time went on, the Allied Council at Versailles, in accordance with its agreement to assist with all forces that could be spared, sent Allied reinforcements which reached Murmansk towards the beginning of June, under Major-General Poole, who had been nominated by the Versailles Council as Commander-in-Chief of the Allied forces in North Russia.
The attitude of the Central Government now changed, probably under strong German pressure. The Provincial Council received orders to require the withdrawal from Russia of all Allied military and naval forces. This point marks the first stage of a state of war between the Allies and the Bolshevist Government of Russia. The Provincial Government took the only course open to it—it repudiated allegiance to the Central Government, and threw in its lot with the Allies. The course of events at Murmansk rendered inevitable the forcible occupation of Archangel. The naval forces which since the beginning of the war had been co-operating with the Russian authorities had been withdrawn in December, 1917, when navigation closed, and political events had made their retention in Archangel undesirable.
Bolshevist Aggression.
From that moment Archangel came under the unrestrained Bolshevist influence of the Soviet Government. As already shown, the Soviet Government had virtually declared war with the Allies after welcoming their intervention. Allied subjects in large numbers had been imprisoned, shockingly ill-treated, and, in many cases, formally sentenced to death. Captain Cromie, R.N., the British Naval Attaché at Petrograd, had been murdered, not by a mob but by the organised military forces of the Russian Republic. Archangel Province was on the verge of famine, and access to Archangel was denied to Allied ships. In spite of repeated protests, many hundreds of thousands of tons of coal and war material of all sorts which were lying at Archangel had been seized and confiscated by the Soviet Government, railed away to the interior during the winter, and sold to the Germans to be used against the Allies on the Western front.
Either of the foregoing causes would have justified belligerent action; taken together they afford the amplest justification for it. The occupation of Archangel was therefore approved, and some modest naval and military reinforcements having been received, Archangel was occupied on August 2 after a surprise attack. The Bolshevist Government and garrison fled in panic. A temporary Government was formed, consisting of members elected to the Constituent Assembly, which had been dispersed by armed force at the beginning of the Bolshevist régime in October, 1917. The Allied diplomatic representatives arrived in Archangel shortly after the occupation, and in co-operation with the Provincial Government of North Russia took over the direction of political affairs. As reinforcements arrived, an advance was made along the railway and up the north Dwina River, strong opposition being encountered.
The supply of food and coal to the people of the occupied territory has averted the horrors of starvation and privation in the coming winter, and Allied intervention has restored to them the blessing of ordered government under a Russian National Administration. Interest and honour alike forbid any withdrawal of Allied forces from Russia, which would subject those who have been loyal to the Allied cause to savage reprisals. Nor will any guarantees short of the forcible smash up of Bolshevism in Russia suffice. This involves the occupation of Kronstadt, Petrograd, and Moscow, together with the surrender to the Allies of Lenin, Trotsky, Tchitcherin, and the principal commissaries responsible for the orgy of outrage and massacre in Russia. These persons are already outlawed by the British Government for the murder of Captain Cromie, and they must be given up. The settlement of Russia is necessarily complicated by the revolution in Germany. It should be remembered that every vote given to those in sympathy with Russian Bolshevism is a vote for anarchy in Europe.
The above, omitting details, is a rough but true account of Allied intervention in Russia. It is written by one who has served in Russia continuously from October, 1915, to November, 1918, who talks and reads Russian with facility, and whose position brought him closely into touch with current events.
4
