Shortly after withdrawing from World War I, Russia descended into a bitter civil war unprecedented for its savagery: epidemics, battles, mass executions, forced labor, and famine claimed millions of lives. From 1918 to 1921, through great cities and tiny villages, across untouched forests and vast frozen wasteland, the Bolshevik "Reds" fought the anti-Communist Whites and their Allies (fourteen foreign countries contributed weapons, money, and troopsincluding 20,000 American soldiers). This landmark history re-creates the epic conflict that transformed Russia from the Empire of the Tsars into the Empire of the Commissars, while never losing sight of the horrifying human cost.

Table of Contents

* Preface * Major Characters * Pt. 1 * Prologue * The Hungry Spring * The Fighting Begins * "The Expropriation of the Expropriators" * First Days of Terror * The Allies Intervene * Pt. 1 * Denikin and the Cossacks * Siberia's Supreme Ruler * The Petrograd Front * The Ukraine in Ferment * In the Red Heart of Russia * Pt. 1 * The Struggle to Survive * "Give Us Warsaw!" * The End of the Whites * Victory's Bitter Fruit * The Kronstadt Uprising * Epilogue: The Revolution Consumes Its Makers * Notes * Works and Sources Cited * Index

Reviews

"Red Victory is successful because of the author's abiding descriptive powers.... [This book] gives a fairly clear picture of how the great Soviet Union was put together by armed force and then held in place by a ruthless secret police. This is timely information as these dynamic forces are now relaxed and chaos spreads [in the former Soviet Union]".

-- New York Times Book Review