Ρωσικός_Εμφύλιος_Πόλεμος
Απώλειες
Ο Βρετανός ιστορικός Ορλάντο Φίτζες έχει υποστηρίξει ότι η ρίζα της ήττας των Λευκών ήταν η αδυναμία τους να διαλύσουν τη λαϊκή αντίληψη ότι ήταν διττά συνδεδεμένοι με την Τσαρική Ρωσία και υποστηρικτικοί της Τσαρικής αποκατάστασης. Orlando Figes, A People's Tragedy--History of the Russian Revolution (Penguin Books 1996): At the root of the Whites' defeat was a failure of politics. They proved to be both unable and unwilling to frame policies capable of getting the mass of the population on their side. Their movement was based, in Wrangel's phrase, on "the cruel sword of vengeance"; their only idea was to put the clock back to the "happy days" before 1917; and they failed to see the need to adapt themselves to the realities of the revolution. The Whites' failure to recognize the peasant revolution on the land and the national independence movements doomed them to defeat. As Denikin was the first to acknowledge, victory depended on a popular revolt against the Reds within central Russia--yet that revolt never came. Rather than rallying the people to their side, the Whites, in Wrangel's words, "turned them into enemies". This was partly a problem of image. Although Kolchak and Denikin both denied being monarchists, there were too many supporters of a tsarist restoration within their ranks, which created the popular image--and gave ammunition to the propaganda of their enemies--that they were associated with the old regime. The Whites made no real effort to overcome this problem with their image. Their propaganda was extremely primitive and, in any case, it's doubtful whether any propaganda could have overcome this mistrust. In the end, then, the defeat of the Whites comes down largely to their own dismal failure to break with the past and regain the initiative within the agenda of 1917. The problem of the Russian counter-revolution was precisely that: it was too counter-revolutionary. [...] This is clearly shown by the story of the return of the peasant deserters to the Red Army. Until June the Reds' campaign against desertion had relied on violent repressive measures against the villages suspected of harboring deserters. This had been largely counter-productive, resulting in a wave of peasant revolts behind the Red Front which had facilitated the White advance. However, in June the Bolsheviks switched to the more conciliatory tactic of "amnesty weeks". During these weeks, which were much propagandized and often extended indefinitely, the deserters were invited to return to the ranks without punishment. In a sense it was a sign of the Bolshevik belief in the need to reform the nature of the peasant and to make him conscious of his revolutionary duty--thus the Reds punished 'malicious' deserters but tried to reform the 'weak-willed' ones--as opposed to the practice of the Whites of executing all deserters equally. Between July and September, as the threat of a White victory grew, nearly a quarter of a million deserters returned to the Red Army from the two military districts of Orel and Moscow alone. Many of them called themselves 'volunteers', and said they were ready to fight against the Whites, whom they associated with the restoration of the gentry on the land.