In Great Britain, Russia is considered an aggressor country and today they do not like to remember what happened 100 years ago. In March 1918, British troops landed in Murmansk, starting a virtually undeclared war against Russia, which at the time was considered an "ally" of Britain. The intervention was planned long before the Revolution and the outbreak of the Civil War. Vladimir Tikhomirov recalls what the United States and Great Britain planned, how they conducted the "expedition to the north" and what they did on Russian lands.
Treaty on the division of the Russian Empire
The plan for an attack on Russia was drawn up back in 1914, when US President Woodrow Wilson decided to join the war on the side of the Entente against Germany. But for the time being, the Americans decided to adhere to a policy of neutrality, waiting until the belligerents weaken each other. Finally, as Wilson's personal friend and closest assistant, Colonel House, testified, in 1916 the decision to enter the war was made.
Woodrow Wilson with his wife and his advisor, Colonel House.
But before that it was necessary to settle a small "formality" - to agree with the British about the withdrawal of Russia from the game. This was done in February 1917, when, with the full approval of the "allies", Generals Alekseev and Ruzsky, with threats and blackmail, knocked out the signature of Emperor Nicholas II under the illegal act of abdication.
After that, the ex-emperor Nikolai Romanov was arrested and sent to Tsarskoe Selo. The ministers of the Provisional Government, who seized power in Russia, initially expected to send him to England - after all, the Russian and British autocrats were not just allies, but close relatives to each other. They even looked like two peas in a pod! Preserved letters in which George V swore to Nicholas in eternal friendship and loyalty. However, when Nicky's friend needed help, the English monarch just threw up his hands.
We cannot grant him asylum,”he wrote to Prime Minister Lloyd George. - I strongly object to this.
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The Russian sovereign was betrayed by the American "allies" - the main ally of the conspirators-revolutionaries in the days of the February coup was the American ambassador David Francis. He arrived in Petrograd in 1916, not really knowing anything about the Russian Empire or diplomacy - the post of ambassador was his debut. The only thing that he, a former bread trader and stock exchange figure, knew well, was that he had to oust Russia both from world markets and from the victorious powers.
Later, in his book of memoirs, Russia: A View from the US Embassy (April 1916 - November 1918), Francis tried to justify his collaboration with the revolutionaries by the fact that he was impressed not by the shootings of police officers and the pogroms of stores, but by the little blood that won the victory of the February Revolution:
This is undoubtedly a revolution, but it is the best revolution ever made for its scale.
Cousins Nicholas II and George V.
Also, Francis became famous for the fact that in the days of the October coup it was he who ordered to provide the diplomatic machine of the US Embassy in order to take Kerensky out of Petrograd.
Following Kerensky, American diplomats fled from Petrograd to the north, where British troops were to begin military operations any day.
On December 23, 1917, a secret Anglo-French convention on the division of influence in Russia was signed in Paris. Formally, it pursued the goal of fighting enemies in the world war, but in fact it meant an agreement on the fragmentation of the Russian Empire into colonial "bantustans." Northern Russia with Arkhangelsk and the new ice-free port of Murmansk, founded just two years before the Revolution, were assigned to the "zone of influence" of Great Britain.
At the same meeting, a British proposal was adopted to maintain relations with the Soviet government through unofficial agents, for the Allies feared that an open break would push the Bolsheviks into the arms of Germany.
British in the north
Officially, British troops appeared in northern Russia only in order to prevent the Germans from seizing equipment supplied by the Entente, stored in Murmansk.
And already at the beginning of March, a British flotilla of 20 ships, including two aircraft carriers, appeared in the Kola Bay. The landing ships carried more than a thousand British soldiers, as well as 14 battalions of the countries of the British Commonwealth - mainly soldiers of the Canadian brigade and Australians.
Rear Admiral Thomas Kemp, who commanded the landing, stated that the British army did not set itself the goal of territorial seizure of Russian lands. But all the actions of the British testified to the opposite.
Frederic Poole and Anton Denikin, 1918.
Thus, the head of the British supply mission in Russia, General Frederic Poole, wrote to London:
Of all the plans that I have heard, I like the one that proposes the creation of a Northern Federation centered in Arkhangelsk … To gain a foothold in Arkhangelsk, one warship in the harbor is enough. We could get lucrative timber and railroad concessions, not to mention the importance to us of control over the two northern provinces …
The invaders behaved like real conquerors. It is important to note that among the British soldiers, former prisoners, rapists and murderers arrived in Russia, who were given the opportunity to “atone with blood” for the crimes of the past by the British government. There were also quite a few Poles who were burning with the idea of revenge on the Russians for all the real and mythical crimes of Russia against Poland. So, the protection of the prisoner of war camps consisted mainly of Poles, who took out their inferiority complexes on military officers.
The attitude towards the population of the "Allied Power" and the British military was not the best.
Lieutenant Harry Baggot wrote in his diary:
An order was received explaining how to dig special holes for the Canadian artillery. The Russians are now located in their settlements opposite those where we settle down and are preparing to fight back … We were ordered to direct our weapons in their direction so that they would come out and surrender. After some were killed, they surrendered. In the end, 13 people - the leaders of the riot - were brought to the wall and shot. The British ship also tested its weapons on those who surrendered, but I don't think it was necessary to do this …
The relations between the leadership of the Northern Region and the command of the occupation forces were complicated. On the one hand, Lieutenant General Vladimir Marushevsky, commander of the Northern Region's troops, wrote that "relations with foreigners gradually improved and took the form of lasting cooperation." On the other hand, Marushevsky, like other representatives of the "white movement", did not call the intervention of the Allies in the Entente anything other than "occupation". In his memoirs, he described his relationship with the British as follows:
To characterize the current situation, it is easiest to consider it an occupation, based on this term, all relations with foreigners are made understandable and explainable …
It is curious that the Bolsheviks also gave their consent to the presence of the interventionists. Back in March 1918, the chairman of the Murmansk Council, Andrei Yuriev, agreed to the proposal of British Rear Admiral Thomas Kemp to protect the Murmansk railway from German and White Finnish troops. Thus, before the summer of 1918, an interesting structure took shape in Murmansk: the political power of the Bolsheviks, based on the military forces of the Entente.
However, by the summer of 1918, this structure had collapsed. The power of the Bolsheviks in Murmansk was overthrown, all northern regions of Russia were under the complete control of the invaders.
Expedition of bears
In July 1918, the British decided to move inland, expanding the boundaries of their new "colony". By that time, the Americans had appeared in the Northern Region - US President Woodrow Wilson had sent soldiers of the American Expeditionary Force, also known as the Polar Bear Expedition, to Russia.
Americans in the north of Russia.
Voices were openly heard in the American press in 1918 inviting the US government to lead the process of dismembering Russia.
Russia is just a geographic concept, and will never be anything else. Her power of cohesion, organization, and recovery was gone forever. The nation no longer exists!
These calls have been heard. Soon, the US President gave the order to send two American infantry divisions based in the Philippines to Vladivostok. Already on August 16, about 9 thousand American soldiers landed in Vladivostok, glorifying themselves for unprecedented atrocities against the civilian population of the region.
On the same day, a declaration was published by the United States and Japan, which stated that "they are taking under the protection of the soldiers of the Czechoslovak corps." The same commitments were made in the respective declarations of the governments of France and England. As a result, 120 thousand foreign invaders, including Americans, British, Japanese, French, Canadians, Italians and even Serbs and Poles, came out to “defend the Czechs and Slovaks”.
The US government also made efforts to get its allies to agree to take control of the Trans-Siberian Railway. According to Wilson, it was precisely the control over the Chinese Eastern Railway and the Trans-Siberian Railway that was the key to the program of "economic development" of Russia, which provided for the dismemberment of the country into dozens of states and the transformation of the former Russian Empire into raw material "colonies" of the Anglo-Saxon world.
At the same time, the Americans also tried to cooperate not with the "whites", but with the Bolsheviks, believing that the Lenin-Trotsky regime would also contribute to the early collapse of the single space of the Russian Empire. Thus, in 1918, the Americans and the British again betrayed their "allies" from the White Army, who were just starting the war against Bolshevism.
Introduction of "wild Russians" to "civilization"
In the summer of 1918, the invaders moved south from Murmansk. On July 2, the interventionists took Kem, then Onega and went to Arkhangelsk - by this time the embassies of the Western powers had moved to Vologda, preparing the ground for the announcement of a new "Russian state".
The British in Arkhangelsk, 1919.
On August 1, 1918, an allied British-American squadron of 17 ships appeared off Mudyug Island near Arkhangelsk. There were only 2 coastal batteries on the island - that is, 8 guns. And 35 sailors-gunners. Rejecting the enemy's ultimatum to surrender, they entered into an unequal battle. To capture the island, a landing force of 150 people was landed.
Amazingly, the attacking American marines were opposed by only 15 sailors, led by Sergeant Major Matvey Omelchenko from the battleship Peresvet. The artillerymen detained the invaders, but they could not do more. They had to blow up the ammunition cellars, remove the locks from the guns and retreat. The enemy rushed to Arkhangelsk.
In an unequal battle - one against 17 enemy ships! - entered the crew of the minesweeper "T-15" under the command of Captain Konstantin Kalin, who covered the departure from the city up the Northern Dvina 50 steamships and barges with military equipment. As a result of direct hits from shells, the minesweeper sank, but completed the task.
After the capture of Arkhangelsk, the interventionists decided to no longer stand on ceremony with the local population, widely applying the experience that British sadists and thugs received in suppressing popular uprisings in India and Africa. So, on the island of Mudyug, a British concentration camp was created, into which several thousand people were thrown - ordinary Russian civilians taken hostage by the invaders.
English concentration camp.
At the same time, concentration camps for hostages were opened in Murmansk, Pechenga and Yokanga. In total, more than 50 thousand people passed through British prisons and camps - more than 10% of the then population of the Arkhangelsk province. That is, every tenth inhabitant of the North learned the hard way of introducing “wild Russians” to “civilization”.
Moreover, a concentration camp for Russian prisoners of war was opened in England itself - in the city of Whitley Bay. You ask, what kind of Russian prisoners of war could have been, after all, Britain was an ally of Russia ?! And everything is simple: after the beginning of the intervention, the British began to arrest their former "brothers in arms." All this happened with the knowledge of Prime Minister David Lloyd George and King George V.
The barracks of the Yokang prison.
Doctor Marshavin, a prisoner of one of the British concentration camps, recalled:
Exhausted, half-starved, we were led under the escort of the British and Americans. They put in a cell no more than 30 square meters. And there were more than 50 people in it. They were fed extremely poorly, many were dying of hunger … They were forced to work from 5 am to 11 am. Grouped by 4 people, we were forced to harness ourselves to the sledges and carry firewood … Medical assistance was not provided. From beatings, cold, hunger and overwork, 15–20 people died every day.
There was no bathhouse, soap, linen change, medical assistance. At the same time, typhoid, scurvy, dystrophy, and parasites have spread. The temperature in the barracks was about minus 8 degrees.
By June 1919, there were already several hundred burial mounds on the Mudyug Island of those who had died from foreign "help" of Russian people.
The Mudyuga concentration camp existed until the September 15, 1919 uprising, during which the prisoners killed the guards and fled. After that, the concentration camp was transferred to Yokanga, where over 1200 hostages were held. Almost one in three died - from scurvy, typhus and the bullets of British executioners. After that, it is hardly surprising that Hitler more than once called himself an "Anglophile" - indeed, the German fascists had experienced "teachers".
Monument to the victims of the intervention on the island. Mudyug.
All to myself
At the same time, the northern edge was subjected to unheard-of plunder. The British and Americans confiscated all goods belonging to Russian companies.
Here are just the official data: 20 thousand tons of "confiscated" flax were exported from Arkhangelsk. At the same time, as the US Ambassador to Russia David Francis wrote, the British appropriated the lion's share of the wealth, while the Americans had to be content with pitiful crumbs.
Very well the true meaning of the stay of the Entente occupation forces in the north of Russia was outlined by the French Ambassador to Soviet Russia Joseph Noulens:
Our intervention in Arkhangelsk and Murmansk, however, justified itself with the results we achieved from an economic point of view. It will soon be discovered that our industry, in the fourth year of the war, has found an additional valuable source of raw materials that are much needed by demobilized workers and entrepreneurs. All of this had a beneficial effect on our trade balance.
Frost and agitation to help
The rapid capture of such vast territories turned the heads of the interventionists, and they launched an offensive from Arkhangelsk in two directions at once: to Kotlas to join the right flank of Kolchak's army, and to Vologda, threatening Moscow from the north.
However, the offensive soon fizzled out and the invaders began to suffer the first defeats. In addition, the weather has deteriorated.
Lieutenant Harry Baggot wrote in his diary:
Above and beyond all obstacles was the climate - worse than the enemy itself. Winter 1918-1919 was the coldest in history, the thermometer dropped to 60 below zero. When the thaw came in the spring, we discovered that some of the "logs" in our trenches were actually corpses!
In the meantime, the Bolsheviks intensified their propaganda work among foreign soldiers. Workers of the political department of the 6th Army of the Red Army scattered leaflets in English over the positions of the British troops:
You are not fighting against enemies, but against workers like yourself. We have achieved success in Russia. We have thrown off the oppression of the tsar, the landowners … We still face gigantic difficulties. We cannot build a new society in one day. We want you not to interfere with us.
Soon the first fruits of propaganda appeared: the British troops stationed in Kandalaksha mutinied. They refused to fight and demanded to be sent home. The riot was suppressed, many soldiers were arrested and thrown into concentration camps. But the decay of the British army could no longer be stopped.
In February, several British soldiers burned down a warehouse with military equipment in Murmansk, and unrest among the troops of the interventionists became more and more frequent.
Even the British General Robert Gordon-Finlayson himself wrote:
We must not hesitate in striving to remove the stamp of Bolshevism in Russia and civilization. But is this our real goal on those terrible winter nights when we shot Russian peasants and burned Russian houses? In fact, there was only a stigma that we left after we left …
The parties represented in the US Congress also opposed the intervention in Russia. By this time, it became known about the losses suffered by the American interventionists - in total in the north of Russia 110 American soldiers died in battles, and 70 soldiers died from diseases. At the same time, no one in the United States even remembered the much more significant victims of the Anglo-American terror in the north of Russia - the Americans at all times worried only about their own losses.
In the summer of 1919, under the influence of political intrigues, the withdrawal of American interventionists from the north of Russia and the Far East began. A quiet evacuation of British troops followed.
* * *
The new American Republican president, Warren Harding, who came to power in 1921, condemned the intervention. But the Americans flatly refused to apologize to Russia for the killings, robberies and violence. The governments of Great Britain, Australia and Canada did not admit their responsibility for crimes in the north of Russia.
Vladimir Tikhomirov
