The Russian Civil War of 1917 to 1921 was a cataclysmic conflict – or, rather, it was a cataclysmic series of overlapping conflicts. A pivotal event in modern history, the war grew directly out of the social, political and economic turmoil in Russia which had been unleashed by the revolutions of 1917 and by the country's defeat in the Great War. Like all civil wars, it, on the one hand, made bloodily manifest the tensions underlying prior decades of political and socio-economic development; on the other, it left a deep imprint upon its participants and their descendants for decades after the guns had fallen silent. In so far as the outcome of the Russian Civil War witnessed the triumph of Communism and its principles in the largest country on earth, the conflict also exerted a profound influence upon the history of the twentieth century. The sheer viciousness, deep tragedy, geographical scope, and complexity of the battles waged made the impact of the Russian Civil War especially great: following the Bolsheviks’ seizure of power in Petrograd, across the length and breadth of a former empire which had covered fully one-sixth of the land surface of the globe, from the borders of Poland to the shores of the Pacific Ocean, for four tumultuous and agonizing years army fought army, party fought party, nation fought nation, town fought country, and family fought family. It was a truly Hobbesian struggle of ‘all against all’. Often forgotten is the fact that the Russian Civil War was also a struggle of man against nature.