“International support for the Whites during the Russian civil war was woefully inadequate”. How valid is this judgement? I will attempt to show that allied support for the Whites in the Russian civil war was inadequate by looking at the reasons for support and how they might impact on the level of support that was given, I will also look at the extent of support to see if it was inadequate, and finally, the relative importance of international support compared to other reasons for the White defeat on the outcome of the war to see if the lack of international support had a critical impact on the outcome of the Russian civil war. Firstly, it must be mentioned that each nation that intervened in the Russian civil war had some similar but many different reasons for doing so and that while many nations sent troops to Russia, not to help the Russians but for their own reasons, the White armies were supported much more than the Reds who had no intentional support. Equally important is the fact that the Allied nations which intervened in Russia at the time of the civil war never intended to ‘crush’ communism and to illustrate this; Britain had originally landed at the port of Archangel at the request of Trotsky to help fight the Germans and had been given permission to land by the Archangel Soviet. It was only after the surrender of the Russian’s in World War 1 that Britain began to help the Whites.

Knowing why the allied nations sent limited support for the Whites goes a long way to explaining why support was so limited. Before the end of World War 1, the Russians surrendered to the Germans, signing the treaty of Brest-Litvosk. This freed up German armies and resources on the eastern front, allowing the Germans to fight a war on one front instead of two, giving them a great advantage. So the allied nation’s first reason for supporting the Whites in the Russian civil war was the restart the eastern front, stopping Germany making use of the Russian raw materials made available to them under the treaty and to make them once again spread their forces over two fronts. However, shortly after the Russians surrendered the First World War ended with an allied victory and there was no need for the allied nations to intervene to restart the Eastern front. The allied nations still did intervene however, but now their intentions had become much more ‘murky’. David Lloyd George, the British Prime Minister at the time did not want to intervene in Russia, “our honourable obligations to the remnants of the Russian army, which, disregarding the treaty of Brest-Litvosk, remained in the field to fight the Germans, put us in the embarrassing position of being obligated to help one of the parties in the Russian civil war” ([1] David Lloyd George). However, the creation of a coalition government in the UK in 1918 meant that David Lloyd George now had to rely on the Conservative party, who supported intervention on the side of the Whites in the Russian civil war; Lloyd George had to cave to popular pressure within his government. The Japanese saw the opportunity to gain the most out of allied intervention; they wanted to annex territory from the Russians in their time of crisis and turmoil. The Americans sent troops to Russia to prevent the Japanese from making their territorial gains. The French had lost massive investments in Russia (16 Billion Francs) after the nationalisation of the Russian economy and were left without compensation. By far the most honourable intervention in the Russian civil war on the side of the Whites appeared to be the Czech Legion, a 50,000 strong force of Czech prisoners of war which had fought for the Austro-Hungarian Empire and had now been released from the Tsar’s POW camps. The Czech Legions only concern at the time was to leave Russia, by way of travelling to Vladivostok were they would be transported out of Russia by Allied ships. On their way to Vladivostok, the Czech Legion was given an ultimatum by Trotsky ‘join the Red army or go to the concentration camps’, not wanting to join the Red army and stranded in Russia the Czech legion took over the railroad and looked for allies; the Whites. But the allied nations also wanted a stable Russia, as expressed by Woodrow Wilson, US President at the time “Europe and the world cannot be at peace if Russia is not” [2]. The French also wanted a stable, strong and friendly Russia to help them prevent Germany from becoming a military power again. With each nation intervening for their own interests and making a stable Russia quite low on their agendas, international support from the allies was doomed to fail.

The extent of allied intervention in the Russian civil war and so allied support for the Whites was very limited. Lenin had expected much more intervention in the form of a ‘capitalist crusade’ against the newly formed Communist Russia. However allied troops in Russia only number 150,000 at their peak who were suffering from acute war weariness from the last four years of war in Europe, the nations that sent them were considerably weakened and only at the start of the road to recovery. It could be questioned whether international support would have been greater if it were not for the obstacle of the First World War. If the allied nations were stronger they may have committed more support, but then, without the First World War, which had a major impact on the Russian revolution, there may not have been a civil war to fight. Also quite significant, was that the massive allied crusade that was expected by the Reds was never even contemplated by the allied nations. What was most important though in the extent of allied support for the Whites in the Russian civil war was that without such support there would have been no civil war, in the fighting sense at least, because the immense firepower and weaponry of the Bolsheviks would have quickly overcome all armed resistance, so, even the limited support that was given was still vital to the Whites very survival. In 1918 the British and United States’ attempted to get the Reds and Whites together for a peace conference which would have avoided much of the civil war. The conference was originally to take place in Paris, France. However, after the French refused permission the conference was moved to Prinkipo Island off Istanbul and was known as the Prinkipo conference. The Whites were appalled by the idea of the peace conference and had originally thought it a miscommunication from the allies for an anti-Bolshevik conference. The Prinkipo conference never materialised however due to the fact that the French had privately advised the Whites not to go and also that Winston Churchill; the only person in the British government who supported intervention to in the form of an ‘international crusade against communism’, (he was in a minority in the view) offered the Whites British support whether they went to the conference or not. This was the only time the allied nations intervened in the Russian civil war trying to stop it and not supporting either side, all over intervention was either to support the Whites or for that particular nation’s own reasons. Of the three main powers involved in the Russian civil war; Britain, France and the United States only Britain made a serious commitment to the Whites and it was Britain who bore almost the entire cost of assistance to the Whites. Early in 1919 David Lloyd George laid down guidelines for British support [3]: “1. There must be not attempt to conquer Bolshevik Russia by force of arms. 2. Support would only be continued as long as it was clear that in the areas controlled by Kolchak and Denikin the population was anti-Bolshevik in sentiment. 3. The anti-Bolshevik armies must not be used to restore the old tsarist regime…and re-impose on the peasants the old feudal conditions under which they held their land”. The last guideline made can be questioned in terms of Lloyd George’s true reason; Britain did not want the old expansionist Tsarist regime back because Britain and Russia had historically been in competition for the middle-east and a return of the Tsarist regime could threaten Britain’s interests there. The British government would have wanted this reason to remain private and so it would have unlikely made it into the guidelines, instead being replaced by something that would be much more acceptable and popular; the continuing freedom of the peasants which they had experienced since the Reds took over. British intervention took several forms; they provided the anti-Bolshevik forces with material such as uniforms, tanks and planes, they placed military contingents in Russia which would only perform guard duty and so not fight, but they could defend themselves if threatened. They trained White officers and helped with intelligence and communications and finally they would evacuate the remnants of the White armies after they had been defeated. The aid that Britain offered was far below what they could offer but was -as mentioned earlier- critical to the Whites’ cause. French involvement has been described as ‘lukewarm’. They appeared to be against the Reds and Whites making peace- as illustrated by their involvement against the Prinkipo conference- but they didn’t seem to want to help either side win. The French did send support, however this can be said to have failed quite miserably, with them abandoning the territory they had not long after they landed and leaving Russia full stop. The Japanese by far sent the most troops, which was as much as 70,000 at its peak. It was originally planned by the allies for them to be deployed against Germany on the reactivated eastern front. However their intention was always to annex Russian territory. The Japanese actually opposed Kolchak and were the only allied nation to oppose the Whites. They feared that Kolchak would oppose the Japanese annexation of Russian territory. The Japanese did have support in Russia in the form of two Cossack warlords who the Japanese used to form a buffer between them and Kolchak west of Lake Baikal. Japanese intervention hurt the White armies more than anything else, Kolchak never actually controlled any territory east of Lake Baikal. In a war were the Whites were at a disadvantage in terms of material and manpower Kolchak needed all the territory he could get and so could have been put at a further disadvantage by the loss of territory to the Japanese. Aware of Japanese intention, the United States sent troops into Russia however; they were purely used as a deterrent against the Japanese and as such never engaged the White armies. It must be noted that American intervention was not selfless either, if the Japanese made territorial gain they could have become more powerful, something the Americans didn’t want of a nation to which they had always been rivals, so the Americans were serving their own interests in Russia just as the Japanese were. Their policy was to let Russia settle its quarrel amongst themselves, which actually contradicts what Woodrow Wilson said about how “Europe and the world could not be at peace if Russia was not” [2] legitimising international intervention. A significant landing of allied troops was a Novorossik a short time after the end of World War 1 by a small British-French naval detachment. The French troops held Odessa and Crimea, and after a short while they came under attack from Ukrainian bandits who had found common cause with the Reds. After some intense fighting the French abandoned the territory and a full withdrawal of all French and French-controlled forces, to add insult to injury, French sailors who were stationed at Sebastopol were exposed to anti-war propaganda and mutinied. The French withdrew and this was the last of their intervention. The British part of this detachment took over Baku -were allied materials were stored- and assumed naval control of the Caspian Sea. However, this deployment was not to support the Whites, it was to stop Germany from receiving foreign aid until she agreed to the peace terms put forward by the allies at the end of the First World War. As shown above, allied support was extremely limited in terms of how they supported the Whites, of the four allied nations that sent troops to Russia, only two actually supported the Whites (Britain and France), one was for their own interests (American) and one actually opposed the Whites (Japan).

The significance of the inadequate support from the allies in the White defeat must be looked at relative to the many other reasons for the defeat of the Whites and the strength of the Reds because, if international support was inadequate, then there is a suggestion that adequate support may have affected the outcome of the Russian civil war, so other reasons for White defeat must be looked at. As mentioned earlier, there would have been no civil war if there was no support for the Whites, which was vital to their cause. However, as also mentioned earlier allied support for the Whites was well under the level they could have offered and so it is possible to consider that if the allies had fully committed to supporting the Whites in offering all the support they could have then the Whites may have won, while it is impossible to know this it does offer the suggestion that while the support for the Whites was critical in their survival, the inadequacy of allied support for the Whites was important in their defeat. International support was also used by the Reds in the form of propaganda. With troops from capitalist and imperialist countries on their soil the Reds could say they were defending Russia from an imperialist invasion, as expressed by Lenin to the ‘toiling workers of France, England, America and Japan’; “Workers, like a vicious dog loosed from its chain, the whole capitalist press of your countries howls for the intervention of your governments in Russian affairs, they have already started military operations. Anglo-French bandits are already shooting Russian workers… They are cutting off the Russian people from their bread and force them to put their necks once more into the noose of the Paris and London stock exchanges…In the interests of the capital you are to be the executioners of the Russian workers revolution” ([4] Lenin) this could be another significant impact of the inadequate international support for the Whites, the very presence of foreign troops on Russian soil allowed the Reds to use it against the Whites but the limited number of allied forces meant they did not do much in the form of helping the Whites win, in that way, they did more harm than good. Another significant reason for the defeat of the Whites that cannot be attributed to the lack of international support was the fact that the Reds ‘fought as one’ whereas the Whites fought as separate armies with separate agendas, and were so very fragmented and separated by large areas of land. Most of the time the White armies could not communicate with each other to coordinate strategies and liaison between White armies consisted of brave officers who would attempt to cross enemy territory to communicate with another White army. Their armies were also made up of diverse components who only served their own interests such as the Cossacks who only obeyed the Whites when it suited them. The Reds controlled central Russia but the Whites controlled territory around Russia circumference, an overwhelming advantage to the Reds as expressed by historian Sergei Melgunov [5] “it seems to me that the movement from the periphery toward the centre is always doomed to disaster…it is the centre that determines the success or failure of a revolution…The centre controls all the technical advantages, first and foremost in the form of an established apparatus, which the periphery had to create virtually from scratch”. With control of the central Russia the Reds could shift their forces from one front to another to defend endangered positions, and they had the great advantage of short communications lines. The Reds also got massive benefits from their geographical location; they controlled territory with a population of 70 million whereas the Whites only had territory of 7-8 million each, a massive numerical advantage in the Reds’ favour. By 1919 the Red army had 3 million men but the White armies never exceeded 250,000. A further advantage of the Reds was that they received vast stores of materials from the old regime that had been left behind in territory which they controlled, whereas the Whites had to rely on support from foreign nations and weapons captured from enemies. And finally, the Reds benefited from having a superior railway network which was designed in a radial pattern and had its hub in Moscow in Red territory, but the rail network in the rest of Russia was poorly developed meaning the Whites did not gain any advantage from it, a massive advantage for the Reds which possibly impacted on the Red victory. All of these reasons were very important in the defeat of the Whites and most had nothing to do with allied support or lack thereof so the allied nations cannot be blamed entirely for the defeat of the Whites in the Russian civil war although they did have an important role to play.

In conclusion, every nation that intervened in the Russian civil war had their own motives which mostly did not include reasons for the good of the Russian people, and even when they appeared to, it was for their own selfish reasons, whether it be for territorial gain or to prevent an expansionist regime from returning to power and threatening the interests of other nations. The reasons for limited support could have had something to do with the fact that Europe and to a lesser extent America had been at war in Europe for 4 years and all nations involved were considerably weakened from it. If there had been no war in Europe then the allied nations may have committed much more to the Whites’ cause in the Russian civil war. However, the First World War can also be considered a catalyst for the Communist revolution, so without it there may not have even been a civil war so such points are difficult to make. Allied support may also have been limited because of the sentiment of many of the leaders of the allied nations at the time, for example, Woodrow Wilson thought the Russians should be left to sort things out on their own, a policy which was followed, with American troops in Russia not fighting for any side in the civil war and only for their own interests. It can be seen that the allied nations commitment to any side in the Russian civil war was ‘lukewarm’ at best, the only nation anywhere near committed was Great Britain who still only gave a tiny amount of support compared with the amount which could have been given, all other nations either gave a half-hearted attempt to help the Whites but then withdraw when things start to go bad, or sent troops to Russia not intending to help anyone but themselves, like the Japanese and Americans. But the question of whether this lack of allied support was important of the defeat of the Whites is most difficult to answer, certainly, the allied nations support for the Whites, while crucial to their cause, was nowhere near what could have been given, and that support from the allied nations which equalled what they had the ability to give could have had a significant impact on the war, but the Whites had their own problems which had nothing to do with the allied nations and may still have led to their defeat no matter what support was given to them. One reason, for example, was that they were extremely fragmented, each army fighting for their own cause. But the Reds had their advantages as well, like the fact that they were fighting from the centre of Russia, allowing their forces to be concentrated while White forces had to be spread thin to cover the vast areas of the circumference of Russia. They also had the superior rail network, and the vast stores of arms that had been left behind by the old regime, that came with that territory, great advantages to the Reds that may not have been overcome even with increased support for the Whites from the allied nations. And finally, that the Reds were able to use allied support for their own reasons, Using allied intervention in Russia as propaganda allowed them to come across as the defenders of a nation come under attack from invading powers, if the allies had sent sufficient support this may have been ok, but with the limited support that was sent, the Reds were able to use this as powerful propaganda, without the allied nations making that much of a difference, so, they never sent enough support to help the Whites win, but the fact that they intervened at all meant it could be used against them. So, if all of this is taken into account then the judgement “international support for the Whites in the Russian civil war was woefully inadequate” is valid, apart from the fact that without the monetary and material support for the Whites from the allies was crucial to their cause, all other intervention appeared to do more harm than good, with the limited support just being used against the Whites in Red propaganda.