Russian Revolution · CHAPTER 10 ·
Allied intervention in Russia
Chapter 10 of The Russian Revolution, 1855–1924: “Intervention”
Fourteen foreign states sent troops into Russia between 1918 and 1922, mostly to ports such as Murmansk, Archangel, Odessa and Vladivostok, where Japan kept the largest force longest. War-weary publics would not support a real war, so the intervention mainly armed the Whites and achieved little militarily.
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The map above is the world of Russia, October 1919 — The crisis: Soviet power at its smallest.
Every state on the map that year: The world in 1920 · Europe in 1920.
Part of IB History: The Russian Revolution →
SHORT EXPLANATION
Fourteen foreign states put troops on Russian soil during the civil war, but they did not fight a single, unified campaign. British, American and French forces occupied areas near Murmansk and Archangel; French forces were also at Odessa on the Black Sea. Japan sent the largest contingent and kept it longest, around Vladivostok. The first landings aimed to protect Allied war stores and help reopen a front against Germany. After four years of slaughter, foreign publics had little appetite for another major war in Russia.
The interveners supplied weapons to the Whites, while doing comparatively little fighting in the line; they sailed home as White forces collapsed. The fourteen flags gave the Bolsheviks a political argument. Foreign powers had occupied Russian territory and armed their enemies, evidence the regime used to portray itself as a workers' state surrounded by hostile capitalists. That account helped justify a siege mentality and security state for decades, shaping the regime that survived the intervention.
The full story
The first Allied landings in Russia belonged to the history of the First World War as well as the Russian Civil War. In 1918 Allied governments wanted to guard enormous munitions dumps at the ports, rescue the Czechoslovak Legion and, if possible, reopen an eastern front against Germany. These aims made sense together while Germany was still fighting. Its surrender in November removed that shared reason for intervention, although foreign troops remained on Russian soil.
Other interests survived the armistice. Some governments wanted to oppose Bolshevism; Caucasus oil, unpaid debts and regional ambitions also mattered. But these interests did not amount to an agreed plan. Each government had to decide what it wanted in Russia and what its own people would bear after the losses of the World War.
That second question sharply limited the intervention. No democracy could readily send fresh armies to die in Russia after burying a generation. At Odessa, French sailors mutinied rather than fight the Bolsheviks. Most foreign contingents were small and stayed near the ports. Their more substantial contribution to Kolchak and Denikin came in guns, tanks and boots, rather than men fighting in the line.
Japan pursued a different course, keeping some seventy thousand troops in the Far East while seeking a Siberian sphere. American forces there had been sent partly to watch the Japanese. Even among the interveners, one power could regard another's ambitions as a problem. The coalition's fourteen flags represented many interests, not a single army working toward a common settlement.
Those flags nevertheless gave Bolshevik leaders a powerful account of their predicament. Foreign soldiers had occupied ports and foreign weapons had armed the Whites. From these facts the regime told a larger story of capitalist encirclement: imperialist powers had combined to crush the revolution. The story obscured their divided purposes, but it could explain hardship through enemies abroad, justify the political police and an arms buildup, and associate dissent with foreign plots. The intervention was too small to decide the civil war; the conviction that Moscow faced a permanently hostile world lasted into the Cold War.
FULL EXPLANATION
The constraint on limited intervention
The Allies had far larger military resources than they committed in Russia. Why did they use so little of them? Soldiers and voters had endured four years of mass war, and a government could more readily defend guarding stockpiles or evacuating the Czechoslovak Legion than an open-ended attempt to choose Russia's government. Resources on paper were not necessarily available for that purpose. Supplies and troops helped prolong White resistance, but the coalition lacked the force and unity to secure victory. Japan's Siberian ambitions made unity harder still: American troops were sent partly to restrain an ally. The limited commitment had consequences of its own. It tied White partners to outsiders who might leave, raised expectations sponsors failed to meet, and gave the Soviet regime a nationalist grievance. The governments sought an outcome without committing the means needed to secure it.
From invasion to “capitalist encirclement”
The Soviet account of capitalist encirclement drew on events that had actually occurred. Foreign troops occupied ports, foreign weapons supplied the Whites, and some Allied leaders openly wanted Bolshevik rule destroyed. But these missions were hesitant, varied and sometimes contradictory. To present them as a single coordinated capitalist plan was to turn intervention into a myth. The distinction matters because the story itself had consequences. It offered an explanation for hardship, supported the security state and made dissent easier to associate with foreign plots. The intervention's small battlefield effect does not make those consequences disappear. Bolshevik leaders had seen hostile powers use force without a unified strategy; repression and rearmament then increased foreign suspicion, which seemed in turn to confirm their belief in permanent encirclement.
Key places on the map
Why it happened
Keep Russia in the war (1918). Guarding Allied munitions at the ports, rescuing the Czech Legion and reopening an eastern front were connected aims while the World War continued. Germany's surrender in November 1918 ended that war. Foreign troops were still ashore, but the clearest purpose their governments had shared was gone.
Anti-Bolshevism and specific interests. Opposition to Bolshevism persisted after the armistice alongside particular interests: French claims in Ukraine, British interest in Caucasus oil and Japanese ambitions in the Russian Far East. These did not make a common campaign. Exhausted Western publics would not support the mass conscript armies needed for a decisive intervention.
War-weariness caps the whole enterprise. Four years of war had left the democracies with a powerful constraint at home. Their publics would not support sending armies to die in another Russian war. Governments supplied the Whites and sent limited forces, but not enough to decide the struggle. Their presence still gave the Reds foreign enemies to denounce.
THE TURNING POINT
Vladivostok — the intervention that outstayed its purpose. At Vladivostok, the interveners' purposes pointed in different directions. Japan sent the largest force and kept it longest, seeking a Siberian sphere; Americans mostly watched their Japanese ally. Tokyo withdrew in October 1922, four years after landing and long after the Whites had gone. This was the civil war's last foreign departure. It did not change the war's outcome, but the episode helped convince Moscow that capitalist powers waited for a chance to prey on it.
What it changed
“Capitalist encirclement” as founding myth. Foreign soldiers and supplies gave substance to the regime's story of a socialist state besieged by imperialist enemies. That story helped justify the security state and an arms buildup, and sustained suspicion of the West into the Cold War.
Little military weight, much White dependence. White armies depended on foreign arms to remain in the field. When interveners were reluctant to fight and then left abruptly, those armies were exposed. Dependence also helped the Reds present the Whites as foreign puppets and themselves as Russia's defenders.
Poisoned relations for a generation. The failed effort to strangle the regime left mutual distrust. In the 1920s and 1930s Soviet leaders drew from it an expectation that they would eventually have to fight the capitalist world. The next World War would seem to confirm that belief.
DISCUSSION QUESTION — Did foreign intervention help the Whites or hurt them — and whom did it ultimately serve?
Foreign weapons helped keep the Whites fighting, but the intervention's political costs were substantial. Too few foreign troops fought to decide the war, and their presence allowed the Reds to depict the Whites as agents of invaders while claiming to defend Russia. On balance the intervention hurt the White cause and benefited the Soviet state. The regime turned the limited, bungled campaign into a master myth of capitalist encirclement that justified a garrison mentality for seventy years. The episode shows how limited involvement can furnish a targeted government with a nationalist grievance and identify its opponents with outsiders when the intervening public will not fully support the campaign.
An interesting fact
While Paris celebrated the Armistice on 11 November 1918, Americans near Archangel were beating off Red attacks in forest villages along the Dvina. Their Michigan-heavy regiment, the “Polar Bears,” continued fighting into 1919. Some 235 Americans died in a campaign Congress never declared. A private expedition returned in 1929 to recover comrades' bodies from Russian ground. Since 1930 a white stone polar bear has stood over their graves in Troy, Michigan, recalling a war with Russia that most Americans have never heard of.
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