Many of them were former tsarist army officers or simply guilty of having "bourgeois" origins, others were unrepentant Trotskyists. Using Soviet documents and recent Russian language publications, ...

Officers were well paid ... in 1918-20 Reds often apprehended their Tsarist White enemies by examining their hands. Soft hands meant 'burzhui' and were shot on the spot at checkpoints.

Unlike the steely-faced heroes of Soviet propaganda, some of the tsarist-era posters depict human weakness. This poster advertises a fund-raising rally “to help victims of the war.” ...

During this time, the Bolsheviks faced massive opposition to their rule in the form of the White Armies, led by former officers of the Tsarist state, and also from intervention by the forces of ...

The Empire did not have an elected parliament (until 1905) and there were no elections for positions in the government. There were no legal or constitutional methods by which Tsarist power could ...