Mind-Munitions

The Bolshevik Revolution and the War of Ideologies
201
Archangel on 1 August. Even so, from Siberia, the Civil War spread
to the Cossack territories and the Caucasus, but it was only after
the defeat of Germany that the European Powers could afford to
intervene more intensively. This gave time for Trotsky to build up
the new Red Army and for the Cheka, the secret police, to establish
its grip on the domestic population.
Following the Armistice with Germany, Allied intervention
increased dramatically. The French landed at Odessa in the south
in December, while the British and Japanese reinforced their detachments
in northern Russia and in the Far East, the latter being joined
by American forces. But, after four years of bloody war, public
support for Allied intervention declined, particularly after the failure
of the White generals Kolchak and Denikin to make substantial
progress in their offensives of 1919. Poland took up the cause and
attacked Russia in 1920 but, despite the help of the Ukrainians,
suffered a series of defeats at the hands of the Red Army. The Treaty
of Riga was signed in March 1921. By that time, most Allied troops
had been withdrawn, with the Japanese finally evacuating completely
in 1925. The White cause had collapsed. The Bolsheviks
had survived.
The role of propaganda in all this chaos and confusion is
difficult to evaluate. The Whites, to be sure, were less skilled in this
as in most other areas, particularly in their failure to capture the
support of the peasants. Their ideology also lacked the cohesion of
their opponents. The presence of foreign troops on Russian soil in
support of the Whites helped the Reds to play on nationalistic
desires to drive the invaders out of Mother Russia but, as will be
seen, this was not without its irony given the international aspirations
of the Bolsheviks. But Russia was far from being a unified
country; separatist elements exploited by the Whites in various
republics made disintegration a very real possibility. The Bolsheviks
for their part seized upon the disunity of their opponents while
themselves unifying the towns and countryside behind their own
party organìzation. This was done through a combination of
agitation, terror, and propaganda. Lenin’s land decree – his first act
in power – was itself a masterstroke of propaganda and served to
provide the basis by which the peasants could be won over.
Activists went out into the countryside to take the news to the
peasants that they now owned the land, to organize them, and to
agitate.