Historical Dictionary of the Russian Civil Wars, 1916-1926

摘要

In the years following the Russian revolution, the infant Bolshevik regime fought many enemies on many fronts. It defeated them all. Its victory in the civil war was a miracle of survival and the history of those years, although complicated, is a heroic one. It was also horrible. But the terminal dates which Dr Smele uses for his book on the subject might surprise some readers. Russia's civil war is usually located between the years 1918 and 1921. In fact, those dates are largely correct, and the extra years in Smele's book have been added for thoroughness sake: he seems determined to cover every last skirmish, occupation force and military mission wherever it occurred - and in 1,500 pages of close detail he might have achieved it.