United States Intervention in Russia 1918-1919
Military Considerations Support Woodrow Wilson's Troop Deployment
Nov 22, 2008 Michael Streich
By early 1918 Russia had signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with the Central Powers and withdrew from the world war. Russia’s new Bolshevik leaders were confronted by Civil War as they sought to consolidate power. Russian withdrawal would allow Germany to redeploy vast numbers of soldiers to the western front. At stake were thousands of tons of Allied war material in Russia at Archangel and Murmansk as well as Vladivostok in Asiatic Russia. Given these considerations, an agonizing President Woodrow Wilson reluctantly agreed to join an Allied expedition into Russia.
Was The Intervention Political?
Some historians maintain that Wilson’s actions were motivated by desires to topple the Bolsheviks. “…Wilson and others hoped to bring down the fledgling Bolshevik government, fearful it would spread revolution around the world.” [1] George Kennan, however, discounts this motive [2], emphasizing that the three American battalions in Northern Russia were under British command, thereby obligated to follow British and French policy which was, at least as openly stated, to protect Allied supplies and possibly reopen the eastern front. Kennan cites the story of Maxim Litvinov’s 1933 visit to Washington, DC, during which he was shown documentation relevant to the US Siberian intervention. Litvinov’s public letter, following his examination of the documents, waived any Russian claims with regard to US intervention.
Page Smith’s analysis [3] concludes that, “Americans would be withdrawn if there were and indication that they were being used against the Bolsheviks.” Russian historian David MacKenzie [4] cites war necessity as one reason for intervention: “President Woodrow Wilson allowed US participation in the Allied expeditions to north Russian ports in the summer of 1918 only after the Allied command insisted it was the sole way to win World War I.”
Other complications included the presence of 40,000 Czech soldiers stranded on the Trans-Siberian railroad as well as a growing Japanese presence in the Vladivostok region. American intervention in Siberian Russia might also deter the possibility of future Japanese aggressions that might have threatened the Open Door Policy in China.
Woodrow Wilson’s Idealism
US involvement in the Russian Civil War with the aim of eliminating the Bolsheviks would not have been consistent with Wilson’s ideology of a new world order based on his Fourteen Points. Page Smith comments that Wilson’s actions in Russia were far more consistent with his earlier intervention in Mexico. It is also possible that Wilson’s acquiescence rested on his conviction that the US needed to be seen as an equal partner, particularly since he was determined to put his post-war peace plan into action but needed Allied support to do so.
Although the later Soviet view equated intervention with western capitalists “enraged by the triumph of the Revolution in Russia…,” [5] there is sparse evidence that this reflects American motivations in 1918-1919. Kenrick A. Clements points out that "Wilson objected to the whole idea" of an intervention aimed at dislodging the Bolsheviks. He quotes Wilson as saying, "to stop a revolutionary movement with ordinary armies is like using a broom to sweep back a great sea..." [6]
Notes:
[1] Robert A. Divine, T.H. Breen, and others, America Past and Present (New York: HarperCollins, 1991) p. 726.
[2] George F. Kennan, Russia and the West Under Lenin and Stalin (New York: New American Library – Mentor Books, 1960) p. 110.
[3] Page Smith, A People’s History of the Progressive Era and World War I (New York: McGraw Hill, 1985), p. 538 and 733.
[4] David MacKenzie and Michael W. Curran, A History of Russia, the Soviet Union, and Beyond (Belmont, California: Wadsworth Pub. Co., 1993) p. 566.
[5] Pravda, September 15, 1957.
[6] Kenrick A. Clements, The Presidency of Woodrow Wilson (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1992) p. 111ff.
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