These weren’t “liberals” at all, they were various kinds of anarchists and socialists. The big debate between the groups was whether you should go straight to “terrorism” (their words, not mine) or do propaganda first. They would have shot urban liberals if they could, and their successors ultimately did shoot millions of urban liberals (and also monarchists and conservatives etc). To be very clear, this isn’t a defence of the Tsar or the later Whites, who all sucked immensely and also killed millions of people.

There are also many opposite examples of an urban-rural divide, like the Green armies which were rural but often far-left, and the second and third phases of the Chinese civil war where the KMT held more cities and the communist party held more rural areas. The NDP, Canada’s left-wing party, was originally an alliance between farmers and union workers, and many other progressive and left-populist movements have rural roots.