This relative quiet was simply the calm before the storm, paving way for the mid-war phase which was the bloodiest section of the war. The rest of the early phase of the war was relatively quiet, both sides simply gathering strength and waiting for foreign volunteers to arrive. The seizure of Belarus also linked up Soviet Russia with their Polish brethren who had launched a concurrent revolution. The first true military action in the war was Soviet forces moving into and seizing Belarus after crushing the local forces and capturing King Sigismund Hohenzollern who was promptly executed by the reds. In the early phases of the Second Russian Civil War, red forces lead by Marshall Mikhail Tukhachevsky managed to seize most of the population and industrial centres of the Russian empire.
