White and Green weaknesses

White and Green weaknesses

1. Geographical factors

   • Too widely scattered geographically to mount sustained attack on Reds
   • No telephone links
   • Communications and co-ordination difficult

2. Unity and organisation

   • White Armies fight as separate detachments; they were not bound together by a single aim
   • Unwilling to sacrifice individual interests to form united anti-Bolshevik front
   • Green’s limited aims of national independence meant they never formed a common front

3. Leadership

   • Whites lacked leaders of quality of Trotsky (War Commissar)
   • Second rate
   • Indiscipline and corruption
   • Some officers lived in brothers with cocaine and vodka

4. Political factors

   • Lacked appealing political programme
   • Land would be restored to previous owners- peasants outraged
   • Refusal to accept national independence movements

5. Foreign intervention

   • Whites too reliant on supplies from abroad, never arriving in the right time, place or quantity
   • Gave the Whites weapons but half-hearted and ineffective

6. Propaganda

   • Did not implement propaganda effectively

7. pg 163 OF