Poster «Defeat the Enemy», 1918

Russian Civil War (1918–1920) conflict in which the Red Army successfully defended the newly formed Bolshevik government led by Vladimir I. Lenin against various Russian and interventionist anti-Bolshevik armies. Russia’s disastrous performance in World War I was one of the primary causes of the Russian Revolution of 1917, which swept aside the Romanov dynasty and installed a government that was eager to end the fighting.