In the spring of 1920, the Eleventh Red Army – “a purely Russian army led by Russian commanders and Russian political cadres” – moved in and occupied the lowlands of Dagestan. This army was feeling close to invincible, inasmuch as communist forces had just defeated the White Army in European Russia and had conquered Azerbaijan almost without firing a shot. Georgia and Armenia had also been subdued within a few short weeks. As a result of Denikin's intransigence and mistaken policies, the mountaineers looked with sympathy on the Red forces; in Dagestan, their arrival was even compared to a column of pilgrims on their way to Mecca.

By August 1920, however, many mountaineers had formed a contrary view of the Reds. Ignorant of and indifferent to local conditions, the Reds, like the Whites before them, committed a series of mistakes which inflamed the peoples of the North Caucasus. Chauvinistic cadres from the Narkomnats (People's Commissariat of Nationalities) based in Rostov-on-Don applied the harsh methods of “War Communism” to the prickly mountaineers. Patriarchal traditions were attacked, as was the Islamic religion, and repeated indignities were visited upon the natives, such as punitive raids, police denunciations, and blackmail.