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The Civil Wars in Russia & Spain A Comparison o

The Russian Civil War and the Spanish Civil War stand somewhat as mirror-image bookends in the two decades of often-uneasy peace between the two World Wars. Both took place in countries that were in some sense marginal to "Europe" as it was conceived politically and culturally in the first half of the 20th century. Both civil wars originated as ideological conflicts between the Left and the Right in their respective countries. Both led to substantial interventions by major powers.

The differences in the two wars are as important as the similarities, yet in a number of respects the differences themselves have a certain mirror-image similarity. Spain had once been a European Great Power, but in the 18th and 19th centuries had fallen behind overall European social and economic developments. Russia was likewise behind the European mainstream, but catching up; though ranked with the Great Powers from the time of Peter the Great it was still even in 1919-20 a rising power.

The Russian Civil War was in large measure a direct byproduct of World War I. While Russia's social and political tensions had internal roots that went back decades, it was wartime military setbacks that triggered the Russian Revolution, out of which the civil war developed. Once the war against Germany ended, the victorious Allied powers, including the United States, sent troops in concert to support the Russian "Whites" or anti-Communist side. Their assistance, however, was not sufficient against the much stronger internal power base of the Reds. The foreign troops were withdrawn, White resistance collapsed, and victorious Reds under Lenin reconstituted the former Russian Empire as the Soviet Union.

The roots of the Spanish Civil War were internal, but reflected broader European ideological trends. The abolition of the Spanish monarchy and establishment of a republic with leftist coloration in 1931 provoked an ultraconservative general, Franci...

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The Civil Wars in Russia & Spain A Comparison o. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 11:12, March 28, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1703268.html