17 July 1918, a cellar in Yekaterinburg. The former Tsar, his wife, their five children and four servants are woken, taken downstairs and shot; the killing takes far longer than planned. White armies are closing on the town, and the Bolsheviks will not leave them a figurehead. Across a broken empire, Reds, Whites, peasant 'Greens', Czech legionnaires, Cossacks and foreign expeditions fight a war with no front line.
Why then
October gave the Bolsheviks two cities. In March 1918 the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk hands Germany a third of the old empire's people; the Allies land troops to keep Russia in the war; generals, Cossacks, socialists and nationalists refuse the new state. The revolt of the Czech Legion along the Trans-Siberian railway in May turns refusal into war.
What they wanted
Lenin means to keep the state at any price, and Trotsky builds the Red Army to do it. The Whites want Russia back, one and indivisible, and agree on little else. Peasants would settle for the land and being left alone by both. Poles, Finns, Ukrainians and Georgians want out.
What changed
The Reds win by 1921, holding the centre and the railways. Seven to twelve million people die, most of them from hunger and disease, including the famine of 1921–22. The Cheka leaves a method. In December 1922 the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics is founded on what is left.
Still argued
Did the Reds win because they were organised, or because the Whites were worse? Was the terror a response to the war or its purpose? The second argument is older than the archives.