November 11, 2017 - No. 36
Supplement
Imperialist Countries' Response to Russian Revolution
Foreign
Intervention in Soviet Russia and Canada's Forgotten Role
PDF
"Hands Off Russia" meeting in Victoria in 1918 opposes Canadian
intervention against revolutionary Russia. Some of the Quebecois
conscript troops stationed in
Victoria en route
to Siberia as part of interventionist forces attend the meeting.
• The
Bolshevik Party in the Period of Foreign Military
Intervention
and Civil War (1918-1920)
- History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union --
Bolsheviks, Chapter 8 -
Canadian Response to the
Russian
Revolution --
A Forgotten Chapter of the First World War
The Story Behind the Canadian
Siberian Expeditionary Force
With its contingent of 4,192 troops, Canada was one of
14 countries that invaded Soviet Russia after the Great October
Socialist Revolution. The Canadian Siberian Expeditionary Force (CSEF),
authorized in August 1918 and commanded by Major General James H.
Elmsley, was sent to Vladivostok, Russia, in December 1918 and returned
to Canada between April and June 1919.
The opposition of the Canadian workers and people to
the intervention against the Russian Revolution grew, in particular
following the Armistice November 11, 1918, that ended World War I.
The main mission of the interventionist forces was to
defeat
the Bolshevik revolution, while other concerns were raised,
such as keeping Russia in the fight against Germany,
safeguarding the Czars' gold reserves being taken out of Russia to
back up the war loans -- a debt cancelled by the new people's
power led by V.I. Lenin.
Some historians say that Canadian involvement in the
Siberian campaign was to a significant degree driven by Canadian Prime
Minister Robert Borden's policy towards the United Kingdom. As a
dominion, Canada was neither a full-fledged member of the Entente, nor
simply a colony. Borden's arguments for Canada's involvement "had
little to do with Siberia per se, and much to do with adding to the
British government's sense of obligation to their imperial junior
partner," P. Whitney Lackenbauer argues.[1]
According to Gaddis Smith, Canadian intervention "represents the
initial episode in the Canadian struggle for complete control over her
foreign policy after World War I. As such, it illustrates the changing
relationships within the British Empire more realistically than the
scores of constitutional documents that the Commonwealth statesmen
self-consciously drafted between 1917 and 1931."[2]
In October 1918, as Canadian troops were mustered to
Victoria for the trip to Siberia, the Privy Council authorized the
formation of a
Canadian-Siberian economic commission, led by trade commissioner
Dana Wilgress, that included representatives of the Canadian
Pacific Railway and the Royal Bank of Canada. It is said the Commission
was established based on the belief that the Bolshevik revolution would
be unsuccessful and lead to business and trade opportunities.
On the occasion of the100th anniversary of the Great
October
Revolution and the 99th anniversary of the signing of the Armistice
on November 11, 2018, TML Weekly
is reproducing the book by
Benjamin Issit, entitled Mutiny from Victoria to Vladivostok.
Notes
1. P. Whitney Lackenbauer,
University of Waterloo, "Why
Siberia? Canadian Foreign Policy and Siberian Intervention,
1918-19," (April 1998).
2. Gaddis Smith, "Canada and the
Siberian Intervention,
1918–1919, "The American Historical
Review, Vol. 64, No. 4
(July 1959), pp. 866–877.
Mutiny from Victoria to Vladivostok, December 1918
-
Benjamin Issit* -
Quebecois troops from the 259th Battalion on leave in downtown Victoria
in late 1918, prior to
their deployment to Siberia.
On 21 December 1918, French-Canadian soldiers mutinied
in
the streets of Victoria, BC. Their story has never been told.
Conscripts in the Canadian Siberian Expeditionary Force, these
young men broke ranks while marching from the Willows Camp to the
troopship Teesta, about to embark for Vladivostok,
Russia. Revolver fire sounded through the city, as the obedient
men were ordered to whip the mutinous back into line. At the
point of bayonets, the march proceeded up Fort Street and through
downtown Victoria to the outer wharf. Twenty hours passed before
the last dissenters were herded aboard the Teesta. In the
ship's hold, along with twenty-one tons of gear for the YMCA and
1700 tons of ammunition, a dozen ringleaders were detained in
cells, the two worst handcuffed together. At 4:15 a.m. on 22
December 1918, the 259th Battalion of the Canadian Siberian
Expeditionary Force set sail for Vladivostok.[1]
INTRODUCTION
'Time will reveal some strange things in the great
Siberian
drama,' the Semi-Weekly Tribune, newspaper of the
Victoria Trades and Labour Council, declared two days before the
mutiny.[2] This
forgotten
chapter of the First World War presents several challenges of
research and interpretation. Straddling military history,
working-class history, and the social history of Canada and
Quebec, this story fits uneasily into any one field. The Canadian
experience of war has been temporally, geographically, and
thematically bounded by the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand
and the signing of the Armistice on 11 November 1918.[3] A handful of historians have
examined Canada's intervention in Russia, while others sought to
explain the demobilization riots that erupted among Canadian
troops in the British Isles; studies of the Siberian Expedition,
however, underestimate the dissent among the troops, the
connection of this dissent to anti-conscription sentiment in
Quebec, and the process through which this dissent translated
into mutiny.[4] Absent
is a
serious inquiry of the social movement that emerged within the
Canadian working class to force their return home. Within the
field of working-class history, domestic expressions of
industrial unrest have been privileged over local responses to
international events such as the Russian revolution. To date, no
study has focused on Canadian labour's response to the Siberian
Expedition. This topic raises important questions, such as the
dual role of soldiers as workers, and the way class tensions were
manifested within the armed forces, providing fertile ground for
expanding our understanding of the working-class experience in
Canada.[5] As William
Rodney observed in 1968, 'the real story of intervention and
Canada's role in it has still to be written.'[6]
As the last guns sounded on the Western Front, 4000
Canadian
troops assembled at Victoria for deployment to Siberia. Born at a
meeting of the Imperial War Cabinet in London in July 1918, the
Canadian Siberian Expeditionary Force (CSEF) was plagued from the
outset by lack of clarity about its aims; a month after the main
body of the force arrived in Siberia, the order was issued from
Ottawa to begin preparations for evacuation. Few troops in the
CSEF ever saw direct fighting. Ambivalence in Allied strategy
prevented their deployment into the interior of Siberia. Most of
their time was spent training White Russian conscripts and
conducting routine security operations around Vladivostok --
responding to looting, theft, assault, and murder in the port
city. The threat of Bolshevik insurgency precipitated
countermeasures by the Canadian command and the deployment of a
small number of troops to the village of Shkotova. An attempt to
move a body of troops up the Trans-Siberian Railroad was thwarted
by a strike of Russian rail-workers, while another train carrying
the horses and men of the Royal North West Mounted Police (RNWMP)
was wrecked near Irkutsk. By June 1919, all but a handful of
troops had returned to Canada.
Troops marching to wharf in Victoria to board ships for Russia,
December
1918.
The Siberian Expedition was part of a larger Allied
campaign
to alter the outcome of the Russian revolution and install a more
sympathetic government in Russia. From Murmansk and Archangel to
Baku and Vladivostok, Canadian troops joined soldiers from
thirteen countries in a multi-front strategy of encirclement
designed to isolate and defeat the Bolshevik regime in
Moscow.[7] In Siberia,
the
Canadians backed a succession of White Russian governments,
headed by General Dmitri Horvath, Grigori Semenov, and finally,
Alexander Kolchak, former admiral of the czar's Black Sea Fleet,
who seized power at Omsk in November 1918. Armistice on the
Western Front liberated Allied forces for battle against the
nascent Soviet state. The British Columbia Federationist,
newspaper of the BC Federation of Labour, quoted G.W.
Tschitcherin, Soviet commissar of foreign affairs, who presented
a Bolshevik interpretation of the conflict:
A handful of capitalists who
desired to repossess
themselves
of the factories and banks taken from them on behalf of the
people; a handful of landowners who want to take again from the
peasants the land they now hold; a handful of generals who again
want to teach docility to the workers and peasants with a whip... have
betrayed Russia in the north, in the south, and in the
east to foreign imperialist states, by calling foreign bayonets
from wherever they could get them.[8]
The failure of Canada and its allies to defeat the
Bolsheviks
consigned this story to the margins of history, far removed from
the heroism of the Canadian Corps in the trenches of France and
Flanders.[9]
The mutiny that erupted in the streets of Victoria on
21
December 1918 was located at the intersection of class and
national cleavages. It provides a compelling window into
persistent tensions in Canadian society, tensions that were
amplified in the heat of wartime. The historic antagonism between
French and English, heightened around the issue of conscription,
combined with the political radicalism of British Columbia's
working class. The French-Canadian conscripts who arrived in
Victoria were mustered from the districts around Quebec City and
Montreal, which had experienced rioting in opposition to the
Military Service Act; in the British Columbia capital, they
encountered a robust socialist movement that identified with the
aims of the Russian revolution and launched a determined campaign
to prevent their deployment to Siberia. In street-corner meetings
and in packed auditoriums, working-class leaders of the Socialist
Party of Canada and Federated Labour Party provided a vocal
critique that transformed latent discontent among the troops into
collective resistance.[10]
Both class and ethnicity drove the conscripts toward
mutiny; neither can sufficiently explain the complex motivations
behind an event that military and press censors did their best to
conceal at the time. At this junction of social forces -- the
converging interests of working-class Quebecois and British
Columbia socialists -- a violent standoff erupted in Victoria.
WHY SIBERIA?
To understand the working-class response, and also the
growth of discontent among the troops, it is essential to
understand the rationale behind the Siberian Expedition. From the
outset, Canada's aims in Russia were complex, fluid, and
confused. Military strategy, international diplomacy, economic
opportunity, and ideology influenced the decision of Canada and
its allies to intervene in the Russian civil war. Militarily, the
Siberian Expedition must be understood in the context of Russia's
transition from trusted ally to de facto enemy. In March 1917, as
unrest mounted in Petrograd and the Romanov 300-year rule neared
its end, a group of Canadian military officers toured Russia,
meeting with Czar Nicholas II and other Russian leaders. 'Russia
is now thoroughly supplied with munitions,' Victoria's Daily
Times reported. 'The Czar's huge armies are prepared ...
industries and transportation are fully organized ... everything
is in readiness for a great offensive, simultaneously with a
similar move by the Western Allies.'[11]
Within a week of this
optimistic report, the
czar abdicated the throne. By November, the Bolshevik party under
V.I. Lenin had displaced the pro-war provisional government and
entered into negotiations with Germany and other belligerent
nations that ultimately removed Russia from the war -- and
liberated German forces for battle on the Western Front. The
Allied Supreme War Council, meeting in London in December 1917,
pledged support to those elements in Russia committed to a
continuation of war against Germany.[12]
The stage was set for
Allied
intervention.
In a speech to the Canadian Club and Women's Canadian
Club in
Victoria's Empress Hotel in September 1918, Newton Rowell,
president of the Privy Council, described the loss of Russia as
the most 'tragic surprise' of the war. The Siberian Expedition
was necessary, he said, 'to reestablish the Eastern front' and 'support
the elements and governments of the Russian people,
which are battling against German armed force and
intrigue.'[13] This
theme
of Germanic influence on the Bolshevik side tapped into public
fear of 'Hun' aggression and harked back to Lenin's famed passage
through Germany in a sealed railcar; it provided justification
for opening fronts far removed from Germany and continuing
fighting after Germany's surrender. Allegations of Bolshevik
atrocities, including the supposed 'nationalization of women,'
were amplified to bolster public support for the Siberian
campaign.[14] A final
component of this military rationale was the presence in Siberia
of the Czecho-Slovak Legion, an anomalous body of troops, sixty
thousand-strong, which was marooned in the Russian Far East from
1917 and 1920, and formed the advance party of the Allied
campaign in a desperate bid for national recognition.[15]
Diplomacy also shaped Canadian policy in Siberia, as
political and military leaders sought greater power and
independence within the British Empire. As Rowell told the
Canadian Club, the achievements of Canadian troops during the war
had won for the country 'a new place among the nations,' obliging
Canada to do her part on the world stage. He informed Parliament
that, after refusing a request from the British War Office to
send another contingent to France, Canadian leaders felt obliged
to provide a brigade for Siberia. Borden underscored this
diplomatic motivation in a letter to a skeptical colleague, as
domestic opposition to the Siberian Expedition mounted: 'I think
we must go on with this as we have agreed to do so... [I]t will
be of some distinction to have all the British Forces in Siberia
under the command of a Canadian Officer.'[16]
More significant than diplomacy, however, was the
economic
motivation. For decades Canadian, American, Japanese, British,
and German investors had eyed the resource wealth of Russia's Far
East and the region's consumer market. The German-controlled
Kunst & Albers Company had established a vast retail-wholesale
network in Siberia before the war, an enterprise similar to the
Hudson's Bay Company in Canada. When Russia's provisional
government ordered the firm be sold, a Canadian intelligence
officer saw 'a wonderful chance for Canada.' Trade commissioners
had been posted to Petrograd and Omsk in 1916, and a Russian
purchasing mission was established in Canada; exports to Russia
reached $16 million, making it the seventh largest market for
Canadian goods.[17] In
June 1917, Russia's consul-general to Britain, Baron Alphonse
Heyking, described Siberia as 'the granary of the world' and
urged, 'Let capitalism come in. It will develop
quickly.'[18] The
Bolshevik revolution interrupted these efforts to develop the
Russian economy along capitalist lines. Rather than welcome
foreign investment and trade, the new regime nationalized the
assets of Russians and foreigners. 'This vast country is in a
very precarious position from the standpoint of trade and
commerce,' Rowell warned. 'She needs capital and expert guidance
in the work of reconstruction ... [With] more intimate relations
the greatest benefit may result both to Canada and
Siberia.'[19] In
October
1918, as Canadian troops were mustered to Victoria, the Privy
Council authorized the formation of a Canadian-Siberian economic
commission, including representatives of the Canadian Pacific
Railway and the Royal Bank of Canada; the latter opened a branch
in Vladivostok at the end of 1918.[20]
The Allied countries also had a direct financial
interest in
the defeat of the Lenin regime. An estimated 13 billion rubles in
war loans had been repudiated by the Bolsheviks.[21] Against this outstanding
debt
stood the Imperial Russian Gold Reserve, the largest holdings of
the precious metal in the world. Valued at over 1.6 billion gold
rubles, one quarter of this gold had been shipped from
Vladivostok to Vancouver in December 1915, June 1916, November
1916, and February 1917, to guarantee British war credits; it was
transported on the Canadian Pacific Railway and stored for
several months in a Bank of England vault in Ottawa. The portion
remaining in Siberia has its own intriguing story, moving from
one train to another, and from town to town, as the czar and an
array of White generals retreated eastward.[22]
As a military officer told
a
December 1918 meeting of Federated Labour Party in Victoria, 'We
are going to Siberia as far as I know because Britain has loaned
a great amount of money to Russia. I don't know how much, and the
Bolsheviki has repudiated the loan money. This is as much ours as
anybody's, and we are going there to get it.'[23]
The final motivation behind the Siberian Expedition was
ideological. In all industrialized countries, the events of 1917
amplified divisions between the social classes. As working-class
grievances against profiteering and conscription mounted in
Canada, with labour demanding the 'conscription of wealth,' the
Russian revolution provided a powerful symbol of resistance. Fear
of revolution informed Allied policy from the outset. An
editorial in the Federationist summed up a growing
sentiment among BC workers: 'There is no other sign post upon the
social horizon pointing the way to peace than the movement which
is now typified in the Russian Bolsheviki. Well may rulers and
robbers hail its advent with terrified squawks and bourgeois
souls quake with terror at its probable triumph. For with that
triumph their game of loot and plunder will end.'[24] To radical sections of BC
labour, the Bolshevik insurrection was celebrated as a bold
response to the two-fold scourges of war and capitalism; it
provided a framework through which BC workers came to interpret
their own class position. Within the Canadian elite, however, the
Bolshevik revolution was received with grave misgivings, viewed
as a catalyst to domestic unrest and an example of radical
movements that were left unchecked. The Siberian Sapper,
newspaper of the CSEF, warned that 'Bolshevik missionaries are
spreading their doctrines in every country in the world ... There
is a mad dog running loose among the nations, and it would seem
to be the duty of the nations to handle it as mad dogs are
usually handled.'[25]
This
fear of domestic Bolshevism was intensified by statements such as
those of Joseph Naylor, president of the BC Federation of Labour
and a socialist leader of the Vancouver Island coal miners: 'Is
it not high time that the workers of the western world take
action similar to that of the Russian Bolsheviki and dispose of
their masters as those brave Russians are now doing?'[26]
This complex array of Canadian motives -- military,
diplomatic, economic, ideological -- is reflected in a cryptic
letter, received by the Victoria Trades and Labour Council from
the deputy minister of militia and defence, Ottawa, 'acknowledging a
letter from the Council opposing the Siberian
expedition':
The Department does not
consider Canada at war with the
Russian people, but that they, the Government of Canada, are
supporting certain governments in Russia, such as that organized
at Omsk and Archangel, which governments are, by the way, quite
socialistic. At any rate no aggression is meant by the Dom.
Govnt, rather an economic development.[27]
This official statement of Canadian policy, despite its
confusing syntax, reveals implicit opposition to the spread of
socialism, but also a clear intent to alleviate labour's fear
that Canada was acting on purely ideological grounds.
A BEACHHEAD ON RUSSIA'S EASTERN FLANK
Interventionist forces on parade in Vladivostok, 1918.
In December 1917, there were 648,000 tons of Allied
munitions and war supplies in the Siberian port of Vladivostok.
The security of Allied military and commercial interests in the
city was compromised by the election that month of a majority of
Bolshevik deputies to the local Soviet. Given the severity of the
situation, British, Japanese, and American warships were deployed
to Vladivostok, lying at anchor in the harbour. In April, 500
Japanese marines landed ashore, as 50 Royal Marines left the
cruiser Suffolk to guard the British Consulate. By June
1918, the Allied powers had launched an attack to establish
Vladivostok as a beachhead on Russia's eastern flank. Fifteen
thousand CzechoSlovaks, aided by Japanese and British marines,
seized control of the city, toppling the local Soviet. A group of
armed gruzshchiki (longshoremen) staged a standoff in the
Red Staff building, and though outnumbered forty to one, resisted
until the building was hit with an incendiary bomb, killing
dozens. At the funeral, attended by 17,000 workers and adorned
with the banners of forty-four unions, Konstantin Sukhanov -- a
twenty-four-year-old student and president of the Vladivostok
Soviet -- declared defiantly, 'The Soviet for which they died
shall be the thing for which we live -- or if need be -- like them,
die.'[28] Two days
later,
Japanese, British, American, French, and Czech officials placed
the city under their 'temporary protection.' By the end of July,
all administrative, judicial, and financial functions had been
assumed by the White cabinet of General Dmitri Horvath.[29]
Across the Pacific in British Columbia, the summer of
1918
was marked by acute industrial conflict. Organized workers were
on the brink of the first citywide general strike in Canadian
history. The Victoria Trades and Labour Council-backed newspaper The
Week was suppressed by government order after
publishing the terms of the Allies' secret treaties. Burgeoning
colonies of draft resisters had taken shape in the Comox Valley
of Vancouver Island and near Howe Sound on the mainland. Labour
leader Albert 'Ginger' Goodwin was shot dead while evading the
Military Service Act, while miners' leader Joseph Naylor was
jailed for assisting draft resisters.[30]
On both the industrial and
political fields,
British Columbia labour developed organizational muscle. Aided by
wartime labour shortages, new organizations took root among
shipyard workers, longshoremen, sawmill workers, telephone
operators, teamsters, school teachers, fire-fighters, police
officers, and laundry workers.[31]
Led by militants in the Socialist Party of
Canada (SPC), British Columbia's labour movement was entering
into a period of unprecedented unrest, preparing to mount a
challenge to the moderate leadership of the Trades and Labour
Congress of Canada. Electorally, the Federated Labour Party (FLP)
established branches across the province, backed by the
provincial labour federation and a team of organizers that
included J.S. Woodsworth. The FLP's lone parliamentarian in the
BC legislature, Jim Hawthornthwaite of Nanaimo, aligned himself
with the Russian revolution:
The capitalist press in this
country is out-lying each
other
in vilifying the Bolsheviki, but we cannot believe one word we
read... The Russians have large stores of supplies in
Vladivostok and Petervolosky... So we are forced to the
conclusion that the Allies are liberating the Germans on the
western front, and allowing them to devastate the Russian
workers' republic.[32]
In both Russia and Canada, working-class unrest was
fuelled
by discontent with the high cost of living, shortages of food,
carnage on the battlefields, compulsory military service, and
restrictions on civil liberties. In both countries, the roots of
unrest could be traced to the class system itself, to the
determination of the domestic elite to engage in war, and to the
efforts of sections of the working class to alter basic economic
relationships. As radicalism in the industrial and political
branches of BC labour intensified, Prime Minister Borden
requested that his director of public safety, Montreal lawyer
C.H. Cahan, investigate the proliferation of Bolshevik influences
in Canada.[33]
Against this domestic backdrop, the Imperial War
Cabinet
convened in London in July 1918. Borden joined British Prime
Minister David Lloyd George, and political and military leaders
from Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa, to formulate
Allied strategy on the Western Front -- and commit forces to the
emerging fronts encircling Bolshevik Russia. In his memoirs,
Borden writes that on 27 July 1918 'we discussed our contingent
for the Siberian expedition.' The next day, Borden received a
wire stating that the Privy Council 'approves principle of
sending expedition, leaving you to arrange cost and other
detail.'[34] Earlier
that
month, American President Woodrow Wilson committed 7000 US troops
to Siberia. As Allied leaders assented to the Siberian campaign,
1000 troops in Britain's 25th Middlesex Regiment made their way
from Hong Kong to Vladivostok, to serve under the Canadian
command. By the end of August, 15,000 of 73,000 Japanese troops
had landed in the city. American soldiers sailed from the
Philippines, as an array of foreign armies made their way to
Siberia: 2000 Italians, 12,000 Poles, 4000 Serbs, 4000 Romanians,
5000 Chinese, and 1850 French troops. When combined with the
Czecho-Slovak Legion and White Russian forces, the total Allied
troop strength in Siberia exceeded 350,000.[35]
On 13 August 1918, the details of the Canadian Siberian
Expeditionary Force were revealed publicly: 'Canada to Send Force
4,000 Strong to Help Russia in Siberia,' the Daily
Colonist announced. Victoria was selected as an assembly
point, along with New Westminster and Coquitlam. Major-General
James H. Elmsley returned from London and began accumulating his
army at the Willows Camp, located on the edge of Victoria, as
military officials arranged for the shipment of 3,000,000 rounds
of ammunition from Vancouver to Vladivostok.[36]
Even at its inception,
however,
the CSEF was plagued by indecision in senior ranks. Gen. S.C.
Mewburn, minister of militia and defence, questioned whether the
troops could be raised voluntarily, asking Borden, 'How will the
public of Canada view the raising of another Force to be sent to
another theatre of war ... in view of the present unrest in
Canada.'[37] In
Regina, 'B' Squadron of the RNWMP Calvary unit enlisted 181 horses and
215 men, all volunteers.[38]
From British Columbia to Nova Scotia, 4197
troops were mobilized to the West Coast; as Mewburn had
anticipated, 1653 were conscripts. In addition to small units of
bakers, butchers, medics, and other supporting troops -- and
Nursing Matron Grace Elrida Potter, the lone woman in the force --
the bulk of the CSEF consisted of the 16th Canadian Infantry
Brigade, which included the 259th and 260th Battalions and
Britain's 25th Middlesex Regiment.[39]
The 259th Battalion (Canadian Rifles) was formed in
September
1918 and organized into four companies, under the command of
Lieutenant-Colonel Albert 'Dolly' Swift, with headquarters in
Montreal. 'A' and 'B' companies were mustered from the districts
of Kingston, Toronto, and London, ON, and received preliminary
training at Niagara Camp before moving to Victoria. 'C' and 'D'
companies were drawn from Montreal and Quebec City, and relied
heavily on 'MSA men' -- conscripts under the Military Service Act.
Of 1083 troops in the Battalion, only 378 had enlisted
voluntarily.[40]
Conscription was bitterly resented in Quebec, where historical
linguistic and national tensions undermined support for the
British war effort, and exploded into rioting in early 1918. This
political context helps explain discontent within the Quebecois
companies of the 259th Battalion. Morale in the 259th was also
influenced by the presence of 135 Russian-speaking troops,
belonging to two Russian platoons that had been recalled from the
Canadian Corps in France and attached to the CSEF to provide
interpretative services in Siberia.[41]
Finally, the outbreak of the Spanish flu
sowed the seeds of discontent within the 259th, forcing the
quarantine of 'C' and 'D' companies in Quebec, and taking the
life of seven members before they even reached
Victoria.[42] At the
end
of October, the Quebecois units of the 259th Battalion boarded
two separate trains for the journey to the Willows Camp.
The situation that greeted the men in Victoria was far
from
ideal: A wet British Columbia autumn was aggravated by the
influenza epidemic. Private Harold Steele, a twenty-year-old
railway worker from Cane Township, ON, who voluntarily enlisted
in 'B' Company of the 259th Battalion, described conditions at
the Willows: 'The weather is the worst,' Steele wrote to his
girlfriend Josie Libby. 'It rains every day and sometimes two or
three times a day.'[43]
A
total of 101 people died of influenza in Victoria in 1918, while
2759 fell ill. A quarantine was established at the Willows, and
all public gatherings were banned by the civic Health Committee,
a prohibition that was not lifted until the end of November.
According to the Daily Times, 'It may not have been the
best time of year for troops to have been quartered in Victoria... The
latter part of their stay has been marked by an unusual
amount of rain with an attendant sea of mud at the
Willows.'[44] Dawn
Fraser,
a volunteer in the 260th Battalion and a pharmacist from Saint
John, NB, put the mood of the troops into verse:
So our esprit de corps is
waning, All our pluck and
interest
too, The only thing we see to fight, Is Mud and Spanish
Flu.[45]
As the main body of the force assembled in Victoria,
the
advance party, consisting of 677 men and headed by Major-General
Elmsley, departed for Vladivostok aboard the Canadian Pacific
steamship Empress of Japan.[46]
Meanwhile, the labour situation continued to
deteriorate.
Within the ranks of Canadian workers, the rift between
the
moderate Trades and Labour Congress leadership and the socialist
leadership concentrated in the western provinces widened into an
open split at the congress convention in Quebec City in September
1918. Among the grievances of the socialist delegates was the
tabling of a resolution opposing Canadian intervention in
Russia.[47] In
response to
growing radicalism, the Borden government approved PC 2384,
outlawing fourteen political organizations and all meetings (with
the exception of religious services) in the Russian, Ukrainian,
and Finnish languages. The proscribed organizations included the
Social Democratic Party, Industrial Workers of the World, and
Slavic radical groups including the Russian Workers Union and
Group of Social Democrats of Bolsheviki. Responding to a strike
of Calgary freight handlers, the government banned all labour
strikes for the duration of the war. The SPC's Western
Clarion was declared 'objectionable' under the authority of
the Secretary of State of Canada, as was the pamphlet A Reply
to the Press Lies Concerning the Russian Situation and
Lenin's 'Political Parties in Russia,' which had been serialized
in the BC Federationist only months earlier. Peace set in
on the Western Front as Canada declared war against radical
labour, both at home and in Russia. On Armistice Day, 11 November
1918, Borden wrote in his diary, 'Revolt has spread all over
Germany. The question is whether it will stop there.'[48]
The signing of the Armistice triggered a debate on
whether
Canadian troops should be deployed to Siberia. As Borden sailed
aboard the Mauritania en route to peace deliberations in
Europe, Acting Prime Minister Sir Thomas White sent an urgent
telegram from Ottawa:
All our colleagues are of
opinion that public opinion
here
will not sustain us in continuing to send troops, many of whom
are draftees under the Military Service Act and Order in Council,
now that the war is ended. We are all of opinion that no further
troops should be sent and that Canadian forces in Siberia should,
as soon as situation will permit, be returned to Canada. Consider
matter of serious importance.[49]
T.A. Crerar, a Winnipeg farmer and businessman who
would soon
defect from the Union cabinet to lead the Progressive Party, was
'absolutely opposed to sending any additional forces to Siberia...The
matter of how Russia shall settle her internal affairs is
her concern -- not ours.' Borden rejected his ministers' advice,
maintaining that troops should leave Victoria for Siberia. 'In my
judgment we shall stand in an unfortunate situation unless we
proceed with Siberian Expedition... Canada's present position
and prestige would be singularly impaired.' Anticipating that
Canadian troops would not be called upon to engage in active
warfare, 'beyond possible quelling of some local disturbances,'
he suggested they were needed to assist the new government of
Admiral Kolchak, which had recently seized power at Omsk and
sought to organize anti-Bolshevik forces into a professional
army.[50] White
reiterated
his earlier opposition, pointing out that Canadian interests in
Siberia differed from those of Britain and France, because of
Russia's indebtedness to those countries:
Canada has no such economic
or business interests as
will
justify the employment of a Canadian force composed of young men
whose parents and friends desire should return at once to their
ordinary occupations...
Canada should, now that the
war is over and no
necessity
exists for the re-establishment of the Eastern front, discontinue
further participation and expense. It seems clearly a task for
nations more immediately interested in the finances of Russia.
There is an extraordinary sentiment in Canada in favour of
getting all our men home and at work as soon as possible.[51]
Indicating that opposition was not confined to labour
circles, the Toronto Globe weighed in on the debate:
'Why
should Canadians be forced into a service of which the purpose,
if there is any definite aim, is hidden in the minds of public
men?... There has been no proposal to make Russia our enemy in
any legal form. How can we say that our force in Siberia is being
used for the defence of Canada?'[52]
On 22 November, a
scheduled
troop sailing was postponed indefinitely by Mewburn, but this
position was reversed days later when the cabinet yielded to
their prime minister and decided the Siberian Expedition would
proceed -- with the proviso that any soldier who desired would be
permitted to return to Canada within one year of the armistice. 'We are
advised that this will be satisfactory to the troops now
in British Columbia,' White assured Borden, prematurely, as
events revealed.[53]
Morale among the troops at the Willows Camp waned in
the face
of vigorous propaganda by Victoria's labour movement, part of a
national campaign against the Siberian Expedition. Socialists
targeted their efforts at members of the CSEF. When the Victoria
branch of the Federated Labour Party held its inaugural meeting
on 8 December, 700 members of the Siberian force were in
attendance, while 'hundreds were turned away.' As the Federationist
reported, 'The way those boys applauded the
Labor speakers showed in no uncertain manner where their
sympathies lay.' Jim Hawthornthwaite, FLP member of the
legislature, and party organizer J.R. Trotter took the platform,
lambasting the 'capitalist press' and describing the violent
overthrow of the Vladivostok Soviet the previous June.[54]
The Daily
Times, considered the more liberal of Victoria's
two dailies, railed against 'certain elements of pronounced
Socialistic tendencies' and claimed the Siberian Expedition was
needed to 'maintain control of the trans-Siberian railroad along
its whole length from the Pacific to the Urals.' A week later, a
second protest meeting was held, under the auspices of the
Victoria Trades and Labour Council. A group of CSEF officers
attempted to disrupt the meeting, flooding onto the platform,
singing 'God Save the King,' and accosting the speakers. The Federationist,
however,
reported
that
'the
majority
of
the
soldiers
present
were
with
the
labor
speakers.'
Labour's
Semi-Weekly
Tribune claimed 'the whole house,
composed
mostly of the Siberian contingent, were unanimous in expressing
their sentiments to the withdrawal of the troops.'[55]
The prospect of soldier -- labour unity created much
apprehension in senior ranks, foreshadowing the heavy-handed
response to veteran-labour unity in Winnipeg the following
spring. The lieutenant governor of British Columbia, Sir Thomas
S. Barnard, sent a secret letter to Borden on 4 December,
requesting the prime minister 'urge upon the Imperial Government
the importance of keeping a few large Cruisers upon this Coast,
if for no other reason, than for that of having a force to quell,
if necessary, any rising upon the part of the I.W.W.' Barnard
felt 'the presence of a warship' would 'do more than any local
military force to settle any local trouble,' since 'the personnel
of such force would not be subjected to the insidious socialistic
propaganda which reaches the soldier -- in other words, would be
more amenable to discipline, and not affected by local influences... In
the event of labor strikes, with demonstrations leading to
riots, a serious situation would arise if the soldiers were in
sympathy with the strikers.'[56]
From labour halls across the country, a flood of
protest
resolutions arrived in Ottawa. The Vancouver Trades and Labour
Council placed itself 'on record as being against intervention in
Siberia or interfering in Russia's internal affairs.' Ernest
Winch, an SPC member and president of the council, warned that 'if the
government desired evolution, and not what was called
revolution,' it would halt its campaign of repression against
radical labour.[57] In Winnipeg,
the labour council
entertained a
proposal for a general strike to force the withdrawal of Allied
troops from Siberia. Victoria's Semi-Weekly Tribune,
meanwhile, suggested 'Ottawa should at once be notified by the
Military Authorities of the real state of affairs at the Willows.
It is common knowledge that the vast majority of the men in camp
are strongly averse to embarking for Siberia.'[58]
Evidence of discontent at the Willows Camp abounds. In
November, eighty-seven soldiers in the Russian platoons of the
259th Battalion were moved across the city to the Work Point
Barracks, 'these men not being anxious to proceed to
Siberia.'[59] Bolshevik
sympathies had developed among
the men,
as did an aversion to fight other Russians. A loyal soldier in
the CSEF reported confidentially that the Russians at the Willows 'are
all Bolsheviki'; they intended to join the Red Army if
deployed to Russia and were 'debating all the time the social
question and predicting the downfall of the rich': 'I am not
afraid to fight the enemy ahead of me... but I don't want to be
shot from behind with our own machine guns.' Only eighteen of the
Russian troops were deemed reliable for service in Siberia and
permitted to leave Canada. Within the other units of the 259th,
efforts were made to contain discontent: English-speaking troops
were transferred out of 'D' company (which the War Diary
describes as the 'French-Canadian Company'), while
French-Canadians were transferred from 'C' company to 'D'
company. In the 20th Machine Gun Company, seven soldiers were
declared 'deserters' by a Court of Inquiry on 20 December 1918;
every day, punishments were meted out for infractions ranging
from 'breaking out of camp' to 'highly improper conduct in the
ranks.' As Skuce observed, 'barrackroom lawyers fomented discord
by pointing out the illegality of the government's intent,' which
was highlighted by a government order of 7 December authorizing
MSA troops for service in Siberia.[60]
A soldier
wrote to his
sister-in-law from the Willows Camp, 'Well, things are beginning
to look awful black over here. We are going to be railroaded to
Siberia, and we cannot do a thing to help ourselves. They started
to dish out our clothes to us the first day, and out of 78 of us
77 refused to take them.'[61]
Efforts to ameliorate the situation were unsuccessful.
The
YMCA provided regular recreation and entertainment for the
troops, and the military organized a 'sports day' and a mandatory
lecture on the geography and political climate of Siberia,
attempting to counter the influence of the labour meetings. When
gale force winds and driving rain forced the cancellation of
rifle practice at the Clover Point Range, Brigade Commander H.C.
Bickford addressed all ranks in the CSEF 'on discipline,
complaints, etc. and propaganda against the Siberian Force.' As
the brigade war diary records, 'So-called Socialistic meetings
have been held in Victoria at which there were speeches made...
against the Siberian Force.'[62]
White wired
Borden in London: 'There
is a good deal of feeling in labour and other quarters
here against our continued participation and my personal view is
that a serious political situation may arise later unless some
definite statement can be made as to the return of the expedition
within a reasonable time.' Borden responded, insisting Canada had
made commitments that had to be honoured, regardless of the
armistice in Europe.[63]
And so Departure Day arrived, 21 December 1918. A total
of
856 enlisted men in the 259th Battalion and the 20th Machine Gun
Company, along with Headquarters Detachment and several smaller
units, left the Willows Camp for the six-kilometre march up Fort
Street toward the outer wharf and the troopship Teesta.
They were under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel Swift, along
with forty-two other officers.[64]
The most
detailed description
of the events that followed appeared in a lieutenant's letter to
his wife, mailed from Japan, which was published in the Federationist
and is worth quoting at length:
Yesterday morning (Saturday, December 21) we turned out
a
reveille, 5 a.m., and turned in all our camp equipment at
quartermasters' stores. We breakfasted at 6 a.m., and marched out
of camp at 7:30 a.m. for the wharf, a distance of four and a half
miles. When we got half way the signal came from the rear to
halt, so we stopped for about ten minutes. Then the commanding
officer blew his whistle as a signal for everyone to resume his
place in the column, and we jumped into our places waiting for
the further signal to advance, which was an unusually long time
coming.
We could not see the rest of the column, as we had
turned a
corner of the road -- and a few minutes later a shot rang out, but
still we waited till eventually we received word to resume the
march. In the meantime it appears that our gallant... or a
number of them, had absolutely refused to fall in again when the
signal blew, or to go down to the boat at all. So then the
colonel drew his revolver and fired a shot over their heads -- in
the main street of Victoria -- when some more got into line,
though there were still a large number who would not, so the
other two companies from Ontario were ordered to take off their
belts and whip the poor devils into line, and they did it with a
will, and we proceeded.
While all this was happening the general staff car was
flying
round with good effect, so that after marching another half mile
we came to a 'guard of honour' (fifty men in close formation,
with rifles and fixed bayonets on either side of the road) who
presented arms in the approved fashion to us -- scouts, bugle
band, and the Toronto company -- but as soon as the other company
was just nicely between them the order was given to the guard to
'Outwards turn,' with the result that this company continued the
march virtually at the point of the bayonet, they being far more
closely guarded than any group of German prisoners I ever saw,
and they were put under armed guard till we actually pulled out
to sea, and even now a dozen of the ringleaders are in the cells -- the
two worst handcuffed together -- awaiting trial.[65]
'MUTINY AND WILFUL DISOBEDIENCE'
Evidence to corroborate this story is sparse, the
victim of
military and press censorship, and a historiography that failed
to ask the right questions while the participants were still
alive.[66] The accounts
of Rodney, MacLaren,
Swettenham, and
Skuce consign the events of 21 December 1918 to the margins,
providing only passing references that are neither explained nor
interrogated for meaning.[67]
These
interpretations do not extend
beyond a superficial reference to French-Canadian
anti-militarism. Mirroring the weakness of the larger literature
on conscription in Canada, these accounts ignore the complex
interplay of class and national cleavages, and the dual role of
soldiers as workers; they confine opposition to conscription to
the province of Quebec.[68]
In framing
anti-conscription
sentiment and mutinous activity as purely French-Canadian
phenomena, these accounts distort the experience, and deny the
agency, of British Columbia's working class, and simplify the
motivations of the Quebecois troops.
Research into the regimental records of the Siberian
Expedition has produced scant evidence of the mutiny. According
to the war diary of the 16th Infantry Brigade, 'On the march from
the camp to the dock some of the French-Canadians of the 259th
Battn. created trouble and objected to embarking. The trouble was
soon overcome, however, and the delinquents placed under arrest
to be dealt with.'[69]
The diary of the 20th
Machine Gun Company
is even more vague: 'Parade formed up at 7:00 A.M. to march to
Rithet's wharf. Made several halts en route and arrived at wharf
at 10:30 A.M.'[70] A
court martial later
concluded that the
trouble started 'at the date when the men were asked whether they
were willing to volunteer for service in Siberia.'
Brigadier-General Bickford admitted that only forty per cent of
the troops agreed to go voluntarily. Due to a requirement of the
Records Office, the troops march in alphabetical order. 'This
completely changed the company organization so that the men were
not under the command of their own Platoon officers and NCOs.
There was one case of an officer who could not speak French being
in charge of a platoon of men who could not understand
English.'[71] The
commanding officer of the
259th,
Lieutenant-Colonel Swift, described the troublemakers as
'French-Canadians, farmers and recruits' with 'very little
education,' who were 'mislead by some civilians while stationed
in Victoria, BC, in December 1918.'[72]
Military censorship prevented contemporary reports from
appearing in the local press. The labour council's Semi-Weekly
Tribune alluded to 'recent happenings, the knowledge of which
is common property in this community.' But no details of these
'happenings' are provided: 'The Tribune has no desire to infringe
the regulations by giving publicity to these happenings unless
forced to do so in self defence.'[73]
In the
mainstream press,
the Toronto Globe was one of the few voices calling for
the withdrawal of the Canadian troops, citing protests 'general
throughout the country.' While the Globe acknowledged 'sixty to
seventy per cent of the men despatched to Siberia went
unwillingly,' it dismissed reports of 'some-thing very much like
mutiny' aboard an unspecified troopship, commending the men for
embarking 'without serious disturbance.'[74] For
a more detailed
picture of the events that transpired in Victoria on 21 December
1918, we must turn to sources generated by the labour
movement.
'In Victoria, if street corner reports are true, some
members
of the Siberian Expeditionary Force refused to go, and were
compelled to do so by the use of forceable [sic] methods, amongst
which was the use of revolvers by the officers,' the Federationist
reported on 27 December, ignoring the
censorship restrictions.[75]
Two weeks later, an
editorial asked
rhetorically, 'Why is the Canadian government so bent on sending
troops to Russia that unwilling men were forced to embark for
Siberia at Victoria... after leading protestors were put under
arrest? Surely the answer is not in the announcement of the birth
of the Canadian Siberian Development Company.'[76]
J.S.
Woodsworth addressed an FLP meeting in Vancouver, describing 'some
disgraceful scenes' that had taken place 'when certain
Canadian troops were only recently shipped at Victoria for
Siberia. We had grown accustomed to hear of German and in the
past of Russian troops being driven by force to the fighting
front, but it was something new for Canada, and... for the
British Empire itself, to have troops driven aboard ship by
bayonet and revolver.'[77]
Having resigned from
the Methodist
Church, Woodsworth was working as a longshoreman in Vancouver,
where, according to daughter Grace MacInnis, he 'downed tools and
gave up his day's work and pay' when he discovered he was loading
munitions bound for Siberia.[78]
Another BC
socialist, William A.
Pritchard, discussed the Siberian Expedition with a Victoria
audience in the wake of the mutiny: 'No matter how many millions
of gallons of Allied blood' were spilt 'combating the Soviet
regime, and no matter how successful it might be in subduing it,
nothing could overthrow the conditions which had brought the
Soviets into existence.'[79]
Leaflet of the Canadian Hands Off Russia Committee
opposing Canadian intervention
against the Bolshevik revolution. Click photos to enlarge. (Northstar Compass)
Further insight into the Victoria mutiny can be gleaned
from
the proceedings of the Western Labour Conference, which convened
in Calgary in March 1919. Helen Armstrong, representing the
Women's Labour League of Winnipeg, asked the British Columbia
delegates whether the troops aboard the Teesta had arrived
in Siberia: 'Some of our members have not been heard from since
Christmas... and we heard... that it took half a regiment at
Christmas to put the other half on the ship for Siberia.' A
Victoria delegate by the name of Flewin responded that as an
organizer of the FLP meetings in the city, he had met personally
with several soldiers, including some from Winnipeg: 'When these
boys were given notice they were to leave for Siberia there was a
plan among them that they would refuse to go. There was one man
chosen to lead them, but when he struck down one of the officers
the rest didn't give him support. However, it took 23 hours to
get those men aboard the ship.'[80]
Out of these fragmentary pieces of evidence the general
contours of the mutiny emerge. Influenced by labour agitation,
their morale weakened by poor weather and the Spanish flu, a
company of francophone conscripts in the Canadian Siberian
Expeditionary Force refused to leave Victoria for Vladivostok,
and the military authorities used force -- revolvers, canvass
belts, and bayonets -- to ensure their deployment to Russia.
At sea, the fortunes of the campaign failed to improve.
One
soldier died aboard the Teesta, as did a Chinese
crewmember. Private Frank Joseph Kay, of the 259th Battalion,
fell down a coal chute during a storm.[81]
Discontent continued
during the crossing. Battered by rough weather, the Teesta
pulled into the northern Japanese port of Muroran for bunkering
on 9 January. The officers were allowed ashore, while the lower
ranks were not. Thirty-eight men were subsequently found guilty
of being absent without leave, and penalized fourteen days
forfeiture of pay.[82]
The Teesta
arrived in Vladivostok
on 12 January, followed by the Protesilaus three days
later. In these two ships, carrying 899 and 1808 men
respectively, nearly three-quarters of the Canadian force reached
Siberia.[83] When the Teesta
docked,
ordnance personnel
discovered 'all blankets etc [were] infested with lice,' and
provided the troops, who lacked winter kit, with fur caps.
According to the war diary of base headquarters, 'All troops on
board the S.S. "TEESTA" had to be bathed on arrival owing to men
[being] lousie.' Determined to avoid a disturbance similar to the
one at Victoria, officials had prepared a careful plan for the
disembarkation of the men. Major-General Elmsley and other senior
officers boarded the ship upon its arrival in Vladivostok, while
fifty troops were detailed 'to act as a guard' as the 259th
unloaded in two stages -- 'C' Company and one platoon of 'D'
Company on 13 January, and the remainder of 'D' Company the next
day. This strategy appears to have worked, but the unloading of
cargo proceeded less smoothly: Cranes, derricks, and other
hydraulic equipment had frozen, so 1700 tons of ammunition and
398 tons of other supplies were unloaded by hand, by Chinese
labourers.[84]
On 24 January 1919, ten men belonging to the 259th
Battalion
appeared before the deputy judge advocate general in Vladivostok,
on charges of 'mutiny and wilful disobedience.' The men, judging
by their surnames, were all French-Canadian, and all held the
rank of rifleman. All had been drafted under the authority of the
Military Service Act. They were Onil Boisvert, Sylvio Gilbert,
Joseph Guenard, Alfred La Plante, Egard Lebel, Adore Leroux,
Edmond Leroux, Edmond Pauze, Arthur Roy, and Leonoe Roy. Over
five days of hearings, the military judge found nine of the men
guilty, one innocent, and delivered sentences ranging from three
years penal servitude to twenty-eight days forfeiture of pay.
Arthur Roy, a twenty-three-year-old from Montreal, who listed his
occupation as saw-maker and resided in St Catharines at the time
he was conscripted, received a three-year sentence; Boisvert, a
farmer from Drummond, QC, and La Plante, a mechanic from
Richelieu, both aged twenty-three, received two years hard
labour; Edmond Leroux, a twentytwo-year-old lumberjack from St
Apolline, was sentenced to one year hard labour. The sentences
imposed on these working-class Quebecois youth were designed to
have a deterrent effect within the CSEF. In April, however, as
the Canadians prepared to evacuate Vladivostok and questions
arose over the legality of deploying conscripts, the judge
advocate received an application to release on suspended sentence
the 'men convicted of mutiny at Victoria, BC' -- a request that
Elmsley authorized.[85]
VLADIVOSTOK AND THE RETURN HOME
In their main barracks at Gournestai Bay, at the East
Barracks, and at Second River, eight kilometres west of
Vladivostok, members of the Siberian Expedition remained restive.
The first week in February, British Colonel John Ward, second in
command of British forces in Siberia, wrote in his diary, 'I
heard news of general insubordination among the Canadian troops
that had just arrived at Vladivostok. If all the information
received could be relied upon, the sooner they were shipped back
to Canada the better. There is enough anarchy here now without
the British government dumping more on us.'[86]
The daily routine
orders from force headquarters in Vladivostok reveal regular
incidents of courts martial and breaches of conduct. The
soldiers' perspective, however, is difficult to discern, as
censorship restrictions were not lifted until mid-February, and
military regulations dictated that only officers could keep
personal diaries. In a letter home from Vladivostok, Private
Harold Steele described an officer in the 260th Battalion,
Lieutenant Alfred Henry Thring, who was 'either murdered or
committed suicide here last night.' In another letter, Private
Steele described Vladivostok as 'this God forsaken hole.'
Lieutenant Eric Henry William Elkington, a doctor in the 16th
Field Ambulance from Duncan, BC, confirmed this view in an
interview six decades later: 'That was a tough place,
Vladivostok,' he recalls. 'It was wintertime, and there were
always people getting shot or killed in the streets.'[87]
A siege mentality developed among the troops and within
the
Canadian command, as the occupying armies came into conflict with
the local population. The RNWMP commander in Vladivostok, a city
of 160,000, conceded that 'the inhabitants are about ninety
percent Bolshevik.' In March, two White Russian officers were
found murdered, their bodies showing signs of torture and
mutilation. The incident prompted an emergency meeting of the
Inter-Allied Council, and CSEF headquarters ordered 'all Officers
to be careful when leaving main streets' and that other ranks 'carry
bayonets.' Amid rumours of 'disturbances and rioting which
are expected from Bolshevik sympathizers,' CSEF base headquarters
released 'Instructions in Case of Riotous Disturbances in
Vladivostok Area,' outlining a procedure to quell any Bolshevik
rising. As anxiety mounted, the judge advocate was requested to
investigate 'alleged Bolshevik activities of a Private in the
259th Battn.'[88]
Tension was evident in Vladivostok, but few of the 4000
Canadians actually saw active engagement. Only a fraction moved 'up
country' to Omsk, serving as headquarters staff for the 25th
Middlesex Regiment and providing protection on transport trains;
some troops in the 259th Battalion were deployed to Shkotova, a
village on an important rail line north of Vladivostok, to join
Japanese, Italian, French, and Czech forces in repelling a
Bolshevik advance. Most of the CSEF never left Vladivostok.
Beyond guard duty, policing, and training White Russian troops,
members of the CSEF occupied themselves in the local bazaar and
at dances organized for members of the force. The YMCA and
Knights of Columbus, which had assigned representatives to the
Siberian Expedition, opened canteen huts and movie theatres at
the Canadian barracks, and held concerts, lectures, boxing
matches, and church services. An eight-team hockey league was
established, as were two brigade newspapers, the Siberian
Bugle and Siberian Sapper. On occasion, the men
marched to a central bathhouse for a hot shower. As spring
approached, Lieutenant Elkington was deployed inland with a
contingent bound for Omsk, to aid the British forces defending
the White governor of Siberia, Admiral Kolchak. However, as the
troops made their way along the Trans-Siberian Railroad toward
Lake Baikal, the rail-workers went on strike: 'We had a Russian
train, and Russian drivers. And eventually they refused to go any
further. Despite being prodded in the backside with
bayonets.'[89]
The troops returned to Vladivostok, as the Canadian
government scrambled to find ships to bring the force home.[90]
When exactly the Borden government resolved to end the Siberian
Expedition remains unclear, as does the precise rationale. From
the beginning, Canadian officials were unable to decide on a
clear policy, vacillating between the ambivalent position of
Japan and the United States, and the more aggressive stance of
France and Britain. The prime minister's failed attempt to
organize a peace conference between Bolshevik and White Russian
forces at the Turkish island of Prinkipo also influenced the
decision to withdraw Canadian troops. At the beginning of January
1919, with the Teesta and Protesilaus still at
sea, the cabinet cancelled a planned deployment of troops aboard
the ship Madras, citing 'increasing popular opposition'
and Japan's decision to reduce its commitment in Siberia. Elmsley
informed unit commanders that Canadian government policy in
Siberia had changed, and rather than move 'up country,' the
troops would be confined to Vladivostok. An 'Operation Plan for
Evacuation of Vladivostok' was drawn up, couched in hypothetical
terms but betraying the fears of the Canadian command: 'The whole
country has risen in revolt and large Bolsheviki irregular
forces, indifferently armed, are preparing to attack this
detachment.' Waning Japanese, American, French, British, and
Czech support -- influenced by domestic opposition to the
campaign, the conflicting agendas of the Allied powers,
deteriorating conditions in Vladivostok, and the growing strength
of the Red Army -- sealed the fate of the Siberian Expedition.[91]
In Canada, the labour situation grew increasingly
tense. In
February 1919, the Victoria Trades and Labour Council voted
seventeen to two to endorse 'the aims and purposes' of the
Russian and German revolutions, empowering its executive 'to call
general strikes should the Allies continue to oppose [the
Bolshevik regime] or oppose a Soviet government that may be
formed elsewhere' -- a stand affirmed by the 234 delegates at the
Western Labour Conference in Calgary. Fearing the domestic
incarnation of Bolshevism, the Canadian government strengthened
its security apparatus, extending the jurisdiction of the RNWMP
into British Columbia and initiating rigorous surveillance of the
working-class leadership. The Privy Council was 'much concerned
over [the] situation in British Columbia,' White informed Borden:
'Bolshevism has made great progress among the soldiers and
workers there.' Warning of 'a revolutionary movement' associated
with the One Big Union, White repeated the lieutenant governor's
earlier request that a British cruiser be deployed to Victoria or
Vancouver. Borden dithered, unwilling to sully the reputation of
the Dominion by calling on British forces to suppress 'purely
local Canadian riots, or insurrection': 'As far back as 1885 we
have attended to our own rebellions.'[92]
Borden was not oblivious to the domestic situation,
however.
On 13 February, he informed Lloyd George that Canadian troops
would be withdrawn from Siberia, and wired Mewburn, minister of
militia and defence, instructing him to withdraw the troops in
early spring. At a meeting of the British Empire delegation to
the peace talks on 17 February, 'I adhered absolutely to my
determination to withdraw our troops from Siberia in April,'
Borden wrote. A month after the main body of the force arrived in
Vladivostok, the order was issued to demobilize the units still
in Canada and bring the troops home.[93]
On 21 April 1919, 1076 Canadians boarded the Monteagle,
and
by
June,
the
last
Canadian
units
left
Vladivostok
for
the
voyage
across
the
Pacific.[94]
They returned to
a country divided
along the lines of social class. Victoria, Vancouver, Winnipeg,
Amherst, and several other cities were tied up in general
strikes. Members of RNWMP 'B' Squadron arrived in Vancouver on 22
June, to a barrage of bricks and stones from angry longshoremen,
and were promptly ordered to serve strike duty in the city. A day
earlier, their counterparts in 'A' Squadron had broken the back
of the Winnipeg strike, and RNWMP agents from Victoria to
Montreal raided the homes and offices of socialist and labour
leaders at the end of June. Working-class militancy reached a
high-water mark in Canadian history, as the Canadian state
expanded its war against radical labour on the home front, part
of the 'Red Scare' that set in across the Western world. Under
the banner of One Big Union, a substantial layer of Canadian
workers employed industrial methods in what they viewed as an
international movement to usher in the New Democracy. The Russian
revolution had provided them with an interpretive framework, and
an example of agency, to challenge the authority of employers and
the legitimacy of the state.[95]
In Siberia, the once-reliable Czecho-Slovak Legion had
grown
restless, its members increasingly unwilling to prolong their
return to the new homeland. They clashed with Japanese and White
Russian forces, and surrendered Kolchak to the Bolsheviks. The
Red Army seized the remnants of the Imperial Russian Gold Reserve
and asserted Soviet authority over the Russian Far East.[96]
The
Czecho-Slovaks were finally permitted to leave Vladivostok in May
1920. They sailed to Vancouver, arriving on 9 June 1920, and
marched through the city, fully armed, before travelling across
Canada by train for the voyage home.[97]
Battered by the
corrosive force of time and elite history, the story of the
Siberian Expedition was forgotten.[98]
CONCLUSION
A total of 4197 Canadians served in Russia with the
Siberian
Expeditionary Force. Nineteen never returned home.[99]
This study
has attempted to provide fresh insight into the complex
motivations behind the Siberian Expedition; to highlight the
forgotten mutiny of 21 December 1918; to explore the connection
between class and national cleavages in relation to the mutiny;
and to contextualize the departure of the force within conditions
in Victoria and British Columbia. This Canadian story must be
integrated into the larger picture of Allied intervention in
1918-19, and into the Canadian historiography of the First World
War and postwar labour revolt. The fields of military history and
labour history must enter into a closer dialogue with one
another, and extend their terrain of inquiry beyond Armistice Day
and the Western Front.
Out of the disparate sources that comprise this study,
the
picture emerges of Vladivostok as a beachhead of Western
interests, established and maintained by the force of Allied
armies, and grudgingly surrendered amid the mounting unrest of
soldiers and workers in Russia, Canada, and beyond.[100]
From
Victoria to Vladivostok, the Canadian government engaged in a
battle against labour radicalism -- Bolshevism, in the lexicon of
the day -- a failed attempt to alter the outcome of the Russian
revolution and install a more sympathetic government in Russia.
In the unstable climate following the war in Europe, geopolitical
patterns were contested in Siberia and in the streets of
Victoria. Decades before the Cold War, the battle lines were
drawn. Located at the confluence of class and national cleavages,
the Victoria mutiny of 21 December 1918 provides a window into
the social history of the First World War -- and the complex
motivations driving the historical actors at the time.
French-Canadian antipathy to the war aims of the
British
Empire combined with growing sympathy for the Bolshevik
government of Russia -- a relationship that was encouraged by the
active intervention of Victoria's labour movement. War weariness,
and discontent generated by poor camp conditions and influenza,
eroded morale among the troops. The presence of pro-Bolshevik
Russian soldiers within the ranks of the 259th Battalion provided
a direct connection to the Russian working class and its radical
mood. These factors coalesced into mutiny. The fragmentary
historical record -- a reflection of military and press
censorship, and the tendency to understate dissent within the
armed forces -- makes it difficult to determine with precision the
individual motivations behind this collective act of resistance.
However, evidence supports the conclusion that class and
ethnicity drove the conscripts to mutiny. The Siberian moment
exposed deep fissures in Canadian society, as the latent
discontent of Quebecois soldiers was translated into collective
resistance in an encounter with the radical section of British
Columbia's working class. While the mutiny was suppressed, the
leaders jailed, and the 259th Battalion deployed to Vladivostok,
this flash of soldier--labour unity has much to tell us of the
Canadian experience during the war. The agency of the
working-class Quebecois youth who mutinied in Victoria, and the
socialists they encountered in British Columbia, suggests that a
more penetrating narrative is in order, one that combines the
class and national bases of anti-militarism. The Federationist
recognized the historical significance of the events
unfolding at the time:
When the true history of the machinations of the Allied
countries in their efforts to overthrow the Soviet regime is
written, it will disclose such an amazing story of intrigue and
duplicity as to make honest people shudder... Not half of the
story has been told, and never will be told if the ruling class
of the Allied nations can prevent it.[101]
As Cold War passions fade into the past -- and
working-class
movements in Canada and Russia develop fresh responses to
enduring questions of power -- this story of resistance from
Victoria to Vladivostok deserves attention.
* Benjamin Isitt was first elected to City Council
and the Capital Regional District Board in 2011 and re-elected in 2014.
He holds a PhD and an
LLB and has taught history, international relations and labour
studies at UVic, UBC and Simon Fraser University. An
award-winning historian, author and community advocate, Ben has
written several books about BC politics and Canadian and global
history, including From Victoria to Vladivostok: Canada's
Siberian Expedition, 1917-19 (UBC Press) and Militant Minority:
British Columbia Workers and the Rise of a New Left, 1948-1972
(University of Toronto Press). He was first elected to City Council and
the Capital Regional District Board in 2011 and re-elected in
2014.
Notes
1. This description of the Victoria
mutiny appears in a letter from a lieutenant to his wife, sent
from Japan en route to Siberia. See 'What a Muddle,' British
Columbia Federationist (hereafter cited as Federationist),
28
Feb.
1919.
For
military
records
pertaining
to
troops
and cargo aboard the Teesta,
see
Divisional
Transports,
Vancouver,
to
Naval
Service,
Ottawa,
23
Dec.
1918, file NSC 1047-14-27 (vol. 1), vol.
3969, RG 24, Defence, Library and Archives of Canada (hereafter
cited as LAC). For details of the YMCA mission in Siberia, see
Charles W. Bishop, The Canadian YMCA in the Great War: The
Official Record of the Activities of the Canadian YMCA in
Connection with the Great War of 1914-1918 (Toronto: National
Council of Young Men's Christian
Associations of Canada, 1924), 304-310.
2. 'The Siberian Expedition,' Victoria Semi-Weekly
Tribune (hereafter cited as Semi-Weekly
Tribune), 19 Dec. 1918.
3. The Canadian experience on the
Western Front is explored in Desmond Morton and J.L. Granatstein, Marching
to
Armageddon:
Canadians
and
the
Great
War,
1914-1919
(Toronto: Lester and Orpen Dennys, 1989); also
Granatstein
and Morton, Canada and the Two World Wars (Toronto: Key
Porter Books, 2003); Morton, When Your Number's Up: The
Canadian Soldier in the First World War (Toronto: Random
House of Canada, 1993) and Canada and War: A Military and
Political History (Toronto: Butterworths, 1981). See also
Gerald W.L. Nicholson, Official History of the Canadian Army
in the First World War: Canadian Expeditionary Force,
1914-1919 (Ottawa: Queen's Printer and Controller of
Stationery, 1962), and Robert Craig Brown and Ramsey Cook, Canada,
1896-1921: A Nation Transformed (Toronto:
McClelland and Stewart, 1974). The impact of stress and
exhaustion on the morale of troops, particularly in the Second
World War, is the subject of Terry Copp and Bill McAndrew, Battle
Exhaustion: Soldiers and Psychiatrists in the
Canadian
Army, 1939-1945 (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's
University Press, 1990). Copp points toward a more 'bottom-up'
method of military history in The Brigade: The Fifth Canadian
Infantry Brigade (Stoney Creek: Fortress, 1992).
4. Studies of the Siberian Expedition
include Gaddis Smith, 'Canada and the Siberian Intervention,
1918-1919,' American Historical Review 64 (July 1959):
866-77; J.A. Swettenham, 'Allied Intervention in Siberia
1911-1919,' Report No. 83, Historical Section (G.S.) Army
Headquarters, 20 Oct. 1959, http://www.forces.ca/dhh/
downloads/ahq/ahq083.pdf; Swettenham, Allied Intervention in Russia,
1918-19: And the Part Played by Canada (Toronto: Ryerson,
1967); Robert N. Murby, 'Canadian Economic Commission to Siberia,
1918-1919,' Canadian Slavonic Papers 11, no. 3 (1969):
374-93; Roy MacLaren, Canadians in Russia (Toronto:
Macmillan, 1976); J.E. Skuce, CSEF: Canada's Soldiers in
Siberia, 1918-1919 (Ottawa: Access to History Publications,
1990); and reviews of Swettenham and MacLaren by William Rodney
in the Canadian Historical Review 49, no. 2 (1968):
184-6, and Canadian Historical Review 58, no. 4 (1977): 515-17.
For a detailed
account of the Russian experience in Siberia, see N.G.O. Pereira, White
Siberia:
The
Politics
of
Civil
War (Montreal
and
Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1996). A one-hour CBC
radio documentary on the subject, compiled by Rodney and narrated
by Leigh Taylor, can be found at William Rodney, Canada and
the Siberian Intervention, 1918-1919, tape reel, n.d. (ca.
1970), ID no. 416, 006 range 43, University of Victoria Archives
and Special Collections (hereafter cited as UVASC).
5. Studies of labour and the left in
British Columbia during this period include David Bercuson, Fools
and Wise Men: The Rise and Fall of the One Big
Union
(Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1978); Gerald Friesen, 'Yours in
Revolt: Regionalism, Socialism, and the Western Canadian Labour
Movement,' Labour/Le Travailleur 1 (1976): 141-57; Ronald
Grantham, 'Some Aspects of the Socialist Movement in British
Columbia' (master's thesis, UBC, 1942); Ross Alfred Johnson, 'No
Compromise - No Political Trading: The Marxian Socialist
Tradition in British Columbia' (PhD diss., UBC, 1975); Mark
Leier, Where the Fraser River Flows: The Industrial Workers
of the World in British Columbia (Vancouver: New Star Books,
1990); and A. Ross McCormack, Reformers, Rebels, and
Revolutionaries: The Western Canadian Radical Movement,
1899-1919 (Toronto and Buffalo: University of Toronto Press,
1977).
6. William Rodney, review of Allied
Intervention in Russia, by Swettenham, Canadian
Historical Review 49, no. 2 (1968): 186.
7. See 'Canadian "Syren" Party, Northern Russian
Expeditionary Force (The Murman Front),' and 'Canadian "Elope"
Party, Northern Russian Expeditionary Force (Archangel Front),'
file 15, vol. 1872, Defence, RG 24, LAC; also John Bradley, Allied
Intervention in Russia (Lantham, New York,
and
London: University Press of America, 1968); George A. Brinkley, The
Volunteer Army and Allied Intervention in South
Russia,
1917-1921: A Study in the Politics and Diplomacy of the Russian
Civil War (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1966);
MacLaren, Canadians in Russia, 9-124; Leonid I.
Strakhovsky, Intervention at Archangel: The Story of Allied
Intervention and Russian Counter-Revolution in North Russia,
1918-1920 (New York: Princeton University Press, 1944); and
Swettenham, Allied Intervention in Russia, 187-274.
The Canadian intervention in Russia has received
significantly less attention than the activities of American and
British forces. See R.M. Connaughton, The Republic of the
Ushakovko: Admiral Kolchak and the Allied Intervention in
Siberia, 1918-20 (London and New York: Routledge, 1990);
Christopher Dobson and John Miller, The Day They Almost Bombed
Moscow: The Allied Intervention in Russia, 1918-1920 (New
York: Atheneum, 1986); David S. Foglesong, America's Secret
War against Bolshevism: US Intervention in the Russian Civil War,
1917-1920 (Chapel Hill and London: University of North
Carolina Press, 1995); Michael Kettle, The Road to
Intervention: March-November 1918 (London and New York:
Routledge, 1988); Robert J. Maddox, The Unknown War with
Russia: Wilson's Siberian Intervention (San Rafael, CA:
Presidio, 1977); Clarence A. Manning, The Siberian Fiasco
(New York: Library Publishers, 1952); Betty Miller Unterberger, America's
Siberian
Expedition,
1918-1920:
A
Study
of
National
Policy (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1956); Carl J.
Richard, '"The Shadow of a Plan": The Rationale behind Wilson's
1918 Siberian Intervention,' Historian 49 (Nov. 1986):
64-84; and John Silverlight, The Victors' Dilemma: Allied
Intervention in the Russian Civil War (London: Barrie and
Jenkins, 1970).
For the Australian role in Siberia, see Bruce Muirden, The
Diggers
Who
Signed
On
for
More:
Australia's
Part
in
the
Russian
Wars
of
Intervention,
1918-1919 (Kent Town, Australia:
Wakefield, 1990). The Japanese contribution is explored in John
Albert White, The Siberian Intervention (New York:
Princeton University Press, 1950). The French role in examined in
Michael J. Carley, 'The Origins of the French Intervention in the
Russian Civil War, January-May 1918: A Reappraisal,' Journal
of Modern History 48, no. 3 (Sept. 1976): 413-39; and Carley, Revolution
and
Intervention:
The
French
Government
and
the
Russian
Civil
War,
1917-1919 (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's
University Press, 1983).
8.'The Soviet's Reply to Allied Gov'ts,' Federationist,
20
Dec.
1918.
9. Commemoration of the Great War is the subject of
Jonathan
F. W. Vance's Death So Noble: Memory, Meaning, and the First
World War (Vancouver: UBC Press, 1997).
10. The propensity of troops to engage in collective
crowd
action is discussed in Lawrence James, Mutiny: In the British
and Commonwealth Forces, 1797-1956 (London: Buchan & Enright,
1987); Desmond Morton, '"Kicking and Complaining": Demobilization
Riots in the Canadian Expeditionary Force, 1918-19,' Canadian
Historical Review 61, no. 3 (Sept. 1980): 334-60; Julian
Putkowski, 'The Kinmel Park Camp Riots 1919,' Flintshire
Historical Society Journal 32 (1989): 55-107; and Jeffrey
Ricard, 'Bringing the Boys Home: A Study of the Canadian
De-Mobilization Policy after the First & Second World Wars'
(master's thesis: University of New Brunswick, 1999). The
historiography of collective crowd action was inaugurated in
George Rudé, The Crowd in History: A Study of Popular
Disturbances in France and England, 1730-1848 (New York:
Wiley, 1964). For opposition to conscription in Quebec during the
First World War, see Elizabeth H. Armstrong, Le Québec et la
crise de la conscription 1917-1918 (Montreal, VLB Éditeur,
1998); Bernard Dansereau, Le mouvement ouvrier montréalais
et
la crise de la conscription: 1916-1918 (Montreal: Université
du Québec à Montréal, 1994); Gaston Dugas, 'Le
Québec et la crise
de la conscription, 1917-1918,' L'Action nationale 9
(Nov. 1999): 139-41; Gérard Filteau, Le Québec, le
Canada et
la guerre 1914-1918 (Montreal: L'Aurore, 1977); J.L.
Granatstein and J.M. Hitsman, Broken Promises: A History of
Conscription in Canada (Toronto: Copp Clark Pitman, 1985),
24-99; and Ferdinand Roy, L'appel aux armes et la réponse
canadiennne-française: étude sur le conflit des races
(Quebec: Garneau, 1917).
11. 'In Fear of Russia,' 9 Mar. 1917; 'Russians Are
Fighting with Allied Forces in the West,' 11 Mar.
1917; 'Russian Hospitality,' 11 Mar. 1917, Victoria Daily
Colonist (hereafter cited as Daily Colonist).
12. After March 1917, the provisional
government that succeeded the czar adhered to a policy of
'revolutionary defencism,' insisting that war against Germany was
necessary to preserve the gains of the March revolution. In
contrast, the Bolsheviks advocated 'revolutionary defeatism,' the
withdrawal of Russia from the war, on the basis of a separate
peace if necessary. This stance bolstered Bolshevik support among
soldiers, farmers, and industrial workers, culminating in the
defeat of the provisional government in November 1917. The new
regime called for negotiations between all warring nations, but
the Allies refused to participate. Instead, they aligned
themselves with anti-Bolshevik factions in Russia in the hope of
maintaining the Eastern Front. The result of negotiations between
the Bolsheviks and Germany was the Brest-Litovsk Treaty, signed
in March 1918, which saw Russia surrender land, resources, and
money to Germany in exchange for peace. By the summer of 1918,
large numbers of German troops had been redirected to the Western
Front for the Ludendorf offensives, and the Allies were suffering
heavy losses. To Allied leaders, reopening the Eastern Front
seemed essential, and they therefore moved to formalize their
assistance to White Russian forces in Siberia and other regions.
See Swettenham, 'Allied Intervention in Siberia 1911-1919,' 4-5;
Skuce, CSEF: Canada's Soldiers in Siberia, 4-6.
13. 'Siberia Offers Vast Opportunity,' Daily
Colonist, 28 Sept. 1918.
14. Alexandra Kollontai, The
Autobiography of a Sexually Emancipated Communist Woman,
trans. Salvator Attanasio (New York: Herder and Herder, 1971),
38. Kollontai, people's commissar of social welfare in the new
Soviet government, describes the controversy: 'My efforts to
nationalize maternity and infant care set off a new wave of
insane attacks against me. All kinds of lies were related about
the "nationalization of women," about my legislative proposals
which assertedly ordained that little girls of twelve were to
become mothers.' An example of Allied allegations of the
mistreatment of women in Russia appears in 'Women in Soviet
Russia' in one of the CSEF newspapers, the Vladivostok
Siberian Bugle (hereafter cited as Siberian Bugle), 6
Mar. 1919, in War Diary of 259th Battalion Canadian Rifles C.E.F.
(S), vol. 5057, series III-D-3, RG 9, Militia and Defence, LAC.
The article claimed that 'nationalization of women has been
attempted in various parts of Bolshevik Russia. One instance of
this occurred in the town of Saratov, where a decree declaring
all women to be property of the nation was promulgated by the
Free Love Association of the Anarchists' Club, and later given
force of law by the Soviet of the district.' For the story of
Lenin's passage through Germany in 1917, see Michael Pearson, The
Sealed Train (New York: Putnam, 1975).
15. The Czecho-Slovak Legion consisted
of prisoners-of-war and deserters from the Austrian army, who
joined the czar's forces to bolster their nationalist cause, and
won recognition as an official Allied army, following the March
revolution. Beyond their military value on the ground, the
Czecho-Slovaks provided propaganda fodder for the Allies; as
Rowell told the Canadian Club, a primary motivation of the
Canadian mission in Siberia was 'to aid the brave Czecho-Slovak
army.' 'Siberia Offers Vast Opportunity,' Daily Colonist,
28 Sept. 1918. For greater detail on the Czecho-Slovak Legion,
see John F.N. Bradley, The Czechoslovak Legion in Russia,
1914-1920 (Boulder: East European Monographs, 1991);
Connaughton, The Republic of the Ushakovko, 36-40; Edwin
P. Hoyt, The Army without a Country (New York: Macmillan,
1967); Victor M. Fic, The Bolsheviks and the Czechoslovak
Legion: The Origin of Their Armed Conflict, March-May 1918
(New Delhi: Abhinav Publications, 1978); and Betty Miller
Unterberger, The United States, Revolutionary Russia, and the
Rise of Czechoslovakia (Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina Press, 1989).
16. See N.W. Rowell speech to Canadian
Club, 'Siberia Offers Vast Opportunity,' Daily Colonist,
28 Sept. 1918; Rowell speech in Canada, House of Commons
Debates (1 Apr. 1919), p. 1063; and J. Castell Hopkins, Canadian
Annual
Review
of
Public
Affairs
(Toronto:
Canadian Annual Review, 1919), 53; Henry Laird Borden and Heath
MacQuarrie, eds., Robert Laird Borden: His Memoirs
(Toronto and Montreal: McClelland and Stewart, 1969), 2:146. As
the Siberian force was mobilized to Victoria, Borden announced
that the organization of the Canadian army would henceforth be
independent of the British army. This step toward Canadian
independence from Britain, and Canada's seat at Versailles, was
impelled by the unlikely conflict in the Russian Far East. See
Hopkins, Canadian Annual Review of Public Affairs
(Toronto: Canadian Annual Review, 1918), 419. For the larger
picture of Rowell's influence in shaping Canadian foreign policy
in the years 1917 to 1921, see Margaret Prang, N.W. Rowell:
Ontario Nationalist (Toronto: University of Toronto Press,
1975). Borden's tenure as prime minister during the war is
discussed in Robert Craig Brown, Robert Laird Borden: A
Biography. Vol. 2, 1914-1937 (Toronto: Macmillan,
1980). The Versailles peace talks, where Canada had its first
experience formulating a foreign policy independent of Britain,
is explored in Margaret MacMillan, Paris, 1919: Six Months
That Changed the World (New York: Random House, 2002).
17. See Murby, 'Canadian Economic Commission to
Siberia,
1918-1919'; also MacLaren, Canadians in Russia, 224.
Canadian exports to Russia increased sharply in the decades
preceding the war; in 1896, they totalled a meagre $16,000. Murby
describes the Kunst & Albers operation as something akin in scope
and importance to the Hudson's Bay Company. All goods were of
German origin, shipped through the parent house in Hamburg. With
a network of branches across eastern Siberia, and enterprises
ranging from sawmills and a coal mine to the chief bunkering
facility at Vladivostok, Kunst & Albers recorded sales of 150
million rubles in 1913, and sustained sales of 40 million rubles
in 1918, notwithstanding the chaos of war. The report proposing
Canadian acquisition of the Kunst & Albers interests in Siberia
was provided by Maj. J. Mackintosh-Bell, a Canadian who was
attached to the British Intelligence Mission in Russia. An
earlier example of foreign commercial interest in Siberia
occurred in 1899, when San Francisco speculator George D.
Roberts, backed by British and French capital, and in concert
with a Russian syndicate led by Col. Vonliarsky, won a concession
from the Russian government to mine gold along a 1000-mile
stretch of the Siberian coastline. His 'Siberian Expedition'
ended in disarray a year later, when dissension erupted between
Americans and Russians on the ship Samoa, en route to
Siberia from Nome, Alaska. See 'That Expedition to Siberia,' Daily
Colonist, 31 Sept. 1900.
18. 'What Russia Will Do after the War Is Over,' Federationist,
29
June
1917.
19. 'Siberia Offers Vast Opportunity,' Daily
Colonist, 28 Sept. 1918.
20. See Borden to White, 8 Aug. 1918,
vol. 103, H1(a), Borden Papers, MG 26, LAC: 'Confidential. United
States and Great Britain are sending economic commission to
Siberia in connection with military expedition. I consider it
essential that Canada should take like action'; Mewburn to
Borden, 12 July 1918, vol. 103, H1(a), Borden Papers, MG 26, LAC: 'It
has been suggested that trade conditions in this territory,
will be a vital factor, looking to the future, and it might be
advisable to have some Canadian representative accompany this
force, as far as Trade and Commerce goes.' Also Privy Council
Order (hereafter cited as PC) 2595, 21 Oct. 1918, Canada,
Department of External Affairs, Documents on Canadian External
Relations (1909-1918) (Ottawa: Department of External
Affairs, 1967), 1:211-13; Murby, 'Canadian Economic Commission to
Siberia, 1918-1919'; Hopkins, Canadian Annual Review of Public
Affairs (1918), 432; Edson L. Pease, vice-president and
managing director, Royal Bank of Canada, as quoted in Hopkins, Canadian
Annual
Review
of
Public
Affairs (1919),
801; Dana
Wilgress, 'From Siberia to Kuibyshev: Reflections on Russia,
1919-1943,' International Journal 22, no. 3 (Summer 1967):
364-75.
21. The repudiation of the czar's war
loans was announced by the Bolshevik government on 28 Jan. 1918.
The total value of these loans appears in G.G. Shvittau, Revoliutsiia
i
Narodnoe
Khoziaistvo
vv
Rossii, 1917-1921 (Leipzig:
Tsentral'noe kooperativnoe
izdatel'stvo, 1922), 337, as quoted in Richard Pipes, The
Russian Revolution (New York: Vintage Books, 1990), 578. A
contemporary discussion appeared in Henry Hazlitt, 'Repudiation,' Nation,
21
Feb.
1918,
220.
22. Jonathan D. Smele, 'White
Gold: The Imperial
Russian
Gold
Reserve in the Anti-Bolshevik East, 1918-? (An Unconcluded
Chapter in the History of the Russian Civil War),' Europe-Asia
Studies 46, no. 8 (1994): 1317-47. In
comparison, in 1914 the gold reserve of Britain amounted to 800
million gold rubles, while that of France was valued at 1.5
billion gold rubles.
23. 'Organized Attempt To Wreck
Mass Meeting,' Federationist,
20
Dec.
1918.
24. 'Bolsheviki Infection
Spreading,' Federationist,
25
Jan.
1918.
25. Vladivostok Siberian
Sapper, 8 Feb. 1919,
file
119, vol. 363, series III, RG 9, LAC, as reproduced in Skuce, CSEF:
Canada's Soldiers in Siberia, 142.
26. 'Lenine's Doctrine Scares
Ruling Class,' Federationist,
14
Dec.
1917.
27. Minutes, 8 Jan. 1919, box
3, 80-59, Victoria Labour
Council Fonds, UVASC.
28. 'The Red Funeral of
Vladivostok,' Federationist,
13
Dec.
1918,
reprinted
from
the New Republic); also
Albert Rhys Williams, Through the Russian Revolution (New
York: Boni and Liveright, 1921). The arrival of British,
Japanese, and American forces in Vladivostok is described in
Connaughton, The Republic of the Ushakovko, 36-40;
Kettle, The Road to Intervention, 35; MacLaren, Canadians
in Russia, 126-7; and Pereira, White
Siberia, 45-53. Skuce overlooks the opening movements of the
Allied forces in Siberia, writing, 'The first Allied forces
landed in Vladivostok on August 13, 1918.' Skuce, CSEF:
Canada's Soldiers in Siberia, 6.
29. 'Britain States Aims in
Russia,' Daily Colonist,
30
July
1918;
MacLaren, Canadians in Russia, 134; and
Pereira, White Siberia, 54, 73. A rival White government
calling itself the Provisional Government of Autonomous Siberia,
under Pyotr Derber, had attempted to consolidate power in
Vladivostok but failed. On 5 July 1918, the US consular
representative in the city came to the conclusion that Derber 'has no
authority for claiming to be the government of Russia.'
Gen. Horvath, based in Harbin, China, and for several years
director of the Chinese Eastern Railway, was recognized by the
Allies, though after Nov. 1918 the supreme authority in Siberia
rested with the Kolchak government in Omsk.
30. 'Arrest of Naylor at
Cumberland,' Federationist,
16
Aug.
1918;
'Naylor
Is
Found
Not
Guilty at Nanaimo,' Federationist,
11 Oct. 1918; Susan Mayse, Ginger:
The
Life and Death of Albert Goodwin (Madeira Park, BC: Harbour,
1990); Roger Stonebanks, Fighting for Dignity: The Ginger
Goodwin Story (St John's: Canadian Committee on Labour
History, 2004). The grand jury at the Nanaimo Assizes threw out
the charges against Naylor on the grounds of insufficient
evidence; however, fellow mine-union leader and co-accused David
Aitken remained in prison. The Ginger Goodwin general strike of 2
Aug. 1918 is discussed in 'Albert Goodwin Shot and Killed by
Police Officer Near Comox Lake,' and 'Trades and Labor Council
Endorse 24-Hr. Protest,' Federationist, 2 Aug. 1918, and 'Labor
Temple Scene of Trouble and Rioting,' Federationist, 9 Aug.
1918; also Paul A. Phillips, No Power Greater: A
Century of Labour in British Columbia (Vancouver: BC
Federation of Labour and the Boag Foundation, 1967), 72-4. For
the banning of Week, see Minutes, 7 Aug. 1918, box 3,
80-59, Victoria Labour Council Fonds, UVASC; also 'Intervention in
Russia,' Victoria Week, 20 July 1918, and 'Here We Are
Again!' Victoria Week, 1 May 1920.
31. For organizational gains in
various industries, see
Minutes, June-August 1918, box 3, 80-59, Victoria Labour Council
Fonds, 80-59, box 3, UVASC; Federationist, June to Aug.
1918.
32. 'Federated Labor Party
Alive on the Island,' Federationist,
8
Mar.
1918.
Hawthornthwaite,
who
previously
served as a SPC MLA (1900-12), was elected in a
January 1918 by-election in the riding of Newcastle, a mining
centre on Vancouver Island, defeating his Liberal opponent with
917 votes to 473. A week later, delegates to the annual
convention of the BC Federation of Labour (BCFL) voted eighty-two
to eleven to form a new political party of labour, and at a
conference immediately following the BCFL proceedings, delegates
adopted a resolution declaring 'That the Federated Labor Party be
organized for the purpose of securing industrial legislation for
the collective ownership and democratic operation of the means of
wealth production.' See 'Labor Convention Decides To Form United
Working Class Political Party,' Federationist, 1 Feb.
1918; 'Working Class Conference Organizes Political Party,' Federationist,
8
Feb.
1918.
33. Opposition to the high cost
of living appears in
Minutes,
16 and 29 Nov. 1916, box 3, 80-59, Victoria Labour Council Fonds,
UVASC. For opposition to conscription, see Federationist,
various issues, Dec. 1916 to July 1918; also Martin Robin,
'Registration, Conscription, and Independent Labour Politics,
1916-17,' in A.M. Willms, ed., Conscription 1917
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1969), 60-77. Cahan's
appointment to investigate Bolshevism, and other measures aimed
at containing radicalism, are discussed in Jeff Keshen, 'All the
News That Was Fit To Print: Ernest J. Chambers and Information
Control in Canada, 1914-19,' Canadian Historical Review 73
(1992): 327.
34. On 9 July, Rowell received
a request from the War
Office,
London, regarding Canadian participation in Siberia. Mewburn,
minister of militia and defence, wrote to Borden on 12 July,
discussing the Canadian contingent and 'trade conditions' in
Siberia, and attached a letter from London proposing the
composition of the Canadian force. See Redcliffe to Rowell, 9
July 1919; Mewburn to Borden, 12 July 1919; Redcliffe to Mewburn,
12 July 1919; Mewburn to Militia (Ottawa), 12 July 1919; Doherty
to Borden, 28 July 1919, vol. 103, H1(a), Borden Papers, MG 26,
LAC; see also Borden and MacQuarrie, eds., Robert Laird
Borden, 2:146; MacLaren, Canadians in Russia,
140.
35. The 1000 troops in
Britain's 25th Middlesex
Regiment left
garrison duty in Hong Kong for Vladivostok; they were later
joined by the 900-strong 1/9 Hampshire Regiment, and served under
Elmsley and the Canadian command. Japan's presence in eastern
Siberia represented the largest foreign contingent in Russia,
with Gen. Kikuzo Otani providing overall leadership to Allied
forces in the region. The Allied campaign in western Siberia, on
the active front against the Red Army in the Ural mountains, was
led by French general Maurice Janin, and composed heavily of
Czecho-Slovak and White Russian troops. The American force,
originally pegged at 7000, rose to 12,000. In Siberia, the
Czecho-Slovak Legion numbered 55,000, joining over 200,000 White
Russian troops. See Hopkins, Canadian Annual Review of Public
Affairs (1919), 53; 'Siberia Force To Be Composite,' Daily
Colonist, 25 Aug. 1918. Also Kettle,
The Road to
Intervention, 301; MacLaren, Canadians in Russia,
137, 181; Skuce, CSEF: Canada's Soldiers in Siberia, 6-7;
and Swettenham, Allied Intervention in Russia, 126-7.
36. 'Canada To Send Force 4,000
Strong To Help Russia
in
Siberia,' Daily Colonist, 13 Aug. 1918; Hopkins, Canadian
Annual Review of Public Affairs (1918),
419;
Skuce, CSEF: Canada's Soldiers in Siberia, 7-8. Elmsley
had commanded the 8th Brigade of the Canadian Expeditionary Force
on the Western Front. For details on the shipment of ammunition,
see major-general for military secretary to naval secretary, 16
Aug. 1918, file NSC 1047-14-26 (vol. 1), vol. 3968, RG 24,
Defence, LAC.
37. Mewburn to Borden, 13 Aug.
1918, vol. 103, H1(a),
Borden
Papers, MG 26, LAC.
38. 'Total Strength of
Squadron,' 14 Nov. 1918, file
'RCMP
1918 -- Siberian Draft Pt. 1,' vol. 1929, RG 18, Royal Canadian
Mounted Police Collection (hereafter cited as RCMP), LAC. Data on
the horses can be found in Memorandum to the Officer Commanding
RNWMP, Depot Division, Regina, 20 Aug. 1919, RCMP 1918 -- Siberian
Draft 3-6, 'Instructions issued to all Divs. and O.C. Squadron,'
vol. 1930, RG 18, RCMP, LAC.
39. For details on the
composition of the force, see
'The
Force dispatched to Siberia,' file DHS 4-20 'Cdn Exped Force,
Siberia,' vol. 1741, RG 24, Defence, LAC; also 'Disposition of
Officers, NCO's & Other Ranks of the Canadian Expeditionary Force
in Siberia, Friday, January 31st, 1919,' file 15, vol. 1872, RG
24, Defence, LAC; and Skuce, CSEF: Canada's Soldiers in
Siberia, 23-24. The 260th Battalion consisted of four
companies, organized as follows: 'A' Company -- Nova Scotia and
New Brunswick; 'B' Company -- Manitoba; 'C' Company -- Saskatchewan
and Alberta; 'D' Company -- British Columbia. Of the 1026 troops,
520 were conscripts.
40. 'Disposition by Unit of
M.S.A. Personnel in the
CSEF,' 9
Apr. 1919, War Diary of Base Headquarters CEF (S), vol. 5057,
series III-D-3, RG 9, Militia and Defence, LAC. Also Skuce, CSEF:
Canada's Soldiers in Siberia, 23.
41. War Diary of 259th
Battalion CEF (S), 24 Oct. 1918,
vol.
5057, series III-D-3, RG 9, Militia and Defence, LAC.
42. 'D' Company was placed
under quarantine in the
Quebec
City Citadel on 3 Oct., and CÀG. À Company. was
quarantined on 12
Oct. 'C' Company left Montreal on 24 Oct., while DÀG. À
Company.
left Quebec City aboard a special CPR train two days later, after
being inspected by the governor general, Sir Victor William
Christian Cavendish, 9th Duke of Devonshire. 'D' Company arrived
at the Willows Camp on 31 Oct. 1918, while 'C' Company arrived
the following day. War Diary of 259th Battalion CEF (S), 3 Oct.
to 1 Nov. 1918, vol. 5057, series III-D-3, RG 9, Militia and
Defence, LAC.
43. Harold to Josie, 2 Nov.
1918, 'Correspondence 1
August
1918-23 Nov. 1918,' E564, Harold Steele Collection (hereafter
cited as Harold Steele), MG 30, LAC.
44. 'Siberia Holds Immense
Opportunity to Members of
Canadian
Contingent,' Victoria Daily Times (hereafter cited as Daily
Times ), 17 Dec. 1918. For the extent of
influenza
in the city, see Victoria, Annual Reports: Corporation of the
City of Victoria (Victoria: Diggen, 1918), 89. Measures
adopted to contain the outbreak are described in 'City Will Act
To Check Epidemic,' Daily Colonist, 8 Oct. 1918.
45. Dawn Fraser, 'The Mud-Red
Volunteers,' Songs of
Siberia and Rhymes of the Road (Glace Bay, NS: Eastern
Publishing, ca. 1919), 12.
46. War Diary of Advance Party
6th Signal Co. CEF (S),
11
Oct. 1918, 'October 1918,' vol. 5057, series III-B-3, RG 9,
Militia and Defence, LAC; also Swettenham, Allied Intervention
in Russia, 128-9. The Advance Party left Victoria on 11
Oct., arriving fifteen days later in Vladivostok. Elmsley and his
troops established base headquarters in the Pushkinskaya Theatre, 'a
large modern building' in the centre of the city. Their
primary task was to prepare for the arrival of the troops in
Victoria, while some of the men were deployed to Omsk to serve as
headquarters staff for the Middlesex Regiment.
47. 'Delegates to Trade
Congress Make Report to Central
Body,' Federationist, 4 Oct. 1918. Resolution thirty-two
was forwarded from Machinists' Local One in Toronto. As a
Vancouver delegate later recounted, 'Delegate Koldofsky of
Toronto, in supporting the resolution, stated that he was not a
Bolsheviki and that he did not agree with them altogether. He had
taken part in the 1905 revolt and was personally acquainted with
Lenine, though not by any means in accord with his ideas. From
his personal knowledge of Lenin, however, he was convinced that
under no consideration could he be guilty of the crimes toward
the working class in Russia such as were being charged in the
daily press. He was strongly opposed to Allied intervention in
Russia. In order to conceal their ignorance of the matter, the
Eastern delegates shut off debate by tabling the resolution.' The
rift within the congress is described in Gerald Friesen, 'Yours
in Revolt: Regionalism, Socialism, and the Western Canadian
Labour Movement,' Labour/Le Travailleur 1 (1976): 141-57;
also Bercuson, Fools and Wise Men ; and A. Ross McCormack, Reformers,
Rebels,
and
Revolutionaries:
The
Western
Canadian
Radical
Movement,
1899-1919 (Toronto: University of Toronto
Press, 1977).
48. Borden, Memoirs,
2:157. The government
measures
against radicalism included PC 2384, 28 Sept. 1918, and PC 2525,
11 Oct. 1918, as well as 'Censorship Regulations.' See Canada, Canada
Gazette (Ottawa: J. de Labroqueire
Taché, 1918),
1278, 1295, 1379, 1444, 1461.
49. White to Borden (via Sir
Edward Kemp, overseas
minister),
14 Nov. 1918, vol. 103, H1(a), Borden Papers, MG 26, LAC.
50. Borden to White, 24 Nov.
1918; also Crerar to
White, 22
Nov. 1918, vol. 103, H1(a), Borden Papers, MG 26, LAC. Alexandr
Kolchak, former admiral of Russia's Black Sea Fleet, landed in
Vladivostok from Japan on 21 Sept. 1918 and boarded a train for
Omsk, arriving in the Siberian capital on 13 Oct. Four days
earlier, the All-Russian Provisional Government had relocated
from Ufa to Omsk, along with 651 million rubles of the Imperial
Gold Reserve. Five days behind Kolchak, Britain's 1000-strong
Middlesex Regiment entered Omsk on the Trans-Siberian Railroad.
On 16 Nov., Kolchak dined with Maj.-Gen. John Ward, commander of
the Middlesex Regiment, in a train car outside Omsk, returning
the next evening at 5:30 p.m. On the night of 17 Nov. 1918, with
the men of the Middlesex Regiment asleep in their barracks, the
ministers of Omsk's Directory were arrested by Cossack guards and
Kolchak was proclaimed supreme ruler of Russia, entrusted with
sweeping dictatorial powers. In the wake of the Victoria mutiny,
the Federationist criticized Canadian support for the
Kolchak government: 'Kolchak is the Siberian adjutant of Denikin,
was an intimate of the Czar and is the present hope of the
Romanoffs.' See 'Chewing the Cud,' Federationist, 10
Jan. 1919. Gen. Anton I. Denikin was the White general in
southern Russia. See Viktor G. Bortnevski, 'White Administration
and White Terror (The Denekin Period),' Russian Review 52
(July 1993): 354-66; Connaughton, The Republic of the
Ushakovko, 70, 79, 88, and 98; A. Denikine, The White
Army, trans. Catherine Zvegintzov (Gulf Breeze, FL: Academic
International, 1973); Peter Fleming, The Fate of Admiral
Kolchak (London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1963); A. Steel, 'The
Present Political Situation in Siberia,' 22 Nov. 1918, vol. 103,
H1(a), Borden Papers, MG 26, LAC; David Footman, The Last Days
of Kolchak (Oxford: St Anthony's College, 1953); Smele, 'White
Gold,' 1319-21.
51. White to Borden, 25 Nov.
1918, vol. 103, H1(a),
Borden
Papers, MG 26, LAC.
52. 'The Siberian Riddle,' Globe,
3
Dec.
1918.
53. White to Borden, 22 Nov.
1918; Mewburn to Borden
(via
Kemp), 24 Nov. 1918; Borden to Mewburn, 25 Nov. 1918; White to
Mewburn, 28 Nov. 1918; White to Crerar, 28 Nov. 1918; White to
Borden, 29 Nov. 1918, vol. 103, H1(a), Borden Papers, MG 26, LAC.
Also CGS to troopers, 24 Nov. 1918; and major-general for
military secretary to naval secretary, 28 Nov. 1918, file NSC
1047-14-26 (vol. 1), vol. 3968, RG 24, Defence, LAC. The decision
to proceed with the expedition, subject to the one-year limit on
compulsory service, was made on 28 Nov. 1918. 'You may regard the
matter as closed,' White informed Borden.
54. Federated Labor Party
launched at Victoria,' Federationist,
13
Dec.
1918;
'The
Protest
Meeting,' Semi-Weekly Tribune, 12
Dec. 1919; and 'Minutes,' 4
and
11 Dec. 1918, box 3, 80-59, Victoria Labour Council Fonds,
UVASC.
55. 'Help for Russia,' Daily
Times, 10 Dec.
1918; 'Organized Attempt To Wreck Mass Meeting,' Federationist,
20 Dec. 1918; 'Free Speech,' Semi-Weekly Tribune, 19 Dec.
1919.
56. Barnard to Borden, 4 Dec.
1918, vol. 103, H1(a),
Borden
Papers, MG 26, LAC.
57. 'Labor Council and
Censorship of Literature,' Federationist,
22
Nov.
1918.
58. 'The Siberian Expedition,' Semi-Weekly
Tribune,
9
Dec.
1918.
Developments
in
Winnipeg
are
discussed in Norman
Penner, ed., Winnipeg 1919: The Strikers' Own History of the
Winnipeg General Strike, 2nd ed. (Toronto: James Lorimer and
Co., 1975), 6-15. Sam Blumenberg advocated a general strike at a
trades and labour council meeting in early December. On 22 Dec.,
the labour council and SPC jointly sponsored a mass meeting at
the Walker Theatre, where R.B. Russell moved a resolution
protesting 'the sending of further military forces to Russia' and
demanding 'the allied troops already there be withdrawn.' Other
resolutions against the Siberian Expedition were forwarded from
the trades and labour councils of Toronto and Montreal, from the
United Farmers of Ontario, from a mass meeting of workers in
Prince Rupert, BC, and from the Mount Hope Grain Growers
Association in Saskatchewan. See R.J.F. Rose to Borden, 6 Jan.
1919; Mr & Mrs A. Clay to Borden, 31 Mar. 1919, vol. 103, H1(a),
Borden Papers, MG 26, LAC; also MacLaren, Canadians in
Russia, 170; Swettenham, Allied Intervention in
Russia, 153.
59. War Diary of 259th
Battalion CEF (S), 16 and 20
Nov.
1918, vol. 5057, series III-D-3, RG 9, Militia and Defence,
LAC.
60. Skuce, CSEF: Canada's
Soldiers in Siberia,
23-28.
Discontent within the Russian platoons of the 259th Battalion, as
well as troop transfers in and out of 'D' Company, is recorded in
the War Diary of 259th Battalion CEF (S), Nov. and Dec. 1918,
vol. 5057, series III-D-3, RG 9, Militia and Defence, LAC. For
the testimony of the loyal CSEF soldier, a volunteer of Serbian
ethnicity who shared his views with S.D. Scott, an acquaintance
of Borden, see Scott to Borden, 22 Oct. 1918; Borden to Scott, 26
Oct. 1918; Borden to Mewburn, 26 Oct. 1918; Mewburn to Borden, 2
Nov. 1918, vol. 103, H1(a), Borden Papers, MG 26, LAC.
Disobedience in the 20th Machine Gun Company is recorded in Daily
Orders, 2 Dec. 1918 to 20 Dec. 1918, file 'Part II Daily Orders,
20th Machine Gun Co - Siberia,' vol. 4, series II-B-12, RG 9,
Militia and Defence, LAC.
61. 'There Can Be No Peace,' Federationist,
20
Dec.
1918.
62. War Diary of 16th Infantry
Brigade Headquarters CEF
(S),
10 Dec., 16 Dec, and 17 Dec. 1918, vol. 5057, series III-D-3, RG
9, Militia and Defence, LAC. The sports day, held on 16 Dec.,
included field events, hockey and a boxing match. The YMCA's
activities are described in the 'Expeditionary Force Hears about
Siberia,' Daily Times, 20 Dec. 1918. The lecture of 17
Dec. was delivered by James W. Davidson, former American
consul-general at Shanghai, who had undertaken a detailed study
of the resource wealth of the Russian Far East.
63. White to Borden, 7 Dec.
1918; Borden to White, 7
Dec.
1918, vol. 103, H1(a), Borden Papers, MG 26, LAC.
64. The units aboard the Teesta
are listed in
Daily
Routine Orders, Headquarters CEF (S), 14 Jan. 1919, 'Daily
Routine Orders, Siberia,' vol. 2, series II-B-12, RG 9, Militia
and Defence, LAC; also in a telegram from Divisional Transports,
Vancouver, to Naval Service, Ottawa, 23 Dec. 1918, file NSC
1047-12027, vol. 3969, RG 24, Defence, LAC.
65. 'What a Muddle,' Federationist,
28
Feb.
1919.
66. Censorship in Canada during
the war is examined in
Jeff
Keshen, 'All the News That Was Fit To Print: Ernest J. Chambers
and Information Control in Canada, 1914-19,' Canadian
Historical Review 73 (1992): 315-43.
67. William Rodney reduced the
mutiny to 'a small
number of
French-Canadian troops of the 259th Battalion,' a claim that is
contradicted by contemporary accounts. MacLaren's description of
the incident is equally curt: 'Following a brief rest halt on
Fort Street in Victoria, six declined to march any farther. For
their objections, they were promptly arrested and placed on board
the ship under guard.' He added that 'many of the French-speaking
soldiers mutely demonstrated that they did not regard service in
Siberia as being within the terms of the conscription act.'
Swettenham quoted a Toronto Globe editorial dismissing
'something very like a mutiny' on 'a Siberia-bound troopship,'
but provided no direct reference to the Teesta. He is
more elaborate in his treatment of a mutiny of Canadian troops on
the Murmansk front in February 1919. Skuce provides the most
accurate description of the Victoria mutiny, but like the others
provides little detail: 'The serious charge of mutiny arose from
events on December 22, 1918 [sic]
when
two
companies
of
the
259th
refused
to
board the transport SS Teesta at Victoria.' See
MacLaren, Canadians in Russia, 175; Rodney, review of Allied
Intervention
in
Russia, 186; Skuce, CSEF:
Canada's Soldiers in Siberia, 19; Swettenham, Allied
Intervention in Russia, 153, 205.
68. This approach to
conscription is exemplified in
Jack
Granatstein and J.M. Hitsman, Broken Promises: A History of
Conscription in Canada (Toronto: Oxford University Press,
1977), 24-99.
69. War Diary of 16th Infantry
Brigade Headquarters CEF
(S),
21 Dec. 1918, vol. 5057, series III-D-3, RG 9, Militia and
Defence, LAC.
70. War Diary of 20th Machine
Gun Company CEF (S), 21
Dec.
1918, vol. 5057, series III-D-3, RG 9, Militia and Defence,
LAC.
71. Report of Field General
Court Martial, Vladivostok,
2
Feb. 1919, file A3 SEF Courts Martial, vol. 378, series III-A-3,
RG 9, Militia and Defence, LAC; Bickford to Headquarters CEF (S),
5 Apr. 1919, file A3 SEF Force HQ MSA, vol. 373, series III-A-3,
RG 9, Militia and Defence, LAC.
72. Swift to Brigade
Headquarters, 8 Apr. 1919, file A3
SEF
Force HQ 23, vol. 371, series III-A-3, RG 9, Militia and Defence,
LAC.
73. 'The Siberian Expedition,' Semi-Weekly
Tribune,
6
Jan.
1919.
74. 'The Siberian Expedition,' Globe,
28
Dec.
1918.
This
alleged
mutiny
that
the
Globe referred to likely
pertained to the ship War Charger, rather than the Teesta,
which
returned
to
Vancouver
in
late
December
after
encountering
engine
problems.
75. 'The Unemployed Question,' Federationist,
27
Dec.
1918.
Though
subject
to
the
same
regulations
as the Semi-Weekly
Tribune, the Federationist
appears to
have taken a greater risk in reporting details of the mutiny in
Victoria. Chief Press Censor Ernest Chambers had visited the
Vancouver offices of the newspaper following the Ginger Goodwin
general strike of 2 Aug. 1918, threatening to suppress the
publication if the directors refused to sign a declaration
against 'objectionable material,' a request with which they
complied. Eleven months later, on the night of 30 June 1919, with
Vancouver once again tied up in a general strike, members of the
RNWMP raided the Federationist office in the Vancouver
Labour Temple, smashing through the front door and seizing a
number of documents. See 'Censorship,' Federationist, 9
Aug. 1918, and 'Mounties Raid Homes and Offices of Labor Men,' Federationist,
4
July
1919.
76. 'Chewing the Cud,' Federationist,
10
Jan.
1919.
77. 'Woodsworth Talks to a
Capacity House,' Federationist,
17
Jan.
1919.
78. Grace MacInnis, J.S.
Woodsworth: A Man To
Remember
(Toronto: MacMillan, 1953), 123.
79. 'Censorship Comes In for
Criticism,' Daily Times,
13
Jan.
1919.
80. 'Verbatim Report of the
Calgary Conference, 1919,' Winnipeg
One
Big
Union
Bulletin (hereafter cited as One
Big
Union Bulletin ), 10 Mar. 1927.
81. 'Officers & Others
Ranks, CEF (Siberia) who
have died,'
file 'Correspondence -- Vladivostok,' vol. 2, series II-B-12, RG
9, LAC; Militia and Defence, Daily Routine Orders, Headquarters
CEF (S), 17 Jan. 1919, 'Daily Routine Orders, Siberia,' vol. 2,
series II-B-12, RG 9, Militia and Defence, LAC; War Diary of 20th
Machine Gun Company CEF (S), 29 Dec. 1918, vol. 5057, series
III-D-3, RG 9, Militia and Defence, LAC. Kay died 29 Dec. 1918,
and was buried 18 Feb. 1919. MacLaren writes that the Chinese
crewmember 'died in another accident.' See MacLaren, Canadians
in Russia, 176.
82. Daily Orders, 12 Jan. 1919,
'Part II -- Daily
Orders 20th
Machine Gun Company,' vol. 3, series II-B-12, RG 9, Militia and
Defence, LAC. Also 'Our Stay in Muroran,' Siberian Bugle,
6 Mar. 1919, in War Diary 259th Battalion Canadian Rifles C.E.F.
(S), vol. 5057, series III-D-3, RG 9, Militia and Defence, LAC;
MacLaren, Canadians in Russia, 176.
83. The arrival of the Teesta
and Protesilaus
is recorded in Daily Routine Orders, Headquarters CEF (S), 14 and
16 Jan. 1919, 'Daily Routine Orders, Siberia,' vol. 2, series
II-B-12, RG 9, Militia and Defence, LAC. The Protesilaus
left Victoria 26 Dec. 1918, arriving in Vladivostok 15 Jan. 1918
after a horrendous crossing in which a propeller was lost and the
ship got stuck in the ice. Sea sickness was rampant, even among
the horses. A Court of Inquiry to investigate the crossing took
place at base headquarters in Vladivostok 27 Mar. 1919. Dawn
Fraser provides a colourful account of the voyage in 'Boulion a
la S.S. Proteslaus [sic],' in Songs
of
Siberia, 20-21: 'A
certain steamship company operating in the Pacific [the Blue
Funnel Line], secured a contract from the government to transport
the Siberian Expeditionary Forces from Vancouver to Vladivostok
in Russia. This contract included the rationing of the Troops en
route. War profiteers like so many others they half starved the
soldiers for the duration of the voyage, a thin soup or stew
being the chief diet for twenty-six days.' See 'Cheering Troops
Leave for Siberia,' Daily Times, 26 Dec. 1918; Daily
Routine Orders, Headquarters CEF (S), 16 Jan. 1919 and 26 Mar.
1919, 'Daily Routine Orders, Siberia,' vol. 2, series II-B-12, RG
9, Militia and Defence, LAC; also Interview with Eric Henry
William Elkington, June and July 1980, SC 141 and 169, Military
Oral History Collection, UVASC. By mid-January 1919, there were
over 3400 troops in Siberia, the vast majority in Vladivostok,
with fewer than 100 in Omsk. On 3 Feb., a handful of supporting
troops arrived on the supply ship Madras from Vancouver,
while a final 314 troops arrived on the Empress of Japan
on 27 Feb. See MacLaren, Canadians in Russia, 151, 175;
Skuce, CSEF: Canada's Soldiers in Siberia, 23-28. Also
Daily Routine Orders, Headquarters CEF (S), 28 Feb. 1919, 'Daily
Routine Orders, Siberia,' vol. 2, series II-B-12, RG 9, Militia
and Defence, LAC.
84. Conditions aboard the Teesta
are recorded
in War
Diary of A.D.O.S. CEF (S), 12 Jan. 1919, and War Diary of Base
Headquarters CEF (S), 13 Jan. 1919, vol. 5057, series III-D-3, RG
9, Militia and Defence, LAC. The procedure for the disembarkation
of the Teesta can be found in 'Secret Administrative
Instruction No. 1,' 4 Jan. 1919, War Diary of Base Headquarters
CEF (S); also War Diary of 259th Battalion CEF (S), 13 and 14
Jan. 1919, vol. 5057, series III-D-3, RG 9, Militia and Defence,
LAC. The unloading of the Teesta is recounted in War
Diary of A.D.O.S. CEF (S), 13 Jan. 1919, and War Diary of Base
Headquarters CEF (S), 13 Jan. 1919. Cargo aboard the Teesta is
itemized by weight in Divisional
Transports,
Vancouver, to Naval Service, Ottawa, 23 Dec. 1918, file NSC
1047-14-27 (vol. 1), vol. 3969, RG 24, Defence, LAC.
85. The sentences were as
follows: Rfn. Onil Boisvert,
two
years hard labour; Rfn. Sylvio Gilbert, ninety days F.P. #1; Rfn.
Joseph Guenard, six months hard labour; Rfn. Edmond Leroux, one
year hard labour; Rfn. Egard Lebel, twenty-eight days F.P. #1;
Rfn. Alfred La Plante, two years hard labour; Rfn. Edmond Pauze,
six months hard labour; Rfn. Leonoe Roy, thirty days F.P. #1;
Rfn. Arthur Roy, three years penal servitude. Rfn. Adore Leroux
was found innocent. The sentences were suspended on 14 Apr. 1919,
after Elmsley received a wire from Ottawa asking whether 'any
draftees objected to doing Military Service in Siberia.' Elmsley
replied that 'no objection on part draftees to doing military
service in Siberia brought to notice.' However the commanding
officer of the 16th Infantry Bridge, H.C. Bickford, wrote that 'At
Victoria, BC, the men were asked if they would volunteer for
service in Siberia. Approximately 40 per cent did so.' For
biographical information on the occupation, age, and place of
origin of the accused, consult the Attestation papers in
Accession 1992-93/166, boxes 8522-20, 852-24, 5392-80, and
5587-64, RG 150, LAC. See also Defensor to Elmsley, 1 Apr. 1919;
Bickford to Headquarters CEF (S), 5 Apr. 1919; Elmsley to
Defensor, 10 Apr. 1919, file A3 SEF Force HQ MSA, vol. 373,
series III-A-3, RG 9, Militia and Defence, LAC; Swift to Brigade
Headquarters, 8 Apr. 1919; Barclay to Elmsley, 11 Apr. 1918;
Barclay to Elmsley, 12 Apr. 1919; 'Suspension of Sentence,' 14
Apr. 1919; file A3 SEF Force HQ 23, vol. 371, series III-A-3, RG
9, Militia and Defence, LAC; 'Courts Martial, C.E.F. (Siberia),
file A3 SEF Courts Martial, vol. 378, series III-A-3, RG 9,
Militia and Defence, LAC; War Diary, deputy judge advocate
general, CEF (S), Jan.-Feb. 1919, vol. 5057, series III-D-3, RG
9, Militia and Defence, LAC; also 'Summary of Events and
Information, Apr. 1919.'
86. John Ward, With the
'Die-Hards' in Siberia
(London, New York, Toronto, and Melbourne: Cassell, 1920),
162.
87. Daily Routine Orders,
Headquarters CEF (S),
Jan.-Apr.
1919, 'Daily Routine Orders, Siberia,' vol. 2, series II-B-12, RG
9, Militia and Defence, LAC. Despite evidence of discontent, when
a request arrived from Ottawa asking whether there was any truth
to a report that 'serious discontent exists amongst troops in
Vladivostok,' Base Commander Lieut.-Col. R.J. Brook answered in
the negative. See War Diary of A.A. & Q.M.G. Branch CEF (S), Feb.
1919, vol. 5057, series III-D-3, RG 9, Militia and Defence, LAC.
Censorship is discussed in a letter from Harold to Josie, 21 Feb.
1919, 'Correspondence 1 Dec 1918-1 May 1919,' E564, MG 30, Harold
Steele. Pte Steele wrote that 'as they have lifted the censorship
I can tell you a little more about where I am. As you know we
landed in Vladivostok on the 15th of January and left the boat
the next day.' He proceeds to describe the weather, as well as
conditions at the Gournestai Barracks. For the prohibition on
diaries among the other ranks, see Skuce, CSEF: Canada's
Soldiers in Siberia, 19; Thring's death is discussed in
several sources, including Harold to Josie, 19 Mar. 1919; War
Diary of A.A. & Q.M.G. Branch CEF (S), 18 Mar. 1919, vol. 5057,
series III-D-3, RG 9, Militia and Defence, LAC; 'Nominal Roll --
Officers & Other Ranks, CEF (Siberia) Who Have Died,' file
'Correspondence -- Siberian Force,' vol. 2, series II-B-12, RG 9,
Militia and Defence, LAC; War Diary of 16th Infantry Brigade
Headquarters CEF (S), 18 Mar. 1919, vol. 5057, series III-D-3, RG
9, Militia and Defence, LAC; and Skuce, CSEF: Canada's
Soldiers in Russia, 16-17. Thring's body was discovered in a
ditch beside Gournestai Road, between Gournestai Barracks and
East Barracks, on 18 Mar. 1919; he held his service revolver in
his right hand. Letters and photos of his wife lay scattered on
the ground. Lieut.-Col. R.J. Brook wrote that Thring's body was
found 'with bullet hole in temple.' While a Court of Inquiry
concluded that Thring had taken his own life, his service records
stated that he had been 'accidentally killed,' 'a gentle
whitewash,' according to Skuce. Descriptions of Vladivostok can
be found in Harold to Josie, 16 Mar. 1919, and Interview with
Eric Henry William Elkington, June and July 1980, SC 141, 169,
and 170, Military Oral History Collection, UVASC.
88. The extent of Bolshevism in
Vladivostok is
discussed in
G.F. Worsley Report on 'B' Squadron RNWMP, 11 Oct. 1919, file G
989-3 (vol. 2), vol. 3179, RG 18, RCMP Collection, LAC. The
murder of the White Russian officers is described in a
memorandum, dated 21 Mar. 1919: 'Two days ago, two Russian
Officers were murdered in the vicinity of First River. Their
bodies were afterwards submitted to mutilation of the worst
description, their ears having been cut off and their hands
nailed to their shoulder blades. Signs of torture before death
were also evident.' Memorandum, Vladivostok, 21 Mar. 1919, vol.
5057, series III-B-3, RG 9, Militia and Defence, LAC. For the
response of the Canadian Command, see 'Instructions in Case of
Riotous Disturbances in Vladivostok Area,' 15 Mar. 1919, and 'Special
Operation Orders,' 13 Mar. 1919, War Diary of Base
Headquarters CEF (S), vol. 5057, series III-D-3, RG 9, Militia
and Defence, LAC. The allegation of Bolshevik activities by a
solider in the 259th Battalion appears in 'Summary of Events, 1st
of March 1919 to 31st of March 1919,' 17 Mar. 1919, War Diary of
Deputy Judge Advocate General, CEF (S), vol. 5057, series
III-D-3, RG 9, Militia and Defence, LAC.
89. See Interview with Eric
Henry William Elkington,
June
1984, Military Oral History Collection, 170, UVASC. Pte Harold
Steele also sheds light on developments with the railway: 'They
are wanting volunteers now to stay here and operate the Siberian
railway. The British government is taking it over and of course
they want a lot of men to run it, but I haven't got any
particulars yet. I guess they will do the same as they did at
Victoria if they can't get volunteers -- they will just keep the
whole works.' Harold to Josie, 16 Mar. 1919, 'Correspondence 1
Dec 1918-1 May 1919,' E564, Harold Steele, MG 30, LAC. A second
unsuccessful attempt to move troops up the Trans-Siberian Railway
is recounted in Maj. G.F. Worsley Report on 'B' Squadron RNWMP,
11 Oct. 1919, and 'Diary of Echelon. 2209,' file G 989-3 (vol.
2), vol. 3179, RG 18, RCMP Collection, LAC; also Vladivostok to
Canadian General Staff (Ottawa), 11 June 1919, vol. 103, H(1)a,
Borden Papers, MG 26, LAC. A transport train that left
Vladivostok on 18 May under British and Russian guard, carrying
154 horses, three British officers, and 112 Canadian soldiers
(including five RNWMP troops) destined for the British Military
Mission at Omsk was wrecked near the village of Zamzor, 1450
miles west of Omsk, on 5 June 1919. According to these reports,
the crash was either the result of sabotage by Bolsheviks, who
removed pins from the sleeping cars, or the result of direct
Bolshevik fire. Two White Russians and eighteen horses were
killed. The activities of Canadian soldiers in Omsk, Shkotova,
and along the Trans-Siberian Railway are illuminated in several
sources, including 'The Force Despatched to Siberia,' file 15 'Cdn
Exped Force, Siberia,' vol. 1872, RG 24, Defence, LAC; War
Diary of A.A. & Q.M.G. Branch CEF (S), Dec. 1918 to Apr. 1919,
vol. 5057, series III-B-3, RG 9, Militia and Defence, LAC; and
Interview with Eric Henry William Elkington, June 1984, 170,
Military Oral History Collection, UVASC. For details on the
Shkotovo engagement, see various intelligence reports and
communiqués attached as appendices to the War Diary of 16th
Infantry Brigade Headquarters CEF (S), April 1919, vol. 5057,
series III-B-3, RG 9, Militia and Defence, LAC, in particular,
'Appendix No. 17, "B" Company, 259th Battalion, Canadian Rifles,
CEF (S), Detailed for duty under the Japanese Command at
SHKOTOVO, Siberia, on 13th April, 1919,' also 'Canadian
Detachment, Daily Orders No. 1, Shkotovo Barracks, April 14,
1919.' The Canadians returned to Gournestai Bay on the night of
21 Apr. 1919, and were rewarded with a gift from Japanese Gen.
Otani, commander of Allied forces in eastern Siberia: ninety-six
bottles of wine, eighteen bottles of whiskey, and three casks of
sake. The recreational activities of the CSEF while in
Vladivostok are described in Bishop, The Canadian YMCA in the
Great War, 304-10, and MacLaren, Canadians in Russia, 198.
The cinema at the Second River Barracks was called British
Columbia Hall. Existing copies of the CSEF newspapers include Siberian
Bugle, 6 Mar. 1919, in War Diary of 259th
Battalion Canadian Rifles CEF (S), vol. 5057, series III-D-3, RG
9, Militia and Defence, LAC, and Siberian Sapper, 8 Feb.
1919, file 119, vol. 363, series III, RG 9, Militia and Defence,
LAC, as reproduced in Skuce, CSEF: Canada's Soldiers in
Siberia, 142.
90. With Canadian forces
dispersed over Europe, the
British
Isles, and the several fronts encircling Soviet Russia, the
Dominion government requisitioned steamers from the Canadian
Pacific Ocean Services (CPOS) fleet. 'The cables we have from
Vladivostok are very disturbing,' A.K. MacLean, acting minister
of naval affairs, wrote in March. 'It is absolutely essential
that these troops should be returned early in April.' See
Mew-burn to Maclean, 25 Mar. 1919; also Memorandum of Agreement,
1919; Mewburn and Maclean to governor-in-council, 4 Apr. 1919;
R.M. Stephens, 'Memo: For the Military Secretary, Naval and
Military Committee,' 27 Mar. 1919, file 1048-61-2, vol. 3778,
Department of Naval Service, Naval Intelligence Records, RG 24,
Defense, LAC.
91. Shifts in Canadian policy,
culminating in the
decision to
withdraw the troops, is reflected in various correspondence in
file NSC 1047-14-26 (vol. 2), vol. 3968, Department of Naval
Service, Naval Intelligence Records, RG 24, Defense, LAC; also
Aug. 1918-Feb. 1919, vol. 103, H1(a), Borden Papers, MG 26, LAC.
The diverging strategies of the Japanese, American, French,
British, Czecho-Slovak, and Canadian forces in Siberia is evident
in a report from 'British General Staff on Siberian situation,'
22 Nov. 1918, vol. 103, H1(a), MG 26, Borden Papers, LAC; also
'Memorandum on the Subject of United States Intentions as to
Siberia,' n.d., vol. 103, H1(a), MG 26, Borden Papers, LAC;
Skuce, CSEF: Canada's Soldiers in Siberia, 6-10;
Swettenham, 'Allied Intervention in Siberia 1911-1919,' 5-25. The
idea of the Prinkipo conference is discussed in Borden, Memoirs,
2:171-2;
Silverlight,
The Victors'
Dilemma, 143-8; and Swettenham, 'Allied Intervention in
Siberia 1911-1919,' 19. Borden was to be the representative of
the British Empire at the Prinkipo conference, which was
cancelled, according to Silverlight, under pressure from White
Russian leaders. The decision to cancel the planned deployment
aboard the Madras can be found in C.G.S. to War Office, 5
Jan. 1919, vol. 103, H1(a), MG 26, Borden Papers, LAC. For a copy
of a secret cablegram between Ottawa and London, containing the
directive that 'the troops should not move inland,' see C.G.S. to
Troopers, 6 Jan. 1919, file NSC 1047-14-26 (vol. 2), vol. 3968,
RG 24, Defense, LAC. The apprehension of the Canadian command is
revealed in 'Operation Plan for Evacuation of Vladivostok,' 1-28
Feb. 1919, War Diary of 259th Battalion CEF(S), vol. 5057, series
III-D-3, RG 9, Militia and Defence, LAC; and Maj. G.F. Worsley
Report on 'B' Squadron RNWMP, 11 Oct. 1919, file G 989-3 (vol.
2), vol. 3179, RG 18, RCMP Collection, LAC.
92. For the resolution passed
in Victoria, see Minutes,
24
Feb. 1919, Victoria Labour Council Fonds, 80-59, box 3, UVASC.
This resolution was forwarded from the Alberta Federation of
Labour. Descriptions of the Western Labour Conference can be
found in 'Verbatim Report of the Calgary Conference, 1919,' One Big
Union, Jan.-Mar. 1927; 'Proceedings of the
Ninth
Annual Convention,' Federationist, 4 and 11 Apr. 1919;
and Winnipeg Defence Committee, Saving the World from
Democracy: The Winnipeg General Sympathetic Strike, May-June,
1919 (Winnipeg: Defence Committee, 1920), 26-7. The expansion
of RNWMP activities into BC can be found in 'Certified Copy of a
Report of the Committee of the Privy Council,' 12 Dec. 1918; 'Monthly
Report,' F.J. Horrigan to the commissioner, 13 Mar.
1919, vol. 1930, RG18, RCMP Collection, LAC. Also correspondences
in 'Labour Organizations and Communism,' vol. 878, series A2, RG
18, RCMP, LAC; and White to Borden, 16 Dec. 1918, vols. 93/94,
H1(a), Borden Papers, MG 26, LAC. The deployment of British
warships to the BC coast is considered in White to Borden, 16
Apr. 1919, vol. 112, H1(a), Borden Papers, MG 26, LAC; also
Borden to White, 18 Apr. 1919; White to Borden, 22 Apr. 1919;
White to Borden, 28 Apr. 1919; Borden to White, 29 Apr. 1919.
93. The withdrawal of troops
from Siberia is discussed
in
Borden to Lloyd George, 13 Feb. 1919; Borden to Mewburn (via
White), 13 Feb. 1919; CGS Ottawa to War Office (London), 16 Feb.
1919; also Borden to Lloyd George, 7 Feb. 1919, vol. 103, H1(a),
Borden Papers, MG 26, LAC; Memo from major-general for military
secretary (Naval and Military Committee) to naval secretary
(Naval and Military Committee), 27 Feb. 1919, file NSC 1047-14-26
(vol. 2), vol. 3968, Department of Naval Service, Naval
Intelligence Records, RG 24, Defense, LAC. For the British
government's response to the withdrawal of Canadian troops, see
Werner to Borden, 16 Feb. 1919, vol. 103, H1(a), Borden Papers,
MG 26, LAC. On 17 Mar. 1919, Winston Churchill, who had been
appointed secretary of state for war in January, finally accepted
Borden' decision to withdraw, writing that 'in view of the very
decided attitude taken up by Canada, the War Office have no
option but to acquiesce, as they have felt it impossible to
continue to urge the Dominion Government to share, against its
will, in a task of much difficulty and anxiety.' However, on 1
May 1919, shortly after the first group of Canadians was
evacuated from Vladivostok, revealing the vulnerability of the
Allied position in the region, Churchill made a final appeal for
a 'small contingent' consisting of a 'few hundred Canadian
volunteers' to relieve Allied units in North Russia and
participate 'in our mission to Admiral Koltchak [sic]': 'I no
longer feel that I am asking you to share in a failure. The hopes
of success are sufficient to justify me in appealing to you to
participate in a hopeful and prosperous policy... If Canada
takes the lead, Australia will be bound to follow.' Churchill's
optimistic tone failed to move the prime minister, however,
particularly since the Canadian cabinet remained steadfast in its
opposition to any further Canadian participation in Russia. See
Churchill to Borden, 17 Mar. 1919; Churchill to Borden, 1 May
1919; Sifton to Borden, 5 May 1919; Borden to Churchill, 5 May
1919; Creighton to Yates, 7 May 1919; Borden to Churchill, 18 May
1919, vol. 103, H1(a), Borden Papers, MG 26, LAC.
94. Sixty-two Canadians
remained in Siberia after June
1919.
Twenty-three troops were seconded to the British Military
Mission, while a rear party of thirty-three troops returned to
Canada via Yokohama on 29 Aug. 1919. There were six deserters.
See 'Statement According to Record of Siberian Expeditionary
Force,' and 'Nominal Roll -Rear Party, CEF (S),' file 'Correspondence
-- Siberian Force,' vol. 2, series II-B-12, RG 9,
Militia and Defence, LAC. A curious twist to the return voyage
was the discovery of eight Russian stowaways aboard the Monteagle,
and
accusations
against
several
members
of
the
260th
Battalion
of
smuggling
Bolshevik
propaganda,
in
English,
in
their gear aboard the Empress of Japan. See 'Stowaways
Believed To Be Bolshevik Agents,' Daily Times, 20 June
1919; MacLaren, Canadian in Russia, 204-207; and Skuce, CSEF:
Canada's
Soldiers
in
Siberia, 19.
95. The sympathetic strikes of
spring 1919 are examined
in
Kealey, '1919: The Canadian Labour Revolt,' and Heron, The
Workers' Revolt in Canada: 1917-1925. For details of the
Victoria General Strike, see Chrow to Ackland, 1 Aug. 1919, 'Strikes
and Lockouts File,' vol. 315, RG 7, Department of Labour
Collection, LAC; also 'Workers Threw Down Tools When Strike Order
Went Forth,' Daily Times, 23 June 1919. The return of 'B'
Squadron from Siberia is discussed in Maj. G.F. Worsley Report on 'B'
Squadron RNWMP, 11 Oct. 1919, file G 989-3 (vol. 2), vol.
3179, RG 18, RCMP, LAC. The longshoremen's action in Vancouver,
spurred by press reports that the RNWMP had returned to Canada to
suppress strikes, is recounted in Alan Phillips, The Living
Legend: The Story of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police
(Toronto and Boston: Little, Brown, 1954), 86. The role of the
RNWMP and Canadian military in the Winnipeg Strike is explored in
Norman Penner, ed., Winnipeg 1919: The Strikers' Own History
of the Winnipeg General Strike, 2nd ed. (Toronto: James
Lorimer and Co., 1975). For the RNWMP raids in various Canadian
cities, see 'Reds Coats Busy,' Semi-Weekly Tribune, 30
June 1919; 'Think Police Acted beyond Their Power,' Daily
Times, 2 July 1919; 'Mounties Raid Homes and Offices of
Labor Men,' Federationist, 4 July 1919. International
dimensions of the postwar labour conflict are discussed in Larry
Peterson, 'The One Big Union in International Perspective:
Revolutionary Industrial Unionism 1900-1925,' Labour/Le
Travail 7 (Spring 1981): 41-66; and Bercuson, Fools and
Wise Men.
96. Discontent within the
Czecho-Slovak Legion is
recounted
in several sources, with Victoria's Daily Times reporting
some Czech regiments had become 'infected with Bolshevism and a
general spread of Red ideas is feared if the men are kept from
their homes another winter.' 'Wish To Return to Czecho-Slovakia,' Daily
Times, 24 June 1919. Also Pereira, White
Siberia: The Politics of Civil War, 148-50; Jonathan D.
Smele, Civil War in Siberia (Cambridge: University Press,
1996), 667; and Swettenham, Allied Intervention in Russia, 246.
Kolchak was captured, tried, and shot by Bolshevik forces
in Irkutsk on 7 Feb. 1920.
97. 'Will Attempt To Lower the
Standard of Living,' Federationist,
28
May
1920,
'CzechoSlovaks
Pass
through
City,' Federationist, 11 June 1920; 'Note & Comment,' One
Big
Union
Bulletin, 19 June 1920; 'A Masterly
Retreat,' Vancouver Western Clarion, 16 June 1920; A. Balawyder, 'The
Czechoslovak Legion Crosses Canada, 1920,' East European
Quarterly 6, no. 2 (June 1972): 177-91. A proposal that the
Czecho-Slovaks be employed as railway labourers in Canada, and
also a tense exchange between Canadian and British officials over
the cost of transporting and provisioning the Legion, can be
found in correspondence April-June 1920, vol. 103, H1(a), Borden
Papers, MG 26, LAC. As the Federationist reported, the
Czecho-Slovaks arrived in Vancouver amid fears from organized
labour that they would be employed by the city's economic leaders
to drive down wages and break the power of the unions. They
marched through Vancouver on Sunday, 9 June 1920, and promptly
boarded trains toward Valcartier, QC, and then Halifax. When a
Federationist correspondent questioned an armed Czech soldier on
the fact that the war was over, and that he was passing through a
friendly country, the man replied, 'Yes, they wanted us to lay
down our arms in Siberia before we came here, but we refused. So
long as I have my rifle and equipment, I am a free man; when I
part with them, I am a slave.'
98. As the Historical Section
of the Department of
Militia
and Defence undertook the formidable task of compiling the
official history of the Canadian war effort, the Siberian
Expedition remained peripheral. In the mid-1920s, official
documents were provided to Elmsley to write an article for
Canadian Defence Quarterly, but this article never materialized.
In 1931, A.F. Duguid, director of the historical section,
received a request from Col. C.H. Morrow, a US military
commandant at Fort Niagara, NY, for information on the CSEF. He
admitted to a colleague, 'In our work on the Official History we
have not quite reached Siberia yet.' Writing to Lt-Col. T.C.
Evans of Military District No. 2 (Toronto), Duguid lamented
having received the request: 'Sometimes I wish that fewer people
were interested in what happened in 1914-1919, or rather that
they could possess their souls in patience yet a while; then we
could go straight ahead with the work of the official History
which will contain replies to all questions in proper order.' See
Duguid to Morrow, 28 Mar. 1931; Duguid to Evans, 28 Mar. 1931;
Matthews to Duguid, 27 Mar. 1928, file DHS 4-18, vol. 1741, RG
24, Defence, LAC.
99. The strength of the force,
4197 men in total,
consisted
of 304 officers and 3893 other ranks. See 'Statement According to
Record of Siberian Expeditionary Force,' file 'Correspondence --
Siberian Force,' vol. 2, series II-B-12, RG 9, Militia and
Defence, LAC. These data are contradicted slightly by an exchange
in the Senate on 25 June 1919, when Sir James Lougheed stated 'the
number of those who proceeded from Canada to Siberia was
4,214.' See Canada, Debates of the Senate of the Dominion of
Canada: Session 1919 (Ottawa: Ottawa: J. de Labroqueire Taché,
1919). For fatalities within the CSEF, see 'Officers & Others
Ranks, CEF (Siberia) Who Have Died,' file 'Correspondence --
Vladivostok,' vol. 2, series II-B-12, RG 9, Militia and Defence,
LAC. Two soldiers died in accidents, sixteen died of illnesses
such as influenza, meningitis, smallpox, and pneumonia, and Lt
Alfred Thring of the 260th Battalion, as noted earlier, committed
suicide. The Canadians who died in Siberia were buried at Cherkov
Naval Cemetery, Vladivostok, where a monument was dedicated on 1
June 1919. The four soldiers who died at sea were buried at sea,
and Pte Wilfred Lane, who belonged to the Headquarters detachment
and died of pneumonia in March, was buried in Hong Kong. See
Skuce, CSEF: Canada's Soldiers in Russia, 16-17; also 'Memorial
Service Unveiling Ceremony, Marine Cemetery, Vladivostok,
Siberia, Sunday, 1st June, 1919,' War
Diary
of
General
Staff
CEF
(S), vol. 5057, series III-B-3, RG 9, Militia and Defence,
LAC.
100. For resistance to the
Siberian Expedition in
Britain and
France, see R. Page Arnot, The Impact of the Russian Revolution
in Britain (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1967); Michael Jabara
Carley, Revolution eI Intervention: The French Government in the
Russian Civil War, 1917-1919 (Kingston and Montreal:
McGill-Queen's University Press, 1983). The campaign against
intervention in Scotland is discussed in 'Is It Peace or More
War,' Vancouver Red Flag, 28 Dec. 1918. In December 1918, a large
protest meeting was held in Albert Hall, London, where several
thousand workers issued the demand 'Hands Off Russia.' See 'The
Albert Hall Labor Meeting,' Federationist, 10 Jan. 1919.
101. 'Lessons To Be Learned,' Federationist, 17 Oct.
1919.
This study does not purport to provide the final word on this
subject. Soviet sources may reveal aspects of the Canadian
experience in Russia that have hitherto evaded Western
historians. Correspondence within branches of the Canadian and
British forces may explain the complex motivations behind the
deployment and withdrawal of the force. The Victoria mutiny of 21
Dec. 1918 may be illuminated through dispersed personal
histories.
The. author acknowledges the financial support of the
Social
Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and thanks
the following colleagues and mentors for their assistance in
reading earlier drafts: Gregory S. Kealey, Margaret Conrad, David
Frank, Mark Milner, Eric W. Sager, Phyllis Senese, Foster
Griezic, Jennifer Evans, Mathieu Rioux, Kirk Niergarth, Janis
Thiessen, Lee Windsor, Glen Leonard, Amy O'Reilly, Matthew
Baglole, Janet Mullin, Heidi Coombs, and Heather Molyneaux. The
staff at various archival collections have been integral to this
study, as have the administrative staff in the history
departments at the University of New Brunswick and University of
Victoria.
The Bolshevik Party in the Period of Foreign Military
Intervention and Civil War (1918-1920)
- History of the Communist Party of the
Soviet
Union -- Bolsheviks, Chapter 8 -
New Year poster from the civil war period celebrates the victories of
the Bolshevik revolution.
1. Beginning of Foreign Military Intervention --
First
Period of the Civil War
The conclusion of the Peace of Brest-Litovsk and the
consolidation of the Soviet power, as a result of a series of
revolutionary economic measures adopted by it, at a time when the
war in the West was still in full swing, created profound alarm
among the Western imperialists, especially those of the Entente
countries.
The Entente imperialists feared that the conclusion of
peace
between Germany and Russia might improve Germany's position in
the war and correspondingly worsen the position of their own
armies. They feared, moreover, that peace between Russia and
Germany might stimulate the craving for peace in all countries
and on all fronts, and thus interfere with the prosecution of the
war and damage the cause of the imperialists. Lastly, they feared
that the existence of a Soviet government on the territory of a
vast country, and the success it had achieved at home after the
overthrow of the power of the bourgeoisie, might serve as an
infectious example for the workers and soldiers of the West.
Profoundly discontented with the protracted war, the workers and
soldiers might follow in the footsteps of the Russians and turn
their bayonets against their masters and oppressors.
Consequently, the Entente governments decided to intervene in
Russia by armed force with the object of overthrowing the Soviet
Government and establishing a bourgeois government, which would
restore the bourgeois system in the country, annul the peace
treaty with the Germans and re-establish the military front
against Germany and Austria.
The Entente imperialists launched upon this sinister
enterprise all the more readily because they were convinced that
the Soviet Government was unstable; they had no doubt that with
some effort on the part of its enemies its early fall would be
inevitable.
The achievements of the Soviet Government and its
consolidation created even greater alarm among the deposed
classes -- the landlords and capitalists; in the ranks of the
vanquished parties -- the Constitutional-Democrats, Mensheviks,
Socialist-Revolutionaries, Anarchists and the bourgeois
nationalists of all hues; and among the Whiteguard generals,
Cossack officers, etc.
From the very first days of the victorious October
Revolution, all these hostile elements began to shout from the
housetops that there was no ground in Russia for a Soviet power,
that it was doomed, that it was bound to fall within a week or
two, or a month, or two or three months at most. But as the
Soviet Government, despite the imprecations of its enemies,
continued to exist and gain strength, its foes within Russia were
forced to admit that it was much stronger than they had imagined,
and that its overthrow would require great efforts and a fierce
struggle on the part of all the forces of counter-revolution.
They therefore decided to embark upon counter-revolutionary
insurrectionary activities on a broad scale: to mobilize the
forces of counter-revolution, to assemble military cadres and to
organize revolts, especially in the Cossack and kulak
districts.
Thus, already in the first half of 1918, two definite
forces
took shape that were prepared to embark upon the overthrow of the
Soviet power, namely, the foreign imperialists of the Entente and
the counter-revolutionaries at home.
Neither of these forces possessed all the requisites
needed
to undertake the overthrow of the Soviet Government singly. The
counter-revolutionaries in Russia had certain military cadres and
man-power, drawn principally from the upper classes of the
Cossacks and from the kulaks, enough to start a rebellion against
the Soviet Government. But they possessed neither money nor arms.
The foreign imperialists, on the other hand, had the money and
the arms, but could not "release" a sufficient number of troops
for purposes of intervention; they could not do so, not only
because these troops were required for the war with Germany and
Austria, but because they might not prove altogether reliable in
a war against the Soviet power.
The conditions of the struggle against the Soviet power
dictated a union of the two anti-Soviet forces, foreign and
domestic. And this union was effected in the first half of
1918.
This was how the foreign military intervention against
the
Soviet power supported by counter-revolutionary revolts of its
foes at home originated.
This was the end of the respite in
Russia and the beginning of the Civil War, which was a war of the
workers and peasants of the nations of Russia against the foreign
and domestic enemies of the Soviet power.
The imperialists of Great Britain, France, Japan and
America
started their military intervention without any declaration of
war, although the intervention was a war, a war against Russia,
and the worst kind of war at that. These "civilized" marauders
secretly and stealthily made their way to Russian shores and
landed their troops on Russia's territory.
The British and French landed troops in the north,
occupied
Archangel and Murmansk, supported a local Whiteguard revolt,
overthrew the Soviets and set up a White "Government of North
Russia."
The Japanese landed troops in Vladivostok, seized the
Maritime Province, dispersed the Soviets and supported the
Whiteguard rebels, who subsequently restored the bourgeois
system.
In the North Caucasus, Generals Kornilov, Alexeyev and
Denikin, with the support of the British and French, formed a
Whiteguard "Volunteer Army," raised a revolt of the upper classes
of the Cossacks and started hostilities against the Soviets.
On the Don, Generals Krasnov and Mamontov, with the
secret
support of the German imperialists (the Germans hesitated to
support them openly owing to the peace treaty between Germany and
Russia), raised a revolt of Don Cossacks, occupied the Don region
and started hostilities against the Soviets.
In the Middle Volga region and in Siberia, the British
and
French instigated a revolt of the Czechoslovak Corps. This corps,
which consisted of prisoners of war, had received permission from
the Soviet Government to return home through Siberia and the Far
East. But on the way it was used by the Socialist-Revolutionaries
and by the British and French for a revolt against the Soviet
Government. The revolt of the corps served as a signal for a
revolt of the kulaks in the Volga region and in Siberia, and of
the workers of the Votkinsk and Izhevsk Works, who were under the
influence of the Socialist-Revolutionaries. A
Whiteguard-Socialist-Revolutionary government was set up in the
Volga region, in Samara, and a Whiteguard government of Siberia,
in Omsk.
Germany took no part in the intervention of this
British-French-Japanese-American bloc; nor could she do so, since
she was at war with this bloc if for no other reason. But in
spite of this, and notwithstanding the existence of a peace
treaty between Russia and Germany, no Bolshevik doubted that
Kaiser Wilhelm's government was just as rabid an enemy of Soviet
Russia as the British-French-Japanese-American invaders. And,
indeed, the German imperialists did their utmost to isolate,
weaken and destroy Soviet Russia. They snatched from it the
Ukraine -- true, it was in accordance with a "treaty" with the
Whiteguard Ukrainian Rada (Council) -- brought in their troops at
the request of the Rada and began mercilessly to rob and oppress
the Ukrainian people, forbidding them to maintain any connections
whatever with Soviet Russia. They severed Transcaucasia from
Soviet Russia, sent German and Turkish troops there at the
request of the Georgian and Azerbaidjan nationalists and began to
play the masters in Tiflis and in Baku. They supplied, not
openly, it is true, abundant arms and provisions to General
Krasnov, who had raised a revolt against the Soviet Government on
the Don.
Soviet Russia was thus cut off from her principal
sources of
food, raw material and fuel.
Conditions were hard in Soviet Russia at that period.
There
was a shortage of bread and meat. The workers were starving. In
Moscow and Petrograd a bread ration of one-eighth of a pound was
issued to them every other day, and there were times when no
bread was issued at all. The factories were at a standstill, or
almost at a standstill, owing to a lack of raw materials and
fuel. But the working class did not lose heart. Nor did the
Bolshevik Party. The desperate struggle waged to overcome the
incredible difficulties of that period showed how inexhaustible
is the energy latent in the working class and how immense the
prestige of the Bolshevik Party.
The Party proclaimed the country an armed camp and
placed its
economic, cultural and political life on a war footing. The
Soviet Government announced that "the Socialist fatherland is in
danger," and called upon the people to rise in its defence. Lenin
issued the slogan, "All for the front!" -- and hundreds of
thousands of workers and peasants volunteered for service in the
Red Army and left for the front. About half the membership of the
Party and of the Young Communist League went to the front. The
Party roused the people for a war
for the fatherland, a war
against the foreign invaders and against the revolts of the
exploiting classes whom the revolution had overthrown. The
Council of Workers' and Peasants' Defence, organized by Lenin,
directed the work of supplying the front with reinforcements,
food, clothing and arms. The substitution of compulsory military
service for the volunteer system brought hundreds of thousands of
new recruits into the Red Army and very shortly raised its
strength to over a million men.
Although the country was in a difficult position, and
the
young Red Army was not yet consolidated, the measures of defence
adopted soon yielded their first fruits. General Krasnov was
forced back from Tsaritsyn, whose capture he had regarded as
certain, and driven beyond the River Don. General Denikin's
operations were localized within a small area in the North
Caucasus, while General Kornilov was killed in action against the
Red Army. The Czechoslovaks and the
Whiteguard-Socialist-Revolutionary bands were ousted from Kazan,
Simbirsk and Samara and driven to the Urals. A revolt in
Yaroslavl headed by the Whiteguard Savinkov and organized by
Lockhart, chief of the British Mission in Moscow, was suppressed,
and Lockhart himself arrested. The Socialist-Revolutionaries, who
had assassinated Comrades Uritsky and Volodarsky and had made a
villainous attempt on the life of Lenin, were subjected to a Red
terror in retaliation for their White terror against the
Bolsheviks, and were completely routed in every important city in
Central Russia.
The young Red Army matured and hardened in battle.
The work of the Communist Commissars was of decisive
importance in the consolidation and political education of the
Red Army and in raising its discipline and fighting
efficiency.
But the Bolshevik Party knew that these were only the
first,
not the decisive successes of the Red Army. It was aware that new
and far more serious battles were still to come, and that the
country could recover the lost food, raw material and fuel
regions only by a prolonged and stubborn struggle with the enemy.
The Bolsheviks therefore undertook intense preparations for a
protracted war and decided to place the whole country at the
service of the front. The Soviet Government introduced War
Communism. It took under its control the middle-sized and small
industries, in addition to large-scale industry, so as to
accumulate goods for the supply of the army and the agricultural
population. It introduced a state monopoly of the grain trade,
prohibited private trading in grain and established the
surplus-appropriation system, under which all surplus produce in
the hands of the peasants was to be registered and acquired by
the state at fixed prices, so as to accumulate stores of grain
for the provisioning of the army and the workers. Lastly, it
introduced universal labour service for all classes. By making
physical labour compulsory for the bourgeoisie and thus releasing
workers for other duties of greater importance to the front, the
Party was giving practical effect to the principle: "He who does
not work, neither shall he eat."
All these measures, which were necessitated by the
exceptionally difficult conditions of national defence, and bore
a temporary character, were in their entirety known as War
Communism.
The country prepared itself for a long and exacting
civil
war, for a war against the foreign and internal enemies of the
Soviet power. By the end of 1918 it had to increase the strength
of the army threefold, and to accumulate supplies for this
army.
Lenin said at that time:
"We had decided to have an army of one million men by
the
spring; now we need an army of three million. We can get it. And
we will get it."
2. Defeat of Germany in the War. Revolution in Germany.
Founding of the Third International. Eighth Party Congress
While the Soviet country was preparing for new battles
against the forces of foreign intervention, in the West decisive
events were taking place in the belligerent countries, both on
the war fronts and in their interior. Germany and Austria were
suffocating in the grip of war and a food crisis. Whereas Great
Britain, France and the United States were continually drawing
upon new resources, Germany and Austria were consuming their last
meagre stocks. The situation was such that Germany and Austria,
having reached the stage of extreme exhaustion, were on the brink
of defeat.
At the same time, the peoples of Germany and Austria
were
seething with indignation against the disastrous and interminable
war, and against their imperialist governments who had reduced
them to a state of exhaustion and starvation. The revolutionary
influence of the October Revolution also had a tremendous effect,
as did the fraternization of the Soviet soldiers with the
Austrian and German soldiers at the front even before the Peace
of Brest-Litovsk, the actual termination of the war with Soviet
Russia and the conclusion of peace with her. The people of Russia
had brought about the end of the detested war by over throwing
their imperialist government, and this could not but serve as an
object lesson to the Austrian and German workers. And the German
soldiers who had been stationed on the Eastern front and who
after the Peace of Brest-Litovsk were transferred to the Western
front could not but undermine the morale of the German army on
that front by their accounts of the fraternization with the
Soviet soldiers and of the way the Soviet soldiers had got rid of
the war. The disintegration of the Austrian army from the same
causes had begun even earlier.
All this served to accentuate the craving for peace
among the
German soldiers; they lost their former fighting efficiency and
began to retreat in face of the onslaught of the Entente armies.
In November 1918 a revolution broke out in Germany, and Wilhelm
and his government were overthrown. Germany was obliged to
acknowledge defeat and to sue for peace.
Thus at one stroke Germany was reduced from a
first-rate
power to a second-rate power.
As far as the position of the Soviet Government was
concerned, this circumstance had certain disadvantages, inasmuch
as it made the Entente countries, which had started armed
intervention against the Soviet power, the dominant force in
Europe and Asia, and enabled them to intervene more actively in
the Soviet country and to blockade her, to draw the noose more
tightly around the Soviet power. And this was what actually
happened, as we shall see later. On the other hand, it had its
advantages, which outweighed the disadvantages and fundamentally
improved the position of Soviet Russia. In the first place, the
Soviet Government was now able to annul the predatory Peace of
Brest-Litovsk, to stop paying the indemnities, and to start an
open struggle, military and political, for the liberation of
Esthonia, Latvia, Byelorussia, Lithuania, the Ukraine and
Transcaucasia from the yoke of German imperialism. Secondly, and
chiefly, the existence in the centre of Europe, in Germany, of a
republican regime and of Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers'
Deputies was bound to revolutionize, and actually did
revolutionize, the countries of Europe, and this could not but
strengthen the position of the Soviet power in Russia. True, the
revolution in Germany was not a Socialist but a bourgeois
revolution, and the Soviets were an obedient tool of the
bourgeois parliament, for they were dominated by the
Social-Democrats, who were compromisers of the type of the
Russian Mensheviks. This in fact explains the weakness of the
German revolution. How weak it really was is shown, for example,
by the fact that it allowed the German Whiteguards to assassinate
such prominent revolutionaries as Rosa Luxemburg and Karl
Liebknecht with impunity. Nevertheless, it was a revolution:
Wilhelm had been overthrown, and the workers had cast off their
chains; and this in itself was bound to unloose the revolution in
the West, was bound to call forth a rise in the revolution in the
European countries.
The tide of revolution in Europe began to mount. A
revolutionary movement started in Austria, and a Soviet Republic
arose in Hungary. With the rising tide of the revolution
Communist parties came to the surface.
A real basis now existed for a union of the Communist
parties, for the formation of the Third, Communist
International.
In March 1919, on the initiative of the Bolsheviks,
headed by
Lenin, the First Congress of the Communist Parties of various
countries, held in Moscow, founded the Communist International.
Although many of the delegates were prevented by the blockade and
imperialist persecution from arriving in Moscow, the most
important countries of Europe and America were represented at
this First Congress. The work of the congress was guided by
Lenin.
Lenin reported on the subject of bourgeois democracy
and the
dictatorship of the proletariat. He brought out the importance of
the Soviet system, showing that it meant genuine democracy for
the working people. The congress adopted a manifesto to the
proletariat of all countries calling upon them to wage a
determined struggle for the dictatorship of the proletariat and
for the triumph of Soviets all over the world.
The congress set up an Executive Committee of the
Third,
Communist International (E.C.C.I.).
Thus was founded an international revolutionary
proletarian
organization of a new type -- the Communist International -- the
Marxist-Leninist International.
The Eighth Congress of our Party met in March 1919. It
assembled in the midst of a conflict of contradictory factors --
on the one hand, the reactionary bloc of the Entente countries
against the Soviet Government had grown stronger, and, on the
other, the rising tide of revolution in Europe, especially in the
defeated countries, had considerably improved the position of the
Soviet country.
The congress was attended by 301 delegates with vote,
representing 313,766 members of the Party, and 102 delegates with
voice but no vote.
In his inaugural speech, Lenin paid homage to
the memory of Y. M. Sverdlov, one of the finest organizing
talents in the Bolshevik Party, who had died on the eve of the
congress.
The congress adopted a new Party Program. This program
gives
a description of capitalism and of its highest phase --
imperialism. It compares two systems of state -- the
bourgeois-democratic system and the Soviet system. It details the
specific tasks of the Party in the struggle for Socialism:
completion of the expropriation of the bourgeoisie;
administration of the economic life of the country in accordance
with a single Socialist plan; participation of the trade unions
in the organization of the national economy; Socialist labour
discipline; utilization of bourgeois experts in the economic
field under the control of Soviet bodies; gradual and systematic
enlistment of the middle peasantry in the work of Socialist
construction.
The congress adopted Lenin's proposal to include in the
program in addition to a definition of imperialism as the highest
stage of capitalism, the description of industrial capitalism and
simple commodity production contained in the old program adopted
at the Second Party Congress. Lenin considered it essential that
the program should take account of the complexity of our economic
system and note the existence of diverse economic formations in
the country, including small commodity production, as represented
by the middle peasants. Therefore, during the debate on the
program, Lenin vigorously condemned the anti-Bolshevik views of
Bukharin, who proposed that the clauses dealing with capitalism,
small commodity production, the economy of the middle peasant, be
left out of the program. Bukharin's views represented a
Menshevik-Trotskyite denial of the role played by the middle
peasant in the development of the Soviet state. Furthermore,
Bukharin glossed over the fact that the small commodity
production of the peasants bred and nourished kulak elements.
Lenin further refuted the anti-Bolshevik views of
Bukharin
and Pyatakov on the national question. They spoke against the
inclusion in the program of a clause on the right of nations to
self-determination; they were against the equality of nations,
claiming that it was a slogan that would hinder the victory of
the proletarian revolution and the union of the proletarians of
different nationalities. Lenin overthrew these utterly
pernicious, imperialist, chauvinist views of Bukharin and
Pyatakov.
An important place in the deliberations of the Eighth
Congress was devoted to policy towards the middle peasants. The
Decree on the Land had resulted in a steady growth in the number
of middle peasants, who now comprised the majority of the peasant
population. The attitude and conduct of the middle peasantry,
which vacillated between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, was
of momentous importance for the fate of the Civil War and
Socialist construction. The outcome of the Civil War largely
depended on which way the middle peasant would swing, which class
would win his allegiance -- the proletariat or the bourgeoisie.
The Czechoslovaks, the Whiteguards, the kulaks, the
Socialist-Revolutionaries and the Mensheviks were able to
overthrow the Soviet power in the Volga region in the summer of
1918 because they were supported by a large section of the middle
peasantry. The same was true during the revolts raised by the
kulaks in Central Russia. But in the autumn of 1918 the mass of
the middle peasants began to swing over to the Soviet power. The
peasants saw that victories of the Whites were followed by the
restoration of the power of the landlords, the seizure of
peasants' land, and the robbery, flogging and torture of
peasants. The activities of the Committees of the Poor Peasants,
which crushed the kulaks, also contributed to the change in the
attitude of the peasantry. Accordingly, in November 1918, Lenin
issued the slogan:
"Learn to come to an
agreement with the middle
peasant, while not for a moment renouncing the struggle against
the kulak and at the same time firmly relying solely on the poor
peasant." (Lenin, Selected Works,
Vol.
VIII,
p.
150.)
Of course, the middle peasants did not cease to
vacillate
entirely, but they drew closer to the Soviet Government and began
to support it more solidly. This to a large extent was
facilitated by the policy towards the middle peasants laid down
by the Eighth Party Congress.
The Eighth Congress marked a turning point in the
policy of
the Party towards the middle peasants. Lenin's report and the
decisions of the congress laid down a new line of the Party on
this question. The congress demanded that the Party organizations
and all Communists should draw a strict distinction and division
between the middle peasant and the kulak, and should strive to
win the former over to the side of the working class by paying
close attention to his needs. The backwardness of the middle
peasants had to be overcome by persuasion and not by compulsion
and coercion. The congress therefore gave instructions that no
compulsion be used in the carrying out of Socialist measures in
the countryside (formation of communes and agricultural artels).
In all cases affecting the vital interests of the middle peasant,
a practical agreement should be reached with him and concessions
made with regard to the methods
of realizing Socialist changes.
The congress laid down the policy of a stable alliance with the
middle peasant, the leading role
in this alliance to be
maintained by the proletariat.
The new policy towards the middle peasant proclaimed by
Lenin
at the Eighth Congress required that the proletariat should rely
on the poor peasant, maintain a stable alliance with the middle
peasant and fight the kulak. The policy of the Party before the
Eighth Congress was in general one of neutralizing
the middle
peasant. This meant that the Party strove to prevent the middle
peasant from siding with the kulak and with the bourgeoisie in
general. But now this was not enough. The Eighth Congress passed
from a policy of neutralization of the middle peasant to a policy
of stable alliance with him for the purpose
of the struggle
against the Whiteguards and foreign intervention and for the
successful building of Socialism.
The policy adopted by the congress towards the middle
peasants, who formed the bulk of the peasantry, played a decisive
part in ensuring success in the Civil War against foreign
intervention and its Whiteguard henchmen. In the autumn of 1919,
when the peasants had to choose between the Soviet power and
Denikin, they supported the Soviets, and the proletarian
dictatorship was able to vanquish its most dangerous enemy.
The problems connected with the building up of the Red
Army
held a special place in the deliberations of the congress, where
the so-called "Military Opposition" appeared in the field. This
"Military Opposition" comprised quite a number of former members
of the now shattered group of "Left Communists"; but it also
included some Party workers who had never participated in any
opposition, but were dissatisfied with the way Trotsky was
conducting the affairs of the army. The majority of the delegates
from the army were distinctly hostile to Trotsky; they resented
his veneration for the military experts of the old tsarist army,
some of whom were betraying us outright in the Civil War, and his
arrogant and hostile attitude towards the old Bolshevik cadres in
the army. Instances of Trotsky's "practices" were cited at the
congress. For example, he had attempted to shoot a number of
prominent army Communists serving at the front, just because they
had incurred his displeasure. This was directly playing into the
hands of the enemy. It was only the intervention of the Central
Committee and the protests of military men that saved the lives
of these comrades.
But while fighting Trotsky's distortions of the
military
policy of the Party, the "Military Opposition" held incorrect
views on a number of points concerning the building up of the
army. Lenin and Stalin vigorously came out against the "Military
Opposition," because the latter defended the survivals of the
guerrilla spirit and resisted the creation of a regular Red Army,
the utilization of the military experts of the old army and the
establishment of that iron discipline without which no army can
be a real army. Comrade Stalin rebutted the "Military Opposition"
and demanded the creation of a regular army inspired with the
spirit of strictest discipline.
He said:
"Either we create a real
worker and peasant --
primarily a peasant -- army, strictly disciplined army, and
defend the Republic, or we perish."
While rejecting a number of
proposals made by the "Military Opposition," the congress dealt a
blow at Trotsky by demanding an improvement in the work of the
central military institutions and the enhancement of the role of
the Communists in the army.
A Military Commission was set up at the congress;
thanks to
its efforts the decision on the military question was adopted by
the congress unanimously.
The effect of this decision was to
strengthen the Red Army and to bring it still closer to the
Party.
The congress further discussed Party and Soviet affairs
and
the guiding role of the Party in the Soviets. During the debate
on the latter question the congress repudiated the view of the
opportunist Sapronov-Ossinsky group which held that the Party
should not guide the work of the Soviets.
Lastly, in view of the
huge influx of new members into the Party, the congress outlined
measures to improve the social composition of the Party and
decided to conduct a re-registration of its members.
This initiated the first purge of the Party ranks.
3. Extension of Intervention. Blockade of the Soviet
Country.
Kolchak's Campaign and Defeat. Denikin's Campaign and
Defeat.
A Three-months' Respite. Ninth Party Congress
"Long live the three million man red army" anonymous 1919 graphic from
Russian State Library.
Having vanquished Germany and Austria, the Entente
states
decided to hurl large military forces against the Soviet country.
After Germany's defeat and the evacuation of her troops from the
Ukraine and Transcaucasia, her place was taken by the British and
French, who dispatched their fleets to the Black Sea and landed
troops in Odessa and in Transcaucasia. Such was the brutality of
the Entente forces of intervention that they did not hesitate to
shoot whole batches of workers and peasants in the occupied
regions. Their outrages reached such lengths in the end that
after the occupation of Turkestan they carried off to the
Transcaspian region twenty-six leading Baku Bolsheviks --
including Comrades Shaumyan, Fioletov, Djaparidze, Malygin,
Azizbekov, Korganov -- and with the aid of the
Socialist-Revolutionaries, had them brutally shot.
The interventionists soon proclaimed a blockade of
Russia. All
sea routes and other lines of communication with the external
world were cut.
The Soviet country was surrounded on nearly every side.
The Entente countries placed their chief hopes in
Admiral
Kolchak, their puppet in Omsk, Siberia. He was proclaimed
"supreme ruler of Russia" and all the counter-revolutionary
forces in the country placed themselves under his command.
The Eastern Front thus became the main front.
Kolchak assembled a huge army and in the spring of 1919
almost reached the Volga. The finest Bolshevik forces were hurled
against him; Young Communist Leaguers and workers were mobilized.
In April 1919, Kolchak's army met with severe defeat at the hands
of the Red Army and very soon began to retreat along the whole
front.
At the height of the advance of the Red Army on the
Eastern
Front, Trotsky put forward a suspicious plan: he proposed that
the advance should be halted before it reached the Urals, the
pursuit of Kolchak's army discontinued, and troops transferred
from the Eastern Front to the Southern Front. The Central
Committee of the Party fully realized that the Urals and Siberia
could not be left in Kolchak's hands, for there, with the aid of
the Japanese and British, he might recuperate and retrieve his
former position. It therefore rejected this plan and gave
instructions to proceed with the advance. Trotsky disagreed with
these instructions and tendered his resignation, which the
Central Committee declined, at the same time ordering him to
refrain at once from all participation in the direction of the
operations on the Eastern Front. The Red Army pursued its
offensive against Kolchak with greater vigour than ever; it
inflicted a number of new defeats on him and freed of the Whites
the Urals and Siberia, where the Red Army was supported by a
powerful partisan movement in the Whites' rear.
In the summer of 1919, the imperialists assigned to
General
Yudenich, who headed the counter-revolutionaries in the
north-west (in the Baltic countries, in the vicinity of
Petrograd), the task of diverting the attention of the Red Army
from the Eastern Front by an attack on Petrograd. Influenced by
the counter-revolutionary agitation of former officers, the
garrisons of two forts in the vicinity of Petrograd mutinied
against the Soviet Government. At the same time a
counter-revolutionary plot was discovered at the Front
Headquarters. The enemy threatened Petrograd. But thanks to the
measures taken by the Soviet Government with the support of the
workers and sailors, the mutinous forts were cleared of Whites,
and Yudenich's troops were defeated and driven back into
Esthonia.
The defeat of Yudenich near Petrograd made it easier to
cope
with Kolchak, and by the end of 1919 his army was completely
routed. Kolchak himself was taken prisoner and shot by sentence
of the Revolutionary Committee in Irkutsk.
That was the end of Kolchak.
The Siberians had a popular song about Kolchak at that
time:
"Uniform British,
Epaulettes from France,
Japanese tobacco,
Kolchak leads the dance.
Uniform in tatters,
Epaulettes all gone,
So is
the tobacco,
Kolchak's day is done."
Since Kolchak had not justified their hopes, the
interventionists altered their plan of attack on the Soviet
Republic. The troops landed in Odessa had to be withdrawn, for
contact with the army of the Soviet Republic had infected them
with the revolutionary spirit and they were beginning to rebel
against their imperialist masters. For example, there was the
revolt of French sailors in Odessa led by André Marty.
Accordingly, now that Kolchak had been defeated, the Entente
centred its attention on General Denikin, Kornilov's confederate
and the organizer of the "Volunteer Army." Denikin at that time
was operating against the Soviet Government in the south, in the
Kuban region. The Entente supplied his army with large quantities
of ammunition and equipment and sent it north against the Soviet
Government.
The Southern Front now became the chief front.
Denikin began his main campaign against the Soviet
Government
in the summer of 1919. Trotsky had disrupted the Southern Front,
and our troops suffered defeat after defeat. By the middle of
October the Whites had seized the whole of the Ukraine, had
captured Orel and were nearing Tula, which supplied our army with
cartridges, rifles and machine-guns. The Whites were approaching
Moscow. The situation of the Soviet Republic became grave in the
extreme. The Party sounded the alarm and called upon the people
to resist. Lenin issued the slogan, "All for the fight against
Denikin!" Inspired by the Bolsheviks, the workers and peasants
mustered all their forces to smash the enemy.
The Central Committee sent Comrades Stalin, Voroshilov,
Ordjonikidze and Budyonny to the Southern Front to prepare the
rout of Denikin. Trotsky was removed from the direction of the
operations of the Red Army in the south. Before Comrade Stalin's
arrival, the Command of the Southern Front, in conjunction with
Trotsky, had drawn up a plan to strike the main blow at Denikin
from Tsaritsyn in the direction of Novorossisk, through the Don
Steppe, where there were no roads and where the Red Army would
have to pass through regions inhabited by Cossacks, who were at
that time largely under the influence of the Whiteguards. Comrade
Stalin severely criticized this plan and submitted to the Central
Committee his own plan for the defeat of Denikin. According to
this plan the main blow was to be delivered by way of
Kharkov-Donetz Basin-Rostov. This plan would ensure the rapid
advance of our troops against Denikin, for they would be moving
through working class and peasant regions where they would have
the open sympathy of the population. Furthermore, the dense
network of railway lines in this region would ensure our armies
the regular supply of all they required.
Lastly, this plan would make it possible to release the
Donetz Coal Basin and thus supply our country with fuel.
The Central Committee of the Party accepted Comrade
Stalin's
plan. In the second half of October 1919, after fierce
resistance, Denikin was defeated by the Red Army in the decisive
battles of Orel and Voronezh. He began a rapid retreat, and,
pursued by our forces, fled to the south. At the beginning of
1920 the whole of the Ukraine and the North Caucasus had been
cleared of Whites.
During the decisive battles on the Southern Front, the
imperialists again hurled Yudenich's corps against Petrograd in
order to divert our forces from the south and thus improve the
position of Denikin's army. The Whites approached the very gates
of Petrograd. The heroic proletariat of the premier city of the
revolution rose in a solid wall for its defence. The Communists,
as always, were in the vanguard. After fierce fighting, the
Whites were defeated and again flung beyond our borders back into
Esthonia.
And that was the end of Denikin.
The defeat of Kolchak and Denikin was followed by a
brief
respite.
When the imperialists saw that the Whiteguard armies
had been
smashed, that intervention had failed, and that the Soviet
Government was consolidating its position all over the country,
while in Western Europe the indignation of the workers against
military intervention in the Soviet Republic was rising, they
began to change their attitude towards the Soviet state. In
January 1920, Great Britain, France, and Italy decided to call
off the blockade of Soviet Russia.
This was an important breach in the wall of
intervention.
It did not, of course, mean that the Soviet country was
done
with intervention and the Civil War. There was still the danger
of attack by imperialist Poland. The forces of intervention had
not yet been finally driven out of the Far East, Transcaucasia
and the Crimea. But Soviet Russia had secured a temporary
breathing space and was able to divert more forces to economic
development. The Party could now devote its attention to economic
problems.
During the Civil War many skilled workers had left
industry
owing to the closing down of mills and factories. The Party now
took measures to return them to industry to work at their trades.
The railways were in a grave condition and several thousand
Communists were assigned to the work of restoring them, for
unless this was done the restoration of the major branches of
industry could not be seriously undertaken. The organization of
the food supply was extended and improved. The drafting of a plan
for the electrification of Russia was begun. Nearly five million
Red Army men were under arms and could not be demobilized owing
to the danger of war. A part of the Red Army was therefore
converted into labour armies
and used in the economic field. The
Council of Workers' and Peasants' Defence was transformed into
the Council of Labour and Defence,
and
a
State Planning Commission
(Gosplan) set up to assist it. Such was the situation when the
Ninth Party Congress opened.
The congress met at the end of March 1920. It was
attended by
554 delegates with vote, representing 611,978 Party members, and
162 delegates with voice but no vote.
The congress defined the immediate tasks of the country
in
the sphere of transportation and industry. It particularly
stressed the necessity of the trade unions taking part in the
building up of the economic life.
Special attention was devoted by the congress to a
single
economic plan for the restoration, in the first place, of the
railways, the fuel industry and the iron and steel industry. The
major item in this plan was a project for the electrification of
the country, which Lenin advanced as "a great program for the
next ten or twenty years." This formed the basis of the famous
plan of the State Commission for the Electrification of Russia
(GOELRO), the provisions of which have today been far
exceeded.
The congress rejected the views of an anti-Party group
which
called itself "The Group of Democratic-Centralism" and was
opposed to one-man management and the undivided responsibility of
industrial directors. It advocated unrestricted "group
management" under which nobody would be personally responsible
for the administration of industry. The chief figures in this
anti-Party group were Sapronov, Ossinsky and Y. Smirnov. They
were supported at the congress by Rykov and Tomsky.
4. Polish Gentry Attack Soviet Russia. General
Wrangel's
Campaign. Failure of the Polish Plan. Rout of Wrangel. End of the
Intervention.
Notwithstanding the defeat of Kolchak and Denikin,
notwithstanding the fact that the Soviet Republic was steadily
regaining its territory by clearing the Whites and the forces of
intervention out of the Northern Territory, Turkestan, Siberia,
the Don region, the Ukraine, etc., notwithstanding the fact that
the Entente states were obliged to call off the blockade of
Russia, they still refused to reconcile themselves to the idea
that the Soviet power had proved impregnable and had come out
victorious. They therefore resolved to make one more attempt at
intervention in Soviet Russia. This time they decided to utilize
both Pilsudski, a bourgeois counter-revolutionary nationalist,
the virtual head of the Polish state, and General Wrangel, who
had rallied the remnants of Denikin's army in the Crimea and from
there was threatening the Donetz Basin and the Ukraine.
The Polish gentry and Wrangel, as Lenin put it, were
the two
hands with which international imperialism attempted to strangle
Soviet Russia.
The plan of the Poles was to seize the Soviet Ukraine
west of
the Dnieper, to occupy Soviet Byelorussia, to restore the power
of the Polish magnates in these regions, to extend the frontiers
of the Polish state so that they stretched "from sea to sea,"
from Danzig to Odessa, and, in return for his aid, to help
Wrangel smash the Red Army and restore the power of the landlords
and capitalists in Soviet Russia.
This plan was approved by the Entente states.
The Soviet Government made vain attempts to enter into
negotiations with Poland with the object of preserving peace and
averting war. Pilsudski refused to discuss peace. He wanted war.
He calculated that the Red Army, fatigued by its battles with
Kolchak and Denikin, would not be able to withstand the attack of
the Polish forces.
The short breathing space had come to an end.
In April 1920 the Poles invaded the Soviet Ukraine and
seized
Kiev. At the same time, Wrangel took the offensive and threatened
the Donetz Basin.
In reply, the Red Army started a counter-offensive
against
the Poles along the whole front. Kiev was recaptured and the
Polish war lords driven out of the Ukraine and Byelorussia. The
impetuous advance of the Red troops on the Southern Front brought
them to the very gates of Lvov in Galicia, while the troops on
the Western Front were nearing Warsaw. The Polish armies were on
the verge of utter defeat.
But success was frustrated by the suspicious actions of
Trotsky and his followers at the General Headquarters of the Red
Army. Through the fault of Trotsky and Tukhachevsky, the advance
of the Red troops on the Western Front, towards Warsaw, proceeded
in an absolutely unorganized manner: the troops were allowed no
opportunity to consolidate the positions that they won, the
advance detachments were led too far ahead, while reserves and
ammunition were left too far in the rear. As a result, the
advance detachments were left without ammunition and reserves and
the front was stretched out endlessly. This made it easy to force
a breach in the front. The result was that when a small force of
Poles broke through our Western Front at one point, our troops,
left without ammunition, were obliged to retreat. As regards the
troops on the Southern Front, who had reached the gates of Lvov
and were pressing the Poles hard, they were forbidden by Trotsky,
that ill-famed "chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council,"
to capture Lvov. He ordered the transfer of the Mounted Army, the
main force on the Southern Front, far to the north-east. This was
done on the pretext of helping the Western Front, although it was
not difficult to see that the best, and in fact only possible,
way of helping the Western Front was to capture Lvov. But the
withdrawal of the Mounted Army from the Southern Front, its
departure from Lvov, virtually meant the retreat of our forces on
the Southern Front as well. This wrecker's order issued by
Trotsky thus forced upon our troops on the Southern Front an
incomprehensible and absolutely unjustified retreat -- to the joy
of the Polish gentry.
This was giving direct assistance, indeed -- not to our
Western Front, however, but to the Polish gentry and the
Entente.
Within a few days the advance of the Poles was checked
and
our troops began preparations for a new counter-offensive. But,
unable to continue the war, and alarmed by the prospect of a Red
counter-offensive, Poland was obliged to renounce her claims to
the Ukrainian territory west of the Dnieper and to Byelorussia
and preferred to conclude peace. On October 20, 1920, the Peace
of Riga was signed. In accordance with this treaty Poland
retained Galicia and part of Byelorussia.
Having concluded peace with Poland, the Soviet Republic
decided to put an end to Wrangel. The British and French had
supplied him with guns, rifles, armoured cars, tanks, aeroplanes
and ammunition of the latest type. He had Whiteguard shock
regiments, mainly consisting of officers. But Wrangel failed to
rally any considerable number of peasants and Cossacks in support
of the troops he had landed in the Kuban and the Don regions.
Nevertheless, he advanced to the very gates of the Donetz Basin,
creating a menace to our coal region. The position of the Soviet
Government at that time was further complicated by the fact that
the Red Army was suffering greatly from fatigue. The troops were
obliged to advance under extremely difficult conditions: while
conducting an offensive against Wrangel, they had at the same
time to smash Makhno's anarchist bands who were assisting
Wrangel. But although Wrangel had the superiority in technical
equipment, although the Red Army had no tanks, it drove Wrangel
into the Crimean Peninsula and there bottled him up. In November
1920 the Red forces captured the fortified position of Perekop,
swept into the Crimea, smashed Wrangel's forces and cleared the
Peninsula of the Whiteguards and the forces of intervention. The
Crimea became Soviet territory.
The failure of Poland's imperialist plans and the
defeat of
Wrangel ended the period of intervention.
At the end of 1920 there began the liberation of
Transcaucasia: Azerbaidjan was freed from the yoke of the
bourgeois nationalist Mussavatists, Georgia from the Menshevik
nationalists, and Armenia from the Dashnaks. The Soviet power
triumphed in Azerbaidjan, Armenia and Georgia.
This did not yet mean the end of all intervention. That
of
the Japanese in the Far East lasted until 1922. Moreover, new
attempts at intervention were made (Ataman Semyonov and Baron
Ungern in the East, the Finnish Whites in Karelia in 1921). But
the principal enemies of the Soviet country, the principal forces
of intervention, were shattered by the end of 1920.
The war of the foreign interventionists and the Russian
Whiteguards against the Soviets ended in a victory for the
Soviets.
The Soviet Republic
preserved its independence and
freedom.
This was the end of foreign military intervention and
Civil
War.
This was a historic victory for the Soviet power.
5. How and Why the Soviet Republic Defeated the
Combined
Forces of British-French-Japanese-Polish Intervention and of the
Bourgeois-Landlord-Whiteguard Counter-Revolution in Russia
Red Army celebrated victory over counterrevolutionary forces in the
Crimea, circa 1920.
If we study the leading European and American
newspapers and
periodicals of the period of intervention, we shall easily find
that there was not a single prominent writer, military or
civilian, not a single military expert who believed that the
Soviet Government could win. On the contrary, all prominent
writers, military experts and historians of revolution of all
countries and nations, all the so-called savants, were unanimous
in declaring that the days of the Soviets were numbered, that
their defeat was inevitable.
They based their certainty of the
victory of the forces of intervention on the fact that whereas
Soviet Russia had no organized army and had to create its Red
Army under fire, so to speak, the interventionists and
Whiteguards did have an army more or less ready to hand.
Further, they based their certainty on the fact that
the Red
Army had no experienced military men, the majority of them having
gone over to the counter-revolution, whereas the interventionists
and Whiteguards did have such men.
Furthermore, they based their certainty on the fact
that,
owing to the backwardness of Russia's war industry, the Red Army
was suffering from a shortage of arms and ammunition; that what
it did have was of poor quality, while it could not obtain
supplies from abroad because Russia was hermetically sealed on
all sides by the blockade. The army of the interventionists and
Whiteguards, on the other hand, was abundantly supplied, and
would continue to be supplied, with first-class arms, ammunition
and equipment.
Lastly, they based their certainty on the fact that the
army
of the interventionists and Whiteguards occupied the richest
food-producing regions of Russia, whereas the Red Army had no
such regions and was suffering from a shortage of provisions.
And it was a fact that the Red Army did suffer from all
these
handicaps and deficiencies.
In this respect -- but only in this respect -- the
gentlemen
of the intervention were absolutely right.
How then is it to be explained that the Red Army,
although
suffering from such grave shortcomings, was able to defeat the
army of the interventionists and Whiteguards which did not suffer
from such shortcomings?
1. The Red Army was victorious because the Soviet
Government's policy for which the Red Army was fighting was a
right policy, one that corresponded to the interests of the
people, and because the people understood and realized that it
was the right policy, their own policy, and supported it
unreservedly.
The Bolsheviks knew that an army that fights for a
wrong
policy, for a policy that is not supported by the people, cannot
win. The army of the interventionists and Whiteguards was such an
army. It had everything: experienced commanders and first-class
arms, ammunition, equipment and provisions. It lacked only one
thing -- the support and sympathy of the peoples of Russia; for
the peoples of Russia could not and would not support the policy
of the interventionists and Whiteguard "rulers" because it was a
policy hostile to the people. And so the interventionist and
Whiteguard army was defeated.
2. The Red Army was victorious because it was
absolutely
loyal and faithful to its people, for which reason the people
loved and supported it and looked upon it as their own army. The
Red Army is the offspring of the people, and if it is faithful to
its people, as a true son is to his mother, it will have the
support of the people and is bound to win. An army, however, that
goes against its people must suffer defeat.
3. The Red Army was victorious because the Soviet
Government
was able to muster the whole rear, the whole country, to serve
the needs of the front. An army without a strong rear to support
the front in every way is doomed to defeat. The Bolsheviks knew
this and that is why they converted the country into an armed
camp to supply the front with arms, ammunition, equipment, food
and reinforcements.
4. The Red Army was victorious because: a) the Red Army
men
understood the aims and purposes of the war and recognized their
justice; b) the recognition of the justice of the aims and
purposes of the war strengthened their discipline and fighting
efficiency; and c) as a result, the Red Army throughout displayed
unparalleled self-sacrifice and unexampled mass heroism in battle
against the enemy.
5. The Red Army was victorious because its leading
core, both
at the front and in the rear, was the Bolshevik Party, united in
its solidarity and discipline, strong in its revolutionary spirit
and readiness for any sacrifice in the common cause, and
unsurpassed in its ability to organize millions and to lead them
properly in complex situations.
"It is only because of the
Party's vigilance and its
strict
discipline," said Lenin, "because the authority of the Party
united all government departments and institutions, because the
slogans issued by the Central Committee were followed by tens,
hundreds, thousands and finally millions of people as one man,
because incredible sacrifices were made, that the miracle took
place and we were able to win, in spite of repeated campaigns of
the imperialists of the Entente and of the whole world."
(Lenin, Collected Works,
Russ. ed., Vol. XXV, p. 96.)
6. The Red Army was victorious because: a) it was able
to
produce from its own ranks military commanders of a new type, men
like Frunze, Voroshilov, Budyonny, and others; b) in its ranks
fought such talented heroes who came from the people as Kotovsky,
Chapayev, Lazo, Shchors, Parkhomenko, and many others; c) the
political education of the Red Army was in the hands of men like
Lenin, Stalin, Molotov, Kalinin, Sverdlov, Kaganovich,
Ordjonikdze, Kirov, Kuibyshev, Mikoyan, Zhdanov, Andreyev,
Petrovsky, Yaroslavsky, Yezhov, Dzerzhinsky, Shchadenko, Mekhlis,
Khrushchev, Shvernik, Shkiryatov, and others; d) the Red Army
possessed such outstanding organizers and agitators as the
military commissars, who by their work cemented the ranks of the
Red Army men, fostered in them the spirit of discipline and
military daring, and energetically -- swiftly and relentlessly --
cut short the treacherous activities of certain of the
commanders, while on the other hand, they boldly and resolutely
supported the prestige and renown of commanders, Party and
non-Party, who had proved their loyalty to the Soviet power and
who were capable of leading the Red Army units with a firm
hand.
"Without the military commissars we would not have had
a Red
Army," Lenin said.
7. The Red Army was victorious because in the rear of
the
White armies, in the rear of Kolchak, Denikin, Krasnov and
Wrangel, there secretly operated splendid Bolsheviks, Party and
non-Party, who raised the workers and peasants in revolt against
the invaders, against the Whiteguards, undermined the rear of the
foes of the Soviet Government, and thereby facilitated the
advance of the Red Army. Everybody knows that the partisans of
the Ukraine, Siberia, the Far East, the Urals, Byelorussia and
the Volga region, by undermining the rear of the Whiteguards and
the invaders, rendered invaluable service to the Red Army.
8. The Red Army was victorious because the Soviet
Republic
was not alone in its struggle against Whiteguard
counter-revolution and foreign intervention, because the struggle
of the Soviet Government and its successes enlisted the sympathy
and support of the proletarians of the whole world. While the
imperialists were trying to stifle the Soviet Republic by
intervention and blockade, the workers of the imperialist
countries sided with the Soviets and helped them. Their struggle
against the capitalists of the countries hostile to the Soviet
Republic helped in the end to force the imperialists to call off
the intervention. The workers of Great Britain, France and the
other intervening powers called strikes, refused to load
munitions consigned to the invaders and the Whiteguard generals,
and set up Councils of Action whose work was guided by the slogan
-- "Hands off Russia!"
"The international
bourgeoisie has only to raise its
hand
against us to have it seized by its own workers," Lenin said.
(Ibid., p. 405.)
Brief Summary
Vanquished by the October Revolution, the landlords and
capitalists, in conjunction with the Whiteguard generals,
conspired with the governments of the Entente countries against
the interests of their own country for a joint armed attack on
the Soviet land and for the overthrow of the Soviet Government.
This formed the basis of the military intervention of the Entente
and of the Whiteguard revolts in the border regions of Russia, as
a result of which Russia was cut off from her sources of food and
raw material.
The military defeat of Germany and the termination of
the
war between the two imperialist coalitions in Europe served to
strengthen the Entente and to intensify the intervention, and
created new difficulties for Soviet Russia.
On the other hand,
the revolution in Germany and the incipient revolutionary
movement in the European countries created favourable
international conditions for the Soviet power and relieved the
position of the Soviet Republic.
The Bolshevik Party roused the workers and peasants for
a
war for the fatherland, a war
against the foreign invaders and the
bourgeois and landlord Whiteguards. The Soviet Republic and its
Red Army defeated one after another the puppets of the Entente --
Kolchak, Yudenich, Denikin, Krasnov and Wrangel, drove out of the
Ukraine and Byelorussia another puppet of the Entente, Pilsudski,
and thus beat off the forces of foreign intervention and drove
them out of the Soviet country.
Thus the first armed attack of international capital on
the
land of Socialism ended in a complete fiasco.
In the period of intervention, the parties which had
been
smashed by the revolution, the Socialist-Revolutionaries,
Mensheviks, Anarchists and nationalists, supported the Whiteguard
generals and the invaders, hatched counter-revolutionary plots
against the Soviet Republic and resorted to terrorism against
Soviet leaders. These parties, which had enjoyed a certain amount
of influence among the working class before the October
Revolution, completely exposed themselves before the masses as
counter-revolutionary parties during the Civil War.
The period of Civil War and intervention witnessed the
political collapse of these parties and the final triumph of the
Communist Party in Soviet Russia.
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