The USA as the “leader of the free world” or, alternatively, of “The West” provides a classic example of the adage, “with a friend like this, who needs enemies?” America leaves in its wake a long line of ruined states and dead politicians who naively trusted the USA’s high-sounding moral principles. The USA traded on its image as the bulwark against communism for decades, and in the process frightened much of the world into its corral. The implosion of the Soviet bloc was a mixed blessing for American power elites, but it was soon replaced by another world bogeyman, “militant Islam.”

American Lt. Col. Nichols with the U.S. Army 31st Infantry at Vladivostok during the U.S. intervention in the Russian civil war (Photo: www.historyplace.com)

American Lt. Col. Nichols with the U.S. Army 31st Infantry at Vladivostok during the U.S. intervention in the Russian civil war (Photo: www.historyplace.com)

Where one is placed on the USA’s list of friends and enemies can change quite quickly. One can be the recipient of US largesse one moment, and scuttled and running for one’s life the next as per Batista,[1] Chiang Kai Shek,[2] Anastasio Somoza,[3] The Dalai Lama,[4] and the last leaders of South Vietnam. Certain forms of communism might also be serviceable by the USA while others are anathema: The Khmer Rouge “good”;[5] Stalin, “bad,”[6] for example.

In 1980 ex-President of Nicaragua, Somoza said: “I was betrayed by a long standing and trusted ally.”[7] He, and many others who found themselves in a similar position, could have learnt from history and from the words of the anti-Bolshevik “Leader of All the Russias,” Admiral Kolchak, who, shortly before his shooting in 1920, basically said of America’s “intervention”: “what the hell was that about, then?”

Wilson’s High Rectitude a Pose for US Hegemony

America’s reputation as the “leader of the free world,” always being stirred up against some world evil or other, largely traces back to Woodrow Wilson’s “Fourteen Points” for post-World War I reconstruction. Ever since, the USA has postured on the world stage as moral guardian and conscience. This Wilsonian world democratic revolution – which continues under other names and under both Republican and Democratic Administrations – was presented as the liberal alternative to totalitarian Bolshevism. Wilson stated at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference of the Bolsheviks:

There is throughout the world the feeling of revolt against vested interests[8] which influence the world in both economic and political spheres. The way to cure this domination is, in my opinion, constant discussion and a slow process of reform; but the world at large has grown impatient of delay. There are men in the United States of the finest temper, if not of the finest judgment, who are in sympathy with Bolshevism because it appears to them to offer that regime of opportunity to the individual which they desire to bring about.[9]

His plan was not to fight Bolshevism, then in a very precarious position, but to accept the Soviets, with confidence that the Bolsheviks would, through “constant discussion and a slow process of reform”, be integrated into the “world community”; i.e. the “world market.”

Yet the great myth of a struggle of Zoroastrian proportions between democracy and communism, whereby communism was eventually defeated by the superiority of the USA, is one of the fundamental paradigms of political and historical analysis. Hence, US State Department expert on Russia, George Kennan, wrote of America’s role in the Allied “intervention” in Russia, supposedly to defeat the Bolsheviks by aiding the “White” movement:

There are those today who see the winter of 1917-1918 as one of the great turning points of modern history, the point at which there separated and branched out, clearly and for all to see, the two great conflicting answers – totalitarian and liberal – to the emerging problems of the modern age…[10]

America’s involvement in the “intervention” was nothing of the kind, and seems to have provided a blueprint for America’s scuttling of sundry states ever since.

Histories of the “Russian Civil War” therefore generally follow the line that, in the words of historian David S Fogles:

From the Bolshevik Revolution to the end of the Civil War the United States sought to encourage and support anti-Bolshevik movements in a variety of secretive and semi-secret ways. Constrained by a declared commitment to the principal of self-determination and hemmed by idealistic and later isolationist sentiments, Wilson and his advisors pursued methods of assisting anti-Bolshevik forces that evaded public scrutiny and avoided the need for congressional appropriations.[11]

However, Fogles also states that despite the US involvement in the Allied “intervention,” the Soviet regime considered the USA to be the most likely source from which to secure diplomatic and commercial relations.[12] While the American Expeditionary Force (AEF) was in Russia, Ludwig Martens, the Soviet representative in America, was carrying on lively communications with US business interests. Thus, when agents of the Lusk Committee of New York raided Martin’s Soviet Bureau offices on June 12, 1919, communications with approximately a thousand firms were found.[13] A British intelligence report noted that the J P Morgan enterprise, Guaranty Trust Company of New York, was funding Martens.[14]

Bankers at the Peace Conference

Meanwhile the paragons of capitalism, the international bankers, were busy at the Paris Peace Conference trying to get the Bolsheviks recognized, when the Soviet regime seemed unlikely to endure. Wilson and Lloyd George were eager to extend recognition to the Soviet government. That they did not do so was largely due to the opposition undertaken by Henry Wickham Steed, editor of The London Daily Times, who seems to have launched a one-man crusade to expose not only the Bolsheviks, but more importantly their friends in High Finance, reminiscing, “Potent international financial interests were at work in favour of the immediate recognition of the Bolshevists”, who were in return offering “extensive commercial and economic concessions.”[15] Steed related that he was contacted by Wilson’s adviser, Edward House, who was concerned at Steed’s exposé of the relationship between Bolshevists and financiers:

That day Colonel House asked me to call upon him. I found him worried both by my criticism of any recognition of the Bolshevists and by the certainty, which he had not previously realized, that if the President were to recognize the Bolshevists in return for commercial concessions his whole “idealism” would be hopelessly compromised as commercialism in disguise. I pointed out to him that not only would Wilson be utterly discredited but that the League of Nations would go by the board, because all the small peoples and many of the big peoples of Europe would be unable to resist the Bolshevism which Wilson would have accredited.[16]

House in Machiavellian manner asked Steed to compromise, to support humanitarian aid supposedly for the benefit of all Russians. Steed agreed to consider this, but soon after talking with House found out that British Prime Minister Lloyd George and President Wilson were to proceed with recognition the following day. Steed therefore wrote the lead article for the Paris Daily Mail of March 28 exposing the maneuvers and asking how a pro-Bolshevik attitude was consistent with Wilson’s declared moral principles for the post-war world?

Charles Crane[17], who had recently talked with Wilson, told Steed that Wilson was about to recognize the Bolsheviks, which would result in negative public opinion in the USA and destroy Wilson’s post-War internationalist aims. Significantly Crane also identified the pro-Bolshevik faction as being that of Big Business, stating to Steed: “Our people at home will certainly not stand for the recognition of the Bolshevists at the bidding of Wall Street.” Steed was again seen by House, who stated that Steed’s article in the Paris Daily Mail, “had got under the President’s hide.” House asked that Steed postpone further exposés in the press, and again raised the prospect of recognition based on humanitarian aid. Lloyd George was also greatly perturbed by Steed’s articles in the Daily Mail and complained that he could not undertake a “sensible” policy towards the Bolsheviks while the press had an anti-Bolshevik attitude. [18]

Reading newspaper accounts at the time, one continually sees on virtually a daily basis the question as to whether the Allies would recognize the White regimes, a matter to which Admiral A V Kolchak and others fighting the Red Army attached much importance. They never did receive recognition, de facto or de jure, and it is evident from what Wickham Steed relates that the Allies never intended to grant recognition, and that Wilson and George wished rather to recognize the Bolsheviks.

Why the Allies Intervened

What should be kept in mind is that when the Allies “intervened” and sent forces to Russia in 1917, following the Bolshevik revolution, they did so at a time when it was not certain whether the Soviets would enter into an armistice with Germany. The Allies aimed to: (1) Ensure that the large stocks of war materials that had been given to Russia by the Allies to fight Germany would not be captured by the German, and (2) to provide safe conduct to the Czech prisoners-of-war who had been released by the Bolsheviks and aimed to reach France to fight the Germans and secure a place for Czech nationhood in the post-war world. Overthrowing the Bolsheviks was not part of the plan, and there was a likelihood that the Bolsheviks would join the Allies against Germany rather than signing an armistice. Robert Service states, “Most Bolshevik leaders… thought that a separate peace with the Central Powers was an insufferable concession to capitalist imperialism.”[19] Despite Lenin’s directions, Trotsky, as People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs, had, instead of signing a peace treaty at Brest-Litovsk, called for a revolution against Germany; and with Trotsky’s intransigence, the armistice broke, with the Germans launching another offensive on the Eastern Front, where they now fought the unprepared Red Army. This caused a sense of “solidarity” between the Soviets and the Allied representatives.[20] The British, via War Cabinet special agent R H Bruce Lockhart, sought out Trotsky on the instructions of Lloyd George. So close were Lockhart and Trotsky to become that Lockhart’s wife commented that he was getting the reputation as a “Red” among his colleagues in Britain.[21]

Kennan states that when the Americans sent their first representative to Archangel in 1917, “At the time of the Bolshevik seizure of power in Petrograd the allies were interested in Archangel not only for its importance as a channel of entrance and egress for European Russia but that also for the fact that here too, as at Vladivostok, war supplies shipped to former Russian governments had accumulated in large quantities.”[22] General William S Graves, commander of the American Expeditionary Force in Siberia, explained:

It should be remembered that the main reason advanced by those interested in military intervention in Siberia, was the immediate and urgent need for protection of the Czechs who were supposed to be trying to get through Siberia to Vladivostok and then to the Western front where they could join the Allies.[23]

With the fear of a German attack, Allied forces landed in Murmansk to support the Soviets. Kennan notes that this was probably the first Allied landing of forces on Russian territory, and it was undertaken at the invitation of the local Soviet authorities.[24]

Contact with the Whites

While the Allies pursued a policy of negotiation with the Bolsheviks in regard to war aims, they also left their options open in regard to the anti-Bolshevik White movement, led by Admiral Kolchak, who had established his authority over Eastern Siberia. There was a good chance that the White movement would defeat the Soviets, and if they could not get support from the Allies they would be obliged to turn to Germany. Although Admiral Kolchak was staunchly pro-British, some, such as Cossack Ataman Semenoff, were heavily backed by the Japanese, one of the Allies, but nonetheless even then suspect; and other White commanders had a pro-German orientation.

In April 1918 British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour, on the basis of encouraging reports from Lockhart, suggested joint Allied intervention in co-operation with the Soviets.[25] Colonel William Wiseman of the British Secret Service, who had played a role in facilitating Trotsky’s return from New York to Russia and possibly had even recruited Trotsky as a British agent,[26] was of the same opinion, cabling President Wilson’s confidante Edward House from London on May 1 1918 that the Allies should intervene at the invitation of the Bolsheviks and help organize the Red Army[27]. However, the Allies remained unsure of the reliability of the Soviets.

Outbreak of the “Civil War”

The catalyst for the outbreak of hostilities involved a dispute between the freed Czech POWs and the Soviets. En route along the Trans-Siberian railway an order came from Trotsky for the Czechs to disarm. The Czechs believed this to be of treacherous intent and a revolt broke out, the Czechs turning back into Russia and on reaching Samara on the River Volga offered their services to the Socialist-Revolutionary “Committee of Members of the Constituent Assembly.” The battle-hardened Czechs defeated the Red Army and the entire Volga region came under the anti-Bolshevik Socialist-Revolutionaries. Russia was in disarray with industrial strikes, peasant resistance, and opposition to the Bolsheviks ranging from anarchists to Czarists. Additionally fighting soon broke out between the Bolsheviks and their partners, the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries.[28]

After months of procrastination, American troops landed in Siberia and North Russia in July 1918, without advising the French and British who had been pushing for decisive action. Here Admiral A V Kolchak had formed a White Army. Encouraged by Allied troop landings an anti-Bolshevik coup in Archangel succeeded in driving out the Soviets. A small American force led by a lieutenant chased the Soviets for seventy-five miles south along the Archangel-Vologda railroad. However, it is important to realize that military engagement against the Bolsheviks contravened US policy, and such actions were undertaken by enthusiastic military men at the scene, in disregard for Wilson’s directive of not engaging the Red Army. Gen. William S Graves, commander of the American Expeditionary Force in Siberia, wrote of this: “…If I had permitted American troops to be used in fighting ‘Red armies,’ as stated, I would have taken an immense responsibility upon myself, as no one above me, in authority, had given me any such orders….”[29]

Graves’ American Kiss of Death

As much of the world now realizes, when America enters a conflict, it is a “kiss of death” to its supposed friends. Gen. Graves took his place in Kolchak’s Siberia as commander of the American Expeditionary Force, the sole aim being to protect the Trans-Siberian Railway, and definitely not to engage the Red Army. Graves’ insisted on maintaining strict “neutrality” – other than when opportunities arose in which he could confront Kolchak and the White movement, for whom he had an unremitting contempt, writing over a decade later:

At the time of my arrival in Vladivostok, when the Allied representatives spoke of Russians, they meant the old Czarist officials, who felt it was then safe enough for them to appear in their gorgeous uniforms every evening, and parade down Svetlanskaya, the principal thoroughfare.[30]

Despite the advantage of hindsight years afterwards Graves continued to damn the atrocities and repression of the White authorities, but at no time did he acknowledge the so-called “Red Terror” which had been officially operative since December 1917, or the totalitarian nature of the Bolshevik regime, insisting in his reminisces that,

The foreign press was constantly being told that the Bolsheviks were the Russians who were committing these terrible excesses, and propaganda had been used to such an extent that no one ever believed that atrocities were being committed against the Bolsheviks.[31]

Of General Ivanoff-Rinoff, one of Kolchak’s commanders, Graves stated to British High Commissioner Sir Charles Eliot, that: “As far as I’m concerned the people could bring Ivanoff-Rinoff opposite American headquarters and hang him to that telephone pole until he is dead – and not an American would turn his hand!”[32] This was an example of Graves’ supposedly non-partisan involvement. Graves’ characterization of the Kolchak Government was that of “a crowd of reactionaries.”[33]

Other forms of “non-interference” by Graves included:

  • Stopping the American Red Cross from delivering warm underwear to the White forces by threatening to withdraw Americans guarding Red Cross trains.[34]
  • Graves’ demand that the Japanese disarm Ussuri Cossack Ataman Kalmikoff.[35]
  • Attempted interference with the Japanese forces, which executed five suspected Bolsheviks, calling in the Japanese Chief of Staff and the American commander, and stating that the Americans should have used force against their Japanese “allies” rather than allow the executions.[36]
  • Withholding 14,000 desperately needed arms from the already under-equipped White forces in retaliation for the failure of Kolchak to repress press criticism of Americans; arms that had been paid for by the Kolchak administration.[37]
  • Armed intervention to prevent Semenoff’s Cossacks obtaining 15,000 rifles, the US aiming to ensure that Semenoff did not receive any weapons.[38]
  • Prevention of Kolchak from firing on a revolutionary force at Irkutsk, which had staged a coup and taken over the railway station.
  • Persuading the Japanese to withdraw from combating the Red Army at a time when the Kolchak forces were in their final life-struggle.[39]
  • Armed prevention of the Japanese from protecting Russian Governor, General Rozanov at Vladivostok, when revolutionists besieged his home. Fortunately for Rozanov, the Japanese were able to facilitate his escape.[40]

“The Judgment of History”

Such was the antagonism of the AEF in Siberia towards Kolchak that many Russians considered Americans to be “Bolshevistic” in their attitudes.

Interestingly, Captain Montgomery Schuyler, Chief of Staff of the AEF in Siberia, formed the same opinion of his fellow-Americans as the White press, writing in a dispatch from Omsk to Lt. Gen. Barrows in Vladivostok:

…You will feel I am being hot about this matter but it is I feel sure, one which is going to bring great trouble on the United States when the judgment of history shall be recorded on the part we have played. It is very largely our fault that Bolshevism has spread as it has and I do not believe we will be found guiltless of the thousands of lives uselessly and cruelly sacrificed in wild orgies of bloodshed to establish an autocratic and despotic rule of principles which have been rejected by every generation of mankind which has dabbled with them.[41]

When the American forces guarding the Trans-Siberian railway left Vladivostok they did so with wild acclaim from the revolutionist regime. The New York Times reported:

Parades, street meetings and speechmaking marked the second day today of the city’s complete liberation from Kolchak authority. Red flags fly on every Government building, many business houses and homes.

There is a pronounced pro-American feeling evident. In front of the American headquarters the revolutionary leaders mounted steps of buildings across the street, making speeches calling the Americans real friends, who at a critical time saved the present movement. The people insist upon an allied policy of no interference internationally in political affairs.

The General Staff of the new Government at Nikolsk has telegraphed to the American commander, Major Gen. Graves, expressing its appreciation for efforts toward guaranteeing an allied policy of non-interference during the occupation of the city, also in aiding in a peaceful settlement of the local situation.[42]

In 1920, in the midst of defeat, Kolchak stated that, “the meaning and essence of this intervention remains quite obscure to me.”[43] Kolchak was captured after being betrayed by his Czech guard and was shot by the Revolutionist regime on February 7.[44] Graves, while being appalled at the reports of the punishments allegedly meted out by the White regime, excused the execution of Kolchak as being the result of justified “resentment by the people,” and as having been properly tried and convicted by a “military court.”[45]

The New York Times editorialized with pertinent analysis of the Allied intervention and the impending collapse of the White remnants:

There can be no doubt that the allied Governments must bear a large part of the blame for the collapse of this movement. As The New Europe recently observed, “the publicly proclaimed vacillations of our statesmen are worth a whole army corps to the Bolsheviki.”[46]

Robert Service comments that while the White forces sought to regroup and challenge the Red Army,

Their hopes were undermined by the decision of the United Kingdom and France to halt their intervention in the Civil War. In December 1919 the British withdrew from Archangel, the French from Odessa. Neither Trotsky nor his leading comrades made much comment because they were wary of concluding that the threat of an anti-Bolshevik crusade was over… The Reds had come close to defeat several time since the Civil War… The Civil War was a close run conflict between the Reds and the Whites.[47]

The White forces had not understood that their most lethal opponents were not merely from the revolutionary milieu of Europe and America’s underbelly, but were seated around the conference tables of corporate boards and Cabinets. Similar acts of sabotage were perpetrated against sundry other regimes to the extent that one might ask whether these were by accident or design, and whether there are not dialectical processes at work in seemingly contradictory American foreign policies?

Notes

[1] Mario Lazo, Dagger in the Heart: American Policy Failures in Cuba (New York: Twin Circle Publishing Co., 1968).

[2] Jung Chang and Jon Halliday, Mao: the Unknown Story (London: Jonathan Cape, 2005), Chapter 28, “Saved By Washington,” pp. 292-303.

[3] Anastasio Somoza and Jack Cox, Nicaragua Betrayed (Boston: Western Islands, 1980).

[4] R Sengupta, “The CIA Circus: Tibet’s Forgotten Army,” Friends of Tibet (India), February 15, 1999, http://www.friendsoftibet.org/databank/usdefence/usd7.html

[5] Strobe Talbott, “America Abroad: Defanging the Beast,” Time, February 6, 1989. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,956883-1,00.html

[6] K R Bolton, “Origins of the Cold War, How Stalin Foiled a ‘New World Order,’ Relevance for the Present,” Foreign Policy Journal, June 1, 2010

http://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/

[7] Anastasio Somoza and Jack Cox, Nicaragua Betrayed, op. cit., p. 397.

[8] Typical humbug, given that Wilson was himself surrounded by “vested interests” through his confidante, Col. Edward House.

[9] Michael Sayers and Albert E Kahn, The Great Conspiracy Against Russia, (London: Collets, 1946),p. 74.

[10] George F Kennan, The Decision to Intervene (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1958), p. 13.

[11] David S Fogles, America’s Secret War Against Bolshevism: US Intervention in the Russian Civil War, (University of North Carolina Press, 1995), p. 5.

[12] David S Fogles, America’s Secret War Against Bolshevism, ibid., p. 6.

[13] Antony C Sutton, Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution (New York: Arlington House, 1974), p. 115.

[14] Basil H Thompson, Special Report No. 5 (Secret), British Home Office Directorate of Intelligence, Scotland Yard, London July 14, 1919; US State Dept. Decimal File, 316-22-656. Cited, by Antony C Sutton, Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution, ibid., p. 115.

[15] Henry Wickham Steed, Through Thirty Years 1892-1922 A personal Narrative, (New York: Doubleday Page and Co., 1924), “The Peace Conference, The Bullitt Mission,” Vol. 2, p.301

[16] Henry Wickham Steed, Through Thirty Years, ibid.

[17] Crane was a member of a 1917 Special Diplomatic Mission to Russia, and a member of the American Section of the Paris Peace Conference in 1919.

[18] Henry Wickham Steed, Through Thirty Years, op.cit.

[19] Robert Service, Trotsky: A Biography (Oxford: Pan Books, 23009), p. 210.

[20] George F Kennan, The Decision to Intervene, op. cit., p. 35.

[21] R H Bruce Lockhart, British Agent (London: G P Putnam’s Sons, 1933), Book Four, “History From the Inside,” Chapter 3.

[22] George F Kennan, The Decision to Intervene, op. cit., p. 17.

[23] William S Graves, America’s Siberian Adventure 1918-1920 (New York: Peter Smith, 1941), “Aid to the Czechs.”

[24] George F Kennan, The Decision to Intervene, ibid., p. 52.

[25] George F Kennan, The Decision to Intervene, op. cit., p. 346.

[26] Richard B Spence, “Interrupted Journey: British Intelligence and the Arrest of Leon Trotsky April 1917,” Revolutionary Russia, No. 1, 2000.

[27] Charles Seymour (ed.), The Intimate Papers of Colonel House (New York: Houghton, Mifflin Co.), Vol. III, p.421.

[28] Robert Service, Trotsky: A Biography, op. cit., p. 220. The ‘Left Socialist Revolutionaries’ were an originally pro-Bolshevik faction that had broken away from the Party of Socialist Revolutionaries over the issue of supporting the Bolsheviks.

[29] William S Graves, America’s Siberian Adventure, op. cit., “Before the Armistice.”

[30] William S Graves, America’s Siberian Adventure, ibid.

[31] William S Graves, America’s Siberian Adventure, op. cit., “Kolchak and Recognition.”

[32] Michael Sayers and Albert E Kahn, The Great Conspiracy Against Russia, op. cit., p 69.

[33] William S Graves, America’s Siberian Adventure, op. cit., “Mobilization of Russian Troops.”

[34] William S Graves, America’s Siberian Adventure, ibid., “The Railroad Agreement.”

[35] William S Graves, America’s Siberian Adventure, ibid., “After the Armistice.”

[36] William S Graves, America’s Siberian Adventure, ibid., “Japan, The Cossacks and Anti-Americanism.”

[37] “Released Rifles Held Up by Graves,” New York Times, October 3, 1919.

[38] “Semenoff demanded arms of Americans,” New York Times, November 2, 1919.

[39] “America and Japan Agree on Siberia Plan. Tokio Modifies Policy – will now Protect Railways as First Priority, Regardless of Kolchak,” New York Times, December 27, 1919.

[40] “Americans Block Japanese Action. Prevent Attempt by Mikado’s Troops to Save Gen. Rozanov from Revolutionists,” New York Times, February 8, 1920.

[41] Capt. Montgomery Schuyler, Report of March 1, 1919, Record Group 120, Records of the American Expeditionary Forces, 383.9 Military Intelligence Report, p. 2.

[42] “Vladivostok Pro-American. Revolutionist Staff Thanks Graves for Preserving Neutrality,” New York Times, February 15, 1920.

[43] Jon Smele, Civil War in Siberia: The Anti-Bolshevik Government of Admiral Kolchak 1918-1920 (New York: University of Cambridge, 1996), p. 201

[44] “Kolchak Sought to Save Companions. 48 Officers and Civilians Refused to Leave Him When Miners Halted Train. Czech Guard Gave Him Up,” New York Times, February 22, 1920.

[45] William S Graves, America’s Siberian Adventure, op. cit., “The Gaida Revolution.”

[46] “Kolchak’s Fall,” New York Times, December 30, 1919.

[47] Robert Service, Trotsky: A Biography, op. cit., p. 244-245.