7 ms·

Every country in WWI did that, no? Anf while didn't say they were the only cause, they certainly didn't try to minimise casualties.

• cmrdporcupine 3y ago
  My point is that the first act the Bolsheviks did was to end Russian involvement in WWI and end that slaughter. (At the cost of massive loss of territory and reprisal from western powers.) It ain't black and white.
  • muro 3y ago
    That's a good point. I thought the Russian civil war was already happening at that time, so it enabled everyone in Russia to focus on that one alone. Is that incorrect?
    • cmrdporcupine 3y ago
      Civil war happened a bit later, but I guess it's blurry because it was also mixed up with the foreign invasion / punishments that came out of the Soviet withdrawal from the war and Brest-Litovsk. The allies were enraged by the withdrawal from the war, but of course also extremely interested in destroying the new Bolshevik regime. So right away after 1918 they were thrown into a conflict setting. I'd have to defer to an actual historian here for the full details, but my understanding of the history is that the "whites" that the Bolsheviks fought in the civil war were funded and aided by foreign powers (Britain, etc.), and that that funding and intervention began the moment Brest-Litovsk was signed, but then later transitioned into the full civil war scenario. Of course it all depends on how you draw definitional lines around civil war vs revolution, etc.