So I've just finished of a fantastic series called peaky blinders for the second time and I'm hoping somebody could give me a detailed rundown of the period mentioned in the title? I was never really taught it in school and after re-watching the show I realised I have no idea what a lot of the terms they use are (white army,red army,bolsheviks etc..) I don't think I even really know what a communist is. Could anyone shed some light on this time period and all the party's involved?
I've seen Peaky Blinders too and it's really Series 3 where we see a storyline that involves the Bolsheviks, White Armies etc., that you mention.
Firstly it's probably best to outline a definition of communism; "a theory or system of social organization in which all property is owned by the community and each person contributes and receives according to their ability and needs". However, this is a very broad term and doesn't define the aims of all communist and socialist groups such as the Bolsheviks, Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries for example.
The Bolsheviks were a party formed in Russia in 1903 after an ideological split from the Social Democrat party, and after taking power, became the Russian Communist Party. A bit of wider context here; the Bolshevik party was formed under the Tsarist autocracy of Nicholas II who was part of the Romanov dynasty, a family that had ruled Russia for 300 years. The nature of autocracy is a system of government where one person - the Tsar - holds absolute authority - so basically the Tsarist regime was almost like a feudal society, with the main support for the Tsar coming from the nobility, and up until 1905, the peasantry too.
The Bolsheviks were led by Vladimir Lenin (head of Soviet government from October 1917 to 1924) who believed that a revolutionary party (i.e. the Bolsheviks) should be made up of a small number of highly disciplined professional revolutionaries, operating under a centralised leadership. This belief differed from other socialist groups in Russia at the time such as the Socialist Revolutionaries who placed their central hope for revolution with the peasants, who would overthrow the Tsar.
Fast forward to October 1917 and after a relatively unbloody revolution the Bolsheviks are now in control. By March 1918, after the treaty of Brest-Litovsk, Russia is now out of the war and Civil War is breaking out. The two main factions fighting this Civil War is the Reds (Bolsheviks) and the Whites, who wished to reinstate the Tsar and destroy the Bolshevik government (though the White Armies were very divided - a key factor to their defeat in the Civil War). The Whites were bolstered by foreign armies from all over the world such as thr British, French and the US, who wished to overthrow the Bolshevik government too and hoped to resurrect the Eastern Front to carry on fighting the Germans.
Foreign armies sent expeditionary forces and supplies to help bolster the White Armies and consequently, this is what we see in Series 3 of Peaky Blinders, as the armoured cars in the factory were originally intended to be sent to Tbilisi to help White Armies. In Series 4 the Communists are touched on again during the General Strike of 1926, when the prospect of revolutionary strikers influenced by the Bolsheviks frightened the government.
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Hope that cleared it up for you, I tried to be a as clear as possible and tried not to be too specific and wordsy.