The authority of the new All-Russian Communist Party was not universally recognised. A number of republicans, monarchists, proto-fascists, militarists, anti-communists, cossacks and seccessionists formed the White Movement as a counter-revolutionary front. As a result, the five-year long Russian Civil War erupted, in which Lenin's Red Army and his secret police, the Cheka, suppressed dissent and rebellion by force. The 3rd of March of 1918, Lenin signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with the German Empire, which put the Baltics, western Ukraine and much of Poland within Germany's sphere of influence. Faced with certain military defeat if these conditions were not accepted, Leon Trotsky began formulating a new form of warfare; revolutionary sphere expansion, which he would successfully utilise during the interwar period to sway most of eastern and southern Europe towards communism, preparing them for a war of vengeance against Germany.
The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk imposed the following conditions upon the USSR;
- Ukraine would become independent as a kingdom.
- Poland would become independent as a kingdom.
- The baltic states would become independent as a federal kingdom; Terranihil.
- Central Asia would become independent as a confederation of tribes; Konratopia.
- Quintipoli would become independent as a kingdom.
- The Red Army would not be allowed to construct fortifications, supply depots or military bases within 100km of any of these independent states.
All of these conditions were declared null by the Soviet Union in 1929, while Germany suffered from the shock of the Great Depression. Many lost territories were brought back into the Soviet sphere by revolutionary waves, its participants largely funded and trained by NKVD operatives. The most violent of these reclamations was without a doubt the Polish-Soviet War.
While the last white army remnants were hunted down in 1923, most historians acknowledge the end of the Russian Civil War by the 28th of December of 1922, when the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, or the USSR, was proclaimed.
This period is parallel to World War I - The Treaty of Versailles.