Churchill and the Archangel Fiasco (Russia and the Allies , 1917-1920)

611 Pages·1992·7.3 MB·English

by  Michael Kettle

CHURCHILL AND THE ARCHANGEL
FIASCO
November 1918–July 1919
At the German Armistice (with which the second volume in this series ended),
smallscale Allied intervention in Russia (designed to thwart the Germans, save the
Czechs, and overthrow the Bolsheviks) had completely failed. But the presence of
Allied troops had enabled some White groups to come together, while Allied
finance had kept others alive. Now the Great War was over. Were Allied troops
to be withdrawn—or reinforced? All would be decided at the coming Peace
Conference. But before it even met, Britain had already decided to supply the
Whites in South Russia and Siberia, while France had actually launched a military
invasion in the Odessa region.
The Peace Conference never properly addressed the Russian problem. After
President Wilson’s final effort to make peace with Moscow had failed, and the
Whites had started an advance in Siberia, and French troops, in open mutiny, had
abandoned Odessa, the British were left to carry on single-handed.
On the main South Russian, Siberian and Baltic fronts, Churchill and Lloyd
George now turned the White forces into expendable British pawns in a
temporary forward holding operation, designed to contain the Bolshevik inferno
within Russia, and burn it out there, and thus give a prostrate Europe time to
recover. This medium British intervention (which the Peace Conference had
already been carefully warned was doomed to failure) was thus to prolong the
Russian civil war, and cause a further 14 million Russian deaths—due not to the
haphazard fighting, but to starvation, cholera and typhus, in turn due to the ever-
growing dislocation within Russia, and its further ruin. Thus were sown the seeds
of the Cold War.
But in North Russia (considered the special British sphere), Churchill was no
more successful than the French. He insisted that, to avoid another ‘Odessa’
debacle at Archangel, more British troops must be sent out to link up with the
White forces coming from Siberia. But as he omitted to inform the Admiralty of
changed British plans in North Russia, too few river boats had been sent down the
Dvina river to support them. As the Peace Conference ended, the Siberians were
in retreat, the river ran dry, local North Russian troops mutinied, and Churchill’s
operation ended in fiasco.
ii
This book (written on a panoramic basis, not front by front) is designed, by
including detailed documents from both sides, to give the reader an idea of what
the leadership on both sides had to face, as the Russian kaleidoscope constantly
changed; and demonstrates how Churchill (bent on restoring a Russia that had
never existed) was completely out-generaled by Trotsky.
Michael Kettle has had access to British Government papers never before seen
by historians, including the last unpublished papers of Winston Churchill, and
many hitherto unseen French documents in the British archives.
RUSSIA AND THE ALLIES 1917–20
Michael Kettle

Volume 1
THE ALLIES AND THE RUSSIAN COLLAPSE
March 1917–March 1918

Volume 2
THE ROAD TO INTERVENTION
March–November 1918
RUSSIA AND THE ALLIES 1917–1920
VOLUME THREE
CHURCHILL AND THE
ARCHANGEL FIASCO
November 1918–July 1919
Michael Kettle
London and New York
First published 1992
by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005.
“To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection
of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.”
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
a division of Routledge, Chapman and Hall Inc.
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001
© 1992 Michael Kettle
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented,
including photocopying and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Kettle, Michael
Churchill and the Archangel fiasco.
I. Title
327. 41047
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Kettle, Michael.
Churchill and the Archangel Fiasco/Michael Kettle.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references (p.) and index.
1. Soviet Union—History—Allied intervention, 1918–1920.
2. Churchill, Winston, Sir, 1874–1965. 3. Great Britain—
Foreign relations—Soviet Union. 4. Soviet Union—Foreign
relations—Great Britain. 5. Great Britain—Foreign relations—
1910–1936.
I. Title.
DK265.42.G7K48 1992
327.41047’09’041–dc20 91–4809
ISBN 0-203-99095-1 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-415-08286-2 (Print Edition)
For
CLARE & ANDREW
I was sent forth from the Power.
Look upon me. Be on your guard!

For I am the first and the last,
I am the honoured one and the scorned one.
I am the whore and the holy one.
I am the wife and the virgin.
I am the barren one,
and many are her sons.

I am the silence that is incomprehensible.
I am the voice whose sound is manifold.
I am the utterance of my name.

For I am knowledge and ignorance.
I am shame and boldness.
I am strength and I am fear.
I am war and peace.
Give heed to me.

I am the one whom they call Life,
and you have called Death.
I am the one whom they call Law,
and you have called Lawlessness.
I, I am godless,
and I am one whose God is great.
I am peace and war.
I am the union and the dissolution.

Hear me in gentleness, and learn of me in roughness,
I am she who cries out.
I am the hearing that is attainable to everyone;
I am the speech that cannot be grasped.
I am the name of the sound,
and the sound of the name.
The Thunder, Perfect Mind
Contents
List of illustrations ix
Preface xi
1 London & Siberia: the coup d’état at Omsk 1
2 The Russian theatres: preparations for war 29
3 Peacemaking: the Prinkipo proposal 51
4 War or Peace: Churchill’s proposal 95
5 Russian policy: London, Washington, Paris & Odessa 129
6 The Russian theatres: Churchill’s unanswered letter 153
7 War & Peace: Kolchak’s advance & Bullitt’s mission 185
8 The French débâcle at Odessa 209
9 The House of Commons: Lloyd George denies Bullitt 249
10 The War Office & Archangel: no second Odessa 287
11 The Golovin plan: the Baltic spring offensive 329
12 Kolchak & the Allies: quasi-recognition 359
13 South Russia: Denikin at Kharkov & Tsaritsin 401
14 The Baltic: the British Squadron & the Russian Northern Corps 445
15 North Russia: Kotlas & the Dvina river 471
16 The Kotlas operation: mutiny & fiasco 511
Sources 535
Select bibliography 555
Index 559
Illustrations
Plates (between pages 256 and 257)
1 Colonel John Neilson (Neilson Collection)
2 Trotsky with a Red Army soldier
3 Red Army soldiers behind the lines
4 Two RAF officers at Archangel
5 A British naval vessel at Lyavlya
6 A British CMB at Troitsa
7 Russian peasants alongside a British vessel at Troitsa
8 Members of the Slavo-British Legion (Imperial War Museum)
9 A British officer at Archangel (Imperial War Museum)
10 The arrival of the British Relief Brigade at Archangel
11 HMS Iron Duke (Cohen Collection)
12 French tanks at Odessa
13 The first British tanks in South Russia (Denikin Collection)
14 General Denikin at Kharkov (Denikin Collection)
15 The hard road to Tsaritsin (Denikin Collection)
16 General Denikin à table (Denikin Collection)
17 Early Soviet cartoon of Lloyd George
Maps
1 North Russia xiii
2 South Russia and the Ukraine xiv
3 Kotlas and the Dvina River xv
4 Central Siberia and the Urals xvi
5 The Baltic xvii
6 The British agent’s map of the Kronstadt area minefields, early 1919 168
7 General Staff map of European Russia, showing the phantom Russian 290
armies, dated 15 April 1919
8 Admiralty map of the naval engagement in the Gulf of Finland, dated 18 337
May 1919