Revolution and Civil War in North Russia : Karelia and the Murmansk Region, 1917-1920

Revolution and Civil War in North Russia shines a much-needed light on the establishment and consolidation of Bolshevik power on the civil war periphery and examines the Allied/anti-Bolshevik military and home fronts from a previously uncharted perspective. Expanding our understanding of the Russian civil war, this book provides the first detailed, archival-based study in English to analyse the two neighbouring regions of Karelia and Murmansk. Despite not being far from the revolutionary capital, Petrograd, both territories resisted the establishment of Bolshevik power longer than many others and so this study offers novel insights into the complexities of the struggle that eventually led to communist rule. Alistair S. Wright reflects on how both Karelia and Murmansk relied on food being imported, comparing how this problem was dealt with by the two independent local governments. Wright shows, for the first time, how providing Murmansk with food supplies was a key feature of Allied intervention during the conflict, part of an informative analysis of Bolshevik and Allied food supply polices to be found throughout the book.