack of military training for such duties and their total inability to function successfully as commanders."112 As chairman of the Council of People's Commissars, president of the Council of Labor and Defense, and head of the party, Lenin had unlimited power and unchallenged authority, which allowed him to act as the final arbiter in all disputes. To maintain a balance between hostile groups, Lenin would often support one side against the other for a while, then reverse himself and support the side he had opposed. In July 1919, for example, over Trotsky's objections, Lenin had Vatsetis removed as commander-in-chief, replacing him with Sergei Kamenev. To console Trotsky, Lenin gave him a blank piece of paper with his signature as chairman of the Council of People's Commissars at the bottom, approving in advance any order the commissar of war might issue.113 The White movement had neither an uncontested leader like Lenin nor an astute strategist who knew how to maneuver, as he did, in the political shoals of civil war without losing sight of the main objective.
Another decisive factor in the Bolshevik victory was terror. Ghastly episodes of White terror are known from many accounts. But terror in the White-occupied areas was always a matter of individual acts by sadistic or fanatical generals, such as Mai-Maevsky or Slashchov. The Red Terror was sponsored by the state. It was not directed against individuals or even political parties but against entire social groups, entire classes, and in some phases of the civil war against the majority of the population. The intimidation that Trotsky viewed as a powerful instrument of policy, both internationally and domestically, was applied on a scale of which the Whites had no idea. It was in the civil war that Stalin first revealed his talents. "Be assured that our hand will not tremble," he wrote to Lenin, who had sent him as a special emissary to Tsaritsyn and telegraphed him to be "ruthless."114 Stalin immediately passed Lenin's message along to Shau- myan in Baku: "We must be especially ruthless toward the bandits in Dagestan and elsewhere who are preventing trains from moving through the Northern Caucasus; a certain number of auls [mountaineers' settlements] must be burned to the ground to teach them not to attack trains in the future."115