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Allied Intervention in the Russian Civil War

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Britain, 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 Each of these Allied campaigns would ultimately fail to achieve their objectives and the troops were withdrawn.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 as patriotic propaganda by the Bolsheviks in their struggle to influence the population and win the Civil War.

Contents

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 tyrannnical 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 Czech 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 Soviet Communists overthrew Kerensky's provisional government and five months later, they 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 had three objectives that they hoped to achieve with this intervention:

# prevent the Allied war materiel stockpiles in Arkhangelsk from falling into German or Bolshevik hands,
# mount an offensive to rescue the Czech 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.
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 that were hastily organized as the American North Russia Expeditionary Force (also known as the Polar Bear Expedition) and 10,000 U.S. troops who were similarly quickly organized and shipped to Vladivostok as the American Expeditionary Force Siberia.

Foreign forces throughout Russia

The following number of foreign soldiers occupied Russia:

:*50,000 Czechs
:*28,000 Japanese (later increased to 70,000)
:*7,500 Americans
:*4,000 Canadians
:*12,000 Poles
:*4,000 Serbs
:*4,000 Romanians
:*2,000 Italians
:*1,600 British
:*760 French[#endnote_soldier]
Each was a separate expedition within the vast geographical range of Russia's western frontier.

*See American Expeditionary Force Siberia for information on the 10,000 American soldiers who were sent to Vladivostok, Russia at the same time.
Eventually all of these countries' expeditions ended in failure.

Allied Intervention in North Russia

Allied Intervention in Siberia

 

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