“Export of democracy” is not a new phenomenon. Western countries already tried to do this in Russia 100 years ago. And they became convinced that complex geopolitical calculations against the conviction of the masses are inexpensive.
Union of Opponents
It is observed in the issue of anti-Russian intervention of 1819-1921, since both camps of opponents in the world war sent their troops to Russia - the states of the Entente and the Quadruple Alliance with their allies.
Moreover, the declarations of both sides were equally lofty. On paper, the interventionists sought:
- restoration of the “constitutional system” (it is not known what kind of structure is meant by this concept);
- suppression of the spread of the “Bolshevik infection”;
- protection of property of foreigners;
- ending the “red terror”, preserving the lives of the innocent (the white terror did not bother anyone);
- ensuring the fulfillment of treaty obligations (allied within the Entente or the terms of the Brest Peace).
In this case, only the second statement was true. Western governments were really afraid of revolutions in their own states - Bolshevism and the Soviets were popular. The fear of “exporting the revolution” then became one of the reasons for the withdrawal of troops from Russia - they successfully re-agitated there. Georges Clemenceau, announcing the withdrawal of French troops, explained this by the fact that France does not need to import 50 thousand Bolsheviks (50 thousand is the size of the French intervention corps).
For the rest, foreigners needed
- weaken Russia militarily;
- provide yourself with access to its strategic resources;
- get a government that is convenient for you in the country.
Some British leaders absolutely insisted on the need to dismember Russia, but not everyone agreed with them on this issue.
Spheres of influence section
14 states took part in foreign intervention during the Civil War. They acted in different regions, in accordance with their own geographical location, capabilities and interests. Representatives of the white movement all had contacts with the interventionists and received help from them (which they could not do without). But at the same time, various white leaders had their “sympathizers” among the intervening states. Thus, the Ukrainian Hetman Skoropadsky and General Krasnov bet on Germany, preferred England and France, and sympathized with the United States.
The division of spheres of influence looked something like this.
- Germany is the territory of Ukraine, part of Western Russia, Transcaucasia.
- Türkiye - Transcaucasia.
- Austria-Hungary - Ukraine.
- England - Black Sea region, Far East, Caspian Sea, Baltic, northern ports (Murmansk, Arkhangelsk).
- France - Black Sea region (Crimea, Odessa), northern ports.
- USA - northern ports, Far East.
- Japan - Far East, Sakhalin.
Newly created states (Poland, Finland) and “second league players” (Romania, Serbia) were able to participate in the intervention. At the same time, everyone tried to “snatch theirs” from the occupied territories to the maximum.
An inglorious end
After the victory of the Soviets, the interventionists even managed to “shift everything from a sore head to a healthy one”, blaming the intervention... on the Soviet leadership, no matter how difficult it is to suspect the Bolsheviks of such stupidity. All this was necessary to cover up the inglorious collapse of all the political ambitions of the West.
You can say whatever you want about the Bolsheviks, but it’s a fact: no terror, no mobilization could provide the Red Army with victory over the white movement, the counter-revolutionary underground, the ataman and 14 interventionist countries combined. This could only be ensured by massive popular support. It was even present in the homeland of the interventionists themselves: they signed up as volunteers to fight FOR the Soviets, the West was rocked by pro-Soviet strikes and demonstrations, and the interventionist soldiers scolded their commanders and could not understand what they had forgotten in Russia.
(1918 -1920)
The period of civil war and intervention is quite clearly divided into four stages. The first of them covers the time from the end of March to November 1918.
The delay in the Entente's intervention in Russian affairs was explained not only by hopes for the imminent fall of the Bolsheviks, but also by attempts to restore the Eastern Front against the Germans, even under the Soviet flag. Only on March 15, 1918, the decision was made to intervene in Russia.
In March-April 1918, Entente troops began to appear on the outskirts of Russia. The British, French, and Americans landed in Murmansk; the British, French, Americans, and Japanese landed in Vladivostok. Later, British troops appeared in Turkestan and Transcaucasia. Romania occupied Bessarabia. However, foreign expeditionary forces were small and could not significantly influence the military and political situation in the country.
At the same time, the enemy of the Entente - Germany - occupied the Baltic states, part of Belarus, Transcaucasia and the North Caucasus. The Germans actually dominated in Ukraine: here they overthrew the bourgeois-democratic Central Rada, putting Hetman P.P. Skoropadsky in power.
Under these conditions, the Supreme Council of the Entente decided to use the 45,000-strong Czechoslovak Corps, which was under its command. It consisted of captured Slavic soldiers of the Austro-Hungarian army and followed the railway to Vladivostok for subsequent transfer to France. On May 25, 1918, his armed uprising began, immediately supported by all anti-Bolshevik forces. As a result, Soviet power was overthrown in the Volga region, the Urals, Siberia and the Far East. At the same time, in many central provinces of Russia, peasants, dissatisfied with the food policy of the Bolsheviks, raised anti-Soviet uprisings.
Socialist parties (mainly the right Socialist Revolutionaries), relying on interventionist landings, the Czechoslovak corps and rebel peasant groups, formed a number of governments: in Arkhangelsk, Tomsk, the Urals, etc. In Samara, a Socialist Revolutionary-Menshevik government arose - Komuch (Committee of the Constituent Assembly) . It included members of the Constituent Assembly, dispersed by the Bolsheviks.
In their activities, socialist governments tried to provide a “democratic alternative” to both the Bolshevik dictatorship and the bourgeois-monarchist counter-revolution. Their programs included demands for the convocation of the Constituent Assembly, the restoration of the political rights of all citizens without exception, freedom of trade and the abandonment of strict state regulation of the economic activities of peasants (while retaining some provisions of the Soviet Decree on Land), the establishment of a “social partnership” of workers and capitalists during the denationalization of industrial enterprises etc.
Their recent allies, the Left Socialist Revolutionaries, also opposed the Bolsheviks. At the V Congress of Soviets (July 1918), they demanded the abolition of the food dictatorship, the dissolution of the Brest-Litovsk Peace Treaty, and the liquidation of the Pobedy Committees.
On July 6, the left Socialist Revolutionary Ya.G. Blumkin killed the German Count Mirbach. The Left Social Revolutionaries seized a number of buildings in Moscow and began shelling the Kremlin. Performances took place in Yaroslavl, Murom, Rybinsk and other cities. The Bolsheviks, however, managed to quickly suppress these protests.
The right bourgeois-monarchist wing of the anti-Bolshevik camp at that time had not yet recovered from the defeat of its first post-October armed attack on Soviet power. The White Volunteer Army, which after the death of L.G. Kornilov in March 1918 was led by A.I. Denikin, operated in the limited territory of the Don and Kuban. Only the Cossack army of Ataman P.N. Krasnov managed to advance to Tsaritsin, and the Ural Cossacks of Ataman A.I. Dutov managed to capture Orenburg, thereby cutting off Turkestan from the center of the country.
By the end of the summer of 1918, the position of Soviet power had become critical. Only a quarter of the territory of the former Russian Empire was under its control.
The Bolsheviks' response was decisive and purposeful. The loose and small Red Army, created in January 1918 on a volunteer basis, after the regular conscription ages of workers, peasants, and military specialists that began in May-June, turns into a personnel army, strictly disciplined (up to 1 million people by the end of 1918 .).
Following the proven tactics of concentrating the maximum forces of their supporters at the decisive moment and in the decisive direction, the Bolsheviks carried out a special communist and trade union mobilization on the Eastern Front, having achieved a numerical advantage over the enemy, the armies of the Eastern Front went on the offensive in September 1918. Kazan fell first, followed by Simbirsk, and in October Samara. By winter, the Red Army approached the Urals. Repeated attempts by General P.N. Krasnov to take possession of Tsaritsyn were repulsed.
Big changes are also taking place in the Soviet rear. At the end of February 1918, the Bolsheviks restored the death penalty, abolished by the Second Congress of Soviets, and significantly expanded the powers of the punitive body of the Cheka. In September 1918, after the assassination attempt on V.I. Lenin and the murder of the leader of the Petrograd security officers M.S. Uritsky, the Council of People's Commissars announced “red terrorism” against persons “involved in White Guard organizations, conspiracies and rebellions.” The authorities began to take hostages en masse from among the nobles, bourgeoisie and intelligentsia. Many of them were then shot. In the same year, a network of concentration camps began to develop in the republic.
By decree of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee in September 1918, the Soviet Republic was declared a “single military camp.” All party, Soviet and public organizations focused on mobilizing human and material resources to defeat the enemy. In November 1918, the Council of Workers' and Peasants' Defense was created under the chairmanship of V.I. Lenin. In the fall of 1919, the Soviets in the front-line and front-line areas were subordinated to emergency bodies - revolutionary committees. In June 1919, all the then existing Soviet republics - Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia - entered into a military alliance, creating a single military command, unifying the management of finance, industry, and transport.
In November 1918, a new, second stage of the civil war and intervention began. By this time, the international situation had seriously changed. Germany and its allies suffered complete defeat in the world war and laid down their arms before the Entente. Revolutions took place in Germany and Austria-Hungary. The leadership of the RSFSR annulled the Brest-Litovsk Peace Treaty, and the new German government was forced to evacuate its troops from Russia. Bourgeois-national governments arose in Poland, the Baltic states, Belarus, and Ukraine, which immediately took the side of the Entente.
The defeat of Germany freed up significant military contingents of the Entente and at the same time opened up for it a convenient and short road to Moscow from the south. Under these conditions, the leadership of the Entente was inclined to the idea of defeating Soviet Russia with the forces of its own armies. At the end of November 1918, the Anglo-French squadron appeared off the Black Sea coast of Russia. English troops landed in Batum and Novorossiysk, and French troops landed in Odessa and Sevastopol. The total number of intervention troops concentrated in the south of Russia was increased by February 1919 to 130 thousand people. The Entente contingents in the Far East (up to 150 thousand people) and in the North (up to 20 thousand) increased significantly.
Not without pressure from the Entente, a regrouping of forces in the Russian anti-Bolshevik camp is simultaneously taking place. By the end of the autumn of 1918, the inability of the moderate socialists to carry out the democratic reforms they had proclaimed in an atmosphere of acute civil confrontation was fully revealed. In practice, their governments found themselves increasingly under the control of conservative, right-wing forces, lost the support of the working people and were eventually forced to give way - sometimes peacefully, sometimes after a military coup - to an open military dictatorship.
In Siberia, on November 18, 1918, Admiral A.V. Kolchak came to power, proclaiming himself the Supreme Ruler of Russia. In the North, from January 1919, the leading role was played by General E.K. Miller, in the north-west - General N.N. Yudenich. In the South, the dictatorship of the commander of the Volunteer Army, General A.L. Denikin, was strengthening, who in January 1919 subjugated the Don Army of General P.N. Krasnov and created the united armed forces of the South of Russia.
The course of events showed, however, the complete hopelessness of the plans of the Entente strategists to rely primarily on their own bayonets in Russia. Meeting stubborn resistance from the local population and Red Army units, and experiencing intense Bolshevik propaganda, Entente soldiers began to refuse to participate in the fight against Soviet power, and things came to an open uprising in the Entente troops. Fearing the complete Bolshevization of the expeditionary forces, the Supreme Council of the Entente began in April 1919 their urgent evacuation. A year later, only Japanese invaders remained on the territory of our country - and then on its far outskirts.
The Red Army successfully repulsed the offensives launched at the same time on the Eastern and Southern fronts. At the beginning of 1919, Soviet power re-established itself in large parts of the Baltic states and Ukraine.
In the spring of 1919, Russia entered the third, most difficult stage of the civil war. The Entente command developed a plan for the next military campaign. This time, as noted in one of his secret documents, the anti-Bolshevik struggle was to be expressed in combined military actions of Russian anti-Bolshevik forces and the armies of neighboring allied states.
The leading role in the upcoming offensive was assigned to the white armies, and the auxiliary role to the troops of small border states (Finland and Poland), as well as the armed formations of the bourgeois governments of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, which retained control over part of their territories. All of them received generous economic and military assistance from England, France and the USA. Only the Kalchakites and Denikinites were transferred during the winter of 1918 - 1919. about a million rifles, several thousand machine guns, about 1,200 guns, tanks and planes, ammunition and uniforms for several hundred thousand people.
The military-strategic situation has noticeably worsened on all fronts. The bourgeois governments of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania quickly reorganized their armies and went on the offensive. During 1919, Soviet power in the Baltic states was eliminated. The 18,000-strong army of N.N. Yudenich found a reliable rear for the operation against Petrograd. But this did not help the general; N.N. Yudenich tried to take possession of the city twice (in spring and autumn), but was unsuccessful each time.
In March 1919, A.V. Kolchak’s well-armed 300,000-strong army launched an offensive from the East, intending to unite with Denikin’s troops for a joint attack on Moscow. Having captured Ufa, Kolchak’s troops fought their way to Simbirsk and Votkinsk, but were soon stopped by the Red Army. At the end of April, Soviet troops under the command of S.S. Kamenev advanced deep into Siberia. By the beginning of 1920, the Kolchakites were completely defeated, and the admiral himself was arrested and on January 15 was taken to Irkutsk. On the night of February 7, Kolchak, along with the chairman of his government, V.N. Pepelyaev, was shot.
In the summer of 1919, the center of the armed struggle moved to the southern front. On July 3, A.I. Denikin’s army of 100 thousand bayonets and sabers began moving towards Moscow. By mid-autumn, she captured Kursk and Orel. But by the end of October, the troops of the Southern Front (commander A.I. Egorov) defeated the white regiments, and then began to push them back along the entire front line. The remnants of Denikin’s army, headed by General P.V. Wrangel in April 1920, fortified themselves in the Crimea. In February-March 1920, the Red Army occupied Murmansk and Arkhangelsk.
In March 1918, British troops landed in Murmansk, starting a virtually undeclared war against Russia, which at that time was considered an “ally” of Britain.
The intervention was planned long before the Revolution and the start of the Civil War. Vladimir Tikhomirov recalls what the United States and Great Britain were up to, how they carried out the “expedition to the north” and what they did on Russian lands.
The plan for an attack on Russia was drawn up back in 1914, when US President Woodrow Wilson decided to enter the war on the side of the Entente against Germany. But for the time being, the Americans decided to adhere to a policy of neutrality, waiting until the warring parties weaken each other.
Finally, as Wilson's personal friend and closest assistant, Colonel House, testified, in 1916 the decision to enter the war was made.
But before that, a small “formality” had to be settled - an agreement with the British on the withdrawal of Russia from the game. This was done in February 1917, when, with the full approval of the “allies,” Generals Alekseev and Ruzsky, through threats and blackmail, extracted the signature of Emperor Nicholas II from the illegal act of abdication.
After this, ex-emperor Nikolai Romanov was arrested and sent to Tsarskoe Selo. The ministers of the Provisional Government, who seized power in Russia, first hoped to send him to England - after all, the Russian and British autocrats were not just allies, but closest relatives. They even looked like two peas in a pod! Letters have been preserved in which George V swore eternal friendship and fidelity to Nicholas.
When Nicky's friend needed help, the English monarch just threw up his hands. We cannot give him asylum,” he wrote to Prime Minister Lloyd George. - I categorically object to this.
The Russian sovereign was also betrayed by the American “allies” - the main ally of the revolutionary conspirators during the February Revolution was the American Ambassador David Francis. He arrived in Petrograd in 1916, not really knowing anything about the Russian Empire or diplomacy - the post of ambassador was his debut. The only thing that he, a former grain trader and stock exchange operator, knew well was that he had to oust Russia both from world markets and from among the victorious powers.
Later, in his book of memoirs “Russia: a view from the US Embassy (April 1916 - November 1918),” Francis tried to justify his cooperation with the revolutionaries by the fact that he was impressed not by the shootings of police officers and pogroms of stores, but by the small bloodshed that resulted in the victory of the February Revolution : This is undoubtedly a revolution, but it is the best of all perfect revolutions for its scale.
Francis also became famous for the fact that during the days of the October Revolution, it was he who ordered the provision of a diplomatic car from the US Embassy to take Kerensky out of Petrograd. Following Kerensky, American diplomats fled from Petrograd to the north, where British troops were to begin hostilities any day now.
Already on December 23, 1917, a secret Anglo-French convention on the division of influence in Russia was signed in Paris. Formally, it pursued the goal of fighting enemies in a world war, but in fact it meant an agreement on the fragmentation of the Russian Empire into colonial “Bantustans”. Northern Russia with Arkhangelsk and the new ice-free port of Murmansk, founded just two years before the Revolution, were classified as part of the “zone of influence” of Great Britain.
At the same meeting, a British proposal was adopted to maintain relations with the Soviet government through unofficial agents, because the Allies feared that an open break would push the Bolsheviks into the arms of Germany.
Officially, British troops appeared in northern Russia only to prevent the Germans from seizing Entente-supplied equipment stored in Murmansk.
And already at the beginning of March, a British flotilla of 20 ships, including two aircraft carriers, appeared in the Kola Bay. The landing craft carried more than a thousand British soldiers, as well as 14 British Commonwealth battalions - mostly Canadian Brigade soldiers and Australians.
Rear Admiral Thomas Kemp, who commanded the landing, stated that the British army did not set itself the goal of territorial seizure of Russian lands. But all the actions of the British indicated the opposite.
Thus, the head of the British supply mission in Russia, General Frederick Poole, wrote to London:
Of all the plans that I have heard about, the one I like the most is the one that proposes creating a Northern Federation with its center in Arkhangelsk... To fortify Arkhangelsk, one warship in the harbor is enough. We could get lucrative timber and railway concessions, not to mention the importance for us of control over two northern provinces...
The interventionists behaved like real conquerors. It is important to note that among the British soldiers who arrived in Russia were former prisoners, rapists and murderers, who were given the opportunity by the British government to “atone with blood” for the crimes of the past.
There were also many Poles who were burning with the idea of vengeance on the Russians for all the real and mythical crimes of Russia against Poland. Thus, the guards of the prisoner of war camps consisted mainly of Poles, who took out their inferiority complexes on military officers. The attitude of the “allied power” and the British military towards the population was not the best.
Lieutenant Harry Baggot wrote in his diary: An order was received explaining how to dig special holes for the Canadian artillery. The Russians are now located in their settlements opposite those where we are settling in and preparing to fight back... We were ordered to point our weapons in their direction so that they would come out and surrender.
After some were killed, they surrendered. In the end, 13 people - the leaders of the riot - were brought to the wall and shot. The British ship also tested its weapons on those who surrendered, but I don’t think it was necessary to do this...
Relations between the leadership of the Northern Region and the command of the occupation forces were complicated. On the one hand, Lieutenant General Vladimir Marushevsky, commander of the troops of the Northern Region, wrote that “relations with foreigners gradually improved and took the form of strong cooperation.” On the other hand, Marushevsky, like other representatives of the “white movement,” did not call the intervention of the Entente allies anything other than “occupation.”
In his memoirs, he described his relations with the British as follows: To characterize the current situation, the easiest way is to consider it an occupation; based on this term, all relations with foreigners become understandable and explainable...
It is curious that the Bolsheviks also gave their consent to the presence of interventionists. Back in March 1918, the chairman of the Murmansk Council, Andrei Yuryev, agreed to the proposal of British Rear Admiral Thomas Kemp to protect the Murmansk railway from German and White Finnish troops. Thus, before the summer of 1918, an interesting structure had developed in Murmansk: the political power of the Bolsheviks, based on the military forces of the Entente.
However, by the summer of 1918 this structure collapsed. The Bolshevik power in Murmansk was overthrown, all northern regions of Russia were under the complete control of the interventionists.
In July 1918, the British decided to move inland, expanding the boundaries of their new "colony". By that time, Americans had appeared in the Northern region - US President Woodrow Wilson sent soldiers of the American Expeditionary Force, also known as the Polar Bear Expedition, to Russia.
In the American press in 1918, voices were openly heard suggesting that the US government should lead the process of dismembering Russia. Russia is simply a geographical concept and will never be anything more. Her powers of cohesion, organization and restoration are gone forever. The nation no longer exists!
These calls were heard. Soon, the US President gave the order to send two American infantry divisions, which were based in the Philippines, to Vladivostok. Already on August 16, about 9 thousand American soldiers landed in Vladivostok, glorifying themselves with unprecedented atrocities against the civilian population of the region.
On the same day, a declaration was published by the United States and Japan, which stated that “they take under the protection of the soldiers of the Czechoslovak corps.” The governments of France and England assumed the same obligations in corresponding declarations. As a result, 120 thousand foreign interventionists, including Americans, British, Japanese, French, Canadians, Italians and even Serbs and Poles, came out to “defend the Czechs and Slovaks.”
The US government also made efforts to obtain agreement from its allies to establish control over the Trans-Siberian Railway. According to Wilson, it was control over the Chinese Eastern Railway and the Trans-Siberian Railway that was the key to the program of “economic development” of Russia, which provided for the division of the country into dozens of states and the transformation of the former Russian Empire into raw materials “colonies” of the Anglo-Saxon world.
At the same time, the Americans tried to cooperate not with the “whites”, but with the Bolsheviks, believing that the Lenin-Trotsky regime would also contribute to the speedy collapse of the single space of the Russian Empire. Thus, in 1918, the Americans and the British betrayed their “allies” from the White Army, who were just starting the war against Bolshevism, for the second time.
In the summer of 1918, the interventionists moved from Murmansk to the south. Already on July 2, the interventionists took Kem, then Onega and reached Arkhangelsk - by this time the embassies of the Western powers had moved to Vologda, preparing the ground for the declaration of a new “Russian state”.
On August 1, 1918, an allied British-American squadron of 17 ships appeared off Mudyug Island near Arkhangelsk. There were only 2 coastal batteries on the island - that is, 8 guns. And 35 artillery sailors. Having rejected the enemy's ultimatum to surrender, they entered into an unequal battle. A landing force of 150 people was landed to capture the island.
Amazingly, the attacking American Marines were opposed by only 15 sailors, led by Petty Officer Matvey Omelchenko from the battleship Peresvet. The artillerymen detained the interventionists, but could not do more. They had to blow up the ammunition magazines, remove the locks from the guns and retreat. The enemy rushed towards Arkhangelsk.
In an unequal battle - one against 17 enemy ships! – the crew of the minesweeper “T-15” entered under the command of Captain Konstantin Kalnin, who covered the departure of 50 steamships and barges with military equipment from the city up the Northern Dvina. As a result of direct hits from shells, the minesweeper sank, but completed the task.
After the capture of Arkhangelsk, the interventionists decided to no longer stand on ceremony with the local population, making extensive use of the experience that British sadists and thugs gained in suppressing popular uprisings in India and Africa. Thus, a British concentration camp was created on the island of Mudyug, into which several thousand people were thrown - ordinary Russian civilians taken hostage by the invaders.
At the same time, concentration camps for hostages were opened in Murmansk, Pechenga and Yokanga. In total, over 50 thousand people passed through British prisons and camps - more than 10% of the then population of the Arkhangelsk province. That is, every tenth resident of the North learned the hard way how to introduce “wild Russians” to “civilization.”
Moreover, a concentration camp for Russian prisoners of war was opened in England itself - in the city of Whitley Bay. You may ask, what kind of Russian captured officers could there be, since Britain was an ally of Russia?! It’s simple: after the intervention began, the British began to arrest their former “brothers in arms.” All this happened with the knowledge of Prime Minister David Lloyd George and King George V.
Doctor Marshavin, a prisoner of one of the British concentration camps, recalled: Exhausted, half-starved, we were taken under the escort of the British and Americans. They put me in a cell no more than 30 square meters. And there were more than 50 people sitting in it. They were fed extremely poorly, many died of hunger... They were forced to work from 5 o'clock in the morning until 11 o'clock at night. Grouped in groups of 4, we were forced to harness ourselves to sleighs and carry firewood... There was no medical assistance provided. From beatings, cold, hunger and backbreaking work, 15–20 people died every day.
By June 1919, on the island of Mudyug there were already several hundred burial mounds of Russian people who died from foreign “help”.
The Mudyug concentration camp existed until the uprising of September 15, 1919, during which the prisoners killed the guards and escaped. After this, the concentration camp was transferred to Yokanga, where over 1,200 hostages were kept. Almost every third died - from scurvy, typhus and bullets of British executioners. After this, it is hardly surprising that Hitler more than once called himself an “Anglophile” - indeed, the German fascists had experienced “teachers”.
At the same time, the northern region was subjected to unprecedented plunder. The British and Americans confiscated all goods belonging to Russian companies.
Here are just the official data: 20 thousand tons of “confiscated” flax were exported from Arkhangelsk. At the same time, as US Ambassador to Russia David Francis wrote, the British appropriated the lion's share of the wealth, while the Americans had to be content with pitiful crumbs.
The true meaning of the presence of the Entente occupation forces in the north of Russia was very well outlined by the French Ambassador to Soviet Russia Joseph Noulens:
Our intervention in Arkhangelsk and Murmansk, however, was justified by the results we achieved from an economic point of view. It will soon be discovered that our industry, in the fourth year of the war, has found an additional valuable source of raw materials, so necessary for demobilized workers and entrepreneurs. All this had a positive effect on our trade balance.
The rapid capture of such vast territories turned the heads of the interventionists, and they began an offensive from Arkhangelsk in two directions at once: to Kotlas to connect with the right flank of Kolchak’s army, and to Vologda, threatening Moscow from the north.
However, the offensive soon fizzled out and the interventionists began to suffer their first defeats. In addition, the weather also deteriorated.
Lieutenant Harry Baggot wrote in his diary: Above and beyond all obstacles was the climate - worse than the enemy himself. The winter of 1918-1919 was the coldest in history, with the thermometer falling to 60 below zero. When the thaw came in the spring, we discovered that some of the “logs” in our trenches were actually corpses!
Meanwhile, the Bolsheviks intensified their propaganda work among foreign soldiers. Workers of the political department of the 6th Army of the Red Army scattered leaflets in English over the positions of British troops:
You are not fighting against enemies, but against workers just like yourself. In Russia we have achieved success. We have thrown off the oppression of the tsar and the landowners... We still face gigantic difficulties. We cannot build a new society in one day. We don't want you to disturb us.
Soon the first fruits of propaganda appeared: the English troops stationed in Kandalaksha rebelled. They refused to fight and demanded to be sent home. The riot was suppressed, many soldiers were arrested and thrown into concentration camps. But the disintegration of the British army could no longer be stopped.
In February, several British soldiers burned a warehouse with military equipment in Murmansk, and unrest among the intervention troops became more and more frequent.
Even British General Robert Gordon-Finlayson himself wrote: We must not hesitate to remove the mark of Bolshevism from Russia and civilization. But is this our real goal in those terrible winter nights when we shot Russian peasants and burned Russian houses? In fact, there was only a stigma that we left after our departure...
The parties represented in the US Congress also opposed the intervention in Russia. By this time, it became known about the losses suffered by the American interventionists - in total, 110 American soldiers died in battle in northern Russia, and 70 soldiers died from disease. At the same time, no one in the United States even remembered the much more significant victims of Anglo-American terror in northern Russia - Americans at all times were only concerned about their own losses.
In the summer of 1919, under the influence of political intrigue, the withdrawal of American interventionists from the north of Russia and the Far East began. Following this, the quiet evacuation of British troops began.
The new American Republican President Warren Harding, who came to power in 1921, condemned the intervention. But the Americans flatly refused to apologize to Russia for the murders, robberies and violence. The governments of Great Britain, Australia and Canada also did not admit their responsibility for crimes in northern Russia.
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The civil war and military intervention of 1917-1922 in Russia was an armed struggle for power between representatives of various classes, social strata and groups of the former Russian Empire with the participation of troops of the Quadruple Alliance and the Entente.
The main reasons for the Civil War and military intervention were: the intransigence of the positions of various political parties, groups and classes on issues of power, economic and political course of the country; the bet of opponents of Bolshevism on the overthrow of Soviet power by armed means with the support of foreign states; the desire of the latter to protect their interests in Russia and prevent the spread of the revolutionary movement in the world; the development of national separatist movements on the territory of the former Russian Empire; the radicalism of the Bolsheviks, who considered revolutionary violence one of the most important means of achieving their political goals, and the desire of the leadership of the Bolshevik Party to put into practice the ideas of world revolution.
(Military encyclopedia. Military publishing house. Moscow. In 8 volumes - 2004)
After Russia's withdrawal from the First World War, German and Austro-Hungarian troops occupied parts of Ukraine, Belarus, the Baltic states and southern Russia in February 1918. To preserve Soviet power, Soviet Russia agreed to conclude the Brest Peace Treaty (March 1918). In March 1918, Anglo-Franco-American troops landed in Murmansk; in April, Japanese troops in Vladivostok; in May, a mutiny began in the Czechoslovak Corps, which was traveling along the Trans-Siberian Railway to the East. Samara, Kazan, Simbirsk, Yekaterinburg, Chelyabinsk and other cities along the entire length of the highway were captured. All this created serious problems for the new government. By the summer of 1918, numerous groups and governments had formed on 3/4 of the country’s territory that opposed Soviet power. The Soviet government began creating the Red Army and switched to a policy of war communism. In June, the government formed the Eastern Front, and in September - the Southern and Northern Fronts.
By the end of the summer of 1918, Soviet power remained mainly in the central regions of Russia and in part of the territory of Turkestan. In the 2nd half of 1918, the Red Army won its first victories on the Eastern Front and liberated the Volga region and part of the Urals.
After the revolution in Germany in November 1918, the Soviet government annulled the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, and Ukraine and Belarus were liberated. However, the policy of war communism, as well as decossackization, caused peasant and Cossack uprisings in various regions and gave the opportunity to the leaders of the anti-Bolshevik camp to form numerous armies and launch a broad offensive against the Soviet Republic.
In October 1918, in the South, the Volunteer Army of General Anton Denikin and the Don Cossack Army of General Pyotr Krasnov went on the offensive against the Red Army; Kuban and the Don region were occupied, attempts were made to cut the Volga in the Tsaritsyn area. In November 1918, Admiral Alexander Kolchak announced the establishment of a dictatorship in Omsk and proclaimed himself the supreme ruler of Russia.
In November-December 1918, British and French troops landed in Odessa, Sevastopol, Nikolaev, Kherson, Novorossiysk, and Batumi. In December, Kolchak’s army intensified its actions, capturing Perm, but the Red Army troops, having captured Ufa, suspended its offensive.
In January 1919, the Soviet troops of the Southern Front managed to push Krasnov’s troops away from the Volga and defeat them, the remnants of which joined the Armed Forces of the South of Russia created by Denikin. In February 1919, the Western Front was created.
Civil War (1917-1922)- an armed confrontation that involved various political, ethnic, social groups and state entities, which began as a result of the October Revolution of 1917 and the coming to power of the Bolshevik Party. The main events took place in the European part of the former Russian Empire, as well as in the Urals and Siberia.
Causes of the war. The civil war was a consequence of a protracted revolutionary crisis, which began with the revolution of 1905-1907. The First World War became a catalyst for growing tensions in society and led to the fall of tsarist power as a result of the February Revolution. However, this only deepened the socio-economic crisis, national, political and ideological contradictions in Russian society, which was especially dangerous given the extremely low political culture and lack of democratic traditions in society.
After the Bolsheviks seized power and began to pursue a harsh, repressive policy towards their opponents, these contradictions resulted in a fierce struggle throughout the country between supporters of Soviet power and anti-Bolshevik forces seeking to regain lost wealth and political influence.
Foreign intervention
The civil war was accompanied by foreign military intervention (December 1917-October 1922) from both the armed forces of the Quadruple Alliance states and the Entente. Intervention- interference of foreign states in the internal affairs of another state, encroaching on its sovereignty. May be military, political or economic in nature.
The intervention was caused by the need to fight Germany in the First World War, and after its defeat, the defense of England and France of their economic and political interests, which were under threat after the October Revolution, and the desire to prevent the spread of revolutionary ideas outside Russia came to the fore. In this regard, the Entente intervention was aimed at assisting the White movement in its fight against the Bolsheviks.
Main stages of the war
October 1917-November 1918— the initial period of the Civil War. It was characterized by the establishment of the Bolshevik dictatorship, active intervention in the Civil War by foreign interventionists (France, Great Britain), and the emergence of national movements on the outskirts of the former Russian Empire.
Almost immediately with the establishment of the Bolshevik dictatorship in Petrograd, the Volunteer Army began to form in the southern regions of Russia. Generals M. Alekseev, A. Kaledin, L. Kornilov took an active part in its creation. Since April 1918, A. Denikin became the commander-in-chief of the Volunteer Army. At the same time, the Provisional Don Government headed by General P. Krasnov arose on the Don. Having received support from Germany, P. Krasnov’s Cossacks managed to capture most of the Donbass in the summer and autumn of 1918 and reached Tsaritsyn. After the defeat of Germany in the World War, P. Krasnov’s troops merged with the Volunteer Army.
The formation of the anti-Bolshevik opposition in the Volga region was greatly influenced by the events associated with the uprising in May 1918 of the Czechoslovak Corps, numbering over 40 thousand people. Together with representatives of the white movement, they managed to drive the Bolsheviks out of many provinces of Siberia, the Urals, the Volga region and the Far East. In the conditions of the White offensive, the Bolsheviks decide to shoot on the night of July 16-17, 1918 the royal family, which was under their arrest in Yekaterinburg.
The Bolsheviks tried to seize the initiative. The Eastern Front was created, led by S. Kamenev. During the battles for Ufa, the Red Divisional Commander V. Chapaev became famous. The counteroffensive of the Red Army forced their opponents to consolidate, and on November 18, 1918, Admiral A. Kolchak was declared Supreme Ruler of Russia in Omsk. His army, which had the support of the Entente countries, became the main driving force in the fight against Soviet Russia.
November 1918-March 1920- the main battles between the Bolshevik Red Army and supporters of the White movement, which ended with a radical change in favor of Soviet power, a reduction in the scale of intervention.
Having united significant anti-Bolshevik forces under his banner in the spring and summer of 1919, A. Denikin succeeded in a large-scale attack on the Red positions, as a result of which Kursk, Orel, and Voronezh came under the control of the Volunteer Army. However, the attack on Moscow ended unsuccessfully, which forced A. Denikin to turn to Ukraine. Twice during 1919 the troops of the white general N. Yudenich made unsuccessful attempts to attack Petrograd.
A. Kolchak’s army initially managed to reach the banks of the Volga, but the repressive policies of the Whites, built on exceptional laws, turned most of the population against them. This helped the Bolsheviks, who were able to push the armed forces of A. Kolchak to Siberia, to Lake Baikal, by the end of 1919.
At the beginning of 1920, the Red Army managed to take Arkhangelsk and Murmansk. Entente troops had to quickly leave Russia.
March 1920 - autumn 1922- the end of the Soviet-Polish War, the elimination of the last centers of resistance to Soviet power on the outskirts of the country. In particular, in November 1920, the Southern Front under the command of M. Frunze defeated the army of General P. Wrangel in the Crimea, and in November 1922, the Far Eastern Republic was liquidated, the remnants of the white armies went to China. This marked the end of the Civil War.
The key event of the final stage of the Civil War was the Soviet-Polish confrontation. The Entente countries wanted to create a kind of buffer zone from Poland that would protect Europe from the influence of Bolshevism. Due to these circumstances, the Polish dictator J. Pilsudski found encouragement in the West for his territorial claims in Eastern Europe. On April 25, 1920, having concluded an agreement with the representative of the Directory of the Ukrainian People's Republic (UNR) S. Petlyura, the Polish dictator gave the order to launch an offensive on the territory of Ukraine, which was under the control of the Bolsheviks. Although the Poles managed to briefly capture Kyiv, the counter-offensive of the Western (M. Tukhachevsky) and South-Western (A. Egorov) fronts of the Red Army, supported by Makhnovist detachments, forced them to retreat into Polish territory. It was stopped only in August 1920 on the outskirts of Warsaw. In March 1921, the Peace of Riga was concluded between Soviet Russia and Poland, which left the western regions of Ukraine and Belarus for the Poles, but Warsaw recognized Soviet power in the rest of Ukraine.
Results of the Civil War. As a result of the Civil War, most of the territory of the former Russian Empire came under the control of the Bolsheviks, who managed to successively defeat the armies of Kolchak, Denikin, Yudenich, Wrangel, and the armed forces of the Entente countries. The new government initiated the creation of Soviet republics on the territory of Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Transcaucasia. Poland, Finland and the Baltic countries gained independence. Almost 2 million people who did not accept Soviet power were forced to emigrate.
The civil war caused enormous damage to the national economy. Industrial production in 1920 fell to 14% of the 1913 level, agricultural production decreased by almost half. The demographic losses turned out to be colossal. According to various estimates, they ranged from 12 to 15 million people.
Political programs of the parties involved
The main warring parties in the Russian Civil War were the Bolsheviks - the “Reds” and supporters of the White movement - the “Whites”. During the war, both sides sought to exercise their power through dictatorial methods.
The Bolsheviks considered armed reprisals against their opponents as the only acceptable option, not only for maintaining their power in a predominantly peasant country. The suppression of any dissent on the way to establishing a political dictatorship could allow them to turn the country into the base of the world socialist revolution, a kind of model of a classless communist society that was planned to be exported to Europe. From their point of view, this goal justified a set of punitive measures applied to opponents of Soviet power, as well as to “vacillating” elements represented by the middle strata of the city and countryside, primarily the peasants. Certain categories of the population were deprived of political and civil rights - the former privileged classes, officers of the tsarist army, the clergy, and wide circles of the pre-revolutionary intelligentsia.
Only after seizing power in October 1917, the Bolsheviks banned the activities of all bourgeois parties, arresting their leaders. Pre-revolutionary political institutions - the Senate, the Synod, the State Duma - were liquidated, and control was established over the press, trade unions, and other public organizations. In July 1918, the rebellion of the Left Socialist Revolutionaries, who had previously been part of a coalition with the Bolsheviks, was brutally suppressed. In the spring of 1921, the Mensheviks were massacred, which led to the actual establishment of a one-party regime.
On September 5, 1918, the decree of the Council of People's Commissars “On the Red Terror”, which was carried out by the Cheka, came into force. The reason for its appearance was the assassination attempt on V. Lenin on August 30, 1918 and the murder of the head of the Petrograd Cheka, M. Uritsky. The forms of the Red Terror were various: executions based on class, a hostage system, the creation of a network of concentration camps to contain class-hostile elements.
In addition to V. Lenin, one of the main ideologists of the Bolshevik movement was L. Trotsky(1879-1940) - revolutionary figure of the 20th century. One of the organizers of the October Revolution of 1917. He stood at the origins of the creation of the Workers 'and Peasants' Red Army (RKKA), which he led during the Civil War.
The basis of the White movement was the officers, Cossacks, intelligentsia, landowners, bourgeoisie, and clergy. The ideologists of the White movement A. Guchkov, V. Shulgin, N. Lvov, P. Struve saw in the Civil War an opportunity to preserve the Russian Empire, return power to their own hands and restore lost rights and privileges. In the territories conquered from the Bolsheviks, the Whites tried to recreate the army and the apparatus of civil administration. The basis of their political program was the demand for the restoration of private property and freedom of enterprise. After the overthrow of the Bolshevik government, all changes in society were to be legitimized by the Constituent Assembly, whose competence would be to resolve the issue of the future political structure of the Russian state.
During the Civil War, the White movement largely discredited itself by its desire for the restoration of the monarchy on an autocratic basis, terror against peasants and workers, carrying out pogroms against Jews, significant dependence on the interests of foreign interventionists, and a sharply negative attitude towards the problems of the national outskirts of the former empire. The lack of unity in the white leadership also played an important role.
Among the leaders of the White movement, the figures of A. Kolchak and A. Denikin stood out. A. Kolchak(1874-1920) - military and political figure, admiral of the fleet. During the Civil War he was an iconic figure of the White movement. He held the positions of Supreme Ruler of Russia (1918-1920) and Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Army. After the betrayal of the Czechoslovaks, he was handed over to the Bolsheviks and executed in January 1920.
A. Denikin(1872-1947) - military leader, political and public figure. During the Civil War he was one of the main leaders of the White movement. He commanded the Volunteer Army (1918-1919), and then the Armed Forces of the South of Russia (1919-1920). Later he emigrated to France.
Various peasant movements had a huge influence on the course of the Civil War. Many of them were close to the ideas of anarchism - the rebel army of N. Makhno (1888-1934) - the leader of the revolutionary masses of the peasantry in the southern regions of Ukraine during the Civil War. Their political platform was based on the demand for an end to the terror against the peasantry and a real, free allocation of land to them. The fluctuations of the peasantry between the Reds and the Whites repeatedly changed the balance of power during the war and, ultimately, predetermined its outcome.
Representatives of the national outskirts of the former Russian Empire also took part in the Civil War, fighting for their independence from Russia (Ukraine, Poland, the Baltic states, Transcaucasia). This struggle met resistance both from the White movement, which wanted the restoration of a “united and indivisible Russia,” and from the Bolsheviks, who saw in it an undermining of the international unity of the working people.
Politics of War Communism
The elimination of private property in any form was the program position of the Bolshevik Party and constituted the main task of its practical activities. This was first reflected in the Decree on Land. But Bolshevik policy during the Civil War was most fully embodied in war communism. War communism- a temporary system of emergency measures carried out by the Soviet government during the Civil War. All measures were aimed at concentrating maximum of the country's resources in the hands of the Bolshevik government.
Among its components: nationalization of industry (Decree of June 24, 1918); introduction of universal labor conscription; introduction of payment in kind, equalization of wages; provision of free public services; creation of food detachments and surplus appropriation for basic agricultural products (since May 1918); ban on private trade, card system of distribution of goods based on class; ban on leasing land and using hired labor.
In carrying out the policy of war communism in the countryside, the Bolsheviks relied on the so-called committees of the poor (kompedas), created by the Decree of June 11, 1918. Their competence included the distribution of bread and basic necessities, agricultural implements, and assistance to local food authorities in the removal of “surpluses” from wealthy peasants.
War communism had major consequences for the organization of labor. It soon became obvious that coercion would not only apply to members of the “exploiting classes.” Practice has shown that not only in politics, but also in the economic sphere, the new government relied on methods of violence and coercion. The policy of war communism soon caused mass indignation and rejection of new methods of leadership on the part of the majority of the population. The state, in fact, stopped market relations through its actions. If in the conditions of the Civil War such a policy could still somehow justify itself, then in the conditions of the transition to peacetime it was doomed to failure.