International support for the Whites during the Russian civil war was woefully inadequate
Uploaded by funkye on Aug 30, 2006
“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...