intervention
to Wilson's overall vision of a liberal Russian fu- ture: by preventing foreign powers from controlling Russia's destiny, the U.
Revolution and War_nodrm
" Foreign Relations ofthe United States, 1918, Rus- sia (Washington, D.
C.
: U.
S.
Government Printing Office, 1931), 1:33o-31.
Two months later, the British foreign secretary, Arthur Balfour, reminded a British agent in Petrograd that "in-
ternal affairs in Russia are no concern of ours. . . . We only consider them in so far as they af- fect the war. " Quoted in Ullman, Intervention and the War, 74?
[1341
? The Russian Revolution
vivendi with the new regime. 16 The British sent a sympathetic young diplo- mat, R. Bruce Lockhart, to Petrograd in January 1918, where he soon became a vocal advocate of cooperation with Russia's new leaders. 17 Until March, the continuing threat of German invasion led Lenin and Trotsky to invite support from the Entente-as a hedge against renewed fighting with Ger- many and as a way to discourage Western intervention. Trotsky, hinting that Russia might reenter the war in exchange for Western aid, requested French, Italian, and U. S. assistance in reorganizing the Russian Army. 18 Entente offi- cials clearly regarded these overtures with suspicion, but their response suggests that they would have considered supporting the Soviet regime had
the Bolsheviks been willing to resume fighting. 19 This possibility was re- mote, however, as aid from the Entente would have taken months to arrive and the German Army would have made short work of the Soviet govern- ment in the interim. Thus, British and French efforts to persuade the Bol- sheviks to reenter the war were stillborn from the start, and pressure for direct intervention grew steadily after the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk.
The growing interest in intervention was partly due to the deteriorating situation on the western front. 20 The Entente powers increasingly believed that the Bolsheviks were German agents or were under German control, a view reinforced by the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, the arrival of a new German ambassador in Moscow, and the German and Turkish advance into south-
16 Balfour and the British ambassador to Russia, Sir George Buchanan, warned that a com- plete break might "hasten the organization of [Russia] by German officials along German lines" and cautioned against giving "the Russians a motive for welcoming into their midst German officials and German soldiers as friends and deliverers. " See Lloyd George, War Memoirs, 5:111-14; and Ullman, Intervention and the War, 23-24, 31-33.
17 See Ullman, Intervention and the War, 58-62.
18 On March 5, Trotsky told Lockhart and Raymond Robins (head of the U. S. Red Cross mission in Moscow) that Russia might resume the war in exchange for economic and mili- tary aid from the Entente. When a German-Finnish invasion of northern Russia seemed likely in April, Trotsky ordered the Murmansk soviet to accept British and American mili- tary aid and invited the Allies to submit "a full and proper statement of [the] help they could furnish. " See C. K. Cumming and Walter W. Pettit, eds. , Russian-American Relations: March 1917-March 1920 (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Howe, 1920), 81-85; Ullman, Inter- vention and the War, 72--76, 159-"63; Carley, Revolution and Intervention, 37-38; and Carr, Bol- shevik Revolution, 3:43-50.
19 In a message requesting U. S. intervention in April, Balfour stated, "If the Bolshevist gov- ernment will cooperate in resisting Germany, it seems necessary to act with them as the de facto Russian government. " In addition, Allied military engineers reportedly aided Russian efforts to destroy rail lines in the path of the German Army. See Ullman, Intervention and the War, 161? 4; Carley, Revolution and Intervention, 37-38, and "Origins of French Intervention,"
42<r-21, 428; Carr, Bolshevik Revolution, 3:43-50; and Kennan, Decision to Intervene, 112-23.
20 Germany shifted forty divisions from the eastern front after the Russian surrender and launched a major offensive in April 1918. A British War Office memorandum declared in June, "Unless Allied intervention is undertaken in Siberia forthwith; we have no chance ofbeing ultimately victorious, and shall incur serious risk of defeat in the meantime. " Quoted in Ull-
man, Intervention and the War, 129. [1351
? ? Revolution and War
em Russia and Ukraine. 21 These events convinced Lockhart that further at- tempts to accommodate the Bolsheviks would be futile, and he joined Am- bassador Joseph Noulens of France in arguing that intervention was necessary to prevent a German takeover. 22
In addition to the legitimate fear that Germany would exploit Russian raw materials and strengthen its forces in the west, British and French lead- ers were also fretting over a host of far-fetched scenarios about the strate- gic consequences of Soviet rule. The Entente powers worried that Germany might capture the military stockpiles in Archangel and Vladivostok and rearm the 8oo,ooo German and Austrian prisoners of war in Siberia, thereby permitting them to rejoin the fighting in the west. British officials were also concerned about their imperial possessions in the Near East and
India, and a British Imperial General Staff memorandum warned that Ger- many would "make use of the pan-Turanian movement and of Ma- hommedan fanaticism to fan into a flame the ever glowing embers of a religious war, in order to loose on India the pent-up tide of Moslem inva- sion. " By July, the chief of the General Staff advised the War Cabinet that "unless . . . democratic Russia can be reconstituted as an independent mil- itary power, it is only a question of time before most of Asia becomes a Ger- man colony, and nothing can impede the enemy's progress towards India. " In an even more bizarre fantasy, British military planners also worried that a German advance across Russia would enable the Germans to ship disas- sembled U-boats to Vladivostok, where they could be reassembled and used against Allied shipping in the Pacific! 23
Underlying these dire visions was the assumption that Russia was rapidly falling under German domination and only prompt intervention by the Entente could stave off disaster. In fact, however, most of the worries were groundless. Given the decrepit state of the Russian. railway network, a German attetnpt to seize the Allied military stores would have come up against the same logistical problems that had prevented tsarist Russia from using these same supplies during the war. The "threat" from German U-
21 The belief that the Bolsheviks were German agents was reinforced by a set of reportedly official documents obtained by Edgar Sisson, head of the U. S. propaganda office in Moscow. These documents, which suggested that the Bolsheviks were taking orders from Berlin, were actually forgeries produced by anti-Bolshevik forces. See Kennan, Russia Leaves the War, 441-57, and "The Sisson Documents," Journal ofModern History 28, no. 2 (1956).
22 Noulens stated this belief in a public interview on April 23, strengthening Bolshevik sus- picions about Allied intentions. See James Bunyan, Intervention, Civil War, and Communism in Russia: April-December, 1918 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1936), 71-'72; Kennan, Decision to Intervene, 21o-11; and Carley, Revolution and Intervention, 58-{io. lockhart and Noulens began providing financial support to several anti-Bolshevik factions; Lockhart was subse- quently arrested! and expeJled by the Soviet government. See Ullman, Intervention and the War, t86-,-9<> 231-35?
23 See Kennan, Decision to Intervene, 71-74, 77-82; and Ullman, Intervention and the War, 87-88, 156-58, 3o4-6.
[136]
? The Russian Revolution
boats in Vladivostok was absurd for the same reason, and instead of repa- triating German and Austrian prisoners to support the German war effort, the Bolsheviks were more interested in recruiting them for revolutionary ac- tivities in their home countries. In any event, under the chaotic conditions in Russia, the prisoners could scarcely have reached the western front quickly and even then would have been in no condition to fight.
By May 1918, therefore, Britain and France had abandoned their efforts to cooperafte with the Bolshevik regime, yet neither state could spare the men that would have been needed to intervene. 24 While continuing to press the United States and Japan to take action, therefore, Britain and France dedded to use the. Czechoslovak Legion, a force of fifty thousand Czech and Slovak prisoners of war originally recruited in Russia to fight against the Central Powers. The Entente had previously decided to trans- port the legion to the western front via Vladivostok and the troops had begun to move across Russia in March. In April, however, the British sug- gested that the legion remain in Russia to provide order and protect Allied interests. As a result, Britain and France ordered part of the legion to head north toward Archangel while the remainder continued east toward Vladivostok. 25
Relations between the Czechoslovak Legion and various local soviets quickly deteriorated, and a series of misunderstandings soon led to armed clashes. 26 This development was a golden opportunity for the Bolsheviks' opponents; Ambassador Noulens urged the Czechs and Slovaks to resist Soviet efforts to disarm them, and ordered French military representatives in Russia not to try to resolve the dispute. The Czechs and Slovaks de- cided to fight their way across Russia by rail and had seized most of the key towns along the Trans-Siberian Railway by the end of June. Encour- aged by reports of growing opposition to Bolshevik rule, Prime Minister
Clemenceau of France agreed that the Czechoslovak Legion could remain in Russia "to constitute a center of resistance around which Siberian and Cossack elements could gather. . . [and] to prepare the way for . . . Allied intervention from the east. " By July, these developments convinced the Supreme War Council to recommend the dispatch of U. S. and Japanese troops to Russia "to prevent the unlimited military and economic domi-
24 According to Carley, "By the end of April 1918 Paris was thoroughly committed to over- throwing the Bolshevik regime. " British planning for intervention in Siberia and northern Russia began in May. See Carley, Revolution and Intervention, 53; and illlman, Intervention and the War, 193-94.
25 The saga of Rhe Czechoslovak Legion is recounted in Kennan, Decision to Intervene, chaps. 6 and 12; Ullman, Intervention and the War, 151-56, 168-72; Bunyan, Intervention, Civil War, and Communism, chap. 2; and John Swettenham, Allied Intervention in Russia, 1918-1919 (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1967), 88-()9.
26 In the words of James Morley, "To send the Czechs through Siberia was to roll a powder keg through a forest fire. An explosion was inevitable. " Japanese Thrust, 235?
[1371
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nation of Russia by Germany . . . [and] to bring assistance to the Czecho- Slovak forces. "27
TheUnitedStates. AcrosstheAtlanticinWashington,PresidentWoodrow Wilson had seen the collapse of tsarism as a liberal triumph that removed his reservations about an alliance with Russia. 28 The Bolshevik coup was
? more problematic, but Wilson initially regarded the Bolsheviks as well in- tentioned, if naive. 29 His intimate advisor, Colonel Edward House, predicted moderate forces would soon regain power, and both he and Wilson were confident that Russia would choose to remain part of the liberal alliance against the autocratic Central Powers. A number of U. S officials were less optimistic, however, and virtually all favored a hands-off policy until the situation in Russia was clearer. 30
Pressed by Secretary of State Robert Lansing and others to counter Bol- shevik propaganda (and hoping to coopt the Bolsheviks into his vision of the postwar order), Wilson paid particular attention to the situation in Rus- sia in his "Fourteen Points" speech in January 1918. The sixth of his points called for the "evacuation of all Russian territory" by foreign armies and ad- vised other states to give Russia "a sincere welcome into the society of free nations under institutions of her own choosing. " Wilson condemned Ger- many's territorial demands, praised the "true spirit of modem democracy" that he believed to be emerging in Russia, and lauded the "voice of the Russian people" that "will not yield either in principle or in action. "31 De- spite the growing evidence to the contrary, Wilson was still convinced that liberalism would emerge triumphant and Russia would continue to resist the Central Powers.
His optimism soon faded. The dissolution of the Constituent Assembly in January cast doubt on the Bolsheviks' commitment to democracy. Wilson
27 See Ullman, Intervention and the War, 172; Carley, Revolu tion and Intervention, 64? 6; and Foreign Relations, 1918, Russia, 2:241-46.
28 Wilson told Congress in April 1917 that Russia "was always in fact democratic at. heart . . . and the great, generous Russian people have been added . . . to the forces fighting for free- dom. " Quoted i. n N. Gordon Levin, Woodrow Wilson and World Politics: America's Response to War and Revolution (New York: Oxford University Press, 1968), 42-43; and see also Kennan, Russia Leaves tlze War, 14-26; and Betsy Miller Unterberger, America's Siberian Expedition, 1918-1920:AStudyofNationalPolicy(Durham:DukeUniversity Press, 1956), ? 10.
29 In November, Wilson said to a group of labor leaders, "Any body of free men that com- pounds with the present German government is compounding for its own destruction," and he told his cabinet that the actions of Lenin and Trotsky "sounded like opera bouffe, talking of armistice when a child would know Germany would . . . destroy any chance for the democ- racy they desired. " Quoted in Levin, Wilson and World Politics, 5? 59?
30 See Levin, Wilson and World Politics, 68; Kennan, Russia Leaves the War, 156-57, 174"'78; and David W. McFadden, Alternative Paths: Soviets and Americans, 1917-1920 (New York: Ox- ford University Press, 1993), chap. 2.
31 See Cumming and Pettit, Russian-American Relations, 68-74; and Kennan, Russia Leaves the War, 253-55.
? ? ? ? The Russian Revolution
grew more concerned after the Congress of Soviets answered his message of congratulations with a bellicose call for world revolution. 32 An image of the Bolshevik regime as hostile and illegitimate began to take shape, and U. S. officials began considering more extensive ways to influence or replace it.
Unlike its British and French allies, however, the United States rejected di- rect intervention until the summer of 1918. Wilson and his advisors, aware of Japanese ambitions in the Far East, did not want to give Japan an opportunity to increase its own influence on the mainland. U. S. leaders also feared that in- tervention would push Russia closer to Germany, and they opposed diverting military assets from the main struggle in Europe. Wilson himself was reluctant to help former tsarist elements regain power: his experiences with the Mexi- can Revolution (discussed in chapter 6 below) having taught him there were limits to what outside forces could accomplish in a revolutionary situation. 33
The breakthrough came in June, when the United States agreed to send troops to support a British and French expeditionary force in northern Rus- sia. 34 The Soviet government tried to head off intervention by offering a se- ries of economic concessions in May, but these gestures did not reverse the growing perception of the Soviet regime as unfriendly and illegitimate. The revolt of the Czechoslovak Legion overcame the rest of Wilson's reserva- tions, and he approved a plan for joint intervention by seven thousand U. S. and seven thousand Japanese troops in July. 35
At the most general level, the U. S. decision to intervene was shaped by Wilson's idealistic faith in the strength of Russian liberalism. Pressure from Britain and France played a key role as well, and Wilson told one confidant
32 Wilson's message had expressed "the sincere sympathy which the people of the United States feel for the Russian people" and pledged that the United States "would avail itself of every opportunity to secure for Russia once more complete sovereignty and independence. " In response, the Soviet government proclaimed, "The happy day is not far distant when the laboring masses . . ? . will throw off the yoke of capitalism and will establish a socialistic state of society. " See Foreign Relations 1918, Russia, 1:399-400; Chamberlin, Russian Revolution, 1:406; and Kennan, Russia Leaves the War, 509-14.
33 See Kennan, Russia Leaves the War, 323-24, 466-67; and Unterberger, America's Siberian Ex- pedition, 25, 31-33. Wilson compared the Russian and Mexican situations in a speech in June, saying that "we cai! Ulot make anything out of Russia. " Quoted in Eugene P. Trani, "Woodrow Wilson and the Decision to Intervene in Russia: A Reconsideration," journal ofModern History 48, no. 3 (1976), 444?
34 Under pressure from the other members of the Entente, Wilson had briefly approved a proposal for Japanese intervention on March 2, but he withdrew his approval three days later. See Kennan, Decision to Intervene, 46cr-83; and Unterberger, America's Siberian Interven- tion, 3D-34?
35 For Wilson, the intervention in northern Russia was intended to safeguard the allied mil- itary stores, while intervention in the Far East was designed to aid the evacuation of the Czechoslovak forces, but his written orders also referred to helping "steady any efforts at self-government or self-defense in which the Russians themselves may be willing to accept assistance. " See Carr, Bolshevik Revolution, 3:87-88; and Kennan, Decision to Intervene, chaps. 16-17 and 483-
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? ? Revolution and War
that he agreed to the intervention because it was an endeavor "upon which [the United States' allies] have so much set their hearts. " Wilson was also encouraged to act by the former tsarist ambassador in Washington and other prominent Russian exiles, and he shared the British and French fear that Russia was falling under German control. U. S. ambassador David Fran- cis had reported that the German ambassador "was practically dictator in Moscow"; British and French officials sounded similar alarms throughout this period. The growing belief that the Bolsheviks were either pro-German or German agents removed the fear that intervention might force Russia and Germany together, and some U. S. officials favored sending troops out of a fear that the Bolsheviks' internal opponents might turn toward Ger- many if they were unable to obtain Allied support. Wilson, who suspected that Japan was going to intervene anyway, decided that a U. S. presence would be the best way to keep Japan's ambitions in check. This objective linked U. S.
intervention to Wilson's overall vision of a liberal Russian fu- ture: by preventing foreign powers from controlling Russia's destiny, the U. S. presence would help bring the liberal forces in Russia to the fore. Fi- nally, the plight of the Czechoslovak Legion provided a moral basis for in- tervention, as sending U. S. forces to "rescue" them was consistent with Wilsonian idealism and his commitment to national self-determination. Thus, on July 6, 1918, Wilson finally agreed to send approximately seven thousand U. S. troops to Vladivostok "to guard the line of communication of the Czecho-Slovaks . . . and cooperate with [them]," while stressing "that
there is no purpose to interfere with [the] internal affairs of Russia. "36
japan. For Japan, the Russian Revolution presented both a threat and an opportunity. On the one hand, the revolution threatened Japan's control over the former German territories it had seized at the beginning of the war and jeopardized the favorable concessions it had obtained from Russia in 1916. The Japanese government also worried that foreign intervention in Russia might lead to a long-term increase in Western influence in the re- gion. 37 On the other hand, the collapse of Russian power gave Japan the chance to expand its territorial control and political influence in Siberia and northern China. Given Western interests in the area, however, it had to pur- sue this objective without alarming the other great powers. 38 Japanese mili-
36 See Foreign Relations, 1918, Russia, 2:262-63, 287-90. On these various motives, see Trani, "Wilson and ? he Decision to Intervene," 442-445; Levin, Wilson and World Politics, 7o-71, 91-95, 109; Kennan, Russia Leaves the War, 94- 147-48, and Decision to Intervene, 365--69, 378-79; and Unterberger, America's Siberian Expedition, 30.
37 In addition to a secret defense pact, Russia had agreed to tum over part of the Chinese Eastern Railway to Japan in exchange for military aid. See Morley, Japanese Thrust, 55, 94; Kennan, Russia Leaves the War, 312-13; and Ian Nish, Japanese Foreign Policy, 1869-1942 (Lon- don: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1977), 1o6-11.
38 On Japanese ambitions, see Morley, Japanese Thrust, 5o-59.
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tary leaders had begun preparing plans for intervention in Russia within a week of the Bolshevik coup, but they preferred to maximize their own free- dom of action and took no interest in British or French schemes for using Japanese troops against the Central Powers. Instead, Japanese advocates of intervention hoped to obtain an invitation from the United States that would enable them to expand their country's influence without damaging relations with the West. 39
These concerns did not mean Japan was idle. Two warships were sent to Vladivostok in January, and British and Japanese troops went ashore in April after local disturbances left several Japanese citizens dead. Japanese agents were also providing financial and military assistance to Cossack forces in Siberia, as well as to an independent regime in Harbin set up by General Dmitri Horvath, the former governor-general of the Chinese East- ern Railway. In addition, the Japanese government negotiated an agreement with the Chinese government in an attempt to coordinate their actions in the
Chinese Eastern Railway Zone. 40
Pressure to act increased throughout the spring of 1918. In March, Gen- eral Horvath's decision to allow a group of U. S. railroad experts to assist in the managemenfr of the Chinese Eastern Railway spurred Japanese concerns about U. S. influence, while Britain and France again invited Japan to inter- vene "as far west as possible for the purpose of encountering the Germans. " Japanese officials were still divided, however, and the Cabinet refused to move without "the moral and material support of the United States. " And in the event that intervention did take place, the Japanese insisted that they be allowed to command the expedition. 41
By convincing Wilson to act, the Czech uprising removed the main obstacle to Japan's ambitions. The United States proposed that each state limit its forces to seven thousand men and guarantee "not to impair the political or territorial sovereignty of Russia. " Because these conditions threatened Japan's larger objectives, a series of delicate negotiations ensued between the rival factions in Japan and between Japan and the United States. The Japanese gov- ernment eventually fashioned a reply that appeared to satisfy the U. S. condi- tions without significantly restricting Japan's freedom of action, and by October Japan had landed more than seventy thousand troops in Siberia. 42
Soviet Responses. British and French troops began to arrive in northern Russia in July. The Soviet authorities in Archangel were ousted by a pro-
39 Morley, Japanese Thrust, 122-23.
40 Morley, Japanese Thrust, 118-21, 161-65.
41 See Foreign Relations, 1918, Russia, 2:202-3; Ullman, Intervention and the War, 202; Kennan,
Decision to Intervene, 384; and Morley, Japanese Thrust, 213-16, 226, 229-31 .
4 2 See Foreign Relations, 1918, Russia, 2:262-63; and Morley, japanese Thrust, chap. 12 and
307-10.
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Entente coup in early August, and some fifty-five hundred U. S. troops joined the European forces in September. The expeditionary force's stated purpose was to guard the military stockpiles and rendezvous with the Czechoslovak Legion, but it soon found itself engaged in combat opera- tions against Bolshevik units. U. S. and Japanese troops reached the Far East in September, along with token British and French contingents, and British units entered Transcaucasia and the trans-Caspian region with the aim of countering German and Turkish influence and protecting the approaches
to India.
Although these activities were not directed against Soviet rule per se, they reinforced the Bolsheviks' impression of imperialist hostility. 43 In addition to undertaking a concerted effort to rebuild Russia's military power, the Soviet government began to move closer to Germany as the threat from the West increased. Germany's desire to evade the Allied blockade and Russia's own economic difficulties led to a trade agreement between the two states in May, and Soviet foreign minister G. V. Chicherin endorsed an earlier Ger- man proposal for intervention in Karelia in August, saying that "an open military alliance was impossible in the state of public opinion, but parallel action irl fact was possible. " Russia's leverage improved as Germany's mil- itary position decayed, and Germany agreed to modify the Treaty of Brest- Litovsk in August. 44
These shifts did not mean that the Bolsheviks had abandoned their revo- lutionary aims. A Soviet diplomat at Brest-Litovsk told his German coun- terpart that he hoped "to start a revolution in your country also," and at the signing of the treaty the Soviet representative said to the head of the Ger- man delegation, "This triumph of imperialism and militarism over the international proletarian revolution will prove only temporary and transi- tory. " Lenin informed his colleagues the Soviet government had violated the antipropaganda provisions of the peace treaty "thirty or forty times," and the Soviets continued their efforts to recruit supporters among cap- tured German and Austrian prisoners of war. 45 Thus, the tilt toward Ger-
43 Lenin told the Central Committee in July that the Czechoslovak Legion's uprising was "one link in the chain long since forged by the systematic policy of British and French impe- rialists to throttle Soviet Russia. . . . What we are faced with here is a systematic, methodical, and evidently long-planned counter-revolutionary military and financial campaign against the Soviet Republic. " Lenin, Selected Works, ):29-30.
44 Lenin wrote in August 1918, "1 shall not hesitate one second to enter into (an] 'agreement' with the German imperialist vultures if an attack upon Russia by Anglo-French troops calls for it. " See Lenin, Selected Works, 3:47; Carr, Bolshevik Revolution, 3:7cr-85; Gerald Freund, Un- holy Alliance: Russian-German Relations from the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk to the Treaty of Berlin (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1957), 23; Wheeler-Bennett, Brest-Litovsk, 427-46; and Oegras, So- viet Documents, 1:9fH)8.
45 The Soviets convened an "All-Russian Congress of Internationalist Prisoners of War" in April 1918, which Lenin later called "the real foundation" of the Third International. See Carr, Bolshevik Revolution, 3:71-76.
? ? The Russian Revolution
many was merely a temporary expedient, not a fundamental shift in Soviet intentions.
Finally, the foreign powers' decision to intervene dissolved the few re- maining contacts between the Soviet regime and the Entente. An abortive uprising in August and the wounding of Lenin by a member of an opposi- tion party triggered a "Red Terror" by the secret police, as well as a sharp rise in hostility toward the Allied powers. After the British naval attache was murdered by a mob attacking the British embassy in September, the British government promptly detained several Bolshevik representatives in England and harshly denounced the Soviet regime. British, French, and U. S. diplomats were withdrawn in August, and the Soviet government arrested and detained hundreds of Allied citizens in Moscow and Petrograd. At the time World War I ended, therefore, relations between the Bolsheviks and the West were going from bad to worse. 46
The diplomatic history of Soviet Russia and the other great powers dur- ing the first year of Soviet rule supports my theory in several ways. First, foreign states' responses to the revolution were motivated primarily by their concern for the balance of power. The Allies did not intervene in Russia be- cause hostility to Bolshevism per se; rather, they sought to prevent Germany from exploiting Russia's collapse. This preoccupation with the balance of power and the war in Europe helps elucidate why the Entente tried to per- suade the Bolsheviks to reenter the war while simultaneously providing aid to the Bolsheviks' internal opponents. The Central Powers welcomed the revolution for the same reasons that the Entente opposed it, and the emerg- ing alignment between Moscow and Berlin during the final months of the war was an obvious attempt to balance against a commori enemy.
By opening up an enormous power vacuum in Eurasia, the Russian Revo- lution also created tempting opportunities for a number of other states, most notably Japan. Japanese expansion was driven both by the government's own acquisitiveness and by the fear that other powers might exploit the sit- uation if it did not. As one Japanese official put it, failure to act might confine Japan to polking activity "while England and America are getting the gravy. "47 The awareness of Japan's ambitions had a major impact on U. S. pol- icy, and Wilson's desire to rein in Japanese expansion played a key role in overcoming his initial reluctance to intervene. Similar motives were also at work in France; although fear of Germany was the primary factor motivat-
46 On the Red Terror, see Chamberlin, Russian Revolution, vol. 2, chap. 23. Balfour termed the attache's murder an "abominable outrage" and warned that unless Britain received a sat- isfactory reply it would "make every endeavour to secure that [the Soviet government) shall be treated as outlaws by the governments of all civilized nations. " Quoted in Ullman, Inter- vention and the War, 288-91.
? 47 Quoted in Morley, Japanese Thrust, 216.
? ? Revolution and War
ing France's support for intervention in Russia, the French were also worried that inaction on their part would enable the other great powers to supplant their own prewar preeminence-and this worry both encouraged interven- tion and made it more difficult for outside powers to coordinate their actions.
The first year of Bolshevik rule also illustrates how states exaggerate each other's hostility in the wake of revolution. The Bolsheviks were already in- clined to view foreign responses in the most negative way; for example, al- though Allied aid to various non-Bolshevik groups was motivated mainly by the desire to prevent the Central Powers from exploiting Russia's col- lapse, to the Bolsheviks it was evidence of innate imperialist ill will. Simi- larly, the revolt of the Czechoslovak Legion was seen as a deliberate imperialist plot (which it was not), and the Bolsheviks failed to recognize that the Allied military intervention was either in response to local events
(such as the attacks on Japanese citizens in April) or directed primarily against Germany. Given that the Entente Powers were backing the Bolshe- viks' domestic opponents, however, their disavowal of any desire to inter- fere in Russia's internal affairs was clearly disingenuous, and it is hardly surprising that Lenin dismissed their offers of support as a transparent ploy intended to undermine the Soviet regime. 48
In the same way, the Entente saw the Soviet decision to leave the war as unambiguous evidence of Bolshevik perfidy and concluded that the Bol- sheviks were either German agents or under German control. This inference was entirely erroneous: the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk had been a bitter pill that the Bolsheviks swallowed with great reluctance. The Entente was also alarmed by the growing ties between Germany and Russia during the spring of 1918, failing to realize that the alignment was formed against the threat of Allied intervention rather than being based on sympathy with Ger- many. Indeed, Lenin believed that Soviet policy should be "equally hostile to the English and the Germans" and eagerly anticipated a revoh. itionary upheaval in Germany.
Of course, the tensions between Soviet Russia and the outside world were not due solely to these misunderstandings. The Bolsheviks' animosity to- ward the outside world was abundantly clear, and both the Central Powers and the Entente were opposed to Bolshevik rule. Nonetheless, the evidence suggests that neither side understood the real motives behind each other's conduct and both drew exaggerated conclusions about their opponents' hostility.
Third, responses to the revolution were shaped by beliefs about the pos- sibility that the revolution might spread. The Bolsheviks rejected the initial
48 Lenin rejected Allied aid offers, saying, "The members of the Anglo-French bourgeoisie are laying a trap for us: 'Just come along, my little dears, and go to war right now. . . . Ger- many will strip you bare . . . and will give us better terms in the west, and incidentally Soviet power will go to the devil. ' " Quoted in Kennan, Russia Leaves the War, 502.
? ? ? ? The Russian Revolution
German peace offer on the grounds that a revolution was about to engulf Germany; in other words, they believed that Marxist propaganda, together with the example they had already set, would form a potent offensive weapon that could destroy a powerful opponent virtually overnight. These hopes were soon dashed, however, and Lenin eventually persuaded his col- leagues to ground Soviet diplomacy in the realities of power rather than an unpredictable revolutionary timetable. Similarly, the Entente's decision to intervene was based on exaggerated fears about the strategic implications of the revolution. Advocates of intervention believed the Central Powers could
easily exploit vast areas of Russian territory, while simultaneously arguing that a modest Allied effort would prevent such a calamity. Thus, an unreal- istic sense of what military force could accomplish helped persuade the Al- lied leaders that intervention was both necessary and feasible. 49
Finally, each side's responses were affected by a pervasive lack of reliable information. This problem was due partly to a general breakdown in com- munications within Russia, as well as to the Soviet decision to move most foreign representatives to the isolated town of Vologda. As a result, contacts between the Soviet government and the Entente began to dissolve at pre- cisely the moment when accurate data was most needed. The dearth of trustworthy information hampered efforts to formulate clear and consistent policies, if only because advocates of different positions could not marshal compelling evidence to support their recommendations. 5?
To make matters worse, the information that was available was often mis- leading. Foreign governments were bombarded by intense lobbying from allies, domestic groups, the Czech leaders, and assorted Russian exiles, each conveying "information" intended to sway national leaders in the desired direction. 51 Allied intervention was inspired in large part by the fear that
49 Such views were not universal. Balfour noted that "Russia, however capable of fighting, is not easily overrun. Except with the active good will of the Russians themselves, German troops . . . are not going to penetrate many hundreds of miles into that vast country. " Simi- larly, Wilson reportedly told the British ambassador in May that "no military man with whom he [Wilson) had talked had been able to convince him that there was any practical scheme which would recreate a Russian front. " Quoted in David Lloyd George, War Memoirs, 5:114; and Unterberger, America's Siberian Expedition, 52-53?
;o Thus, Balfour answered complaints about the Allies' indecision by noting that they had "determined their policy as quickly as could reasonably be expected in the face of the vary- ing opinions expressed by their agents, the contradictory reports which poured into them from Russia, and the novelty of the problems presented to them for solution. " Quoted in Ull- man, Intervention and the War, 191-92.
51 KennanarguesthattheformertsaristembassyinWashington"playedanimportantpart in shaping the initial American response to the Bolshevik seizure of power," but former am- bassador Boris Bakhmetev's influence declined sharply after 1918. See Kennan, Decision to In- tervene, 322-23; 36o-61; McFadden, Alternative Paths, 48-50; Linda Killen, "The Search for a Democratic Russia: Bakhmetev and the United States," Diplomatic History 2, no. 3 (1978); and Robert J. Maddox, "Woodrow Wilson, the Russian Embassy, and Siberian Intervention," Pa- cific Historical Review 36, no. 4 ( 1 967).
? ? Revolution and War
Russia was falling under German influence-a belief supported by U. S. am- bassador Francis's report that the German ambassador "was practically dic- tator in Moscow" and the testimony of various anti-Bolshevik groups. The decision to intervene was also driven by the mistaken fear that Germany would try to seize the Allied military stockpiles in Archangel and Vladivos- tok, even though the German troops were hundreds of miles away. Even worse, Wilson agreed to send U. S. troops to Murmansk in order to protect the allied military stockpiles, but the stores were actually in Archangel, and most of the supplies had already been removed by the Bolsheviks. Thus, the purpose for which U. S. troops were originally sent to northern Russia had been rendered obsolete before the expeditionary force even arrived, in a vivid illustration of the inadequate information available on the other side of the ocean. 52
The decision to intervene in Siberia was based on equally inaccurate no- tions about conditions in Russia. Intervention was intended to aid the Czechoslovak Legion and prevent Germany from gaining a strategic ad- vantage, based on the fear that German and Austrian prisoners of war would extend German influence across Siberia or return west to reinforce the Central Powers. A group of Western military attaches led by William Webster and W. L. Hicks reported that the prisoners of war were not a seri- ous threat, but their assessment was not received until the momentum for intervention was far advanced. As Kennan notes, "here again the lack of an
effective orderly arrangement for representation and information-gathering abroad prevented the United States government from assembling and uti- lizing correctly the best information available. " The belief that the Czechs were in imminent danger was equally erroneous, and by the time U. S. troops arrived, the Czech forces had occupied Vladivostok and were aiding military operations by anti-Bolshevik forces. Finally, Wilson's desire to aid "liberal" forces in Russia showed scant appreciation for the chaotic politican situation there, where none of the competing factions could reasonably be labeled "liberal. " Like that of the other members of the Entente, in short, the U. S. involvement in Russia was founded on inaccurate and misleading in- formation from the beginning. 53
52 Wilson himself referred to the situation in Russia as "kaleidoscopic," and complained, "As soon as we have thought out a working plan there is a new dissolution of the few crys- tals that had formed there. " Quoted in Trani, "Wilson and the Decision to Intervene," 454; and see also Ullman, Intervention and the War, 194--95; and Kennan, Decision to Intervene, 41s-19.
53 In addition, a prophetic warning against intervention from the U. S. vice consul in Archangel was delayed in transmission and failed to reach Washington until after the deci- sion had been made. See Foreign Relations, 1918, Russia, 2:23o-31; Kennan, Decision to Inter- vene, 74-82, 363-65, 4oo-401; Levin, Wilson and World Politics, 104-105; and Unterberger, America's Siberian Expedition, 45-47. On this general point, see Kennan, Russia Leaves the War, 190.
? ? ? The Russian Revolution
THE GREAT PowERS AND THE RussiAN CIVIL WAR Why Did Intervention Continue?
ternal affairs in Russia are no concern of ours. . . . We only consider them in so far as they af- fect the war. " Quoted in Ullman, Intervention and the War, 74?
[1341
? The Russian Revolution
vivendi with the new regime. 16 The British sent a sympathetic young diplo- mat, R. Bruce Lockhart, to Petrograd in January 1918, where he soon became a vocal advocate of cooperation with Russia's new leaders. 17 Until March, the continuing threat of German invasion led Lenin and Trotsky to invite support from the Entente-as a hedge against renewed fighting with Ger- many and as a way to discourage Western intervention. Trotsky, hinting that Russia might reenter the war in exchange for Western aid, requested French, Italian, and U. S. assistance in reorganizing the Russian Army. 18 Entente offi- cials clearly regarded these overtures with suspicion, but their response suggests that they would have considered supporting the Soviet regime had
the Bolsheviks been willing to resume fighting. 19 This possibility was re- mote, however, as aid from the Entente would have taken months to arrive and the German Army would have made short work of the Soviet govern- ment in the interim. Thus, British and French efforts to persuade the Bol- sheviks to reenter the war were stillborn from the start, and pressure for direct intervention grew steadily after the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk.
The growing interest in intervention was partly due to the deteriorating situation on the western front. 20 The Entente powers increasingly believed that the Bolsheviks were German agents or were under German control, a view reinforced by the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, the arrival of a new German ambassador in Moscow, and the German and Turkish advance into south-
16 Balfour and the British ambassador to Russia, Sir George Buchanan, warned that a com- plete break might "hasten the organization of [Russia] by German officials along German lines" and cautioned against giving "the Russians a motive for welcoming into their midst German officials and German soldiers as friends and deliverers. " See Lloyd George, War Memoirs, 5:111-14; and Ullman, Intervention and the War, 23-24, 31-33.
17 See Ullman, Intervention and the War, 58-62.
18 On March 5, Trotsky told Lockhart and Raymond Robins (head of the U. S. Red Cross mission in Moscow) that Russia might resume the war in exchange for economic and mili- tary aid from the Entente. When a German-Finnish invasion of northern Russia seemed likely in April, Trotsky ordered the Murmansk soviet to accept British and American mili- tary aid and invited the Allies to submit "a full and proper statement of [the] help they could furnish. " See C. K. Cumming and Walter W. Pettit, eds. , Russian-American Relations: March 1917-March 1920 (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Howe, 1920), 81-85; Ullman, Inter- vention and the War, 72--76, 159-"63; Carley, Revolution and Intervention, 37-38; and Carr, Bol- shevik Revolution, 3:43-50.
19 In a message requesting U. S. intervention in April, Balfour stated, "If the Bolshevist gov- ernment will cooperate in resisting Germany, it seems necessary to act with them as the de facto Russian government. " In addition, Allied military engineers reportedly aided Russian efforts to destroy rail lines in the path of the German Army. See Ullman, Intervention and the War, 161? 4; Carley, Revolution and Intervention, 37-38, and "Origins of French Intervention,"
42<r-21, 428; Carr, Bolshevik Revolution, 3:43-50; and Kennan, Decision to Intervene, 112-23.
20 Germany shifted forty divisions from the eastern front after the Russian surrender and launched a major offensive in April 1918. A British War Office memorandum declared in June, "Unless Allied intervention is undertaken in Siberia forthwith; we have no chance ofbeing ultimately victorious, and shall incur serious risk of defeat in the meantime. " Quoted in Ull-
man, Intervention and the War, 129. [1351
? ? Revolution and War
em Russia and Ukraine. 21 These events convinced Lockhart that further at- tempts to accommodate the Bolsheviks would be futile, and he joined Am- bassador Joseph Noulens of France in arguing that intervention was necessary to prevent a German takeover. 22
In addition to the legitimate fear that Germany would exploit Russian raw materials and strengthen its forces in the west, British and French lead- ers were also fretting over a host of far-fetched scenarios about the strate- gic consequences of Soviet rule. The Entente powers worried that Germany might capture the military stockpiles in Archangel and Vladivostok and rearm the 8oo,ooo German and Austrian prisoners of war in Siberia, thereby permitting them to rejoin the fighting in the west. British officials were also concerned about their imperial possessions in the Near East and
India, and a British Imperial General Staff memorandum warned that Ger- many would "make use of the pan-Turanian movement and of Ma- hommedan fanaticism to fan into a flame the ever glowing embers of a religious war, in order to loose on India the pent-up tide of Moslem inva- sion. " By July, the chief of the General Staff advised the War Cabinet that "unless . . . democratic Russia can be reconstituted as an independent mil- itary power, it is only a question of time before most of Asia becomes a Ger- man colony, and nothing can impede the enemy's progress towards India. " In an even more bizarre fantasy, British military planners also worried that a German advance across Russia would enable the Germans to ship disas- sembled U-boats to Vladivostok, where they could be reassembled and used against Allied shipping in the Pacific! 23
Underlying these dire visions was the assumption that Russia was rapidly falling under German domination and only prompt intervention by the Entente could stave off disaster. In fact, however, most of the worries were groundless. Given the decrepit state of the Russian. railway network, a German attetnpt to seize the Allied military stores would have come up against the same logistical problems that had prevented tsarist Russia from using these same supplies during the war. The "threat" from German U-
21 The belief that the Bolsheviks were German agents was reinforced by a set of reportedly official documents obtained by Edgar Sisson, head of the U. S. propaganda office in Moscow. These documents, which suggested that the Bolsheviks were taking orders from Berlin, were actually forgeries produced by anti-Bolshevik forces. See Kennan, Russia Leaves the War, 441-57, and "The Sisson Documents," Journal ofModern History 28, no. 2 (1956).
22 Noulens stated this belief in a public interview on April 23, strengthening Bolshevik sus- picions about Allied intentions. See James Bunyan, Intervention, Civil War, and Communism in Russia: April-December, 1918 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1936), 71-'72; Kennan, Decision to Intervene, 21o-11; and Carley, Revolution and Intervention, 58-{io. lockhart and Noulens began providing financial support to several anti-Bolshevik factions; Lockhart was subse- quently arrested! and expeJled by the Soviet government. See Ullman, Intervention and the War, t86-,-9<> 231-35?
23 See Kennan, Decision to Intervene, 71-74, 77-82; and Ullman, Intervention and the War, 87-88, 156-58, 3o4-6.
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? The Russian Revolution
boats in Vladivostok was absurd for the same reason, and instead of repa- triating German and Austrian prisoners to support the German war effort, the Bolsheviks were more interested in recruiting them for revolutionary ac- tivities in their home countries. In any event, under the chaotic conditions in Russia, the prisoners could scarcely have reached the western front quickly and even then would have been in no condition to fight.
By May 1918, therefore, Britain and France had abandoned their efforts to cooperafte with the Bolshevik regime, yet neither state could spare the men that would have been needed to intervene. 24 While continuing to press the United States and Japan to take action, therefore, Britain and France dedded to use the. Czechoslovak Legion, a force of fifty thousand Czech and Slovak prisoners of war originally recruited in Russia to fight against the Central Powers. The Entente had previously decided to trans- port the legion to the western front via Vladivostok and the troops had begun to move across Russia in March. In April, however, the British sug- gested that the legion remain in Russia to provide order and protect Allied interests. As a result, Britain and France ordered part of the legion to head north toward Archangel while the remainder continued east toward Vladivostok. 25
Relations between the Czechoslovak Legion and various local soviets quickly deteriorated, and a series of misunderstandings soon led to armed clashes. 26 This development was a golden opportunity for the Bolsheviks' opponents; Ambassador Noulens urged the Czechs and Slovaks to resist Soviet efforts to disarm them, and ordered French military representatives in Russia not to try to resolve the dispute. The Czechs and Slovaks de- cided to fight their way across Russia by rail and had seized most of the key towns along the Trans-Siberian Railway by the end of June. Encour- aged by reports of growing opposition to Bolshevik rule, Prime Minister
Clemenceau of France agreed that the Czechoslovak Legion could remain in Russia "to constitute a center of resistance around which Siberian and Cossack elements could gather. . . [and] to prepare the way for . . . Allied intervention from the east. " By July, these developments convinced the Supreme War Council to recommend the dispatch of U. S. and Japanese troops to Russia "to prevent the unlimited military and economic domi-
24 According to Carley, "By the end of April 1918 Paris was thoroughly committed to over- throwing the Bolshevik regime. " British planning for intervention in Siberia and northern Russia began in May. See Carley, Revolution and Intervention, 53; and illlman, Intervention and the War, 193-94.
25 The saga of Rhe Czechoslovak Legion is recounted in Kennan, Decision to Intervene, chaps. 6 and 12; Ullman, Intervention and the War, 151-56, 168-72; Bunyan, Intervention, Civil War, and Communism, chap. 2; and John Swettenham, Allied Intervention in Russia, 1918-1919 (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1967), 88-()9.
26 In the words of James Morley, "To send the Czechs through Siberia was to roll a powder keg through a forest fire. An explosion was inevitable. " Japanese Thrust, 235?
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nation of Russia by Germany . . . [and] to bring assistance to the Czecho- Slovak forces. "27
TheUnitedStates. AcrosstheAtlanticinWashington,PresidentWoodrow Wilson had seen the collapse of tsarism as a liberal triumph that removed his reservations about an alliance with Russia. 28 The Bolshevik coup was
? more problematic, but Wilson initially regarded the Bolsheviks as well in- tentioned, if naive. 29 His intimate advisor, Colonel Edward House, predicted moderate forces would soon regain power, and both he and Wilson were confident that Russia would choose to remain part of the liberal alliance against the autocratic Central Powers. A number of U. S officials were less optimistic, however, and virtually all favored a hands-off policy until the situation in Russia was clearer. 30
Pressed by Secretary of State Robert Lansing and others to counter Bol- shevik propaganda (and hoping to coopt the Bolsheviks into his vision of the postwar order), Wilson paid particular attention to the situation in Rus- sia in his "Fourteen Points" speech in January 1918. The sixth of his points called for the "evacuation of all Russian territory" by foreign armies and ad- vised other states to give Russia "a sincere welcome into the society of free nations under institutions of her own choosing. " Wilson condemned Ger- many's territorial demands, praised the "true spirit of modem democracy" that he believed to be emerging in Russia, and lauded the "voice of the Russian people" that "will not yield either in principle or in action. "31 De- spite the growing evidence to the contrary, Wilson was still convinced that liberalism would emerge triumphant and Russia would continue to resist the Central Powers.
His optimism soon faded. The dissolution of the Constituent Assembly in January cast doubt on the Bolsheviks' commitment to democracy. Wilson
27 See Ullman, Intervention and the War, 172; Carley, Revolu tion and Intervention, 64? 6; and Foreign Relations, 1918, Russia, 2:241-46.
28 Wilson told Congress in April 1917 that Russia "was always in fact democratic at. heart . . . and the great, generous Russian people have been added . . . to the forces fighting for free- dom. " Quoted i. n N. Gordon Levin, Woodrow Wilson and World Politics: America's Response to War and Revolution (New York: Oxford University Press, 1968), 42-43; and see also Kennan, Russia Leaves tlze War, 14-26; and Betsy Miller Unterberger, America's Siberian Expedition, 1918-1920:AStudyofNationalPolicy(Durham:DukeUniversity Press, 1956), ? 10.
29 In November, Wilson said to a group of labor leaders, "Any body of free men that com- pounds with the present German government is compounding for its own destruction," and he told his cabinet that the actions of Lenin and Trotsky "sounded like opera bouffe, talking of armistice when a child would know Germany would . . . destroy any chance for the democ- racy they desired. " Quoted in Levin, Wilson and World Politics, 5? 59?
30 See Levin, Wilson and World Politics, 68; Kennan, Russia Leaves the War, 156-57, 174"'78; and David W. McFadden, Alternative Paths: Soviets and Americans, 1917-1920 (New York: Ox- ford University Press, 1993), chap. 2.
31 See Cumming and Pettit, Russian-American Relations, 68-74; and Kennan, Russia Leaves the War, 253-55.
? ? ? ? The Russian Revolution
grew more concerned after the Congress of Soviets answered his message of congratulations with a bellicose call for world revolution. 32 An image of the Bolshevik regime as hostile and illegitimate began to take shape, and U. S. officials began considering more extensive ways to influence or replace it.
Unlike its British and French allies, however, the United States rejected di- rect intervention until the summer of 1918. Wilson and his advisors, aware of Japanese ambitions in the Far East, did not want to give Japan an opportunity to increase its own influence on the mainland. U. S. leaders also feared that in- tervention would push Russia closer to Germany, and they opposed diverting military assets from the main struggle in Europe. Wilson himself was reluctant to help former tsarist elements regain power: his experiences with the Mexi- can Revolution (discussed in chapter 6 below) having taught him there were limits to what outside forces could accomplish in a revolutionary situation. 33
The breakthrough came in June, when the United States agreed to send troops to support a British and French expeditionary force in northern Rus- sia. 34 The Soviet government tried to head off intervention by offering a se- ries of economic concessions in May, but these gestures did not reverse the growing perception of the Soviet regime as unfriendly and illegitimate. The revolt of the Czechoslovak Legion overcame the rest of Wilson's reserva- tions, and he approved a plan for joint intervention by seven thousand U. S. and seven thousand Japanese troops in July. 35
At the most general level, the U. S. decision to intervene was shaped by Wilson's idealistic faith in the strength of Russian liberalism. Pressure from Britain and France played a key role as well, and Wilson told one confidant
32 Wilson's message had expressed "the sincere sympathy which the people of the United States feel for the Russian people" and pledged that the United States "would avail itself of every opportunity to secure for Russia once more complete sovereignty and independence. " In response, the Soviet government proclaimed, "The happy day is not far distant when the laboring masses . . ? . will throw off the yoke of capitalism and will establish a socialistic state of society. " See Foreign Relations 1918, Russia, 1:399-400; Chamberlin, Russian Revolution, 1:406; and Kennan, Russia Leaves the War, 509-14.
33 See Kennan, Russia Leaves the War, 323-24, 466-67; and Unterberger, America's Siberian Ex- pedition, 25, 31-33. Wilson compared the Russian and Mexican situations in a speech in June, saying that "we cai! Ulot make anything out of Russia. " Quoted in Eugene P. Trani, "Woodrow Wilson and the Decision to Intervene in Russia: A Reconsideration," journal ofModern History 48, no. 3 (1976), 444?
34 Under pressure from the other members of the Entente, Wilson had briefly approved a proposal for Japanese intervention on March 2, but he withdrew his approval three days later. See Kennan, Decision to Intervene, 46cr-83; and Unterberger, America's Siberian Interven- tion, 3D-34?
35 For Wilson, the intervention in northern Russia was intended to safeguard the allied mil- itary stores, while intervention in the Far East was designed to aid the evacuation of the Czechoslovak forces, but his written orders also referred to helping "steady any efforts at self-government or self-defense in which the Russians themselves may be willing to accept assistance. " See Carr, Bolshevik Revolution, 3:87-88; and Kennan, Decision to Intervene, chaps. 16-17 and 483-
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that he agreed to the intervention because it was an endeavor "upon which [the United States' allies] have so much set their hearts. " Wilson was also encouraged to act by the former tsarist ambassador in Washington and other prominent Russian exiles, and he shared the British and French fear that Russia was falling under German control. U. S. ambassador David Fran- cis had reported that the German ambassador "was practically dictator in Moscow"; British and French officials sounded similar alarms throughout this period. The growing belief that the Bolsheviks were either pro-German or German agents removed the fear that intervention might force Russia and Germany together, and some U. S. officials favored sending troops out of a fear that the Bolsheviks' internal opponents might turn toward Ger- many if they were unable to obtain Allied support. Wilson, who suspected that Japan was going to intervene anyway, decided that a U. S. presence would be the best way to keep Japan's ambitions in check. This objective linked U. S.
intervention to Wilson's overall vision of a liberal Russian fu- ture: by preventing foreign powers from controlling Russia's destiny, the U. S. presence would help bring the liberal forces in Russia to the fore. Fi- nally, the plight of the Czechoslovak Legion provided a moral basis for in- tervention, as sending U. S. forces to "rescue" them was consistent with Wilsonian idealism and his commitment to national self-determination. Thus, on July 6, 1918, Wilson finally agreed to send approximately seven thousand U. S. troops to Vladivostok "to guard the line of communication of the Czecho-Slovaks . . . and cooperate with [them]," while stressing "that
there is no purpose to interfere with [the] internal affairs of Russia. "36
japan. For Japan, the Russian Revolution presented both a threat and an opportunity. On the one hand, the revolution threatened Japan's control over the former German territories it had seized at the beginning of the war and jeopardized the favorable concessions it had obtained from Russia in 1916. The Japanese government also worried that foreign intervention in Russia might lead to a long-term increase in Western influence in the re- gion. 37 On the other hand, the collapse of Russian power gave Japan the chance to expand its territorial control and political influence in Siberia and northern China. Given Western interests in the area, however, it had to pur- sue this objective without alarming the other great powers. 38 Japanese mili-
36 See Foreign Relations, 1918, Russia, 2:262-63, 287-90. On these various motives, see Trani, "Wilson and ? he Decision to Intervene," 442-445; Levin, Wilson and World Politics, 7o-71, 91-95, 109; Kennan, Russia Leaves the War, 94- 147-48, and Decision to Intervene, 365--69, 378-79; and Unterberger, America's Siberian Expedition, 30.
37 In addition to a secret defense pact, Russia had agreed to tum over part of the Chinese Eastern Railway to Japan in exchange for military aid. See Morley, Japanese Thrust, 55, 94; Kennan, Russia Leaves the War, 312-13; and Ian Nish, Japanese Foreign Policy, 1869-1942 (Lon- don: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1977), 1o6-11.
38 On Japanese ambitions, see Morley, Japanese Thrust, 5o-59.
? ? TheRussian Revolution
tary leaders had begun preparing plans for intervention in Russia within a week of the Bolshevik coup, but they preferred to maximize their own free- dom of action and took no interest in British or French schemes for using Japanese troops against the Central Powers. Instead, Japanese advocates of intervention hoped to obtain an invitation from the United States that would enable them to expand their country's influence without damaging relations with the West. 39
These concerns did not mean Japan was idle. Two warships were sent to Vladivostok in January, and British and Japanese troops went ashore in April after local disturbances left several Japanese citizens dead. Japanese agents were also providing financial and military assistance to Cossack forces in Siberia, as well as to an independent regime in Harbin set up by General Dmitri Horvath, the former governor-general of the Chinese East- ern Railway. In addition, the Japanese government negotiated an agreement with the Chinese government in an attempt to coordinate their actions in the
Chinese Eastern Railway Zone. 40
Pressure to act increased throughout the spring of 1918. In March, Gen- eral Horvath's decision to allow a group of U. S. railroad experts to assist in the managemenfr of the Chinese Eastern Railway spurred Japanese concerns about U. S. influence, while Britain and France again invited Japan to inter- vene "as far west as possible for the purpose of encountering the Germans. " Japanese officials were still divided, however, and the Cabinet refused to move without "the moral and material support of the United States. " And in the event that intervention did take place, the Japanese insisted that they be allowed to command the expedition. 41
By convincing Wilson to act, the Czech uprising removed the main obstacle to Japan's ambitions. The United States proposed that each state limit its forces to seven thousand men and guarantee "not to impair the political or territorial sovereignty of Russia. " Because these conditions threatened Japan's larger objectives, a series of delicate negotiations ensued between the rival factions in Japan and between Japan and the United States. The Japanese gov- ernment eventually fashioned a reply that appeared to satisfy the U. S. condi- tions without significantly restricting Japan's freedom of action, and by October Japan had landed more than seventy thousand troops in Siberia. 42
Soviet Responses. British and French troops began to arrive in northern Russia in July. The Soviet authorities in Archangel were ousted by a pro-
39 Morley, Japanese Thrust, 122-23.
40 Morley, Japanese Thrust, 118-21, 161-65.
41 See Foreign Relations, 1918, Russia, 2:202-3; Ullman, Intervention and the War, 202; Kennan,
Decision to Intervene, 384; and Morley, Japanese Thrust, 213-16, 226, 229-31 .
4 2 See Foreign Relations, 1918, Russia, 2:262-63; and Morley, japanese Thrust, chap. 12 and
307-10.
? ? Revolution and War
Entente coup in early August, and some fifty-five hundred U. S. troops joined the European forces in September. The expeditionary force's stated purpose was to guard the military stockpiles and rendezvous with the Czechoslovak Legion, but it soon found itself engaged in combat opera- tions against Bolshevik units. U. S. and Japanese troops reached the Far East in September, along with token British and French contingents, and British units entered Transcaucasia and the trans-Caspian region with the aim of countering German and Turkish influence and protecting the approaches
to India.
Although these activities were not directed against Soviet rule per se, they reinforced the Bolsheviks' impression of imperialist hostility. 43 In addition to undertaking a concerted effort to rebuild Russia's military power, the Soviet government began to move closer to Germany as the threat from the West increased. Germany's desire to evade the Allied blockade and Russia's own economic difficulties led to a trade agreement between the two states in May, and Soviet foreign minister G. V. Chicherin endorsed an earlier Ger- man proposal for intervention in Karelia in August, saying that "an open military alliance was impossible in the state of public opinion, but parallel action irl fact was possible. " Russia's leverage improved as Germany's mil- itary position decayed, and Germany agreed to modify the Treaty of Brest- Litovsk in August. 44
These shifts did not mean that the Bolsheviks had abandoned their revo- lutionary aims. A Soviet diplomat at Brest-Litovsk told his German coun- terpart that he hoped "to start a revolution in your country also," and at the signing of the treaty the Soviet representative said to the head of the Ger- man delegation, "This triumph of imperialism and militarism over the international proletarian revolution will prove only temporary and transi- tory. " Lenin informed his colleagues the Soviet government had violated the antipropaganda provisions of the peace treaty "thirty or forty times," and the Soviets continued their efforts to recruit supporters among cap- tured German and Austrian prisoners of war. 45 Thus, the tilt toward Ger-
43 Lenin told the Central Committee in July that the Czechoslovak Legion's uprising was "one link in the chain long since forged by the systematic policy of British and French impe- rialists to throttle Soviet Russia. . . . What we are faced with here is a systematic, methodical, and evidently long-planned counter-revolutionary military and financial campaign against the Soviet Republic. " Lenin, Selected Works, ):29-30.
44 Lenin wrote in August 1918, "1 shall not hesitate one second to enter into (an] 'agreement' with the German imperialist vultures if an attack upon Russia by Anglo-French troops calls for it. " See Lenin, Selected Works, 3:47; Carr, Bolshevik Revolution, 3:7cr-85; Gerald Freund, Un- holy Alliance: Russian-German Relations from the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk to the Treaty of Berlin (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1957), 23; Wheeler-Bennett, Brest-Litovsk, 427-46; and Oegras, So- viet Documents, 1:9fH)8.
45 The Soviets convened an "All-Russian Congress of Internationalist Prisoners of War" in April 1918, which Lenin later called "the real foundation" of the Third International. See Carr, Bolshevik Revolution, 3:71-76.
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many was merely a temporary expedient, not a fundamental shift in Soviet intentions.
Finally, the foreign powers' decision to intervene dissolved the few re- maining contacts between the Soviet regime and the Entente. An abortive uprising in August and the wounding of Lenin by a member of an opposi- tion party triggered a "Red Terror" by the secret police, as well as a sharp rise in hostility toward the Allied powers. After the British naval attache was murdered by a mob attacking the British embassy in September, the British government promptly detained several Bolshevik representatives in England and harshly denounced the Soviet regime. British, French, and U. S. diplomats were withdrawn in August, and the Soviet government arrested and detained hundreds of Allied citizens in Moscow and Petrograd. At the time World War I ended, therefore, relations between the Bolsheviks and the West were going from bad to worse. 46
The diplomatic history of Soviet Russia and the other great powers dur- ing the first year of Soviet rule supports my theory in several ways. First, foreign states' responses to the revolution were motivated primarily by their concern for the balance of power. The Allies did not intervene in Russia be- cause hostility to Bolshevism per se; rather, they sought to prevent Germany from exploiting Russia's collapse. This preoccupation with the balance of power and the war in Europe helps elucidate why the Entente tried to per- suade the Bolsheviks to reenter the war while simultaneously providing aid to the Bolsheviks' internal opponents. The Central Powers welcomed the revolution for the same reasons that the Entente opposed it, and the emerg- ing alignment between Moscow and Berlin during the final months of the war was an obvious attempt to balance against a commori enemy.
By opening up an enormous power vacuum in Eurasia, the Russian Revo- lution also created tempting opportunities for a number of other states, most notably Japan. Japanese expansion was driven both by the government's own acquisitiveness and by the fear that other powers might exploit the sit- uation if it did not. As one Japanese official put it, failure to act might confine Japan to polking activity "while England and America are getting the gravy. "47 The awareness of Japan's ambitions had a major impact on U. S. pol- icy, and Wilson's desire to rein in Japanese expansion played a key role in overcoming his initial reluctance to intervene. Similar motives were also at work in France; although fear of Germany was the primary factor motivat-
46 On the Red Terror, see Chamberlin, Russian Revolution, vol. 2, chap. 23. Balfour termed the attache's murder an "abominable outrage" and warned that unless Britain received a sat- isfactory reply it would "make every endeavour to secure that [the Soviet government) shall be treated as outlaws by the governments of all civilized nations. " Quoted in Ullman, Inter- vention and the War, 288-91.
? 47 Quoted in Morley, Japanese Thrust, 216.
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ing France's support for intervention in Russia, the French were also worried that inaction on their part would enable the other great powers to supplant their own prewar preeminence-and this worry both encouraged interven- tion and made it more difficult for outside powers to coordinate their actions.
The first year of Bolshevik rule also illustrates how states exaggerate each other's hostility in the wake of revolution. The Bolsheviks were already in- clined to view foreign responses in the most negative way; for example, al- though Allied aid to various non-Bolshevik groups was motivated mainly by the desire to prevent the Central Powers from exploiting Russia's col- lapse, to the Bolsheviks it was evidence of innate imperialist ill will. Simi- larly, the revolt of the Czechoslovak Legion was seen as a deliberate imperialist plot (which it was not), and the Bolsheviks failed to recognize that the Allied military intervention was either in response to local events
(such as the attacks on Japanese citizens in April) or directed primarily against Germany. Given that the Entente Powers were backing the Bolshe- viks' domestic opponents, however, their disavowal of any desire to inter- fere in Russia's internal affairs was clearly disingenuous, and it is hardly surprising that Lenin dismissed their offers of support as a transparent ploy intended to undermine the Soviet regime. 48
In the same way, the Entente saw the Soviet decision to leave the war as unambiguous evidence of Bolshevik perfidy and concluded that the Bol- sheviks were either German agents or under German control. This inference was entirely erroneous: the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk had been a bitter pill that the Bolsheviks swallowed with great reluctance. The Entente was also alarmed by the growing ties between Germany and Russia during the spring of 1918, failing to realize that the alignment was formed against the threat of Allied intervention rather than being based on sympathy with Ger- many. Indeed, Lenin believed that Soviet policy should be "equally hostile to the English and the Germans" and eagerly anticipated a revoh. itionary upheaval in Germany.
Of course, the tensions between Soviet Russia and the outside world were not due solely to these misunderstandings. The Bolsheviks' animosity to- ward the outside world was abundantly clear, and both the Central Powers and the Entente were opposed to Bolshevik rule. Nonetheless, the evidence suggests that neither side understood the real motives behind each other's conduct and both drew exaggerated conclusions about their opponents' hostility.
Third, responses to the revolution were shaped by beliefs about the pos- sibility that the revolution might spread. The Bolsheviks rejected the initial
48 Lenin rejected Allied aid offers, saying, "The members of the Anglo-French bourgeoisie are laying a trap for us: 'Just come along, my little dears, and go to war right now. . . . Ger- many will strip you bare . . . and will give us better terms in the west, and incidentally Soviet power will go to the devil. ' " Quoted in Kennan, Russia Leaves the War, 502.
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German peace offer on the grounds that a revolution was about to engulf Germany; in other words, they believed that Marxist propaganda, together with the example they had already set, would form a potent offensive weapon that could destroy a powerful opponent virtually overnight. These hopes were soon dashed, however, and Lenin eventually persuaded his col- leagues to ground Soviet diplomacy in the realities of power rather than an unpredictable revolutionary timetable. Similarly, the Entente's decision to intervene was based on exaggerated fears about the strategic implications of the revolution. Advocates of intervention believed the Central Powers could
easily exploit vast areas of Russian territory, while simultaneously arguing that a modest Allied effort would prevent such a calamity. Thus, an unreal- istic sense of what military force could accomplish helped persuade the Al- lied leaders that intervention was both necessary and feasible. 49
Finally, each side's responses were affected by a pervasive lack of reliable information. This problem was due partly to a general breakdown in com- munications within Russia, as well as to the Soviet decision to move most foreign representatives to the isolated town of Vologda. As a result, contacts between the Soviet government and the Entente began to dissolve at pre- cisely the moment when accurate data was most needed. The dearth of trustworthy information hampered efforts to formulate clear and consistent policies, if only because advocates of different positions could not marshal compelling evidence to support their recommendations. 5?
To make matters worse, the information that was available was often mis- leading. Foreign governments were bombarded by intense lobbying from allies, domestic groups, the Czech leaders, and assorted Russian exiles, each conveying "information" intended to sway national leaders in the desired direction. 51 Allied intervention was inspired in large part by the fear that
49 Such views were not universal. Balfour noted that "Russia, however capable of fighting, is not easily overrun. Except with the active good will of the Russians themselves, German troops . . . are not going to penetrate many hundreds of miles into that vast country. " Simi- larly, Wilson reportedly told the British ambassador in May that "no military man with whom he [Wilson) had talked had been able to convince him that there was any practical scheme which would recreate a Russian front. " Quoted in David Lloyd George, War Memoirs, 5:114; and Unterberger, America's Siberian Expedition, 52-53?
;o Thus, Balfour answered complaints about the Allies' indecision by noting that they had "determined their policy as quickly as could reasonably be expected in the face of the vary- ing opinions expressed by their agents, the contradictory reports which poured into them from Russia, and the novelty of the problems presented to them for solution. " Quoted in Ull- man, Intervention and the War, 191-92.
51 KennanarguesthattheformertsaristembassyinWashington"playedanimportantpart in shaping the initial American response to the Bolshevik seizure of power," but former am- bassador Boris Bakhmetev's influence declined sharply after 1918. See Kennan, Decision to In- tervene, 322-23; 36o-61; McFadden, Alternative Paths, 48-50; Linda Killen, "The Search for a Democratic Russia: Bakhmetev and the United States," Diplomatic History 2, no. 3 (1978); and Robert J. Maddox, "Woodrow Wilson, the Russian Embassy, and Siberian Intervention," Pa- cific Historical Review 36, no. 4 ( 1 967).
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Russia was falling under German influence-a belief supported by U. S. am- bassador Francis's report that the German ambassador "was practically dic- tator in Moscow" and the testimony of various anti-Bolshevik groups. The decision to intervene was also driven by the mistaken fear that Germany would try to seize the Allied military stockpiles in Archangel and Vladivos- tok, even though the German troops were hundreds of miles away. Even worse, Wilson agreed to send U. S. troops to Murmansk in order to protect the allied military stockpiles, but the stores were actually in Archangel, and most of the supplies had already been removed by the Bolsheviks. Thus, the purpose for which U. S. troops were originally sent to northern Russia had been rendered obsolete before the expeditionary force even arrived, in a vivid illustration of the inadequate information available on the other side of the ocean. 52
The decision to intervene in Siberia was based on equally inaccurate no- tions about conditions in Russia. Intervention was intended to aid the Czechoslovak Legion and prevent Germany from gaining a strategic ad- vantage, based on the fear that German and Austrian prisoners of war would extend German influence across Siberia or return west to reinforce the Central Powers. A group of Western military attaches led by William Webster and W. L. Hicks reported that the prisoners of war were not a seri- ous threat, but their assessment was not received until the momentum for intervention was far advanced. As Kennan notes, "here again the lack of an
effective orderly arrangement for representation and information-gathering abroad prevented the United States government from assembling and uti- lizing correctly the best information available. " The belief that the Czechs were in imminent danger was equally erroneous, and by the time U. S. troops arrived, the Czech forces had occupied Vladivostok and were aiding military operations by anti-Bolshevik forces. Finally, Wilson's desire to aid "liberal" forces in Russia showed scant appreciation for the chaotic politican situation there, where none of the competing factions could reasonably be labeled "liberal. " Like that of the other members of the Entente, in short, the U. S. involvement in Russia was founded on inaccurate and misleading in- formation from the beginning. 53
52 Wilson himself referred to the situation in Russia as "kaleidoscopic," and complained, "As soon as we have thought out a working plan there is a new dissolution of the few crys- tals that had formed there. " Quoted in Trani, "Wilson and the Decision to Intervene," 454; and see also Ullman, Intervention and the War, 194--95; and Kennan, Decision to Intervene, 41s-19.
53 In addition, a prophetic warning against intervention from the U. S. vice consul in Archangel was delayed in transmission and failed to reach Washington until after the deci- sion had been made. See Foreign Relations, 1918, Russia, 2:23o-31; Kennan, Decision to Inter- vene, 74-82, 363-65, 4oo-401; Levin, Wilson and World Politics, 104-105; and Unterberger, America's Siberian Expedition, 45-47. On this general point, see Kennan, Russia Leaves the War, 190.
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THE GREAT PowERS AND THE RussiAN CIVIL WAR Why Did Intervention Continue?
