Russian Civil War Timeline

The Czechoslovak Legion, some 50,000 former Austro-Hungarian POWs seeking passage home, seized control of key cities along the Trans-Siberian Railway after clashes with Bolshevik authorities, giving the anti-Bolshevik cause control of Siberia.

Image source: Revolt of the Czechoslovak Legion

Socialist Revolutionaries formed the Committee of Members of the Constituent Assembly (Komuch) in Samara, attempting to revive democratic government against the Bolsheviks with support from the Czechoslovak Legion.

Image source: Committee of Members of the Constituent Assembly

As White forces approached Yekaterinburg, the Ural Soviet ordered the execution of Nicholas II, Alexandra, their five children, and four servants in the basement of the Ipatiev House, ending any possibility of restoring the monarchy around the Tsar himself.

Image source: Murder of the Romanov family

White and Czechoslovak forces captured the strategic city of Kazan on the Volga, seizing part of the Imperial gold reserve, before Leon Trotsky personally organized the Red Army's counteroffensive which retook the city in September.

Admiral Alexander Kolchak staged a coup against the socialist Directory in Omsk and declared himself Supreme Ruler of Russia, unifying much of the White movement under military rule and becoming its most prominent figurehead.

Image source: Alexander Kolchak

Kolchak's armies drove west across the Urals, capturing Ufa and threatening the Volga. The offensive stalled before Samara due to overextended supply lines, Red resistance, and spring thaw, marking the high-water mark of White fortunes in Siberia.

Image source: Great Siberian Ice March

General Nikolai Yudenich organized the White Northwestern Army in Estonia with Allied backing, aiming to strike toward Petrograd, where the Bolshevik capital faced threats from multiple directions in 1919.

Image source: Northwestern Army (Russia)

General Anton Denikin's Volunteer Army took Kharkov in June and Tsaritsyn in early July, securing the Donbass coal fields and grain regions. Emboldened, he issued the Moscow Directive ordering an advance on the Bolshevik heartland.

Image source: Anton Denikin

Yudenich's Northwestern Army reached the suburbs of Petrograd but was repulsed by Trotsky's hastily mobilized defenses, aided by British naval support for the Soviets and Estonian refusal to assist further. His army retreated into Estonia and was disarmed.

Image source: Battle of Petrograd

Denikin's forces reached their northernmost point near Orel, only about 250 miles from Moscow, while Cossack cavalry raided as far as Tula. Overextended and harassed by Makhno's rear-area raids, the Whites were soon thrown back by massive Red counterattacks.

Image source: Armed Forces of South Russia

In a sweeping winter counteroffensive, Budyonny's cavalry and other Red formations retook Kharkov, Kiev, and Tsaritsyn, shattering the Armed Forces of South Russia and sending Denikin's army into a catastrophic retreat toward the Black Sea.

Image source: Kharkiv Operation (December 1919)

With Omsk falling to the Red Army in November 1919, Kolchak's retreating forces endured a horrific winter march along the Trans-Siberian Railway. Abandoned by allies, Kolchak was handed over by Czechoslovak troops, executed at Irkutsk on February 7, 1920.

After the disastrous Novorossisk evacuation, Denikin resigned and Pyotr Wrangel took command of the remnants in Crimea, reorganizing them into the Russian Army and pursuing a more pragmatic policy of land reform and alliances with Cossacks and Ukrainians.

Image source: Pyotr Wrangel

Wrangel broke out of the Perekop isthmus into northern Taurida and the Kuban, hoping to rally Cossack support, but gains proved temporary as the Red Army, freed by the Polish armistice, massed overwhelming forces against him in October.

Frunze's Red Army stormed the fortified Perekop and Chongar isthmuses, forcing Wrangel's evacuation of some 150,000 soldiers and civilians by sea from Sevastopol. This marked the effective end of major White military operations in European Russia.

Image source: Siege of Perekop (1920)

Nestor Makhno built an anarchist peasant army, the Revolutionary Insurgent Army of Ukraine, which fought Germans, Austrians, Whites, and intermittently allied with then fought the Bolsheviks, embodying the 'Free Territory' experiment in southern Ukraine.

Image source: Nestor Makhno

The Ukrainian Directory under Symon Petliura overthrew Pavlo Skoropadskyi's German-backed Hetmanate, restoring the Ukrainian People's Republic amid chaotic fighting between Ukrainian nationalists, Reds, Whites, anarchists, and Polish forces.

Image source: Directorate of Ukraine

After the Bolsheviks turned on their former anarchist allies, Makhno's dwindling insurgent bands waged guerrilla warfare until being hunted down by large Red Army contingents. Wounded, Makhno escaped into exile through Romania in August 1921.

Image source: Revolutionary Insurgent Army of Ukraine

To avoid war with Japan still occupying eastern Siberia, Moscow created the nominally independent Far Eastern Republic, which gradually absorbed White-held territory including Vladivostok before merging with Soviet Russia in November 1922.

Image source: Far Eastern Republic

Sailors at the Kronstadt naval base, once heroes of the October Revolution, rose demanding free soviets and an end to food requisitioning. Tukhachevsky's Red Army stormed the fortress across ice, crushing the revolt and prompting Lenin's New Economic Policy.

Image source: Kronstadt rebellion

The Treaty on the Creation of the USSR united the Russian, Ukrainian, Byelorussian, and Transcaucasian Soviet republics, formalizing the Bolshevik victory and creating the state structure that would dominate Eurasia for nearly seven decades.

Image source: Soviet Union