Chapter Six

The Start of the Red–Green Civil War

The Red versus Green, Bolshevik versus SR civil war, that had been latent since Lenin’s seizure of power in October 1917, but delayed by the Railway Workers’ Union talks, the elections to the Constituent Assembly, and the patriotic mood after Germany’s resumption of hostilities in February 1918, finally began on 13 May 1918 when the Bolshevik Central Committee decided to reject the proposal for an alliance with the Allies. This civil war was unnecessary: negotiated settlements of all Russia’s social conflicts had been available in November 1917 and May 1918, but on both these occasions Lenin would have had to agree to the formation of a coalition socialist administration. To this he preferred risking civil war, and by the end of May a quite unnecessary war had begun between the Bolsheviks and the SRs.

As the fighting began, some of the weaknesses of the Green side were immediately apparent. The members of the Allies ‘great enterprise’ in Russia, as General Poole’s mission was termed, found themselves not as they had anticipated being welcomed by Trotsky, but as the shock troops of the Red versus Green civil war. They were put at the disposal not of Trotsky but of the Green patriotic socialists once wooed by Somerset Maugham; for the Allies these patriotic socialists offered the only hope of re-establishing a new Eastern Front. Yet Poole’s mission itself was still plagued by uncertainty as to the role planned in it for the Czechoslovak Legion. They still refused to link up with the Allies in Archangel, severely weakening both the mission and the military arm of the Green force favoured by the Allies, the so-called Union for the Regeneration of Russia.

When the Czechoslovaks did begin to fight, it was not in the vicinity of Archangel as planned, but far to the south on the river Volga, and in the company of SR forces unaware that their party leaders had made any commitment to the Allies and the Union for the Regeneration of Russia. To make matters worse, communication problems meant that a planned joint Allied-Union for the Regeneration of Russia action in Archangel and Yaroslavl, a town providing the key to access from the north to the Volga, was a failure. As the Red versus Green civil war started, all the actors were in the wrong place at the wrong time, and everything went off at half cock. Yet by early August 1918 these problems were in the process of being resolved. The Allies did land in Archangel, the Czechoslovaks did secure a base on the Volga, and supported by the SR-inspired People’s Army these units were seeking to march north and perform a vast pincer movement with General Poole’s forces descending from Archangel, to rendezvous at a strategic point on the Trans-Siberian railway.

The Mutiny of the Czechoslovak Legion

Lenin’s rejection of an alliance with the Allies on 13 May 1918 meant that London had to revise General Poole’s mission even before he had arrived in Murmansk. If the Allied force was not to be welcomed by the Bolsheviks but likely to meet opposition from the Red Army, control of Vologda was essential; every blueprint for military operations against the Bolsheviks revolved around the basic premise that control of the town of Vologda, and preferably Vyatka as well, would secure the essential north–south and east–west arteries of Russia (see map, p. 278).¹ On 22 May 1918 the British Cabinet discussed a paper, ‘Future military strategy’, which assumed for the first time that the government established in Russia to stop the German advance would be anti-Bolshevik; in the accompanying War Office memorandum it was made clear that this change of circumstance meant that it was more important than ever, indeed Poole’s ‘first and foremost duty’, to ‘organize’ the Czechoslovaks. A rough plan was discussed in a paper for the Director of Military Intelligence of 24 May 1918 which argued that the arrival of Poole’s mission would be ‘the signal for those elements among the Russians who are ready to throw in their lot with the Allies rather than the Germans to rally to the Allied cause’; General Lavergne, the French military representative in Moscow, and his staff would help organize these forces and prolong the fighting line to link up the Allied effort based on Archangel with Siberia via the Viatka–Perm railway.² A map produced at this time envisaged deploying the Czechoslovaks along the length of the railway system from Penza in the south via Vologda to Archangel in the north, with the main concentration of Czechoslovak forces guarding the Vologda–Archangel line.³

These changed priorities were made even clearer by Poole’s deputy, General R.G. Finlayson as he sailed with the second part of the mission, due to rendezvous with Poole in Murmansk approximately a month after Poole’s departure. He spelt out four aims: the seizure of Archangel to prevent the formation of German submarine bases in the area; the seizure of Vologda and its railway connections, a town ‘of greatest strategical importance to us’ whose ‘possession is vital to ensure great success … our main jumping off point’; to reach Vyatka via Kotlas, and thus control the vital Siberian trade; and to rally ‘influential Russians’. He admitted that while the first of these priorities could be achieved by the British forces alone, the others all depended on fruitful co-operation with ‘friendlies’ like the Czechoslovaks. As he developed his scheme for what would happen after the seizure of Vologda, the references to the Czechoslovaks in his memorandum became more and more frequent.⁴

But just as the Czechoslovaks featured more and more prominently in British plans, they mutinied. As part of the same volte face which saw the Bolsheviks abandon plans for an Allied alliance, they were compelled to regularize the position of the Czechoslovak Legion. On 15 May 1918, to satisfy German objections to the existence of an Allied military force in neutral Russia, Stalin drew up plans to dissolve the Czechoslovak National Council and transfer its activities to his Commissariat of the Nationalities; at the same time Trotsky began moves he hoped would culminate in the disbanding of the Czechoslovak Legion, for after the Central Committee decision of 13 May 1918 Trotsky performed an about-turn, and instead of wanting to work with the Czechoslovak Legion, was thereafter only interested in seizing its arms and equipment. However, disbanding the legion meant disarming it, something that would not be easy given the poor fighting capacity of the Red Army. Trotsky’s task was made immeasurably easier by the behaviour of the Czechoslovak Legion itself.⁵

In the final Allied plan for the future of the Czechoslovak Legion, its second division, then stationed in trains to the east of Omsk, was to continue its eastward journey to Vladivostok and France; but the first division, the bulk of which was scattered along the railway system from Penza to Chelyabinsk, was to proceed to Omsk, and thence, performing a U-turn, west to Vologda and north to Archangel. On 15 May 1918, having concluded talks with the French ambassador Noulens which began on 7 May 1918, the Czechoslovak National Council instructed its army command to divide the legion as agreed with the Allies; the legion did not obey. The idea of splitting the legion was far from popular among the rank and file and on 18 May 1918 delegates from the seventy trains spread the length of the railway lines from Penza to Vladivostok began to assemble in Chelyabinsk to hold a long planned congress of the legion; the main topic to be discussed was the move to Archangel. The first division was determined not to go; its delegates arrived in Chelyabinsk earlier than the others and voted on 15 May 1918 not to obey the new order. On the 18th a leading member of the Czechoslovak National Council, Bogdan Pavlu, warned the French liaison officer Verge of the growing unrest, but despite appeals from Verge, the first division persuaded an informal delegate session held the same day to endorse its stance. Ignoring this pent-up emotion, Verge was informed by Noulens later on the 18th that the move to Archangel had to begin at once, so on 21 May 1918 train commanders were instructed to issue orders for the trains to start moving on the following day. When the legion congress opened its formal sessions on 21–23 May 1918 it mutinied and resolved not to go to Archangel, but to leave Russia via Vladivostok as originally planned, forcing its passage there if necessary. By mutinying, the congress also rejected the right of the Moscow-based Czechoslovak National Council to control its affairs. Despite more pleas from Verge, the rank and file congress delegates refused to believe that the Allies had sponsored what to them appeared the suicidal plan of dividing the legion and sending the entire first division into a trap.⁶

This rebellion against the Czechoslovak National Council was perfectly understandable, since Stalin’s announcement of 15 May 1918 outlining plans to incorporate the council within the Commissariat of Nationalities was followed up by a further broadside from Trotsky. On 21 May 1918 he made skilful use of an incident which had taken place in Chelyabinsk between 14–17 May 1918, but about which he had only been informed on 20 May 1918. After a fight between some Czechoslovak legionaries and a Hungarian prisoner of war, the Chelyabinsk soviet had imprisoned a number of the Czechoslovaks involved in the fracas; the Czechoslovaks had then forced the soviet to set their men free. This high-handed action gave Trotsky the excuse to demand the disarming of the legion, and when the Czechoslovak National Council refused he promptly arrested the council leadership in Moscow and forced them to order the legion’s disarmament. When two days later the legion congress decided to ignore all orders from the Czechoslovak National Council, they did so on the grounds that, since the threat to incorporate it in the Commissariat of Nationalities, it was no longer the independent voice of the Czechoslovaks. The order to move to Archangel and the order to disarm both seemed part and parcel of the same attempt to emasculate the legion, a policy being forced on the leadership after its arrest. The legion’s refusal to disarm gave Trotsky the excuse to demand that the legion be disarmed by force, which he did on 23 May 1918.

This mutiny against the Allies prompted a strange coalition of interests between Trotsky, who wanted to see the Czechoslovaks disarmed before they could be disbanded, and the Allies, who wanted them in Archangel at any cost, for in Archangel they could always be re-armed even if they were disarmed en route; both Trotsky and the Allies wanted the Czechoslovak mutiny ended. The Allies, desperate to get the Czechoslovaks to Archangel, were more than willing to help Trotsky reach a peaceful solution. On 23 May 1918 a French liaison officer Major Guinet arrived in Omsk where the legion’s military command was based. In talks held on 24 May 1918 he stressed that it was Marshal Foch himself who had endorsed the move to Archangel, and orders were sent to Chelyabinsk condemning the mutiny and calling on the legion to co-operate with the Bolsheviks in their transfer to Archangel; the congress was told to halt all further discussion until Guinet arrived. But the damage had already been done. Czechoslovak trains were already starting their journey eastward from Chelyabinsk to Omsk, and on the same day, 25 May 1918, as a Czechoslovak National Council delegation set off from Omsk to Chelyabinsk to try and reassert its authority over the legion, the first trains from Chelyabinsk were approaching Omsk. Implementing Trotsky’s order that they be forcibly disarmed, the Red Army attempted to intercept those trains at Marianovka halt; this incident led to a bloody clash in which the Czechoslovaks gained the upper hand over the Bolsheviks.

Over the next three days large sections of the Trans-Siberian Railway east of Omsk were seized by the Czechoslovaks, with only Irkutsk responding to Verge’s pleas for talks; almost overnight Soviet control over much of Siberia was lost. In Omsk itself Guinet and the Bolsheviks tried to persuade the Czechoslovaks that the fighting at Marianovka had been a misunderstanding, but with little success. To the west of Omsk the Czechoslovak action was less dramatic, since the soviets of Penza, Syzran and Chelyabinsk at first continued to co-operate with the Czechoslovaks, but when that co-operation wavered they too were overthrown; thus on 27 May 1918 Chelyabinsk was seized by the Czechoslovaks and on 29 May 1918 the tail-end of the Czechoslovak convoy seized control of Penza before heading further east. By the end of May 1918 it seemed increasingly unlikely that any Czechoslovak forces would rendezvous with Poole in Archangel. As he sailed into Murmansk on 24 May 1918 the strategic assumptions on which his mission had been based had both disappeared: there was no sympathetic Bolshevik government, and no Czechoslovak Legion.⁷

The Anti-Bolshevik Underground

When General Finlayson sailed to join Poole in Murmansk, his reassessment of the mission’s purpose included the hope that the arrival of their mission would be ‘the signal for those elements among the Russians who are ready to throw in their lot with the Allies rather than the Germans to rally to the Allied cause’.⁸ From the end of May and throughout June and July 1918 Allied representatives intensified their contacts with the anti-Bolshevik underground; not surprisingly given the experience of the Somerset Maugham mission, these contacts centred on the patriotic socialists. When at the end of May 1918 Lockhart performed an about-turn, dropped his Bolshevik contacts and began working with anti-Bolshevik forces, it was to Maugham’s Russians that he turned, to Chaikovskii and the politicians who had sought to overcome the Bolshevik threat in autumn 1917, and at the turn of the year to guarantee that the Constituent Assembly opened on time; but above all he turned to Savinkov, the politician in whom Maugham had placed so much faith.

Purely military contacts had long been established between the Allies and Savinkov. He was the most frenetic opponent of the Bolsheviks: as they stormed the Winter Palace on 25 October 1917, he was holding despairing talks with former Commander-in-Chief General Alekseev and desperately trying to rally cossack regiments to retake the palace. In the following week, although spurned by Kerensky, he tried to rally every conceivable opponent of Bolshevism, dashing towards Pskov in an unsuccessful effort to persuade the Polish Corps of Dowbor Musnicki to join General Krasnov’s cossacks at Pulkovo Heights. Once it was clear that the Bolshevik regime had consolidated its hold on power, Savinkov went to the Don in December 1917 and persuaded General Alekseev to include him on his Don Citizens Council; but the atmosphere on the Don was not conducive to close co-operation between Green patriotic socialists and White generals. After a failed assassination attempt on his life, Alekseev agreed that Savinkov would do better as the council’s representative within Soviet Russia; he duly returned to Petrograd in mid-January 1918, but failed to establish contact as hoped with other patriotic socialists like Plekhanov and Chaikovskii. Then, in the early spring, he was left stranded in Moscow as General Alekseev’s Volunteer Army retreated from the Don. Disillusioned with his experience in the south, Savinkov determined to build an underground organization inside Soviet Russia and held talks in Moscow on 2 and 5 March 1918 with the Czechoslovak leader Masaryk, who donated 200,000 roubles to Savinkov’s cause; Masaryk had just left Kiev after its fall to the Germans and was on his way to Vladivostok, America, and ultimately an independent Czechoslovakia.⁹

Between March and May 1918 Savinkov’s organization was essentially military rather than political, and during the period of Allied co-operation with the Bolsheviks was used by the Allies for intelligence gathering, both behind enemy lines in the Ukraine and among the former War Minister’s numerous sympathizers within the General Staff and the Supreme Military Council; one of those involved in this operation was the British military agent George Hill, at the very same time an honoured associate of Trotsky.¹⁰ The Allies were impressed with Savinkov’s use of partisan detachments, but wanted them to operate well behind the German line, not as at first happened, in its immediate vicinity. Savinkov’s ability to pass both this test and supply crucial intelligence information brought immediate rewards. By the end of April 1918 he was receiving regular support from the French totalling 500,000 roubles – enough to pay the salaries of key personnel – and he had at least four meetings with the French consul in Moscow and General Lavergne; his aide A. Dikgof Derental, a former French officer, met them more frequently.¹¹

It was only after the about-turn in Bolshevik–Allied relations in mid-May 1918 that Savinkov was drawn back into the political arena, and as he did so he felt closest to a group called the National Centre. Despite his cool reception among the White generals on the Don, Savinkov saw it as essential to keep contacts with liberal politicians open, and the National Centre, founded in May 1918 by leading former Kadets like N.I. Astrov seemed closest to Savinkov’s political stance. However, these liberal politicians were deeply split in their attitude to the Allies; many liberals, most notably the Kadet Party leader Milyukov, had abandoned all thought of contact with the Allies after the collapse of the White Volunteer Army on the Don and looked instead to the Germans to help overthrow the Bolsheviks. The most active of these pro-German liberals were grouped around the former Tsarist minister A.V. Krivoshein and included the Moscow industrialist S.N. Tretyakov. Their pro-German stance was shared by many monarchists with whom they began to co-operate.¹²

This split within the liberal camp between pro and anti-German groups meant that by far the most important underground political organization as far as the Allies were concerned was the Union for the Regeneration of Russia (URR), which sought to resuscitate the political alliance which had struggled to keep alive the Third Coalition Government during the days of the Preparliament, the same politicians on whom Somerset Maugham had placed such hope when the British had first considered intervention in Russia, the same politicians that Savinkov had once talked of welding into a ‘Centre Party’, between the Bolsheviks and the Kadets. In early March 1918 a so-called ‘intergroup council of Constituent Assembly deputies’ met in Moscow in a private flat. The sixty to seventy deputies who attended discussed the question of how the assembly could be reconvened and agreed that attempts should be made to re-establish a quorate session so that the assembly could resume its work; but many present felt that bickering among the party leaders had made the meeting quite futile. A coalition socialist government, the accepted goal of the socialist opponents of the Bolsheviks since October 1917, only made sense in the context of the two dominant socialist parties, the SRs and the Bolsheviks, coming to some sort of accommodation; the Bolsheviks’ determination to dissolve the Constituent Assembly and the SRs’ determination to reconvene it put a socialist coalition off the agenda: but what should be put in its place, a government formed by the SRs alone? The March 1918 meeting of Constituent Assembly deputies served to bring together the Popular Socialist deputies, the Kadet deputies and the SR deputies, who had always been to the right of the Central Committee, and these three groups began to discuss how a new political alliance could be forged.¹³

In the following weeks it was Chaikovskii’s Popular Socialists who took the initiative in holding talks with the central committees of the other opposition parties, and when no progress was made it was they who proposed bypassing the central committees in the search for wider unity by forming a new organization based on what they called the ‘personal principle’. Individual members of the opposition parties would form a union and bind themselves to work within their separate parties for the common goal; the parallel with the Union of Liberation set up prior to the Revolution of 1905 was frequently drawn. Thus the URR was founded in April 1918. Among those most actively involved were, for the Kadets, Astrov, of the National Centre, and L.A. Krol, a member of the Kadet Central Committee; for the SRs, Avksentiev, one time president of the Preparliament, Argunov, a patriotic SR whose name had featured in some of Kornilov’s fantasy governments, and Moiseenko, of the SR military commission; and for the Popular Socialists, their leader Chaikovskii. Its aim, also agreed in April, was twofold: to win back the territory ceded to Germany by forming an alliance with the Allies; and to establish a democratic state based initially around the restoration of local town and rural councils but, on liberation, around elections to a new Constituent Assembly. In the interim, central power would belong to a body they named ‘the directory’. The agreement to call a new Constituent Assembly, rather than reconvene the existing one, was hard for many SRs to accept, but for the sake of unity they did so. The most important member of the organization was Chaikovskii, who was able to raise considerable sums of money from the co-operative movement with which he had long been associated. The other central figure was General V.G. Boldyrev, one of its instigators and the only prominent military figure associated with it, other than the former Navy Minister in the Second Coalition Government in 1917, V.I. Lebedev.¹⁴

Although the URR established a military commission under General Boldyrev, its lack of a really effective military organization meant there was little choice but to co-ordinate activity with other groups, particularly the military organization of the SRs, which, like the party’s Constituent Assembly deputies, was on the right-wing of the party; it was headed by the URR member Moiseenko. He was keen to broaden this co-operation to include not only Boldyrev and the URR but Savinkov’s organization as well; but despite talks nothing came of the move, largely as a result of a personality clash between Savinkov and Boldyrev.¹⁵ But although Savinkov retained his link with the liberal National Centre, differences between it and the URR should not be overplayed. Both sides informed each other of their activities and joint meetings were held; indeed an agreement was made according to which the results of all talks with Allied representatives would be shared by both organizations. When Sorokin, formerly of the right-wing SR paper Volya naroda and a leading player in the moves to prepare for the Constituent Assembly, arrived in Moscow on 4 May 1918 as an enthusiastic recruit to the URR, he noted how the URR and Savinkov’s organization were ready to ‘work zealously together’ with all socialists willing to sink doctrinaire differences for the greater good. This greater good found its first public expression in mid-May 1918 when Sorokin published the first and only legal edition of the paper Regeneration. Immediately banned by the Bolsheviks, several illegal editions appeared before the end of May 1918 when Sorokin and most of the URR leaders fled from Moscow.¹⁶

When on 13 May 1918 the Bolshevik government came down firmly in favour of a pro-German policy, the URR began to operate in earnest. During the last fortnight in May 1918 the Mensheviks, SRs and Kadets all held party conferences which rejected the Brest-Litovsk Treaty, and which in the case of the SRs called for the overthrow of the Bolsheviks; on 14 May 1918 the SRs and Mensheviks made similar statements at a joint session of the Soviet Executive and Moscow Soviet.¹⁷ Then on 18 May 1918 the URR called a second ‘inter-group conference of Constituent Assembly deputies’, attended by over 400 people, which voted in favour of a resolution declining to recognize the validity of the Brest-Litovsk Treaty and insisting that a state of war with the Central Powers continued to be in force; to make this declaration real, the resolution also called for Allied intervention.¹⁸ Avksentiev, a leading member of the URR and former president of the Preparliament, sought an immediate meeting with the French ambassador Noulens, who deputed the rendezvous to his French consul while assuring the URR of Allied support. At the same time Kerensky, closely involved in all these discussions despite several months living ‘underground’ in Moscow, contacted Lockhart to arrange an escape route via Archangel for talks with Lloyd George and the French Prime Minister Clemenceau. Kerensky’s message when he arrived in London was that he represented an alliance of Mensheviks, SRs, Popular Socialists and liberals - in other words the URR - who wanted immediate Allied intervention to create a rallying point for the masses who were deeply hostile to both Germany and, as the success of the Petrograd Assembly of Factory Delegates and provincial soviet elections showed, increasingly hostile to the Bolsheviks. The URR called for Allied intervention to establish a new anti-German front on the Volga.¹⁹

The Allies and the Underground

Avksentiev’s initiative led to the first formal contact between the Allies and the anti-Bolshevik underground early in June 1918, at a meeting held in the Moscow flat of Prince E.N. Trubetskoi, who had in March 1918 introduced Masaryk to Savinkov. The meeting was the occasion for the final split between the pro-Allied and the pro-German elements among liberal members of the National Centre. All shades of opinion were present, from rightists like Krivoshein, to centrists like Struve and Astrov, and, of course, the URR. The French consul outlined a proposal, allegedly sent from V.A. Maklakov the Russian ambassador in Paris, calling for the formation of a new Eastern Front to be formed from the joint forces of the Russian opposition, the Czechoslovaks and the Japanese. It was mention of the Japanese which caused the biggest problem. As Kerensky was to inform Lloyd George on 24 June 1918, the URR consented to Japanese involvement so long as they formed part of a broader Allied force;²⁰ the pro-German liberals, however, were still opposed. Their military advisor insisted that it would take six to eight months for the Japanese to arrive, so the whole scheme for a renewed Eastern Front was pointless; for the URR General Boldyrev argued that Japanese troops could arrive on the Volga very quickly indeed.²¹

Of course, as things turned out, no Japanese ever were involved in this stage of the intervention, but it provided the pro-German liberals with a patriotic reason to leave the meeting. Henceforth they adopted the title ‘Right Centre’ and most of them, like their leader Milyukov, left at once for the more comfortable pro-German atmosphere of the Ukraine. The URR and the pro-Allied section of the liberal National Centre immediately began to lay their plans, encouraged by the French consul’s confident statement that Allied intervention would begin before the end of June. The URR’s efforts were to be concentrated on the Volga; although National Centre liberals were encouraged to make contact with Alekseev’s forces in the distant south, this was a secondary thrust of the operation and funded accordingly.²² By the end of May 1918 the URR’s top military figures, the former Navy Minister Lebedev, the head of the SRs’ military organization Moiseenko and General Boldyrev, had drafted plans identical to those being developed by the Allies: there would be insurrections in the Volga region accompanied by Allied landings in Archangel to link up with Vologda, where control of the Trans-Siberian railway could bring further long-term support. Optimistically the URR talked of 25,000 Allied troops landing in support.²³

True to its programme, the URR planned to establish a new interim administration in the form of a three-member directory comprising Astrov, Boldyrev, and Chaikovskii, and all three men were instructed to head towards the Volga. On his way there, however, Chaikovskii passed through Vologda and there re-established contact with two long-term associates on the right-wing of the SR Party, S.S. Maslov and Dedusenko. Maslov was the SR Constituent Assembly member for Vologda and Dedusenko the same for Archangel, and both had been active together with Chaikovskii in preparations for the opening of the Constituent Assembly in 1918; Maslov had been involved in plans for its military protection. By June 1918 both were leading figures in the Vologda branch of the URR and soon became key figures in the attempt by the Allies to co-ordinate a planned Allied landing in Archangel with the activities of the URR. Maslov in particular, with his extensive contacts with the local co-operatives and peasants’ organizations, was at the centre of the Archangel operation, and it was he who persuaded Chaikovskii that, rather than continue his journey eastward to the Volga, he should instead put himself at the head of the Archangel operation. After talks with E.K. Breshko-Breshkovskaya, the Grandmother of the Russian Revolution, and by then also a leading figure in the URR, Chaikovskii agreed; after all, as the Allies marched south from Archangel, seized Vologda and liberated the Volga, he would be at the head of a movement which would establish a new all-Russian government.²⁴

Since the URR had no developed military organization of its own in the north, it was encouraged by the Allies to make use of the services of G.E. Chaplin, a naval captain who spoke fluent English, having served on a British submarine during the first year of the war and who had come to the attention of the naval attaché and intelligence officer in the British embassy Captain F.N.A. Cromie. Early in May 1918 Cromie commissioned Chaplin to travel to Murmansk where he would be attached to General Poole, but before he had completed this mission, Poole had arrived in Murmansk and sent an emissary, Colonel McGrath, to Petrograd for talks with Cromie and Lockhart, talks which were held at the beginning of June 1918. Cromie, ‘the spirit behind the whole undertaking’, put forward Chaplin as the man who could organize a URR insurrection in Archangel, and at once Chaplin was on his way to Vologda, operating under the name of Thomson with a British passport and posing as a member of the British military mission. After two weeks in Vologda he set off for Archangel in mid-June.²⁵

Chaikovskii left Vologda for Archangel slightly later than Chaplin, on the night of 30 June. He was to travel by steamer and rendezvous en route with Sorokin. Sorokin, also an SR Constituent Assembly deputy for Vologda, was a native of Velikii Ustyug, and had been sent by the URR from Vologda to the Ustyug-Kotlas region. This was an area of immense strategic importance. If the attack on Vologda failed, it offered a second route to the Trans-Siberian, up the Dvina to Kotlas by boat and thence by train to Vyatka and the Trans-Siberian. Sorokin’s task was to plan action timed to coincide with the Allies’ disembarkation at Archangel and subsequent advance up the Dvina. By the middle of June everything was in place, and Sorokin was instructed to join Chaikovskii at Kotlas as his steamer sailed down the Dvina towards Archangel. The two travelled on together, but there was a breakdown in the URR’s communication network and, as they neared Archangel, the necessary papers were only provided for Chaikovskii. Sorokin was forced to await further instructions.²⁶

When these came the news was bad indeed. Sorokin was informed that the Allied landing in Archangel had been delayed and he should return to Ustyug. The news of the delay came with the British consul Francis Lindley. He had left England a month after Poole and with diplomatic immunity wasted no time in travelling on from Poole’s base in Murmansk to Archangel, where he arrived on 28 June 1918 accompanied by Poole’s associate Admiral Kemp. It was Kemp who broke the news to Chaplin of the delay, adding that even when Poole did land Chaplin could expect no military support from Poole, other than his arrival at the moment of liberation; with the few forces at his disposal, Poole insisted the town would have to be taken by Russian patriots before he arrived. News of the delay was communicated to Maslov and Dedusenko in Vologda on 5 July 1918 when they were contacted by the British agent Lieutenant Maclaren who headed what remained of Maugham’s network in Russia.²⁷

The Fall of Samara

Poole decided to postpone his landing because he had finally become convinced that there was absolutely no chance of support from the Czechoslovak Legion. Ironically he took this decision precisely at the moment when French military representatives had succeeded in reasserting some authority over their mutinous Czechoslovak allies, persuading them if not to move towards Archangel then at least to stay on the Volga rather than hurrying east across Siberia.

The French ambassador Noulens had long considered it worth exploring the possibilities offered by using the Czechoslovaks on the Volga rather than transferring them to Archangel. On 1 May 1918 he had met some anti-Bolsheviks from the Volga town of Saratov who had suggested to him that the Czechoslovaks could offer decisive help in an anti-Bolshevik rising. Noulens noted in his next report to Paris that this was worth considering if the Archangel venture failed to materialize; he repeated the point on 9 May 1918. When the Bolsheviks turned against the Allies and the Czechoslovak Legion rebelled, Noulens was quick to try to link their rebellion to the anti-Bolshevik movement, rather than simply allowing them to fight their way to Vladivostok; if they would not go to Archangel, at least they should be put to some use. Thus for a while Noulens and the French military were following different policies: until the end of May 1918 Lavergne was still working with Trotsky trying to persuade a disarmed Czechoslovak Legion to regroup in Archangel; but Noulens’ representatives were already trying to give the Czechoslovak revolt a clearer political direction.²⁸

What persuaded the Czechoslovak Legion to become involved in Russia’s Red versus Green civil war was not the impact of Marshall Foch’s orders, but the activities of a small group of SRs who persuaded Colonel Stanislaus Cecek of the Czechoslovak Legion to help them liberate the Volga town of Samara. P.D. Klimushkin, I.M. Brushvit and B.K. Fortunatov, all of them SR deputies to the Constituent Assembly for Samara, had been active in the Samara region since the spring of 1918, busy organizing a peasant congress as a focal point for anti-Bolshevik activity and focusing their attention on fostering growing peasant unrest into an insurrection, anticipated for the autumn. Then, in the middle of May 1918, came the news of the Bolsheviks’ economic alliance with Germany and the SR Party Conference with its call for the immediate resumption of the war with Germany and the overthrow of the illegitimate Bolshevik regime; coincidentally news came from another SR N.A. Galkin, a Central Committee representative who had recently travelled from Moscow to Samara past the stationary Czechoslovak trains, that in Penza the Czechoslovaks were in angry mood.²⁹

On approximately 1 June 1918 Brushvit went to Penza to contact the Czechoslovak commander, while Fortunatov set about mobilizing the SR’s own militia. Klimushkin meanwhile took on the task of planning the new administration to be established in Samara when the Bolsheviks had gone; it would be based on the deputies to the Constituent Assembly and local government councils. Klimushkin also planned a General Staff for the insurrectionary army which would include Fortunatov himself and Galkin. The depressing thing for Klimushkin was the refusal of the Mensheviks and Kadets in Samara to associate themselves with the proposed insurrection, but undeterred, Klimushkin planned everything to the smallest detail, making contact with local government representatives, local military units and even the local treasury.³⁰

Brushvit reached Colonel Cecek as his train was moving from Penza towards Samara. He was not at first made welcome: a delegation from a group of local liberal politicians had already approached Cecek and offered first two million roubles and then three million roubles if the Czechoslovaks would stay behind in Penza; Cecek had refused to be ‘bought’ in this way, and would have dismissed Brushvit’s approach out of hand if Brushvit had not been a Latvian, and therefore of use in talks if, as was quite likely, the Bolsheviks sent Latvian troops to intercept the Czechoslovaks. Although Brushvit explained the SR view that the Czechoslovaks would never be able to leave the country peacefully and should therefore co-operate with anti-Bolshevik forces like the SRs, Cecek was not convinced. Not easily put off, Brushvit promised to help the Czechoslovaks get through Samara, and sent word to his associates to start preparations for the uprising; but it was only when Brushvit and the Czechoslovaks had already reached Syzran – where the railway crossed the Volga about fifty miles short of Samara itself – and SR emissaries had presented Cecek with detailed plans of the city’s defences and Galkin’s views on how the city could best be taken, that Cecek’s attitude began to soften. Yet only after a 600-strong SR peasant militia, led by Fortunatov, had staged an insurrection in the workers’ suburb of Ivashchenkovo, stormed the Timashevskii factory and won control of the bridge over the river Samara, did Cecek agree that the Czechoslovaks would help the SRs take Samara.³¹

As Brushvit pleaded with the reluctant Colonel Cecek and the other preparations continued, the French agent Captain Bordes became actively involved in the plot to take Samara. In his railway carriage he organized a meeting between a leading SR Bogolyubov, the French consul in Samara Jannot, and one of the leading officials of the Czechoslovak National Council Dr Fischer; he urged them to co-operate in overthrowing the Bolsheviks in Samara. At a subsequent meeting Galkin and Jannot met two Czechoslovak officers who acknowledged that, although they planned only to pass through Samara, if the Bolsheviks tried to stop them there would be a fight and this would inevitably create a suitable climate for anti-Bolshevik action. On the eve of the insurrection Bogolyubov joined Galkin’s insurrectionary military staff. In this way the French did not instigate the Czechoslovak action, but they did help facilitate it. Samara fell to the SRs and Czechoslovaks on 8 June 1918; the insurgents were greatly strengthened when two of the Red Army commanders who had been responsible for defending the town were persuaded to change sides; thus General Kappel and General Notbek became two of the most active commanders of the SRs’ newly established People’s Army.³²

The key commander of the People’s Army was the former Navy Minister in the Second Coalition Government V.I. Lebedev. A leading figure in the URR and close collaborator of Sorokin, he had been sent by the URR to the Volga area at the end of May 1918 to try and win the Ural cossacks to its cause. His journey took him to Samara, where he arrived on 14 June 1918 and, caught up in the town’s liberation, he immediately changed his plans. At once he was put in charge of leading the People’s Army in taking Syzran, through which the Czechoslovaks had passed a week or so earlier without overthrowing the Bolshevik administration; control of the town’s bridge over the Volga was essential if the SR’s insurrection was to succeed. Lebedev arrived on 22 June 1918 and soon took the town, but heavy fighting forced him to evacuate it temporarily on 7 July 1918, before reoccupying it on the 10th. Here he was informed by the French officer Major Guinet that the Allies were soon to land in Archangel, and he should move north as quickly as possible to take Simbirsk and Kazan. Guinet’s order reflected the fact that the French were at last beginning to exert some sort of control over the Czechoslovaks.³³

Colonel Cecek had initially agreed with Brushvit and the SRs that he would help them establish themselves in Samara for a fortnight or so and then move on. This was in line with the instructions still being sent by the Czechoslovak leaders in Vladivostok that the Czechoslovak Legion should keep out of politics and concentrate on travelling east. However, not all Czechoslovak commanders took that view. Making a virtue out of a necessity given the events in Samara, the commander of Czechoslovak forces west of Novonikolaevsk instructed his subordinates after 15 June 1918 that ‘involvement in politics’ was no longer excluded. This change of heart was largely due to the pleadings of the French liaison officer Arsene Verge, who believed that fate had offered the Czechoslovaks a unique opportunity to re-open the Eastern Front by turning round, leaving Siberia and returning to the Volga. On 23 June 1918 he was given permission by the chief French military representative in Russia, General Lavergne, to make the hazardous journey east to Vladivostok – partly by boat because the Trans-Siberian railway would not be fully under Czechoslovak control until 31 August 1918 - to convince the Czechoslovak leadership there that help was needed to restore the Eastern Front.³⁴

Thus when the time came for Colonel Cecek to leave Samara, he was told by the French consul on 22 June 1918 that the Czechoslovak forces should abandon all thoughts of leaving Russia and prepare to open an Eastern Front on the Volga by fortifying all the positions currently held; Major Guinet had told the Czechoslovaks in Chelyabinsk a day earlier that while their uprising had been premature, it coincided with Allied policy. These orders were gradually confirmed. When, at the end of June 1918, Colonel Cecek did start to move east – as he approached Ufa the local Red Army commander but clandestine SR Party member Colonel Makhin opened the town to him – he found himself confronted on 6 July 1918 by Czechoslovak forces coming towards him down the railway line to stabilize the new Eastern Front; on 7 July 1918 he received the first official order from the Czechoslovak Chief of Staff that the Czechoslovaks were to defend the Volga front ‘until the arrival of the Allies’. On 28 June 1918 Lockhart had been sent the same message by London: he should now ‘take every possible step to encourage the Czechoslovaks’; they should not surrender their arms nor abandon their positions on the Volga ‘the key of the Russian position’.³⁵

But few of these encouraging developments concerning the Czechoslovaks were known to Poole in distant Murmansk. Although it soon became known that the Czechoslovak Legion had rebelled against the Bolsheviks, their future plans remained obscure; what if anything would come of their dealings with the French and the SRs was even less certain. Poole faced endless contradictory reports. On 29 May 1918 he ‘definitely heard from Moscow that there was no hope of getting the Czechoslovaks as they were fighting the Bolsheviks at Penza’; it was part of Colonel McGrath’s mission to Petrograd to find out exactly where the Czechoslovaks were. Lockhart tried to give McGrath the latest picture and his subsequent report to London on 5 June 1918 was to the effect that the Czechoslovaks, in their current mood, would hear nothing of going to Archangel and simply wanted to leave Russia as soon as possible.³⁶

However, the situation was constantly changing and poor communications between Moscow and Murmansk made things even worse. The possible arrival of at least some Czechoslovaks was still being discussed by Poole for another fortnight, and as late as 14 June 1918 both Lockhart and Noulens were still getting requests from him to facilitate the transfer of the Czechoslovaks to Archangel. It was only on 20 June 1918 that Poole was finally informed by Lockhart, via London, that the chances of the Czechoslovaks arriving in Archangel were ‘slender to a degree’.³⁷ Thus it was only a month after his arrival in Murmansk that Poole finally had to face up to the absence of the Czechoslovaks. This realization coincided with the arrival in Murmansk of the bulk of Poole’s mission led by Finlayson and accompanied by the consul Francis Lindley. On 24 June 1918 Lindley spelt out to London the strategic implications of the new situation brought about by the ‘deplorable failure’ of the Czechoslovaks to come north;³⁸ instead of the Czechoslovaks being organized by the British to secure the Archangel railway, the British would now have to secure the railway as far as Vologda in order to give support to the Czechoslovaks on the Volga. This merely echoed what Lockhart had reported on 12 June 1918: the Poole plan would not work without the Czechoslovaks and its resuscitation required a massive landing of Allied troops.³⁹

The absence of the Czechoslovaks convinced Poole there was no choice but to wait for reinforcements and he informed London of his decision on 27 June 1918. On 29 June 1918 Lord Geddes, the First Lord of the Admiralty visiting Poole on a private mission, sent a memorandum to Lloyd George outlining his perceptions of the situation. He suggested that if Poole were sent 5,000 additional men he could descend to Vologda, attracting anything up to a 100,000 irregulars, and once Vologda had been taken, the 20–25,000 Czechoslovaks in Siberia could be contacted; it was a gamble, he said, but Poole believed ‘if you are going to gamble at all, you should stake boldly’. Unconvinced that he would get his 5,000 men, he quietly resolved on 11 July 1918 that he could go when French reinforcements arrived ‘early in August with about fifteen hundred men; with five hundred of which I could hold the town and district and push on a thousand to Vologda’. But unfortunately for the Allies’ ‘great enterprise’ word of the postponed landings had not reached Savinkov.⁴⁰

Insurrection in Yaroslavl and Moscow

Control of Yaroslavl and the nearby towns of Rybinsk, Murom and Kostroma was essential to the Allies’ plan. It would establish a direct rail link from Archangel via Vologda to the freely navigable Volga. Success there was absolutely essential to the whole mission, and no doubt for that reason the insurrection in Yaroslavl was entrusted to Savinkov, the man in whom the Allies had most trust.

Although Savinkov’s organization had been weakened by arrests at the end of May, it had survived intact and by June 1918 detailed planning had begun. In principle the decision for an insurrection was taken on 20 June 1918, and its chief planner A.P. Perkhurov arrived in the area at the end of the month, with Savinkov arriving at the beginning of July. Savinkov won working-class support for the action after talks with the local Mensheviks; a complex formula was agreed whereby 150 workers would arrive after ninety minutes fighting, a further 300 after four hours fighting and a final 300 if fighting continued until the evening. However, things were already beginning to go wrong. The insurgents learnt that the Bolsheviks were aware of their plans, and that reinforcements had arrived: some wanted to call everything off, but this was overruled, and the insurrection went ahead, despite the fact that only about 100 of the anticipated 300 volunteers assembled to launch the attack.

Initially things went roughly according to plan. Not as many workers’ groups supported the insurgents as had been anticipated, but the population at large was enthusiastic, with a flood of volunteers in the early days. By the fifth day of fighting, however, it was clear the adventure was doomed; by day six only 700 fighters were still in the field; on 20 July 1918 they were forced to ask for a cease-fire and then they surrendered on the 21st.⁴¹ The planned insurrections elsewhere also failed; only in Rybinsk was there substantial fighting, but Savinkov’s men there had expected the operation in Yaroslavl to begin a day later, and, forced to delay their action until the planned starting date, lost the element of surprise. As a result they failed to capture any of the large artillery depots in the town, control of which would have given the insurgents enormously increased fire power.⁴²

Savinkov’s decision to act when he did later caused great controversy, since he acted after the Archangel landing had already been called off. Antagonism between his forces and the URR was one possible explanation: tension certainly existed between Savinkov’s organization and the URR; in his memoirs the URR’s military leader General Boldyrev felt that relations between the URR and the liberal National Centre steadily worsened during June, and he held Savinkov partly responsible for this since he had fallen too much under the influence of the National Centre. Certainly Savinkov was very keen to get the full endorsement of the National Centre for his action, and there was more than mere symbolism in his decision to call his Yaroslavl army the Volunteer Northern Army, echoing the Volunteer Army of General Alekseev on the Don rather than the People’s Army formed by URR activists on the Volga. Yet, once Savinkov had escaped to the Volga in August 1918, he cheerfully merged his forces with the People’s Army, and before the Yaroslavl insurrection began he sent a steady stream of his supporters to Kazan and the Volga to be put at the disposal of the URR. Savinkov’s decision to launch a ‘premature’ insurrection was not a result of any self-willed refusal to co-ordinate plans with the URR, but the simple fact that Poole’s decision to postpone the Archangel landings reached him too late.⁴³

When the French ambassador Noulens had arranged for his consul to inform the opposition groups early in June that the Allies would intervene by the end of the month, he was simply reflecting Poole’s original plan. This was that as soon as Poole’s mission was fully assembled, it would leave Murmansk and disembark in Archangel, link up with the Czechoslovaks, and move south towards Vologda. The full mission was duly assembled on time by 23 June 1918: by then, however, the true state of affairs concerning the Czechoslovaks had become clear and Poole decided to await French reinforcements to take the place of the missing Czechoslovaks; but news of this only reached Vologda via the British consul Lindley, his escort Admiral Kemp and the secret agent Maclaren on 5 July 1918. Savinkov began his action on the 4th. Perhaps if he had acted on the 5th, as the Rybinsk insurgents had anticipated, he would have received a message cancelling the operation, but, with the Bolsheviks aware that something was afoot, his decision to act one day early, on the 4th, was dictated by military necessity. Although Savinkov was in regular communication with Lockhart, Lockhart’s links with Poole were always poor: the two never established direct communications and messages had to go via London; at one point Lockhart received no messages from London for a fortnight. Thus a message sent on 27 June 1918 from Poole via London to Lockhart for Savinkov would hardly have reached its destination before 4 July 1918, especially once Savinkov had left Moscow for Yaroslavl.⁴⁴

Savinkov’s plans had been drawn up in close consultation with both Noulens and Lockhart. When the idea of an insurrection had first been mooted, Savinkov had proposed a putsch in Moscow carried out by 5,000 of his supporters. It had been the French who proposed abandoning this scheme: Lavergne explained to Savinkov how Noulens anticipated the formation of a new Eastern Front on the Volga, linked to an Allied landing at Archangel; if the insurgents could seize the towns on the upper Volga, a secure base could be made for supplying the Volga from the north. As one of Savinkov’s close advisors noted, the whole planning of the Yaroslavl uprising was made on assumptions derived from the French. Savinkov always maintained that he had been told by the French that the landings at Archangel would take place in the first week of July, and Perkhurov later recalled being told by Savinkov that he would only have to hold the town for four days before the Allied landings began.⁴⁵ The British too inadvertently helped supply misleading information. Thus on 26 May 1918 Lockhart asked London for confirmation of rumours that the French had agreed intervention would start on 25 June 1918, the approximate date of Finlayson’s rendezvous with Poole in Murmansk; thereafter he acted as if confirmation had been received. If on 2 June 1918 he was still uncertain about the date of the landing and could urge London to commence operations within the next ten days, after his meeting on 5 or 6 June 1918 with Poole’s agent McGrath in Petrograd he must have been informed that the mission would reach its full complement within three weeks, again confirming the rumour of a landing on or around 25 June 1918.⁴⁶

Once Lindley had reached Vologda and the Murmansk and Moscow wings of the operation were brought together, the British consul immediately realized the full import of Savinkov’s doomed venture. He urged immediate action in the following telegram to London sent on 7 July 1918:

General Poole does not expect to occupy Archangel until first week of August. This delay is too long [since] civil war is breaking out in Russia … Profoundly convinced of this necessity heads of Allied missions at Vologda desire their respective governments to expedite all steps calculated to hasten despatch of Allied forces to Archangel … When decision was taken by Poole to postpone military operations until arrival of larger force I entirely agreed. Since then events have precipitated themselves and I now think that if the General can scrape together one thousand men and can expect reinforcements at an early date he should occupy Archangel at once … now that the attention of Bolshevists is concentrated at Moscow and Yaroslavl …⁴⁷

Poole, however, made no move, even though Lockhart believed as late as 18 July 1918 that a landing was imminent, late, of course, but still in time to prevent Savinkov’s surrender.⁴⁸

Tragically for the ‘great enterprise’ of bringing Allied support to the patriotic socialist or Green cause, the Allies were unable to benefit from Savinkov’s insurrection in Yaroslavl; but they were able to benefit considerably from events in Moscow. On 6 July 1918 the German ambassador Mirbach was assassinated by the Left SRs as part of a co-ordinated effort to restart the war with Germany; the assassination prompted a mutiny on the Volga by the Left SR General Muraviev. Muraviev, after falling out of favour with the Bolshevik leadership since his campaign in the Ukraine, had recently been appointed to head the Red Army’s offensive against the Czechoslovaks. For Lenin his reputation as a military commander counted for more than his support for the Left SRs.

Up until the very last minute the Left SRs had been confident that, as the voice of Russia’s peasant masses, they would achieve a majority when the Fifth Congress of Soviets assembled in Moscow on 6 July 1918, a majority which would enable them to deprive Lenin of power and launch a revolutionary war against Germany. Between April and the end of June 1918 membership of their party had almost doubled, from 60,000 to 100,000, and to prevent them securing a majority at the congress Lenin was forced to rely on dubious procedures; he allowed so-called committees of poor peasants to be represented at the congress. Thus as late as 3 July 1918 returns suggested a majority for the Left SRs, but a Congress of Committees of Poor Peasants held in Petrograd the same day ‘redressed the balance in favour of the Bolsheviks’, to quote the Guardian’s Philips-Price, by deciding it had the right to represent all those districts where local soviets had not been ‘cleansed of kulak elements and had not delivered the amount of food laid down in the requisitioning lists of the Committees of Poor Peasants’. This blatant gerrymandering ensured a Bolshevik majority at the Fifth Congress of Soviets.⁴⁹

Deprived of their democratic majority, the Left SRs resorted to terror and assassinated the German ambassador Mirbach, hoping this would force a renewal of the war. At the same time Left SR military units seized the telegraph building to proclaim to the country that they had secured a majority at the congress and that the war was being resumed. It was with some difficulty that the Bolsheviks were able to restore order in the capital, and those who had seized the telegraph building clearly thought that their broadcast would prompt sympathetic action in the country at large, and in particular from General Muraviev.⁵⁰ Sympathetic action by the Left SRs on the Volga could indeed be expected. During the fighting to take Syrzan, the People’s Army commander Lebedev had noted that the Left SR press was sympathetic to the Czechoslovaks and very critical of Trotsky’s actions towards them. Similarly in Simbirsk relations between the Bolsheviks and the Left SRs in the local soviet were near breaking-point; the Left SRs had a majority on the local soviet and no doubt made use of this when assembling in the town after 8 July 1918 several units of the party’s armed militia, ready in case an insurrection broke out; in response the Bolsheviks had arrested the Left SR leader Klim Ivanov. Sympathetic action by General Muraviev was more difficult to predict, however, since in the aftermath of Mirbach’s assassination he had announced he was leaving the party.⁵¹

Muraviev had been arrested by the Bolshevik government in April 1918 for refusing to take up an appointment offered him and after allegations that he had misused his power. However, pressure from the military had resulted in his release, and on 13 June 1918 he was appointed to overall command of the Czechoslovak Front. The appointment was controversial, but supported by Lenin who himself later overruled any suggestion that he should be dismissed in the light of the Left SRs’ assassination of Mirbach; but it was an odd decision to place at the head of the army fighting the Czechoslovaks the man who in February 1918 had proposed joining them in a joint struggle against Germany. On 10 July 1918 Muraviev abandoned the Red Army command in Kazan and sailed with 1,000 men to Simbirsk where he informed the local Left SRs that the party should seize power and establish a ‘Volga Soviet Republic’. The new government would immediately negotiate with the Czechoslovaks and declare war on Germany, and to this end Muraviev sent a telegram from Simbirsk to the German embassy announcing the war was being renewed. At the same time he telegraphed the Czechoslovaks, urging them not to leave Russia but to resume the struggle against the Germans.⁵² Conceivably he acted with the knowledge of the French, since the French agent Bordes arrived in Kazan on 8 July 1918 and certainly witnessed events. Bordes’s role was possibly greater than this, since both Bordes and Muraviev had served with Antonov-Ovseenko in the Ukraine, both had long-standing associations with the Czechoslovaks, and, while in Odessa, Muraviev had already been in contact with the French military agent Colonel Arquier.⁵³

Muraviev’s rebellion lasted no more than a day: the Bolsheviks in Simbirsk persuaded him to attend a special meeting of the soviet to explain his actions and gunned him down as he entered the building; however, the impact of the rebellion on the Czechoslovak front was dramatic. The Red Army was soon in disarray and the People’s Army, supported by the Czechoslovaks, could accelerate their progress up the Volga towards Kazan. A new rendezvous with the Allies in the Vologda-Vyatka area did not seem so impossible after all. The twin disasters of the Czechoslovak mutiny and the Yaroslavl insurrection could perhaps still be overcome and the Allies’ ‘great enterprise’ in support of Russia’s Green patriotic socialists put back on course.

To Vologda and Vyatka?

The People’s Army took Simbirsk on 22 July 1918. Bordes was there at once, arriving with clear orders from Lavergne concerning the future of the Allied enterprise. Kazan should be captured at once, since the Allies were about to land at Archangel and seize both Vologda and Vyatka. Lebedev’s forces were to move north, take Kazan, and then divide, with one branch moving up the Volga to Nizhnyi Novgorod, Yaroslavl and Vologda, and the other heading across country to Vyatka. Despite these clear instructions, Lebedev experienced momentary doubts when on the eve of his advance to Kazan he met the leader of Savinkov’s insurrection in Murom who told him how the Allies had let them down; but this time the Allies did not fail them.⁵⁴

Despite the delay to the Archangel landing, planning for this URR-linked operation continued. Lockhart held two meetings with URR leaders designed primarily to strengthen contacts with General Alekseev in the south. At the first of these on 16 July 1918 he and Lavergne met the liberal politicians Struve and Astrov to discuss the developments on the Volga and ask whether General Alekseev might now be able to move from his redoubt beyond the Don to the lower reaches of the Volga. At the second meeting, on 21 July 1918, an emissary from Alekseev promised to try to capture Tsaritsyn, and Lockhart promised to try to get Struve to Archangel, to strengthen liberal representation in any new government formed; the British clearly hoped that he might head the new administration. At both meetings Lockhart handed over considerable sums of money.⁵⁵

What particularly pleased Lockhart when he reported to London on 25 July 1918 was that the ‘Centre [URR] has come to complete agreement with Savinkov’s League’ and were jointly seeking to contact the Czechoslovaks; as part of the broader preparations for the landing General Boldyrev had moved to Vologda, while Savinkov had gone to rendezvous with Lebedev in Kazan. Meanwhile those of Savinkov’s partisans who had escaped from Yaroslavl were being regrouped under General Lavergne’s orders: some would cut the Archangel railway as the Allies landed, to prevent the Bolsheviks reinforcing the local detachments, while the rest, some 3–5,000 men would be regrouped in both Vyatka and Kazan.⁵⁶

As to plans for the insurrection in Archangel, these also depended on co-operation between the URR and the National Centre. Chaikovskii arrived in Archangel in disguise on approximately 24 July 1918, and at his first meeting with Chaplin, he made clear that he was acting in accordance with the URR programme; his government would include both liberals and SRs. Chaplin, whose main contact with the Archangel opposition was N.A. Startsev, a local liberal politician and a member of the National Centre, immediately proposed that Startsev should be included in Chaikovskii’s government; Chaikovskii stressed the abilities of his associates Maslov and Dedusenko, and also of another colleague Likhach, also a veteran of the SR military commission during the preparations for the opening of the Constituent Assembly and later a leader of the Petrograd Assembly of Factory Delegates. There was no sense at this stage of any tension between these two sides.

Throughout July 1918 Chaplin had become increasingly nervous and more and more convinced that the Bolshevik authorities knew of his plans. He began to make urgent appeals to Poole to land at once, but, despite these requests, Poole would not bring forward the date of the landing.⁵⁷ The situation only changed at the end of the month with the evacuation of the Allied ambassadors from Vologda. Abandoning Vologda had first been considered by the diplomatic corps on 10 July 1918 when, after the assassination of the German ambassador Mirbach, the Soviet Foreign Affairs Commissar Chicherin had invited the Allied ambassadors to move to Moscow, ostensibly for their safe-keeping; fearing a trap, the ambassadors had refused. A week later, on 17 July 1918, a messenger from General Poole suggested the ambassadors should move to Archangel since he planned to land early in August. Then, when on 23 July 1918 Chicherin repeated his request in more threatening tones, the ambassadors left Vologda on 25 July and arrived in Archangel on Friday the 27th.⁵⁸

They held immediate talks with Chaplin, and stressed to him that the insurrection would lead to the establishment of a new democratic government, excluding reactionaries as well as Bolsheviks; at the same time they accepted Chaplin’s view that immediate action was essential. On 29 July 1918 they sailed to Kandalachka, a small port on the western shore of the White Sea, linked to Murmansk by the Petrograd–Murmansk railway line and occupied by the British since Poole’s arrival. From there they immediately telephoned Poole, urging him to land whatever troops he had at once, even if it was only 1–2,000. Poole hesitated, but the ambassadors insisted that an insurrection would break out at once; Poole still refused, but ultimately Lindley succeeded in persuading him to promise to act on 31 July 1918. As Poole himself recorded, he had planned to start on 3 August 1918, but:

I received information from Mr Lindley … that the state in Archangel was so desperate that our friends there had decided that it was impossible to delay any longer and that they had arranged for a revolution against the government to start on the 31st and that unless we could arrive very shortly after the outbreak that it would certainly be suppressed. As I was most anxious to take advantage of any internal disturbances, I decided … that we would start the same night.

Poole’s decision was made all the easier since the anticipated French reinforcements had arrived in Murmansk on 26 July 1918.⁵⁹

Poole’s landing and Chaplin’s insurrection enabled the URR leader Chaikovskii to assume power on 2 August 1918. He noted at the time that ‘in a few days time our troops and Allied troops will be moving up to Vologda and Vyatka … A new Eastern Front will be established’. Lockhart had written a fortnight earlier that Poole still hoped to link up with the Czechoslovaks, and Lindley noted on the eve of the insurrection in Archangel, on 31 July 1918, that ‘there is a reasonable prospect of the Czechoslovaks joining hands with Alekseev on the Volga and ourselves at Vyatka’. It was not to be.⁶⁰

On 2 August 1918 Poole’s advance up the Archangel–Vologda railway and river Dvina began, but despite great hopes of action by Green patriotic socialists, any such activities were poorly co-ordinated. The force advancing up the railway was stopped by stiff resistance on 11 August 1918, despite the hopes that the partisan remnants of Savinkov’s Yaroslavl units might attack the Bolsheviks to the rear. The advance up the Dvina fared slightly better, but was hampered by leaking boats; although Kotlas was reached, the Allied forces failed to establish a bridgehead with the Kotlas–Vyatka railway, and failed to link up with the URR group led by Sorokin waiting for instructions on what to do in the rear to help the advancing British boats.⁶¹

Despite these setbacks, as late as 15 August 1918 Poole was still optimistic that Vologda could be reached. He was much cheered by the receipt of fresh instructions on 10 August 1918 making clear that the Czechoslovaks were now co-operating with the Allies after all and he should establish communications with them. On 7 August 1918 the French had appointed General Maurice Janin to head the Czechoslovak Army and his instructions clearly stated he was to try and establish links with the Allied bases on the White Sea by taking Vyatka and ascending the Dvina. Unfortunately Poole’s desperate telegram to the Czechoslovaks, urging them ‘to take Perm and Vyatka and effect a junction with the Allies at Vologda as soon as possible’ had no effect; on 22 August 1918 he abandoned his advance when it became clear that he would not reach Vologda before winter.⁶²

On the Kazan front there was a similar swing from boundless optimism to pessimism, but what caused the pessimism here was not the success of the Bolsheviks in resisting their enemy’s advance, but the first symptoms of disunity within the anti-Bolshevik front. In accordance with the Allies’ plan, Lebedev’s assault on Kazan began on 7 August 1918 and the town was occupied on the 8th. With Allied forces at Archangel and Kazan Lebedev was determined thereafter to push on up the Volga before the Red Army had time to regroup; he hoped to be in Moscow within two months. To Lebedev’s surprise and dismay, no sooner had Kazan been taken, than the main body of his troops was withdrawn; instead of rushing on to Vologda, Vyatsk and the Allies, his political masters told him they needed the troops to consolidate their position in Samara. Indeed, it had taken the intervention of Bordes, and the high-handedness of Lebedev himself, who ignored a last minute attempt by the People’s Army General Staff to cancel the assault, to get SR politicians in Samara to agree to the attack on Kazan in the first place.⁶³

Travelling with Lebedev to Kazan was one of Savinkov’s closest lieutenants A. Dikgof Derental. He recalled the despairing cry of a captain in the French military mission, exasperated at the inability of the politicians who surrounded him to appreciate the strategic importance of Kazan: ‘My God, my God, why do your fellow countrymen talk so much!’.⁶⁴ This tension between Lebedev, a leading member of the URR, and his SR superiors was symptomatic of an unanticipated problem; the Czechoslovak mutiny had not only wrecked the Allies’ great enterprise, but had brought into the anti-Bolshevik struggle SRs who were not party to the URR agreement with the Allies, and did not share the political vision on which it was based.

Notes

1. As early as 29 December 1917 British military officers were proposing a plan of this kind to London, see Public Records Office, FO371.3319.15; it was also the crux of the scheme outlined to Lockhart on 10 May 1918 by ‘representatives of two large organizations of the old army’, see Milner Papers, 364.287.

2. Milner Papers, 372.179 and 365.40.

3. Entitled ‘Proposals for Allied Enterprise for Russia (assuming French concurrence)’, the map coloured the area from Vologda to Archangel red and designated it ‘the main effort to organise the Czechoslovaks’. Arrows pointing westward from Ufa and Chelyabinsk towards Vologda showed clearly the direction of troop movements, see Milner Papers, 365.67.

4. Public Records Office, WO32.5643.24a.

5. J. Kalvoda, The Genesis of Czechoslovakia (Columbia 1986), p. 325; V.M. Fie, The Bolsheviks and the Czechoslovak Legion (Delhi 1978), p. 231.

6. Fic, Bolsheviks, p. 187 et seq.; A. Verge, Avec les Tchecoslovaques (Paris 1926), pp. 107, 111.

7. The Marinovka incident is in Fic, Bolsheviks, p. 279; this summary follows Fic closely.

8. Milner Papers, 365.40.

9. B.V. Savinkov, Borba s Bolshevikami (Warsaw 1920), pp. 3–25; Delo Borisa Savinkova (Moscow 1924), p. 11; Kalvoda, Genesis, pp. 244–8.

10. ‘“Soyuz zashchity rodiny i svobody” i Yaroslavskii myatezh 1918g.’ Proletarskaya revolyutsiya no. 10 (1923), pp. 203–8; G. Hill, Go Spy the Land (London 1932), p. 196. For Savinkov’s links with the army, see V.I. Gurko, ‘Iz Petrograda cherez Moskvy, Parizh i London v Odessu’ Arkhip Russkoi Revolyutsii (Berlin 1924), p. 11.

11. ‘Soyuz zashchity rodiny i svobody’, p. 203; Delo Savinkova, p. 38.

12. For the National Centre, see ‘“Natsional’nyi tsentr” v Moskve v 1918’ Na chuzhoi storone Berlin/Prague no. 8 (1924); Gurko, ‘Iz Petrograda’, p. 12; B. Kazanovich, ‘Poezdka iz Dobrovol’cheskoi armii v “Krasnuyu Moskvu”’ Arkhiv Russkoi Revolyutsii Berlin (1922), vol. 7, p. 191.

13. S.P. Melgunov, N.V. Chaikovskii v gody grazhdanskoi voiny (Paris 1929), p. 49; L.A. Krol, Za tri goda (Vladivostok 1921), p. 13; S. Nikolaev, ‘Vozniknovenie i organizatsiya Komucha’ Volya Rossii Prague (1928), vols 8–9, p. 238.

14. Melgunov, Chaikovskii, pp. 50–8; ‘Natsional’nyi tsentr’, p. 135; V. Myakotin, ‘Iz nedalekogo proshlogo’ Na chuzhoi storone Berlin/Prague no. 2 (1923), p. 180; V.G. Boldyrev, Direktoriya, Kolchak, Interventy (Novonikolaevsk 1925), p. 24.

15. Myakotin, ‘Iz nedalekogo’, p. 191; Delo Savinkova, p. 37. The clash of personalities between Savinkov and Boldyrev is noted in Kazanovich, ‘Poezdka’, p. 195.

16. ‘Natsional’nyi tsentr’, pp. 135–6; Myakotin, ‘Iz nedalekogo proshlogo’ pp. 180, 189; P. Sorokin, Leaves from a Russian Diary (London 1924), p. 141.

17. For the SR Council, see M. Jansen, A Show Trial under Lenin (The Hague 1982), p. 2; for the Kadets, see W.G. Rosenberg, Liberals in the Russian Revolution (Princeton 1974), p. 295; for the soviet meeting J. Bunyan and H.H. Fisher, The Bolshevik Revolution: Documents and Materials (Stanford 1961), pp. 122–4.

18. The inter-group conference is mentioned by J. Noulens, Mon Ambassade en Russie Soviétique, 1917–19 (Paris 1933), vol. 2, p. 114. However, the Milner Papers give more details: 359.108 et seq. gives details of the resolution passed and the conditions on which Allied help would be sought, as reported by Kerensky to Lloyd George on 24 June. Lockhart reported on 16 May, at the time this conference was being planned, that Kerensky had contacted him and wanted to visit London, see 364.290.

19. Noulens Ambassade vol. 2, p. 107; Myakotin, ‘Iz nedalekogo’, p. 180; Milner Papers, 359.108. In a letter to Chaikovskii, Kerensky made clear he had travelled to Europe as a URR emissary, see Melgunov, Chaikovskii, p. 55.

20. Myakotin, ‘Iz nedalekogo’, p. 191.

21. The meeting is described in Gurko, ‘Iz Petrograda’, p. 13 and referred to obliquely in ‘Natsional’nyi tsentr’ p. 132 and directly in Kazanovich, ‘Poezdka’, p. 193.

22. Krol, Za tri goda, p. 130. Complaints about Allied favouritism towards the URR rather than the National Centre can be seen in Kazanovich, ‘Poezdka’, p. 199.

23. ‘Iz arkhiva V.I. Lebedeva: ot Petrograda do Kazani’ Volya Rossii nos 8–9 Prague (1928), p. 63; S.N. Gorodetskii, ‘Obrazovanie sevemoi oblasti’ Beloe Delo no. 3 Berlin (1927), p. 7.

24. Myakotin, ‘Iz nedalekogo’, p. 194; Melgunov, Chaikovskii, pp. 70–3.

25. G.E. Chaplin, ‘Dva perevorota na Severe’ Beloe delo no. 4 Berlin (1928), p. 15 et seq.

26. Melgunov, Chaikovskii, p. 70; Sorokin, Leaves, p. 149 et seq.

27. Sorokin, Leaves, p. 153; Chaplin, ‘Dva perevorota’, p. 17; M. Kettle, The Road to Intervention (London 1988), p. 257. For Maclaren, see Wiseman Papers, 20 March 1918.

28. M.J. Carley Revolution and Intervention: the French Government and the Russian Civil War (Montreal 1983), pp. 63–5.

29. I. Nesterov, ‘Pered vystupleniyem na Volge’ Volya Rossii nos 10–11, p. 96; I. Brushvit, ‘Kak podgotovlyalos’ volzhskoe vystuplenie’ Volya Rossii nos 10–11, p. 93.

30. P.D. Klimushkin, ‘Pered volzhskim vosstaniem’ Volya Rossii nos 8–9 Prague (1928), pp. 222–5. These events are summarized in English in S. Berk, ‘The democratic counter-revolution: Komuch and the civil war on the Volga’ Canadian-American Slavic Studies vol. 7 (1973), pp. 443–59. The fullest version is State Archive of the Russian Federation (GARF) 749.1.4.16.

31. Klimushkin, ‘Pered volzhskim’, p. 229; Brushvit, ‘Kak podgotovlyalos”, p. 94; GARF 667.1.17.24.

32. J.F.N. Bradley, La Légion Tchécoslovaque en Russie 1914–20 (Paris 1965), p. 88; J.F.N. Bradley, Allied Intervention in Russia (London 1968), p. 99; L.M. Spirin, Klassy i partii v grazhdanskoi voine v Rossii, 1917–20 (Moscow 1968), p. 233; S. Cecek, ‘Ot Penza do Urala’ Volya Rossii nos 8–9 Prague (1928), p. 262.

33. ‘Iz arkhiva V.I. Lebedeva: ot Petrograda do Kazani’ Volya Rossii nos 8–9 (Prgaue 1928), pp. 52, 68, 96; V.I. Lebedev, Russian Democracy and its Struggle against the Bolshevist Tyranny (New York 1919), pp. 12, 20.

34. Vergé, Avec les Tchécoslovaques, pp. 116–21.

35. Kalvoda, Genesis, pp. 354, 357, 368; Cecek, ‘Ot Penza’, p. 264. For Lockhart, see Milner Papers, 365.133.

36. Public Records Office WO32.5703 Poole’s report; R.H.B. Lockhart, Memoirs of a British Agent (London 1946), p. 285; Milner Papers, 366.203, 365.82–5.

37. Public Records Office WO32.5643.26a

38. Public Records Office FO371.3319.270

39. Milner Papers, 365.95, 365.103, 365.109, 366.239.

40. LLoyd George Papers, House of Lords Record Office, F.60.2.36; Milner Papers, 366.310.

41. Savinkov talks about the impact of the arrests on his organization in his Borba, p. 31. Otherwise, see G. Gopper, ‘Belogvardeiskie organizatsii i vosstaniya vnutri Sovetskoi Respubliki’, in S.A. Alekseev (ed.), Revolyutsiya i grazhdanskaya voina v opisaniyakh Belogvardeitsev (Moscow 1926), pp. 308–14. Details of the surrender are given in U. Germanis, ‘Some observations on the Yaroslavl revolt of July 1918’ Journal of Baltic Studies vol. 4 (1973), p. 241.

42. A. Dikgof-Derental ‘Iz perevemutykh stranits’ Na chuzhoi storone no. 2 (1923), p. 57.

43. Boldyrev, Direktoriya, p. 25; Kazanovich, ‘Poezdka’, p. 195; Germanis, ‘Some observations’, p. 239; Delo Savinkova, p. 14; Savinkov, Borba, p. 43.

44. Milner Papers, 365.140, 365.156.

45. Delo Savinkova, p. 38; Gopper, cited in Germanis, ‘Some observations’, p. 238; Noulens, Ambassade vol. 2, p. 107.

46. The reference to intervention by 25 June is problematic: the text is 25 January, clearly a typing error; but whether the true date is June or July is possibly open to debate, see Milner Papers 365.48–50. Lockhart’s requests for information are in Milner Papers, 365.73, 365.82, 365.85. Lockhart was closely involved in Savinkov’s work with the National Centre and URR. Balfour’s instruction ‘to have nothing to do with Savinkov’s plans’ – see R. Ullman, Anglo-Soviet Relations, 1917–21: Intervention and the War (Princeton 1961), p. 190 - was either an instruction to keep a diplomatic distance from the details of the plotting, or an order Lockhart simply ignored. When he returned to London, however, he felt the need to distance himself from the whole affair and in his report rather disingenuously stressed ‘French misinformation’ as the cause of the Yaroslavl disaster; see Milner Papers, 365.346.

47. Wiseman Papers, 7 July 1918.

48. Milner Papers, 365.147.

49. L. Hafner, ‘The assassination of Count Mirbach and the “July Uprising” of the Left SRs in Moscow, 1918’ Russian Review vol. 50 (1991), p. 325; M. Philips-Price, My Reminiscences of the Russian Revolution (London 1921), p. 314.

50. Hafner, ‘Assassination’, p. 337; Spirin, Klassy, p. 187; V. Vladimirova, ‘Levye esery 1917–1918gg.’ Proletarskaya revolyutsiya no. 4 (1927), p. 120; ‘Likvidatsiya levoeserovskogo myatezha v Moskve v 1918g.’ Krasnyi Arkhiv (1940), p. 106.

51. ‘Iz arkhiva’ p. 68; Hafner, ‘Assassination’, p. 341; Spirin, Klassy, p. 194; S. Nikolaev, ‘Narodnaya armiya v Simbirske’ Volya Rossii nos 10–11 Prague (1928), pp. 114–16.

52. Vladimirova, ‘Levye esery’, p. 130; D.L. Golinkov, Krushenie antis ovetskogo podpolya v SSSR (Moscow 1975), p. 165.

53. Bradley, Allied Intervention, p. 100; Bradley, La Légion, p. 88.

54. ‘Iz arkhiva’, pp. 127–33.

55. For developments in Archangel, see Melgunov, Chaikovskii, p. 73; for Lockhart, see Milner Papers, 365.145; 365.156, 365.182.

56. Milner Papers, 365.171, 366.340.

57. Melgunov, Chaikovskii, p. 73; Chaplin, Dva perevorota, pp. 16–19.

58. Bunyan and Fisher, Documents, p. 136; Noulens, Ambassade vol. 2, p. 58.

59. Public Records Office WO32.5703 Poole’s report; see also Noulens, Ambassade vol. 2, p. 167.

60. For Chaikovskii’s comment, see Melgunov, Chaikovskii, p. 77; for Lockhart, see Milner Papers, 365.181.

61. Milner Papers, 366.340, 366.346, and 366.371; Sorokin, Leaves, p. 154.

62. Milner Papers, 366.109, 366.346; Lloyd George Papers, 50.3.16.

63. Lebedev, Russian Democracy, pp. 24, 27, 36; ‘Iz arkhiva’, pp. 133, 176; I. Maiskii, Demokraticheskaya Kontrrevolyutsiya (Moscow 1923), p. 27.

64. Dikgof-Derental, ‘Iz perevernutykh’, p. 65.