Welcome to Russian History Retold.

Episode 293, the Russian Civil War, a people's perspective.

Last time, we did an interview with Professor Rolfe Hellabost about his latest book,

how Russian literature became great. Today we go darker and discuss the Russian Civil War, but not the battles or the events, but from a people's perspective, which will include comments by Lenin, Trotsky and other leaders. Still, we will delve more

into what the people of Russia, Ukraine, and the rest of the soon-to-be Soviet Union

went through and what they thought and felt.

This series, which will include the Russian Revolution and the Crimean War, will be three of the

darkest I have ever covered in the past almost 14 years.

Still, I knew I had to cover this because one of my tenants in teaching history

is that if history doesn't make you uncomfortable at one time or another, you are not teaching history.

I guarantee you some of the stories you're about to hear.

First hand and second hand accounts will be challenging to listen to.

It will also give you all a better understanding of the Russian people and what they have endured during the cataclysmic

events of their history.

Before we move on, I want to read a few quotes I found in the book,

Former People, The Final Days of the Russian aristocracy

by Douglas Smith, in his chapter about the Civil War.

The first is from Vladimir Lenin in his typical verbose manner.

Quote, the path of history is beyond the understanding of those who have been consigned to the routine of capitalism, of those who would have been defeated by the mighty crash of the old world, by the cracking, the noise, the chaos, or apparent chaos of the

collapse of the agile structures of czarism and bourgeoisie, of those ced by class warfare taken to its most extreme, by its transformation,

into a civil war, a true holy war, and not in some priestly sense of the word, but in its most

humane understanding, a holy war of the oppressed against their oppressors, a holy war for the

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