The Soviet Civil War (1960-1963)

The Soviet Civil War was, in the interval between the Second and Third World Wars, the bloodiest armed conflict to occur in the Eurasian continent. Somewhat surprisingly, the Soviet Civil War did not escalate into a general war involving all of the Soviet Union's neighbours.

The origins of the Soviet Civil War lay in the discontentment of many Soviets with the capricious totalitarian rule of Lavrenti Beria. Although Berianist policies in science and industry were more productive than their Stalinist counterparts, in the realm of public life Marxist-Leninist and Berianist dicta dominated. The idea of frank public discussions of the problems facing the Soviet Union -- of the discontent in Poland and the Baltic States, occupied since 1944-5 as Communist satellite states; of the immense economic waste of the armed competition with the League of Nations and the United States; of the growing militarization of Soviet life and the Soviet economy -- was beyond the realms of the acceptable. Despite the ruthless KGB, many Soviets were silently unhappy about the perversion of the idealistic philosophy of the early Soviet state into an ideology justifying unchecked rule by an elite.

The breakneck industrialization forced by the Berianist regime was also obliquely criticized in literature as wantonly destroying the traditions of the various Soviet peoples, so sorely attacked by the famines of the 1930's and thirty million dead of the Second World War. These criticisms were particularly vocal outside of Siberia, which had received the lion's share of investment in industrial plant and infrastructure; the neglected villages of the Volga and the Black Earth district, and those who came from those communities, remained sullenly resentful of modernization, as did the traditionalist intellectuals of Leningrad.

These criticisms were often augmented by the nationalistic resentment of the non-Russian peoples inside the Soviet Union. The Central Asian republics had not managed to develop nationalisms of their own, based on their Turkic/Persian languages and their Muslim religion; indeed, the Kazakh and Kyrgyz republics were run by a firmly Berianist and Russian elite. Likewise, the overwhelmed non-Russian minorities of Siberia -- Yakuts, Buryats, Evenk, Khakass -- also remained quiescent. In the Georgian republic, though, the anger of that ancient Christian people at the predominance of the Russian language in their country and the overthrow of the ideology of Stalin, a Georgian himself, galvanized Georgian resentments. The diverse Muslim peoples of the North Caucasian federative republic resented the attempts of the kommissars to destroy their Muslim religion and culture, as did the Tatars of the middle Volga in Russia proper. The Finnic Komi people had also begun to develop their own identity, based on the melding of Komi culture with the Karelian culture brought by the Karelians deported from the Kola peninsula in 1945-6, and opposed to a planned industrialization that would reduce the Komi to a small minority in their homeland.

By far the largest of the dissident nationalities, though, was the Ukrainian nation, fifty million strong. Even under Polish rule, Ukrainians had developed a strong sense of national identity, and the Ukrainianization programs undertaken by the Independent Republic of Ukraine in its three years of independence had only reinforced this identity. After a Berianist terror that killed almost two million Ukrainians, Ukrainian Communists managed to acquire a certain degree of autonomy. The Russification policies applied outside Ukraine -- in the neighbouring Belarusian republic, for instance -- never were fully applied inside Ukraine, while towards the end of the 1950's some leading members of the Ukrainian Communist Party went so far as to propose that the Ukrainian republic adopt the same liberal reforms as independent Poland and Lithuania. The resistance of the minor nationalities, and the outright defiance of the Ukrainians, angered the Berianist factions of the Soviet Communist Party.

In April of 1960, these tensions latent in the Soviet Union exploded into civil war after an abortive move by the Berianists to purge Ukraine and Leningrad of the deviationists. The Ukrainian republican government managed to easily defeat the Berianists, and negotiated with local Soviet army commanders to remain neutral. The Leningrad liberals took the dangerous step of quietly appealing for support from Soviet army commanders unhappy with the latest purge of the officer corps. Perhaps surprisingly, quite a few local military commanders and the entire Northern Military District supported the Leningrad liberals. In Central Asia, Berianists quickly took over the administration of the Uzbek, Tajik, and Turkmen republics, but that passed unnoticed in the midst of the control of most of the European Soviet Union by liberals. Though they broadly supported the Leningrad liberals, the Soviet garrisons in the satellite states remained uncertain about what to do -- the collapse of the Polish and Baltic Communist governments, and their replacement by ad hoc coalitions of local nationalists and social democrats, set the Soviet policy in eastern Europe in shambles. It was only when the non-Communist governments managed to get the League of Nations and the European Confederation to negotiate for the rapid withdrawal of the garrisons, eventually incorporating the former satellite states inside the Confederation but limited domestic and foreign military deployments, that they began to withdraw in May. (Soviet recognition of Polish and Baltic membership in the League of Nations and the European Confederation came under the terms of the Lausanne Accords in 1964.)

The first bouts of actual armed conflict occurred around Moscow in June of 1960, between KGB assault troops and the pro-Leningrad city garrison. By the end of the summer of that year, the fighting had spread throughout European Russia and much of western Siberia, as the opposing Leningrad and Berianist coalitions fought pitched battles -- fortunately, all using conventional armaments -- for control of the Soviet heartland. The immense tank battle at Ryazan' in September of 1960, and the running battles the length of the Volga and the 'Ob in the following summer, devastated much of the Russian heartland at heavy cost to its civilian population.

Remarkably, the non-Russian fringes of the Soviet Union managed to limit their involvement in the conflict. Aside from clashes on the Georgian coast that quickly petered out by August, Georgia managed to remain uninvolved. The North Caucasian peoples had to face an Berianist infantry column in the spring and summer of 1961, but using the same tactics that had held the forces of Tsarist Russia at bay the North Caucasians managed to drive out the invaders with heavy losses. After brief fighting in and around the Komi capital of Syktyvkar, the Berianists withdrew their beleaguered garrison and left the Komi effectively independent. Even vast and populous Ukraine managed to hold off invaders, melding the Ukrainian republican militia and defecting Soviet army units into a Ukrainian Republican Armed Forces that quickly gained battle experience in driving out Berianists. Increasingly, all of these peripheral peoples began to act as independent agencies regardless of the Russians.

By the end of 1961, the Soviet civil war had devolved into a Russian civil war. Save for some ethnic partisans and irregulars, all of the soldiers fighting and dying on the many battlefields spoke Russian, while radio stations broadcasting in Russian propagandized for the causes of the Leningraders and the Berianists. A front had formed, stretching from northern Kalmykia by the Caspian Sea upon along the Volga to Kazan', and from there east to the Urals and westernmost Siberia. All along that front, the infrastructure and industries of the area -- repaired at such cost less than two decades ago -- were devastated in continuing infantry, tank, and air battles. The forces available to the two sides balanced each other -- while the Leningraders had at their disposal a larger industrial base and a larger population, the Berianists had, in the Kuzbass and Baikal industrial districts, a far more secure industrial base, and a more loyal population. The warfare might well have continued indefinitely, had it not been for the decision of the autonomous non-Russian republics -- the Ukrainians, the Komi, the Georgians, and the North Caucasians -- to throw their substantial armed forces and industrial bases into the battle in January of 1963.

In the half-year after the non-Russian republics intervened on behalf of the Leningraders, the front line was pushed east immensely. The March 1963 Battle of Kazan' drove Berianists out of the entire Middle Volga region, while Tatar partisans promised a Tatarstani republic decimated the vulnerable flanks of the retreating Berianists. Along the Caspian Sea, Kalmyks moved to occupy Kazakstan west of the Ural River. In Central Asia in spring, the restive Muslim populations of the area began to rise up in revolt. Unchecked, the Soviet Civil War might well have ended in a complete victory for the Leningraders and their allies by 1964, or 1965 at the latest. In June of 1963, though, the Berianist Central Committee threatened to bring Chinese troops into the field and to overwhelm the numerical superiority of the Leningraders and their allies. For their part, the Leningraders would have been willing to brave Chinese intervention, but the refusal of their allies to continue the fight forced the Leningraders to sign a permanent ceasefire in Sverdlovsk in July of 1963. After three years of warfare and almost 3.5 million dead, the Soviet Civil War came to an end.

Given the immense bloodshed of the Soviet Civil War, and the ideological rift that opened up between the Berianists and the rest of the Soviet Union, the collapse of the Soviet federation was probably the most sensible outcome. Despite their immense differences, though, both the Leningrader and the Berianist factions inside Russia were determined to keep the Soviet state united, and within its pre-Civil War boundaries. Much as the nationalist governments of the various republics were outraged, they simply could not count on any kind of international recognition, much less aid. Almost despite themselves, all of the republican governments, and the Leningrader and Berianist factions of Russia, met in Moscow in from the end of the war until the middle of 1965 to hammer out a new Soviet constitution.

The Soviet constitution of 1965 explicitly made the Soviet Union an asymmetrical confederation.  At the outer edges of independence, Ukraine, Georgia and North Caucasia gained the newly-devised status of Associated Soviet Republics. Associated Soviet Republics possessed the right to determine cultural and linguistic policies without interference from the Soviet government, and could determine their political and economic structures within an ill-defined "Marxist-Leninist socialist" framework. The Soviet Socialist Republics -- now including Tatarstan, Komi, and Kalmykia -- were forced to adhere to a more conservative line. The most noticeable change on the Soviet map, though, was the division of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic into a rump Russian federative republic (now including the defunct Belarusian republic) under Leningrader control, and the new Siberian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, including the Central Asian republics and under firm Berianist control.

The Soviet Civil War, and the subsequent 1965 settlement, changed  the course of world history immeasurably. Had the Soviet Union collapsed entirely after 1965, the European Confederation might well have expanded eastwards much more rapidly than was the case, bringing about correspondingly greater prosperity. Russia might not have languished in poverty, while the peoples of Central Asia might have had the chance to emerge as nations of their own. The manifold divisions in the non-Berianist Soviet Union were matched by the emergence of a disciplined, racist, and fanatical Berianist-controlled Siberia. This new Siberia, in seeking common cause with an increasingly more radical China, lay the foundations for confrontation in Southeast Asia.