Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War
The Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War consisted of a series of multi-national military expeditions that began in 1918. The initial impetus behind the interventions was to secure munitions and supply depots from falling into the German Empire's hands, particularly after the Bolsheviks signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, and to rescue the Allied forces that had become trapped within Russia after the 1917 October Revolution. After the Armistice of 11 November 1918, the Allied plan changed to helping the White forces in the Russian Civil War. After the Whites collapsed, the Allies withdrew their forces from Russia by 1925.
Allied troops landed in Arkhangelsk and in Vladivostok. The British also intervened in the Baltic theatre and in the Caucasus. French-led Allied forces participated in the Southern Russia intervention.
Allied efforts were hampered by divided objectives, and war-weariness following World War I. These factors, together with the evacuation of the Czechoslovak Legion in September 1920, led the western Allied powers to end the North Russia and Siberian interventions in 1920, though the Japanese intervention in Siberia continued until 1922 and the Empire of Japan continued to of Sakhalin until 1925.
Background
Revolution
In early 1917 the Russian Empire found itself wracked by political strife – public support for World War I and Tsar Nicholas II had started to dwindle, leaving the country on the brink of revolution. The February Revolution of March 1917 affected the course of the war; under intense political and personal pressure, the Tsar abdicated and a Russian Provisional Government formed, led initially by Georgy Lvov and later by Alexander Kerensky. The Provisional Government pledged to continue fighting the Germans on the Eastern Front.The Allied powers had been shipping supplies to Russia since the beginning of the war in 1914 through the ports of Arkhangelsk, Murmansk, and Vladivostok. In April 1917 the United States entered the war on the Allied side. U.S. President Woodrow Wilson dropped his reservations about joining the war with the despotic tsar as an ally, and the United States began providing economic and technical support to Kerensky's government.
The war became increasingly unpopular with the Russian populace. Political and social unrest grew, with the Marxist anti-war Bolshevik Party, under Vladimir Lenin, increasing its support. Large numbers of common soldiers either mutinied or deserted from the Imperial Russian Army. The Kerensky offensive started on, but a German and Austro-Hungarian counterattack defeated the Russian forces. This led to the collapse of the Eastern Front. The demoralised Russian Army stood on the verge of mutiny and most soldiers had deserted the front lines. Kerensky replaced Aleksei Brusilov with Lavr Kornilov as Commander-in-Chief of the Army.
Kornilov attempted to set up a military dictatorship by staging a coup. He had the support of the British military attaché in Petrograd, Brigadier-General Alfred Knox, and Kerensky accused Knox of producing pro-Kornilov propaganda. Kerensky also claimed that Lord Milner, a member of the British War Cabinet, wrote him a letter expressing support for Kornilov. A British armoured-car squadron commanded by Oliver Locker-Lampson, and dressed in Russian uniforms participated in the failed coup. The October Revolution of led to the overthrow of Kerensky's provisional government and to the Bolsheviks assuming power.
According to William Henry Chamberlin, "A few weeks after the Bolshevik Revolution, on December 23, 1917, an Anglo-French convention had been concluded in Paris, regulating the future operations of British and French forces on Russian territory. This convention defined as a British 'zone of influence' the Cossack regions, the territory of the Caucasus, Armenia, Georgia and Kurdistan, while the French zone was to consist of Bessarabia, Ukraine and Crimea. There was a certain economic background for this convention; British investment predominated in the Caucasian oil-fields, while the French were more interested in the coal and iron mines of Ukraina."
Russia exits the war
In early 1918, forces of the Central Powers invaded Russia, occupying extensive territory, and threatening to capture Moscow and to impose pliant regimes. Lenin wanted to negotiate with Germany, but failed to get approval from his council until late February. In a desperate attempt to end the war, as promised in their slogan 'Peace, Bread, Land', the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, ending the bloodshed. The Allied Powers felt betrayed and turned against the new regime, aiding its "White" enemies and landing troops to prevent Russian supplies from reaching Germany. According to historian Spencer Tucker, the Allies believed the Bolsheviks wouldn't provide an orderly enough regime to stand up to German domination. "With Brest-Litovsk, the spectre of German domination in Eastern Europe threatened to become reality, and the Allies now began to think seriously about military intervention."The perception of betrayal removed whatever reservations the Allied Powers had about overthrowing the Bolsheviks. According to William Henry Chamberlin, even before Brest-Litovsk, "Downing Street contemplated a protectorate over the Caucasus and the Quai d'Orsay over Crimea, Bessarabia and Ukraine" and began negotiating deals for funding White generals to bring them into being. R. H. Bruce Lockhart and another British agent and a French official in Moscow tried to organize a coup that would overthrow the Bolshevik regime. They were dealing with double agents and were exposed and arrested. French and British support for the Whites was also motivated by a desire to protect the assets they had acquired through extensive investment in Tsarist Russia.
Czechoslovak Legions
The Czechoslovak Legion was at times in control of most of the Trans-Siberian Railway and all major cities in Siberia. Austro-Hungarian prisoners were of a number of various nationalities; some Czechoslovak prisoners-of-war deserted to the Russian Army. Czechoslovaks had long desired to create their own independent state, and the Russians aided in establishing special Czechoslovak units to fight the Central Powers.The signing of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk ensured that POWs would be repatriated. In 1917, the Bolsheviks stated that if the Czechoslovak Legions remained neutral and agreed to leave Russia, they would be granted safe passage through Siberia en route to France via Vladivostok to fight with the Allied forces on the Western Front. The Czechoslovak Legions travelled via the Trans-Siberian Railway to Vladivostok. However, fighting between the Legions and the Bolsheviks erupted in May 1918.
Allied concerns
The Allied Powers became concerned at the collapse of the Eastern Front and the loss of their Tsarist ally to communism, and there was also the question of the large quantities of supplies and equipment in Russian ports, which the Allied Powers feared might be seized by the Germans. Also worrisome to the Allied Powers was the April 1918 landing of a division of German troops in Finland, increasing speculation they might attempt to capture the Murmansk-Petrograd railway, and subsequently the strategic port of Murmansk and possibly Arkhangelsk. Other concerns regarded the potential destruction of the Czechoslovak Legions and the threat of Bolshevism, the nature of which worried many Allied governments. Meanwhile, Allied materiel in transit quickly accumulated in the warehouses in Arkhangelsk and Murmansk. Estonia had established a national army and, with the support of the British Royal Navy and Finnish volunteers, were defending against the 7th Red Army's attack.Faced with these events, the British and French governments decided upon an Allied military intervention in Russia. The first British landing in Russia came at the request of a local Soviet council. Fearing a German attack on the town, the Murmansk Soviet requested that the Allies landed troops for protection. British troops arrived on 4 March 1918, the day after the signing of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk between Germany and the Bolshevik government. In the summer of 1918, Leon Trotsky, the head of the Red Army, welcomed the arrival of British, American, and French troops in Murmansk.
Severely short of troops to spare, the British and French requested that President Wilson provide American soldiers for the campaign. In July 1918, against the advice of the United States Department of War, Wilson agreed to the limited participation of 5,000 United States Army troops in the campaign. This force, which became known as the "American North Russia Expeditionary Force" were sent to Arkhangelsk while another 8,000 soldiers, organised as the American Expeditionary Force Siberia, were shipped to Vladivostok from the Philippines and from Camp Fremont in California.
That same month, the Canadian government agreed to the British government's request to command and provide most of the soldiers for a combined British Empire force, which also included Australian and Indian troops. Some of this force was the Canadian Siberian Expeditionary Force; another part was the North Russia Intervention. A Royal Navy squadron was sent to the Baltic under Rear-Admiral Edwyn Alexander-Sinclair. This force consisted of modern s and s. In December 1918, Sinclair sailed into Estonian and Latvian ports, sending in troops and supplies, and promising to attack the Bolsheviks "as far as my guns can reach". In January 1919, he was succeeded in command by Rear-Admiral Walter Cowan.
The Japanese had already landed marines in Vladivostok in January 1918. Responding to the allied build-up, they would increase their commitment in Siberia to 70,000 troops under their own command. They desired the establishment of a buffer state in Siberia, and the Imperial Japanese Army General Staff viewed the situation in Russia as an opportunity for settling Japan's "northern problem". The Japanese government was also intensely hostile to communism.
The Italians created the special "Corpo di Spedizione" with Alpini troops sent from Italy and ex-POWs of Italian ethnicity from the former Austro-Hungarian army who were recruited to the Italian Legione Redenta. They were initially based in the Italian Concession in Tientsin and numbered about 2,500.
However, while Soviet propaganda often portrayed Allied intervention as an alliance dedicated to crushing a nascent, worldwide communist revolution in the cradle, in reality the Allies were not particularly interested in intervention. While there were some loud voices in favour, such as Winston Churchill, these were very much in the minority. The main concern for the Allies was to defeat the German Empire on the Western Front. While the Bolsheviks' repudiation of Russia's national debt and seizure of foreign-owned industries did cause tension, the main concern for the Allies was the Bolshevik's desire to get Russia out of the First World War. The Allies disliked the Whites, who were seen as nothing more than a small group of conservative nationalists who showed no signs of planning reform. Government ministers were also influenced by anti-White public opinion, which was being mobilised by trade unions. The low casualties suffered by the Allies is indicative of the low level of their combat involvement. However, the Soviets were able to exploit the Allied intervention for propaganda purposes.
Churchill, the loudest voice in favour of action, was a vehement anti-socialist and saw Bolshevism as socialism's worst form. As a result, he attempted to gain Allied support for intervention on ideological grounds. Most of the British press were ideologically hostile to the Bolshevik regime, and supported the intervention. Many newspapers actively encouraged Allied intervention during the war.