November 7, 1917 · Petrograd Theater

On the night of October 25–26 (November 7 by the new calendar), Bolshevik Red Guards and Baltic Fleet sailors seized the key infrastructure of Petrograd — telegraph offices, railway stations, bridges, and the State Bank — in a near-bloodless coup. The Provisional Government ministers, sheltering in the Winter Palace, were arrested; Prime Minister Kerensky escaped in a car borrowed from the American embassy. The Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets ratified the transfer of power and Lenin announced Soviet rule.

May 25, 1918 · Trans-Siberian Railway, Siberia Theater

The Czechoslovak Legion — 40,000 former prisoners of war trying to travel east to Vladivostok and sail to the Western Front — revolted when Bolshevik authorities tried to disarm them. Within weeks the Legion seized control of the entire Trans-Siberian Railway from the Volga River to the Pacific, a stretch of nearly 6,000 miles. This gave the White movement access to Siberia's resources and enabled the Allied intervention, opening a vast new front against the Bolsheviks in the east.

July 17, 1918 · Yekaterinburg, Ural Region Theater

In the basement of the Ipatiev House in Yekaterinburg, Cheka officer Yakov Yurovsky and a firing squad executed Tsar Nicholas II, Tsarina Alexandra, their five children (Olga, Tatiana, Maria, Anastasia, and Alexei), and four servants. The decision was taken by the local Ural Soviet, almost certainly with Bolshevik central approval, as White and Czech forces closed in on Yekaterinburg. The bodies were taken to the forest, doused in acid, and buried in secret pits.

July 22, 1918 · Lower Volga, Tsaritsyn (later Stalingrad) Theater

Don Cossack forces under Ataman Krasnov besieged Tsaritsyn three times in 1918–1919. Stalin, sent as a political commissar to secure grain supplies, turned the defense into his personal military fiefdom — ignoring Trotsky's orders, executing commanders he distrusted, and using brutal methods to hold the city. The city held through all three sieges, contributing to the strategic stalemate on the southern front. The battle's name would later be immortalized when the city was renamed Stalingrad.

August 6, 1918 · Volga River Front, Kazan Theater

White forces and Czech Legionaries captured Kazan — including the Imperial gold reserve of 651 million rubles — in August 1918. Leon Trotsky arrived on his famous armored train to personally organize the Red counter-offensive. After desperate fighting along the Volga, Red forces recaptured Kazan on September 10, 1918, marking Trotsky's first major military success and demonstrating that the newly formed Red Army could fight. The recapture denied the Whites access to the gold reserve and secured the Bolshevik hold on central Russia.

September 5, 1918 · All Soviet-controlled territory Theater

Following the assassination attempt on Lenin by Fanny Kaplan on August 30, 1918, the Council of People's Commissars formally decreed the Red Terror on September 5. The Cheka (secret police) under Felix Dzerzhinsky launched mass executions of 'class enemies' — former nobles, clergy, tsarist officers, merchants, and anyone deemed politically suspect. Estimates of those killed by the Cheka during the civil war range from 100,000 to 300,000. Thousands more were held in early concentration camps or taken as hostages. The terror established patterns of political violence that would be institutionalized under Stalin.

March 4, 1919 · Urals and Western Siberia Theater

Admiral Kolchak launched his greatest offensive in March 1919, driving west from Siberia toward the Urals with 300,000 men and threatening to link up with White forces in the south and north. The Whites captured Ufa in March and advanced to within 70 miles of the Volga. But supply lines were overstretched, peasant resistance in Siberia was growing, and the Red Army counter-offensive in May–June shattered the White advance. By summer, Kolchak's armies were in full retreat; by autumn, the Siberian campaign was essentially over.

July 3, 1919 · South Russia — Ukraine and the Don Theater

General Denikin issued his 'Moscow Directive' on July 3, 1919, ordering his 150,000-strong Armed Forces of South Russia northward toward Moscow. Through summer and autumn the Whites swept through Ukraine and south Russia, capturing Kursk, Voronezh, and Orel — coming within 250 miles of Moscow by October. It was the closest any White army came to capturing the capital. But Semyon Budyonny's Red Cavalry smashed Denikin's flank, the supply lines collapsed, peasant uprisings in the rear (Makhno's forces cut his supply lines) and Bolshevik mobilization turned the tide. By December Denikin was in full retreat.

August 19, 1920 · Tambov Province, central Russia Theater

The peasants of Tambov province, driven to desperation by Bolshevik grain requisitioning that left them starving, rose in revolt under SR leader Alexander Antonov. At its peak in 1921, the Green Army rebellion numbered 40,000 fighters and controlled the entire province. Tukhachevsky was sent to crush the uprising with 50,000 Red Army troops and a decree authorizing the use of poison gas against villages sheltering rebels — the first use of chemical weapons against a Russian population. By 1922 the revolt was suppressed through mass executions, deportations, and the taking of hostages.

August 13, 1920 · Central Poland, Vistula River Theater

The Red Army under Tukhachevsky swept through eastern Poland in summer 1920, and Lenin ordered an offensive on Warsaw to carry revolution into western Europe. Tukhachevsky's advance outran his supply lines while Budyonny's cavalry dawdled in Ukraine. Polish commander Piłsudski launched a brilliant counter-offensive — the 'Battle of Warsaw' or 'Miracle on the Vistula' — attacking the exposed Red Army flank on August 16. The Red Western Front collapsed; 60,000 Soviet soldiers were taken prisoner and 30,000 were interned in East Prussia. Poland retained its independence, confirmed by the Treaty of Riga (1921).

November 11, 1920 · Crimea — Sevastopol, Feodosiya, Kerch Theater

After the Polish-Soviet armistice freed Red Army forces for the southern front, Frunze's armies smashed through Wrangel's defenses on the Perekop Isthmus and flooded into Crimea. Wrangel organized a remarkable evacuation: 126 ships carried 145,693 soldiers, civilians, and families out of Crimean ports in four days. Those who remained — White officers, civil servants, soldiers who surrendered — were executed by the Cheka in mass killings estimated at 50,000–150,000 victims. The evacuation marked the end of organized White resistance in European Russia.

March 1, 1921 · Kronstadt Naval Fortress, Gulf of Finland Theater

The sailors of Kronstadt — the Baltic Fleet fortress island near Petrograd, the same sailors whose revolutionary zeal had helped the Bolsheviks seize power in 1917 — revolted against Bolshevik rule in March 1921, demanding free soviets, freedom of speech, and an end to grain requisitioning. Trotsky branded them 'tools of White generals' and Tukhachevsky led Red Army forces across the frozen Gulf of Finland. After brutal fighting on the ice, the fortress was stormed on March 17. The surviving rebels escaped to Finland. The uprising exposed the Bolsheviks' loss of working-class support and directly prompted Lenin to introduce the New Economic Policy.