This civil war pitted the Communist "Reds" against the anti-communist "Whites". A brutal conflict that started in both the south and east of Russia, it led to their annexation of territories that they had lost previously to the Germans (Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan). The reds won this war of attrition mainly due to their superior organization and the infighting among the whites, who had political ideologies ranging from hard-line Czarists to Anarchists.

Many anarchists were "blacks" as part as the Makhnovist movement in the Ukraine, fighting both "Whites" and "Reds." There also existed the "Greens," who were neither "white" nor "red."