Between 1917 and 1921 a devastating struggle took place in Russia following the collapse of the Tsarist empire. Many regard this civil war as the most influential event of the modern era. An incompatible White alliance of moderate socialists and reactionary monarchists stood little chance against Trotsky's Red Army and Lenin's singe-minded Communist dictatorship. The struggle became a world war by proxy as Churchill deployed weaponry and troops from the British Empire, while armed forces from the United States, France, Italy, Japan, Poland and Czechoslovakia played rival parts.