Russian Civil War

Russian Civil War is a protracted military engagement waged between forces of the Provisional Government of the Russian Republic and the revolutionary government of Soviet Russia, waged on several fronts and between sides that are rather... flexible.
De facto it is a war between the authoritarian dictatorship of Lavr Kornilov and totalitarian dictatorship of Vladimir Lenin, later replaced by Leon Trotsky, over who exactly will rule Russia in the future. But there are more sides than that, most of them now lying defeated but some of them still fighting - this includes anarchists, nationalists of various countries vying for independence from Russia, peasant insurgents fighting everyone and common bandits.
Ever since the South Russia fell to Reds, the Russian Civil War continues merely because of a fact that Central Powers armies focus the Reds to divert their attention between de facto four fronts at once, with Russian Republic responsible only for two of them, both of rather low importance to Soviet leadership.

The Conflict

Prelude

May Revolution was a spark that finally caused a collapse of the Provisional Government under Alexander Kerensky - that, in turn, was caused by its own weakness and the total failure of Second Kerensky Offensive on the Eastern Front. The war was brewing was years already, and the only thing that could potentially prevent it was the early peace treaty with Central Powers, without significant territorial loses.
Red Guard forces managed to capture the capital and kill most of Provisional Government. Lavr Kornilov, the current commander-in-chief of Russian Republic army seized power, but the sudden eruption of dissent - that was earlier barely covered by extensive political action and the threat of army - seemed overwhelming.
Army on the front mosty took no side, stopping several of the Central Powers attacks and holding the ground until the situation becomes clear. They were the only forces of Russian Republic that underwent morale reinforcement with thaumaturgy, which was used to strengthen their will to oppose the Germans and fight them. They were never aligned to the political line of the government - this idea was scrapped due to political resistance - but they were made more loyal to their commanding officers. Because of that, merely few percents of the soldiers deserted, and the rest managed to hold the line.
Armies on the front remained idle during most of the revolution, with Reds supplying them with ammunition and food if only to prevent Germans from entering Moscow and Petrograd (which turned out to be especially important after the peace talks failed and bolsheviks remained in war).
The forces in reserve were most idle of them all, and this opened them for politics. Many of them switched side and joined the bolsheviks, but even more simply deserted, ignoring both sides. The same happened to the Navy, with many officers murdered by the mariners during riots.
General Kornilov tried to gather loyal soldiers, but he was soon forced to evacuate from Central Russia, as all measures of organisation collapsed. One of his last acts during this period was an order to evacuate tsar and his family to Vladivostok.
Reds controlled the cities, but common bandits, Green and several other groups were arming themselves in the countryside. He was shot in one of the firefights with local Reds, and evacuated through Transsybir to Omsk, where he began organizing a government - by trying to unite about twenty different regional governments.
In the end, early period of the Civil War was done without a central command, with several different commanders raising armies of the Whites and fighting Reds separately, which greatly contributed to the defeat of the Whites in Western Russia. What's more, it required several months for the Whites movement to actually be in any way organized, prior to that Reds managed to at least briefly seize control of most of the country.
What prevented them from reinforcing their rule were peasant rebellions (mostly anarchic in theme), the dissolution of a significant part of Army other than the formations on the front that were hold together mostly by newly applied thaumaturgy and dislike for Germany (desertions were a thing, though).

The Engagement

1921-1922 - Consolidation and Offensive of Whites

Southern Russia

Food crisis in the cities forced bolsheviks to requisition food from the peasants. Most of the early Reds 'armies' were merely improvised units of bandits busy stealing food from peasants. This gave the Whites time to organise themselves. Siberia freed itself from any vestiges of Reds control (if it ever existed) quite soon, but it was of little value to Russia as whole.
Whites firstly organized themselves in the southern part of Russia - it happened around March 1921. The Volunteer Army was composed mostly of officers and trainees (many officers hailed from the wealthy part of society, setting them as natural enemies of the bolsheviks), recruited Cossacks and the cavalry regiment of Mikhail Drozdovsky, that deserted from the frontline near Romania to join the Whites, only such case. It was commandered by Mikhail Alekseyev and Anton Denikin, the latter seized full command after the former died in combat when Red artillery managed to hit his headquarters.
Volunteer Army was forced to retreat from Rostov south, to Kuban, under pressure from Red forces - done during the winter (October 1921 -February 1922), no less, and while being accompanied by thousands of refugees. They were also accompanied by Alexey Kaledin, an ataman of Don Cossacks. Their lack fo support for the Whites almost led him to suicide, but in the end, he was still around when requisitions forced by Reds made them change sides and support the Whites (at least to a point).
Volunteer Army - strengthened by this so called Ice March - returned north in April 1922, and began liberating Southern Russia, destroying Red forces many times more numerous and bolstering the morale of the Whites in the region - which also meant surge of volunteers.

Siberia

The situation in Siberia was complicated. Many local governments vied for supremacy, some of them opting for independent Siberia, mostly united by Kornilov in the new Provisional Government, officially dedicated to defeating the Reds and repeating the pan-Russian elections to finally create a new Russian state. One without collectivism and bolshevik extremism. The idea of free Siberia was postponed for post-war... theoretically.
The new Provisional Government was established in November 1921. It controlled (more or less) territories from the Ural Mountains to Vladivostok, where local revolutionary movements were succesfully squashed by admiral Kolchak forces. Kornilov began organizing the so called Siberian Army. In January 1922, Volunteer Army in the Southern Russia region accepted his leadership. The situation with the Socialist Revolutionary Party was a complicated one, as a notable part of the party reverted to support bolsheviks, seeing the new government as counter-revolutionary dictatorship. Miensheviks as a whole did the same - and both of the parties ended up mostly dissolved in the bolshevik party, strengthening the reactionary groups amongst the Whites.
There were still fights in the Transbaikal region, where ataman Grigory Mikhaylovich Semyonov of the Baikal Cossacks - together with his close aide, Roman von Untern-Sternberg, began expunging local Reds, facing significant resistance that was however mostly destroyed before April 1922 - and most of this resistant were people with money that Semyonov wanted to take. Lacking the Reds to fight, and increasingly angry with his friend, Semyonov, Roman deserted with several hundred horseman and departed to Mongolia.

North and Northwestern Front

Nikolai Yudenich organized his army - called Northwestern Army in Baltics region, together with local insurgents that hoped for independency from Russia. His army, bolstered with deserters from the frontline, grew to 25 000 soldiers and cooperated with Northern Army of general Yevgeny Miller that held northern parts of Russia (especially ports of Murmansk and Arkhangelsk, together with their vast stores of Entente military resources that it send to help Republic before the Revolution).
This two armies - totalling 70 000 soldiers, counted amongst best equipped forces of Whites - began march on Petrograd, defeating local Red forces during the Petrograd March between October 1921 and December 1921. Petrograd fell on 3rd December, but overextension of both armies and Red guerillas allowed the Red Army to wage succesful counteroffensive and the capital was retaken on 8th December.
North and Northwestern Armies were forced to retreat from Petrograd region, but weren't defeated. Their strength in the north prevented Reds from intervening in the Finnish Civil War.

Ukraine

Russian-held part of Ukraine quickly devolved into a de facto civil war between the so called Ukrainian People's Republic (later changed into Ukrainian State under Pavlo Skoropadskyi, anarchist Free Territory, some forces loyal to Russian Republic and the Reds. War on many fronts began very early, because in late 1920 the Ukrainian People's Republic declared independence.
There was no clear winner, as especially Machno's Free Territory changed sides repeatedly, making sure that nobody in the region was strong enough to defeat them. Pavlo Skoropadskyi was forced to escape to the other side of the frontline around September 1921. With Ukrainian independence movement squashed, the Whites temporarily gained control over the entire region, with Machno's forces focused on guerilla warfare.

Central Russia

Two main threats for the Reds' control over the Central Russia emerged. First was the major peasant rebellion in Tambov under Alexander Antonov, that began in August 1921, due to Red's requisitions of food. The rebellion was well organized and began spreading to neighbouring governorates. Local Red forces were defeated or joined the insurgency. The threat of the insurgency was so great, that it became a priority for the Red government.
Best forces of the Red Army were send against Tambov urprising. Antonov and most of his militiamen decided to continue their revolt elsewhere, and found refugee behind lines of the White in first months of 1922.
Second threat was Boris Savinkov and his Society for Defence of Motherland and Freedom. Through good organization and decent funding, this secret organisation managed to cause simultaneous urprisings in almost twenty major cities, including Moscow. This happened in July 1921 and happened too early - mostly because of Reds catching the scent of the group, which threatened the group.
Because of that, the insurgency was finally squashed - after seventeen days in Moscow, twenty two in Murom, twenty seven in Rybinsk and three months in Yaroslav and surrounding regions. In other cities the insurgency either misfired and was put down after several hours or within few days.
Savinkow and many insurgents fled behind the Whites line through Tambov Governorate.

1922-1923 - Peak of Whites power... and their defeat.

South Russia, Ukraine and Siberia

Offensive north was launched from the positions in the Southern Russia with the hope of reaching Moscow. However it started in May 1922, which was quite late. Both Green (politically left) insurgency in Tambov and Savinkov's Society (centre-and-right) groups were defeated, and while they joined the Whites, this made their command structure only more troublesomely complicated.
Reds were ready. And that was a major problem.
Forces in Southern Russia under Denikin marched north, gaining contact with the Kornilov's Siberian Army after Tsaritsyn was captured. Ukraine was mostly taken by Whites before March of 1922. Forces of the Volunteer Army supported by Don Cossacks, Green forces of Antonov, and the People's Army of Savinkov were defeated near Orel in August 1922, despite being supported by Kornilov forces.
Whites were defeated, but not decisively. However, they lost initiative and began being steadily pushed back. Fights in Ukraine were reignited in September 1922, drawing some White forces there. Situation was steadily getting worse and worse.
Southern Russia held until March 1923. When it became obvious that even with new techmaturgy brought by Grigorij Rasputin there is no chance of stopping the Red offensive, the Siberian March began. Most of Southern forces retreated east, through Tsaritsyn. It was lost in September 1923, and the remaining forces in south - especially Don Cossacks that refused to leave - were destroyed before January 1924 or escaped through Black Sea.

Northwestern and North

Yudenich and Miller forces were separated after the Reds managed to retake Petrograd. This became their downfall. Reds focused on Miller forces first - they swelled massively with Entente sending back Russians that fought alongside it on another fronts, which together with local volunteers bolstered his army to more than 200 000 soldiers, making him essentially second most powerful White commander after Kornilov.
Surprisingly, the operation against Miller turned out to be a disaster and Petrograd fall again during his counteroffensive which happened in September 1922. Yudenich forces, however (numbering around 35 000 at the time) failed to bolster him, due to problems with simultaneous nationalistic insurgencies in Baltic region and local Red revolts.
Yudenich was forced to retreat to Germany through Tallin in August 1922, almost simultaneously with the Denikin's defeat near Orel. This freed some forces of the Reds - together with said Denikin's defeat - and Miller was defeated. Most of his forces evacuated to Vladivostok via Entente during the winter of 1923 and spring of 1924.

1923-1924 - Red Tide... and Stalemate.

Frontline

With the number of fronts finally dropping down, the new one was established to the east from Tsaritsyn. While Whites lost decisively during the fights in Central Russia, they weren't defeated completely - with thaumaturgic mind control, expanded Winter-based thaumaturgy and, finally, the slowly growing help from United States coming since signing the Treaty of Anchorage, the Whites managed to stop the Reds offensive.
With Reds forces increasingly focused on fighting a war against the Central Powers, Whites hope to retake Tsaritsyn and march into Central Russia once again. Reds, in the same time, keep growing more and more numerous, and its leadership plans are as elusive as they are terrifying...

Start Date

18.5.1920

Belligerents

Russian Republic [Whites]

• Russian Republic

Soviet Russia [Reds]

Strength

In Russia
Kornilov - 350 000
Denikin - 125 000
Antonov - 75 000
Miller - 120 000
Semyonov - 25 000
Kolchak - 65 000
Savinkov - 55 000
Diterikh- 35 000

Total: 820 000

Intervention Forces
United States - 35 000
Austro-Hungary - 45 000
German Empire - 25 000

Total: 105 000

Central Powers
Vrangel's Army - 75 000
Yudenich's Army - 45 000

Total: 120 000

Red Army
Western Front: 3M
Eastern Front: 1,5M

Reserves: ~1,5M

Total: 6M
Red Guard
Western Front: 150 000
Eastern Front: 75 000

Total: 225 000

Casualties

Est. 2M

Up to 5M.

Objectives

Restoration of Russian Republic in its glory from the times before the May Revolution... by destroying the Reds.

Establishing communism in Russia - and then spreading the Revolution throughout the world.