One of the relatively little-known pages of Russian history is the American occupation of northern Russia in 1918. This expedition was called "Polar Bear".
Start of operation
This story began in February 1918, during the First World War. The Germans at that time decided to launch an offensive on all fronts, the reason for which was the breakdown of the peace agreement in Brest.
One of the most important targets was Murmansk, an ice-free northern port that played an extremely important role during the war; it was here that most of the military equipment was stored, which was supplied by the allies of the former tsarist Russia - the Entente countries. Reinforcements were also required for the Czechoslovak corps, which was located in the area of the Trans-Siberian Railway. Martial law was introduced, and in March the first Allied troops landed in the city.
However, the allies could not fight in all directions at once. And then unexpected help arrived: the American side expressed its interest in the intervention. The then US President Woodrow Wilson spoke about this in the summer of 1918.
Promotional video:
Siberian republic
The allies, including the United States, had certain plans for a weakened and subjugated Russia. Big business showed interest on the American side. Entrepreneur Herbert Hoover, who will become president of the United States in the future, at that time acquired the oil enterprises of the Urals and Siberia for $ 1 billion. During the war, Russia became even more dependent on the Americans - after all, it needed a huge amount of weapons, vehicles and other goods. Production in Russia itself has never been significant, massive and successful, and this state (a weak, impoverished and "moderately developed" country) was beneficial to American entrepreneurs, and not only American ones. However, this was not enough for the American "elite"; back in the 19th century, she proposed plans for dismembering Russia into several puppet states, including Finland, European Russia,Ukraine, Siberian Republic. The Americans were not used to putting off plans on the back burner, so the program to divide Russia soon began to be implemented. And the invaders decided to start from Siberia.
Already in the summer of 1918, the 85th division of American troops arrived on the Western Front, one of which was sent to the Russian north. This is how Operation Polar Bear began.
About five thousand American soldiers fought on Russian territory. Formally, the purpose of the operation was to protect the military equipment of the Allies from the Germans and Bolsheviks; soldiers were forbidden to interfere in the events of the Civil War. However, in fact, they actively participated in the battles, only in them more than a hundred American fighters died. Of course, they fought on the side of the whites; at the same time, the goals of the parties in the Civil War were not clear to them - they only obeyed the White Guard chiefs. Supporting whites, American soldiers and their business patrons did not understand (or pretended not to understand) that whites in their behavior practically did not differ from the Reds, except in class origin: their "noble service" was mainly limited to murders, robberies and abuse of the common people.
In America itself, the public was also not happy with the situation. Members of Congress protested; mothers of soldiers mobilized to serve in Russia wrote angry letters to the government. The resulting noise determined the further fate of the intervention: in the summer of 1919 it was curtailed.
Invaders and locals
What were the actions of the occupiers in the Russian North, and how did they turn out for the local residents?
During the occupation, the Americans established a special regime. It was they who introduced the Russians to such a phenomenon as concentration camps: they created them long before the Bolsheviks. In the concentration camps created by the invaders, 52 thousand people languished - one sixth of the total population of Russian Siberia.
One of the surviving prisoners, a doctor named Marshavin, recalled how the British and American invaders treated local residents. Several dozen people lived in each small cell (no more than 30 square meters); they suffered from unbearable labor, which lasted almost round the clock, hunger and cold. The jailers often carried out mass executions, the deaths of which numbered in the thousands. The Americans removed everything that was of any value from the occupied lands. After their departure, there was practically nothing left that could be used as a source of income, except perhaps the forest. Together with foreigners, their own Russians, the White Guards, favorites and loyal subjects of the murdered tsar, raged on the Siberian lands.
Therefore, it is not surprising that local peasants massively left for partisan detachments. The soldiers mobilized into the White Army in whole detachments and one by one went over to the side of the Bolsheviks. Those who remained sabotaged the service, substituted the White Guard units under heavy fire from the Red Army.
So the American government caught on in time: he had to literally save his own soldiers, otherwise they would all be killed or taken prisoner. In Russia, meanwhile, the popularity and prestige of the Bolshevik Party, whose army successfully fought the invaders, was steadily growing. The Bolsheviks themselves used the fact of the occupation and the cooperation of whites with the interventionists for propaganda purposes. This made it possible to raise the morale of the soldiers of the Red Army.
Americans and other invaders
As already mentioned, the Americans were not the only ones who wanted to clean up Russian territory or part of it into their own hands. The military forces of Italy, Great Britain, Canada and Japan were part of the interventionists. The latter had long looked at the Russian Far East, and her actions stood out sharply from the well-coordinated program of the allies.
So, Japan has allocated as many as 70 thousand fighters - more than any other occupying country. The Japanese government initially decided that the Japanese army would operate independently of the Allies. This led to a split in the White movement: while other allies supported the Kolchak government, Japan supported his opponent, Ataman Semyonov.
What does such a large-scale invasion of Russian territory mean? Obviously not about the fierce inhumanity of the interventionists: they only acted in accordance with their economic interests. Russia was initially a large, but at the same time an underdeveloped country, and even the acquired status of an empire did not allow overcoming backwardness. The new European order, introduced by tsars Alexei Mikhailovich and his son Peter and in line with the mentality of strong nations, was not to the liking of the hardened Russian society, so after Peter's death the country gradually returned to its original “patriarchal” (that is, semi-wild) state. The total division of Russian society into isolated estates and the oppression of the "lower" estates, coupled with corruption, remnants of medieval parochialism and other social vices, led tothat a strong and cohesive society had not been created by the beginning of the twentieth century. And any weak state and any weak society will inevitably be absorbed by a stronger and more developed one.