General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: "US worse than the USSR"? American Amnesia of the worst sort [View all]Fantastic Anarchist
(7,309 posts)It was mostly three sides in the civil war. It was mostly one side after the civil war after the Western powers did their thing.
During the Civil War, you had your Bolsheviks, and at times, Mensheviks and Left SRs (Socialist Revolutionaries) and Right SRs. On another side, you had your dissident Marxists, Left Opposition, and at times, Left SRs and Right SRs, and anarchists (and in the Ukraine, the Makhnovists <Insurrectionary Revolutionary Army of the Ukraine> ) and various other unaffiliated socialists and trade unionists. And yet on another side, supplied and aided by the West, were the Tsarists and White Armies.
To quell the White Army reactionaries, the Black and Red Armies worked together, but also helped the Bolsheviks consolidate all their power, which in turn led to Stalin.
The rest, as they say, is history.