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Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War

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The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, Japan, France, Canada and the United States, along with other World War I Allied countries, conducted a military intervention into the Russian Civil War during the period of 1918 through 1920.

Rapidly changing circumstances in the late stages of World War I caused the Allies to launch separate campaigns in North Russia and Siberia. Each of these Allied campaigns would ultimately fail to achieve their objectives and the troops were withdrawn.

During the Allied Intervention, the military presence of foreign troops was effectively used for patriotic propaganda by the Bolsheviks in their struggle to influence the population and win the Civil War.

Reasons Behind the Allied Intervention

In March 1917, a number of events occurred which changed the dynamics of World War I. Following the abdication of Russian Tsar Nicholas II and the formation of a provisional democratic government in Russia, the U.S. President Woodrow Wilson's final reservations about entering the war with an ally that was led by a tyrannical monarch no longer existed. Thus, the U.S. joined the war against the Central Powers while the Russian provisional government, led by Alexander Kerensky, pledged to continue fighting the Germans on the Eastern Front. In return, the U.S. began providing economic and technical support to the Russian provisional government so they could carry out their military pledge.

However, the Russian Army proved to be no match for the German and Austro-Hungarian forces on the Eastern Front. The Russian offensive of June 18, 1917 was overwhelmingly defeated by a German counteroffensive. The demoralized Russian Army, plagued by mutinies and desertions, melted away and the Eastern Front quickly collapsed. Only the Czechoslovak Legion, a corps of 50,000 ethnic Slavs who had reluctantly fought with the Central Powers and subsequently switched sides after being captured by the Russian Army, remained an effective fighting force. Allied war material still in transit quickly began piling up in the already well-stocked warehouses of Arkhangelsk and the ice-free port of Murmansk.

In October 1917, the October Revolution overthrew Kerensky's provisional government and five months later, the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with the Germans, which formally ended the war on the Eastern Front. This allowed the Germans to begin redeploying troops to the Western Front where the depleted British and French armies had not yet been bolstered by the American Expeditionary Force. Coincidental with the Treaty, Joseph Stalin personally pledged that if the Czech Legion would stay neutral and leave Russia, they would enjoy safe passage through Siberia on their way to join the Allied forces on the Western Front. However, as the Legion made their way along the Trans-Siberian Railroad to Vladivostok, only half had arrived before the agreement broke down and fighting ensued in May 1918. Also worrisome to the Allies was the fact that in April 1918, a division of German troops had landed in Finland, creating fears that they might try to capture the Murmansk-Petrograd railroad, the strategic port of Murmansk and possibly even the city of Arkhangelsk.

Faced with these series of events, the leaders of the British and French governments decided that the Allies needed to begin a military intervention in North Russia. They hoped to achieve three major objectives:

# prevent the Allied war material stockpiles in Archangel from falling into German or Bolshevik hands,
# mount an offensive to rescue the Czechoslovak Legion, which was stranded along the Trans-Siberian Railroad and
# resurrect the Eastern Front by defeating the Bolshevik army with the assistance of the Czech Legion and an expanded anti-Bolshevik force drawn from the local citizenry - and in the process stopping the spread of communism and the Bolshevik cause in Russia.

Severely short of troops to spare, the British and French decided to request that President Wilson provide U.S. troops for the North Russia Campaign and the Siberian Campaign. In July 1918, against the advice of his War Department, President Wilson finally agreed to a limited participation in the Campaign by 5,000 U.S. troops who were hastily organized as the American North Russia Expeditionary Force (also known as the Polar Bear Expedition) and sent to Archangel as well as 8,000 U.S. troops who were similarly organized as the American Expeditionary Force Siberia and shipped to Vladivostok from the Philippines and Camp Fremont in California. That same month the Canadian government agreed to a British request to command and furnish the majority of troops for a combined British Empire force.

Japan, which sent by far the most numerous organized force, had its own reasons for participating in the intervention. The Empire by then had annexed Korea, Inner Manchuria, parts of China, and had a very strong interest in expanding its influence and territories in the Far East. The Japanese government's intense hostility to communism as a potential threat to its monarchy, a determination to recoup historical losses to Russia following the Treaty of Portsmouth, and the perceived opportunity to settle the “northern problem” in Japan's security by either creating a buffer state, or through outright territorial acquisition, were also factors. American economic and diplomatic pressure and internal political issues along with the military success of the Red Army forced Japan's withdrawal.

Foreign forces throughout Russia

The following numbers of foreign soldiers occupied the indicated Russian regions:

*50,000 Czechoslovaks (along the Trans-Siberian railway)
*28,000 Japanese (later increased to 70,000, all in the Vladivostok region)
*24,000 Greeks (in Crimea)
*13,000 Americans (in Arkhangelsk and Vladivostok regions)
*12,000 Poles (mostly in Crimea and the Ukraine)
*4,000 Canadians (in Arkhangelsk and Vladivostok regions)
*4,000 Serbs (in Arkhangelsk and Vladivostok regions)
*4,000 Romanians (in Arkhangelsk region)
*2,000 Italians (in Arkhangelsk and Vladivostok regions)
*1,600 British (in Arkhangelsk and Vladivostok regions)
*760 French (mostly in Arkhangelsk and Vladivostok regions)

Allied Intervention in North Russia

  • British Army (6th Yorkshire Regiment, 2/10th Royal Scots, others?)
  • Royal Navy (plus a detachment of 53 US Navy sailors & officers - including Harold Gunnes - from the USS Olympia during August & September 1918 only)
  • Royal Air Force (Fairey Campania and Sopwith Baby seaplanes along with a single Sopwith Camel fighter)
  • French Army (21st Colonial Battalion)
  • Canadian Field Artillery (67th & 68th Batteries of the 16th Brigade, Canadian Field Artillery)
  • Slavo-British Allied Legion (aka SBAL, anti-Bolshevik forces, included Dyer's Battalion, British trained and led)
  • White Russian Army (previously the army of Kerensky's provisional Russian government, anti-Bolshevik, led by General Eugene Miller, a Russian native)
  • U.S. Army, American North Russia Expeditionary Force (aka Polar Bear Expedition, 339th Infantry, 310th Engineers, 337th Field Hospital, and 337th Ambulance Company)
  • U.S. Army 167th and 168th Railroad Companies (sent to Murmansk to operate the Murmansk to Petrograd line)
  • Miscellaneous Allied troops from Poland, Serbia and Italy
  • British North Russian Relief Force (arrived in late May 1919 to cover the withdrawal of U.S. and Allied troops)

Allied Intervention in Southern Russia

A month after the Armistice, on December 18, 1918, the French occupied Odessa, thus beginning Allied involvement in Ukraine and Southern Russia. The intervention was intended to aid and supply the White forces of General Denikin (the Volunteer Army) operating in the area. The campaign involved French, Polish, and Greek troops (I Army Corps, ca. 24,000 men), but ended in failure in April 1919, before the defeat of the White forces' attempted march against Moscow. General Wrangel managed to reorganize his army in the Crimea, but in the end he and his men were forced to flee abroad, with their evacuation aboard Allied ships ending on November 14, 1920.

Allied Intervention in Siberia

British Intervention in Caucasus

26 Baku Commissars

See also

Arthur Percy Sullivan

Notes



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