Revolutions and Civil War

Abstract

The focus of this chapter is on the complex developments in the North Caucasus during the time of Revolution and Civil War (1917-1921). If the period of the February and October revolutions was characterized by attempts of the North Caucasian political and religious elite to form a single state entity, the outbreak of civil war brought societal and ethnic cleavages to the fore, undermining common state-building efforts. Caucasians fought on all sides of the front, but most of the North Caucasian Muslims allied themselves with the forces of the Bolsheviks, with whom they shared a common cause: to prevent the re-establishment of the old regime. While the “White” troops under former tsarist General Anton Denikin fought for a Russia “one and united,” the Bolsheviks promised the non-Russian peoples land and freedom. Shortly after the triumph of the Bolsheviks, cracks began to appear in these alliances. By mid-1920, the mountainous parts of Chechnia and Dagestan had been set aflame in a large-scale anti-Bolshevik uprising led Imam Gotsinskii. Only in late 1921 did the Bolsheviks, with assistance from regular units of the Red Army, manage to crush this rebellion and establish military superiority.