Vladimir Lenin
Civil War and the Polish–Soviet War: 1918–1920

Lenin tasked Trotsky with forming the Red Army, with Trotsky organizing a Revolutionary Military Council in September 1918 and serving as chairman until 1925. Lenin allowed former Tsarist officers to serve in the Red Army, monitored by military councils. The Reds controlled Moscow, Petrograd, and most of Great Russia, while the Whites were fragmented and geographically scattered on the peripheries. The Whites' Russian supremacism alienated national minorities. The White Terror was more spontaneous than the state-sanctioned Red Terror. Antisemitism proved to be a major issue during the Civil War, and while both sides attacked Jewish communities (see Pogroms during the Russian Civil War), the Whites successfully used antisemitism in anti-Bolshevik propaganda by blaming the Jews for the revolution and the alleged conspiracy behind it. Lenin, in his turn, blamed capitalists for inflaming antisemitism and condemned it in general.
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