Key terms - Bolshevik Government and the civil war

Reds - The bolsheviks

Whites  - The opposition

Greens - Peasants defending their land

Constituent assembly - An elected comunity with a bolshevik minority that Lenin soon closed

Treaty of Brest-Litovsk - Which ended Russiaa involvement in the war in March

Sovnarkom - An elected council of people's commissariats that ruled Russia. Lenin was the chairman

Politburo - Most senior committee in the communist party. It was effectively the government from 1919 - 1990

Centralisation - A form of organisation in which the power is centralised

Cheka - Bolshevik controlled secret police. (hunt down anarchists, shut down opposition press and stopping revolutionaries)

Red Terror - The fear that the Cheka created

Nomeklatura - Administrators in the communist party or the soviet government with the power to promote.

Factionalism - Where factions were formed within parties