The Volunteer Army and the Allied Intervention in South Russia, 1917-1921: A Study in the Politics and Diplomacy of the Russian Civil War

464 Pages·2006·6.767 MB·English

by  George A. Brinkley

International Studies of the
Committee on International Relations
University of Notre Dame

The Volunteer Army and
Allied Intervention
in South Russia, 1917-1921
THE VOLUNTEER ARMY
and
A Study in the Politics and Diplomacy
of the Russian Civil W ar
ALLIED INTERVENTION
IN S O U T H RUSSIA,
1917-1921
By George A. Brinkley
UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME PRESS • 1966
Copyright © 1966 by
University of Notre Dame Press
Notre Dame, Indiana
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 66-15501
Manufactured in the United States
TO ANN

PREFACE
The Russian civil war and the accompanying Allied intervention
from 1917 to 1921 have long been recognized as major events in the
great upheaval which was unleashed by World War I. Yet today,
almost half a century after these events, they remain less than fully
analyzed or even chronicled. One of the reasons for this situation lies
in the extreme complexity of the international struggle which took
place on the territory of the former Russian Empire. Armies, political
parties, and ideological issues proliferated rapidly in the virulent
breeding ground created by the collapse of both political order and
established value systems in Russia. Moreover, the international prob­
lems of the first World War in history served to complicate further
any question thrown up by the general catastrophe.
War, civil war, and foreign intervention were not new phenomena
in world history in 1917, of course. Not even their simultaneous
appearance at the same focal point of international politics was un­
precedented. But now this combination of international crisis patterns
took place in the context of a revolutionary transition affecting the
traditional structure of diplomacy and international law and putting
radically opposed ideologies at the center of political action. The
resulting confusion, imposed on Europe by the breakdown of the old
order, put into question many of the legal and moral foundations of
the existing state system. Governments had for the first time been
obliged to marshal all of the resources of the nation in a massive effort
IX
x 'The Volunteer Army
which, with it all, led not to quick victory but to virtual collapse for
all of the belligerents.
It was in this state of stress that Russia experienced a military and
political paralysis, and her allies, Britain and France, were faced with
the prospect of losing a partner considered essential to victory. The
deterioration of Russian power before the March Revolution of 1917
was a serious blow to the Entente in the war against Germany. It
became a crisis of major proportions when the Bolsheviks seized con­
trol of the state in November 1917 and immediately issued a call for
peace to be brought about by popular revolution in all of the bellig­
erent countries. By November 1918, when World War I ended, Rus­
sia was in the throes of an all-embracing civ il war, and the Allies were
committed to a variety of forces which had remained loyal to the
Entente and now sought a continuation of aid to overthrow the
Bolshevik regime.
With the Armistice in November 1918, some Allied spokesmen
argued that all reason for continuing the intervention had ended,
while others pointed to an obligation to stand by those forces in Rus­
sia to whom commitments had already been made and stressed the
importance of the anti-Bolshev ik war as a necessary part of the strug­
gle to restore peace and order to Europe. Choice between these two
points of view was extremely difficult for the Allied governments. The
intervention, undertaken initially simply as a means to continue the
war against Germany, would require a much broader range of policy
decisions after November 1918. but such decisions were made only
haphazardly, if at all. The Allies, trying to treat the Russian problem
as merely a final battle of World War I, tended to evade the responsi­
bility which inevitably accompanied the continuation of the inter­
vention in a revolutionary situation. They thus neither conspired to
make an all-out military effort nor consistently pursued the oppor­
tunities for peacemaking.
Meanwhile the Russian civil war grew into a major conflict. The
first important resistance to the Bolshevik regime had come chiefly
from two elements: from a variety of socialist parties which rejected
Bolshevik policies and from the non-Russian borderlands which de­
manded autonomy. The most important of the latter, the Ukraine
and Transcaucasia, were initially also led bv socialists, although the
Cossack areas, which also resisted Bolshevik encroachment, tended
toward more conservative leadership. The first real turning point for
the major groups in both of these elements of opposition was the dis-