At the beginning of April the Japanese made a landing at Vladivostok. The subsequent intentions of the Japanese were not known. Consequently it could not be known whether the Czechoslovaks would be able to embark at Vladivostok. [1] In accordance with instructions from the government I held up the movement of the Czechoslovak echelons, and I explained to the representatives of the French military mission and also to representatives of the Czechoslovak National Council who had come to me, that the halting of the movement of the Czechoslovak echelons in no way represented a measure hostile to the Czechoslovaks but was motivated solely by the new political and strategic situation in the Far East. I proposed moreover to the representatives of the National Council [2], Messrs. Max and Cermak, to urge the British and French governments to officially declare their readiness to take the Czechoslovaks on their vessels at Archangel and Murmansk. For my part I committed myself to a definite date, to be established by means of negotiations, by which to transport the Czechoslovaks there. In spite of the fact that Messrs. Max and Cermak promised me they would obtain an official statement to this effect from the interested governments of Britain and France in the next few days, I received no such notification. In the course of a private exchange of views with Mr. Lockhart [3], the British plenipotentiary, I indicated to him the need for the British and French governments to make a specific decision with regard to the Czechoslovaks, as it was absolutely impossible to keep men in echelons for a period of months especially during summer time. Mr. Lockhart could give no reply and merely pointed out that the problem of available tonnage was very acute and he did not know whether the British government considered it feasible to send the necessary number of ships. Thus the question was left quite undefined not through any fault of the Soviet government but entirely as a result of on the one hand, the Japanese landing in V1adivostok and on the other the absence of any definite statements on the part of the governments of Britain and France.
From an interview given to Vyacheslav Neubert, a representative of the Czechoslovak Corps, 31st May 1918
The internal class struggle in the Soviet Republic has become complicated and taken on the form of a drawn out and just war, owing to the fact that the resistance of the Russian bourgeoisie has been combined with the military intervention, invasion and incursion of foreign imperialism in the shape of the European-American landing and a network of conspiracies. For a start, having landed an expeditionary force of two to three thousand British and French at Murmansk and Archangel, the imperialist raiders had reckoned that broad masses of the people would start rallying to them. [5] They did not at all count upon the resistance of the revolution when they saw the harsh conditions of Russian workers. But the carrier of the revolution, the hungry proletariat of Moscow and Petrograd, said to them: “I’ve got two ounces to eat today and nothing tomorrow, but I can tighten my belt a bit more and say openly: I have taken power and I will never give that power up!” So that no sooner had the imperialists encountered their first rebuff after their unexpected onslaught on Archangel, than cries went up throughout the bourgeois press of Britain and France that the whole undertaking in the North was an adventure.
From a speech in the Kazan theatre, 12th September 1918
(The Significance of the Capture of Kazan for the Course of the Civil War)
The revolution was not only temporarily deprived of Baku, but it also lost for ever many of its best sons. In September 1918, almost at the very time when Gegechkori [6] was negotiating with Denikin [7], twenty-six Bolsheviks, the leaders of the Baku proletariat, headed by Comrade Shaumyan, a member of the Central Committee of our party, and by Alexei Japaridze, were shot at a lonely Transcaspian station. [8]
You can get full information on this matter, Mr. Henderson, from your own General Thompson, the commander in this war of liberation: his agents acted as the executioners.
Thus neither Shaumyan nor Japaridze were in a position to hear about the jubiliation of Zhordania [9] on the fall of Soviet Baku. But nevertheless, they took with them into the grave a burning hatred towards the Menshevik abettors of the executioners.
The manuscript of this book had been completed, when I received a new book by Vadim Chaikin [10], a Socialist-Revolutionary and member of the Constituent Assembly, entitled: A Contribution to the History of the Russian Revolution: The Execution of 26 Baku Commissars, and published by Grzebin, Moscow. This book, consisting mostly of documents of which the more important ones are reproduced in facsimile, narrates the story of the murder of 26 Baku commissars by order of the British military authorities, without the least pretence of a public trial. The direct practical organizer of the massacre was the chief of the British Military Mission at Ashkhabad, Reginald Teague-Jones. [11] General Thompson was cognizant of the whole case, and Teague-Jones, as the evidence shows, acted with the consent of the gallant general. After the consummation of the slaying of 26 unarmed men at a station, where they had been taken under the pretence of exiling them to India, General Thompson aided the escape of one of the leading perpetrators of the crime, the hired scoundrel Druzhkin. The appeals of Vadim Chaikin, by no means a Bolshevik, but a Socialist-Revolutionary and a member of the Constituent Assembly, to the British General Malcolm and to the British General Milne were left unheeded. On the contrary, all these gentlemen demonstrated their solidarity in aiding and abetting the crime and the criminals and in the fabrication of false statements.
This book shows with documentary evidence that Gegechkori, at the insistence of Chaikin, promised to prevent the escape of the criminal scoundrel Druzhkin from Georgia. Yet, in collusion with the British General Thompson, he gave Druzhkin every facility to escape from trial and justice. While the committees of Russian and Georgian Socialist-Revolutionaries and of the Russian Transcaspian Mensheviks, after an investigation of all the facts of the case, signed a declaration testifying to the criminal manner in which the British military authorities had acted, the committee of the Georgian Mensheviks, although as the other Committees arriving at the same conclusion, refused to sign the document for fear of displeasing the British authorities. The telegraph officer of the Menshevik Georgian government refused to accept for transmission the telegrams of Vadim Chaikin which exposed the murderous activities of the British authorities. If nothing more were known about the Georgian Mensheviks except what is established by indisputable and irrefutable documents in Chaikin’s book, it would be quite sufficient to imprint for all time the brand of shame and dishonour upon these gentlemen, upon their “democracy”, their protectors and apologists.
We do not entertain the least hope that after the direct, exact, and irrefutable evidence furnished by Chaikin’s book, either Mr. Henderson, or Mr. MacDonald, or Mr. J.R. Clynes, Mr. Jimmy Sexton, or Mr. William Adamson, Mr. John Hodge, Mr. Frank Rose, Mr. C.W. Bowerman, Mr. Robert Young, or Mr. Benjamin Spoor [12] will – as Labour MPs – deem it now their duty to investigate the case frankly and honestly and make these representatives of Great Britain, who in Transcaucasia were so gloriously defending democracy, civilization, justice, religion and morality against Bolshevik barbarism, answerable for their conduct.
The international Mrs. Snowdens [13] have denied the co-operation of the Georgian Mensheviks with the counter-revolutionary organizations and armies, basing this on the two following circumstances. First, that the Mensheviks themselves complained to the British socialists about the Entente, which had, so to speak, forced them to support the counter-revolution; second, that there was friction between Georgia and the Whites, which at that time assumed the character of armed conflict.
The British General Walker shook his fist in the face of the premier Zhordania, and threatened to close down immediately the central Menshevik organ, if it dared to publish a paragraph which might give umbrage to the Entente. A British lieutenant violently struck the table of the Georgian Attorney-General with his sword and demanded the immediate release of all those arrested people whom he, lieutenant by the grace of God, designated. Generally speaking, the British military authorities, according to the documents, conducted themselves even more insolently than the German. Of course, in such cases, Zhordania most respectfully mentioned Georgia’s semi-independence, and complained to MacDonald about the violation of Georgia’s semi-neutrality. This was necessitated by ordinary caution. When Denikin was robbing Georgia of the Sukhumi area, the Mensheviks complained about Denikin to General Walker. Now they complained about General Walker to Henderson – in both instances with the same success.
If these complaints and frictions had not occurred it would have simply meant that the Mensheviks did not differ in the least from Denikin. But this would be as erroneous as to say that Henderson did not differ in the least from Churchill. [14] The range of petty-bourgeois vacillations during the revolutionary period extends from supporting the proletariat to a formal union with the landlords” counter-revolution. The less the petty-bourgeois politicians are independent, the louder they talk of their complete independence and of their absolute neutrality. From this viewpoint it is very difficult to follow the history of the Mensheviks and the Right and Left Socialist-Revolutionaries in the course of the revolution. They have never been neutral or independent. Their “neutrality” has always been a critical point in the movement from the right to the left, or from the left to the right. In supporting the Bolsheviks (as did the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries and the anarchists), or in supporting the Tsarist generals (as did the Right Socialist-Revolutionaries and the Mensheviks), the petty-bourgeois parties frequently took fright at the decisive moment of the impending victory of their ally, and even more frequently deserted him in the moment of his greatest peril. One must certainly admit that if, during the revolutionary period, the petty-bourgeois parties bear their share of all the drawbacks of defeat, they seldom benefit by the advantages of victory. After having consolidated its power with the help of “democracy”, the monarchist counter-revolution in the East (in the person of Kolchak [15]), in the North and West (in the person of Yudenich [16], Miller and the British generals), and in the South (in the person of Denikin) always treated its aiders and abettors with the utmost arrogance and severity.
From Chapter 2 of Between Red and White (1921)
Lloyd George not long ago stated that it was dangerous to take the offensive against our country for, as a result of an offensive, peasant millions would rally around Soviet power to safeguard their country with all their might. The American President Wilson [17] according to newspaper reports now considers the offensive of Messrs. “Allies” against Archangel was a mistake. After our capture of Shenkursk there followed the demoralization of British and American soldiers who abandoned their positions by withdrawing into Archangel. There was open unrest in Murmansk. [18] On the Odessa Front, according to available information, French troops are demanding to be sent home and the black colonial troops cannot endure the climate and have already been withdrawn to their country. [19] Wilson and Lloyd George are beginning to realize that they have made a mistake …
From a report in the Hall of Columns, Moscow, 24th February 1919
(At the Fronts)
The commander of the British troops in Western Transcaucasia, General Forester Walker, on January 4th, 1919, explained to Zhordania, both orally and in writing, that the enemy of the Entente in the Caucasus is “Bolshevism, which the Great Powers have resolved to destroy wherever and whenever it should make its appearance. In connection with this, a fortnight afterwards, Zhordania declared to the British General Milne: “General Walker … proved to be the first person that understood the state of affairs in our country.” General Milne himself summarized his agreement with Zhordania in the following manner: “You and we have common foes – they are the Germans and the Bolsheviks.” All these circumstances together furnished of course, the most favourable conditions for the fullest liberty of action” for the Bolsheviks.
On February 18th, General Walker gives the following order, No.99/6, to the Georgian government: “All Bolsheviks entering Georgia must be imprisoned only in the Mskhet (the jail of Tbilisi), and put under a strong guard.” The reference is to those Bolsheviks who were seeking refuge from Denikin. But, already, on February 25th, in Order No. 99/9, Walker wrote: “Arising out of the conversation I had on the 20th inst., with his Excellency M. Zhordania, I have come to the conclusion that it will be necessary in the future to prevent the entrance of Bolsheviks into Georgia by the main road.’ [20] The imprisonment of the Bolshevik refugees in the Mskhet at least preserved their lives for a time. Walker had “come to the conclusion” that it was best to bar their way of escape, thus throwing them back into the hands of Denikin’s executioners. If Arthur Henderson has a few moments to spare from his labours in exposing the cruelties of the Soviet Government, and from his Brotherhood services [21], he should have an exchange of views with Forester Walker upon this subject.
From Chapter 3 of Between Red and White (1921)
We were menaced by the claws of Anglo-French imperialism and there was a moment when these claws seemed to threaten to crush us in a deadly embrace. After their victory over Germany there was no limit to the omnipotence of the British and the French. Moreover the German bourgeoisie itself, including Hindenburg, readily entered the service of France and Britain to put down the Bolsheviks. I have here some recent German papers where it is openly stated in a number of leading articles: “In the West (i.e., on the frontier between Germany and France) iron and concrete walls and fortresses are being erected the walls of the old national hatred between France and Germany are being put up. But all this is insignificant compared to the abyss that separates us in the East. We must somehow or other come to an agreement with France, but with the Bolsheviks and Soviet power – never. Theirs is a different world order, they deny – and they say this openly – they deny the whole basis of economic life and private property.” And let us add ourselves, the order on which most holy profits are based. The struggle against Britain and France, the old forts of Belfort and Verdun, is insignificant compared to the hatred we inspire in unified European capital. Such is the admission of the German bourgeoisie, crushed down, humiliated, plundered but which even now, while reeling under the boot of the French and British bourgeoisie, says: “but all the same you are closer and more kindred to me than that horrible Soviet communist republic.” That’s the feeling they harbour towards us in Germany, France, Britain and everywhere else.
You can of course say that when Britain and France proposed a trip to the Prinkipo Islands, Soviet power agreed to such a trip and it agreed then as it had done at Brest-Litovsk because we were ready to seize any opportunity to stand down our front, win an armistice and a respite, and lighten the burden on our Red Army and all the working people. [22] It stands to reason that we would have gone to the Prinkipo Islands as we went to Brest-Litovsk, not out of sympathy, respect or trust for Clemenceau [23], Lloyd George and that old transatlantic Tartuffian hypocrite Wilson, no comrades, on that score Clemenceau, Lloyd George and Wilson, like the Hohenzollerns and Habsburgs [24] before them, are not for a single minute mistaken, for they know that we harbour the same feelings for them as they do for us. We are joined to them by an intimate hatred, an intimate mortal enmity, and any agreement with them will only be dictated by cold calculation and form by its very nature a temporary armistice, after which the struggle will inevitably break out again with renewed force.
It had seemed before that they were strangling us; then they offered us the Prinkipo Islands and then they stopped talking about them. Why? Because Kolchak, Denikin, Krasnov and Mannerheim [25] in Finland declared to the imperialist stock exchange, “give us a time limit, give us two or three more spring months: Soviet power will be strangled and you will not need to negotiate with it on the Prinkipo Islands.” To this Lloyd George replied: “you made that promise a long time ago. First of all Milyukov did, then Kerensky, Skoropadsky [26] in the Ukraine, and then Krasnov; now Krasnov has fled from Rostov and Bogaevsky [27] has replaced him, you all made that promise. Kolchak promised America long ago. We shall no longer give you assistance with troops; our position in the north and the south is becoming worse and worse.” Then Kolchak, Denikin and the others answered: “We ask you and beg you to give us just a little while longer to finish off Soviet power. But don’t have talks with them, don’t strengthen their position. We are preparing a wide offensive for the spring.”
And so they had their offensive – that spring offensive – and we are now surviving it. Throughout the winter the allies gave money and shells. They did not give manpower as they were afraid of getting too mixed up in our affairs and getting bogged down in our Soviet plain, for they realized from Germany’s experience that the imperialists” troops enter our Russia under the tricolour of imperialism and violence, but the same troops leave Soviet Russia under the red banner of communism.
They agreed to provide arms, money, rifles and pieces of silver but they withdrew their soldiers.
In France the leading newspaper, Temps and the paper of the same name, The Times, in Britain, openly say that the French troops are being withdrawn from Odessa because “since the occupation of Nikolaev and Kherson” ... the position of the expeditionary force in Odessa has been “critical”. They talk about this quite frankly in the European press. I have a telegram here received today or yesterday dealing with the position of the allied armies in the north of Russia – I do not know whether it was published in the press: “America, radio from Paris for Canada. The involuntary anxiety gripping British circles concerning the grave risk of destruction threatening the Archangel expedition only confirms the opinion of the American military expressed many months ago. Stark new facts have been added namely: the mutiny of Finnish troops in Archangel.”
The Americans and British had mobilized or rather attracted round themselves Finnish forces when German forces were occupying Finland, as the British presented themselves as Finnish liberators from German imperialism. Now the American wireless reports publicly from Paris on the mutiny of Finnish soldiers incorporated in the Anglo-American army on our northern shore: “The mutiny of Finnish troops threatens to cut off the only road for our soldiers, and the Bolsheviks’ concentration of warships on the Dvina and the Vaga indicates their readiness for an attack ... Men from Canada form the main part of the detachment in this area. Official figures admit that there is not the slightest hope of reinforcing their effectives before a Bolshevik assault.”
The London Daily Mail says in a leading article: “responsibility for this danger ... rests upon the Allies ... The eyes of the whole world are upon them. if they should fall into the hands of that enemy their fate baffles description” and so on and so forth. This of course is a blatant lie. If they fall into our hands we shall treat them as we treated those hundreds and now possibly thousands of French, British and Americans who were captured by us in the Ukraine and the north. We sat them on school benches and gave them teachers, French and English communists, and they were most successful.
Not long ago a bourgeois MP asked the Naval Minister whether it was true that some Englishman called Price was conducting criminal Bolshevik agitation on the Murmansk coast, and whether it was true that there had been an uprising in a British battalion which then had to be withdrawn. The British Naval Minister was forced to confirm that yes, this Price had previously been a correspondent of the Manchester Guardian, a British democratic newspaper, became a communist at a school here, set out from Moscow for the north and there conducted agitation with great success, and that there was an uprising of more than one battalion there and that these troops had to be brought back home ... [28]
From a speech to the Samara Provincial Executive Committee of the RCP and trade union representatives, 6th April 1919 (The Eastern Front)
... Anglo-French imperialism is still not only alive but dangerous.
For our part we are ready to repeat Brest-Litovsk negotiations with new Anglo-French partners; history has shown that we did not emerge the loser from the first Brest. But for precisely this reason the bourgeois classes of the Entente, after all their hesitations, waverings and pondering, finally rejected negotiations with the government of the Bolsheviks. In this refusal there is an extremely valuable historical admission, both of the correctness of our policy at Brest-Litovsk and of our increased strength. German imperialism had entered negotiations with us because it hoped to settle us with ease. Anglo-French imperialism does not trust itself and thus fears us. Although history required a Brest stage in order to overthrow Austro-German imperialism, this does not in any way mean that the Anglo-French plunderers will, by avoiding a Brest, avoid their downfall. History is resourceful and it has at its disposal many methods and means, while we are not dogmatic and will gladly accept the downfall of our enemies, irrespective of the torm in which it crashes down on their heads.
From The Brest Stage: Foreword (dated 1st August 1919) to
Protocols of the Brest-Litovsk Peace Talks: volume I (1920)
Churchill does not rank among those politicians whose words should be taken for the genuine article. But for the impolite and numbskulled petty-bourgeois rabble to which Churchill speaks, the figure of “fourteen states” entering the battle against Russia must make a big impression. Critically-thinking workers of Great Britain will say that it appears that the affairs of victorious British imperialism cannot be in a very brilliant state, if the champion of capitalist violence has to boast noisily about the number of his small – militarily speaking, insignificant – allies in the struggle against the Red Army, Kolchak would be immeasurably more pleased with fourteen divisions than fourteen geographical terms.
That the artificially installed bourgeois governments of Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Hungary and so on are hostile to Soviet Power we had no doubt, as we have had no doubt that sooner or later the working class of these countries will settle accounts with their bourgeoisie as soon as the proletariat of Britain and France put a rein on the violence of Entente imperialism against small and weak nations.
Ambitions of conquest are wholly and totally alien to Soviet policy, which is clear to any sane person who is informed as to the objects and tasks of Soviet power and the whole past of the party that guides the life of our country. That is why the order was given to our forces operating on our Western Front not to cross the frontiers of the little states which had announced their secession from the former Tsarist empire. But this does not of course mean that subsequent attempts by Finland and Estonia upon Petrograd will go unpunished.
If you believe Churchill (and that is not obligatory) then the hesitations of the Finnish and Estonian bourgeoisies have been now resolved in favour of a military invasion. Without doubt such a decision (if it was made) would have been aided by our retreat on the Western Front and Denikin’s temporary successes.
As you know we had regarded the Western Front as of third-rate importance in comparison with the Eastern and Southern Fronts. Now after we have moved our Kolchak Front some six hundred miles eastwards and are advancing further every day, and when we have halted Denikin’s onslaught and gone over to a victorious offensive along the whole Southern Front, we are in a position to pay adequate attention to the Western Front. All the necessary measures have been taken so that even without any kind warning from Churchill we would not have been caught off guard.
As previously we have no motives for launching hostile operations against Finland and Estonia. But we do know full well that the lines which have been laid down by Churchill and others for an offensive against Petrograd lead in the opposite direction to Helsinki and Tallin. You can rest assured that our Red soldiers can find that road.
With regard to Churchill’s generous promise: in the event of the failure of the offensive by fourteen states against Soviet power, we for our part have not the slightest doubt that, following the inevitable collapse of a new onslaught on Soviet Russia, absolutely friendly relations will be established between the latter on the one hand, and Britain, France and their allies on the other. One can, however, assume that such a lesson will not pass without effect on Great Britain’s internal life. By that time, the British proletariat will have given Churchill and his friends and allies sufficient free time to draw a comparison between his current policy and the behaviour of the Dickensian character who tried to keep back the waves with a broom.
An interview dated 29th August 1919
first published in 1926 in Works: Volume 17 Part 2.
Further to my report of August I consider it essential to raise the following points.
The Truce between Afghanistan and Britain may, according to certain evidence, wholly rebound against us. [29] According to reports from our people in Turkestan, Britain is actively at work uniting Persia, Bukhara, Khiva and Afghanistan against Soviet Turkestan. It would be incredible if she were not to do so. Britain is now attempting to form a chain of States to the East just as she did on our Western Borders. The above work offers in turn far fewer difficulties than there are in the West, The whole question now is who will be first in the race.
Our successful advance on Turkestan and the destruction of Kolchak’s Southern Army create conditions in which we can come first in the race. But from this it follows that while conducting an entirely correct policy of biding our time, tactical adjustment, avoiding engagement, and concession in the West, we must switch to a policy of resolute and dynamic action in the East.
We can forthwith thwart Britain’s efforts to rally the Asian States against us by setting up a major military base in Turkestan, for which there are already adequate elements. A feasible line of direction for a thrust needs to be immediately selected and one out of the chain of States which Britain is ranging against us confronted with immediate attack, presented with an ultimatum to conclude a peace treaty, and made to comply with our bidding or subjected to attack.
From this there follow:
A letter to the Central Committee of the RCP dated 20th September 1919.
It was first published in The Trotsky Papers edited by J.Meijer
and published by the International Institute for Social History
by whose kind permission it is here reproduced.
For us the most secure position has been created on the Northern Front, where there are now no large-scale military operations but only minor and partial clashes. This can be explained by the international situation that has developed, the internal difficulties of British imperialism and the British command’s withdrawal of forces from Archangel and Baku which can be considered as final. [30]
Churchill, who not so long ago spoke of fourteen powers preparing an offensive against Soviet Russia, speaks now not only of the withdrawal of British forces from the Russian North but also that Britain must grant asylum to the Archangel White Guard “Chaikovskyites” whom she had led into temptation. [31]
On this front two roads are possible: either the enemy win reinforce themselves along a narrower front and replace regular British units by volunteer White Guard units, or Archangel will be evacuated even before the onset of winter. But these are essentially two stages of one and the same path.
From a speech to the all-city conference
of the Moscow organizations of the RCP, 24th September 1919
1. The Czechoslovaks were prisoners of war from the Austro-Hungarian Army who were being formed into a legion to fight on the Allied side. The officers were bourgeois nationalists hostile to Austrian rule but also to Bolshevism The terms of the Brest-Litovsk Treaty required the legion to be disbanded.
2. The Czechoslovak National Council was set up in 1916 to propagate the idea of the break-up of the Austria-Hungary and the establishment of an in dependent Czechoslovak state. In 1918 it was officially recognised by the Allies.
3. R.H. Bruce Lockhart (1887-1970), British diplomat and secret agent. British envoy in Russia from January 1918; implicated in a plot to assassinate Lenin; jailed and condemned to death, but was spared and released in exchange for the Soviet diplomat, Maxim Litvinov. He later wrote about his experiences in an autobiographical book, Memoirs of a British Agent (1934).
4. The recapture of Kazan from the Whites and Czechoslovaks on 19th September 1918 was the first victory of the newly formed Red Army and marked a turning point in the Civil War. Kazan is some 600 miles east of Moscow.
5. British forces landed at Murmansk on the Arctic Sea at the end of June 1918 ostensibly to forestall a German advance front Finland to the coast; a combined Anglo-French landing took place at Archangel at the beginning of August, while American reinforcements arrived at both ports.
6. Evgeni Gegechkori (1881-1954), Georgian Foreign Minister from May 1918 to February 1921; Menshevik.
7. Anton Ivanovich Denikin (1872-1947), Tsarist general, organiser and commander of counter-revolutionary Volunteer Army in South Russia, 1918-1920.
8. This is a reference to 26 leaders of the Baku Commune executed without trial by the British occupation forces on 20 September 1918. – Stepan Shaumyan (1878-1918), Armenian Bolshevik, member of the Bolshevik Central Committee, leader of the Baku Commune until July 1918; captured by the British occupation forces in Krasnovodsk in September 1918 and executed without trial. – Prokopius Japaridze (1880-1918), Georgian Bolshevik, candidate member of the Bolshevik Central Committee, one of the leaders of the Baku Commune and one of the 26 Baku Bolsheviks executed without trial by the British occupation forces in September 1918.
9. Noe Zhordania (1868-1953), Georgian journalist and Menshevik politician; adopted social chauvinist position during World War I working closely with Plekhanov; head of Georgian government from July 1918 to March 1921, when Georgia was occupied by Soviet troops (cf. Karl Kautsky, Georgia, and Leon Trotsky, Between Red and White); headed Georgian government-in-exile until his death.
10. Vadim Chaikin, Russian Social Revolutionary and member of the Constituent Assembly.
11. Reginald Teague-Jones (1889-1988), British intelligence officer accused of ordering the execution of the 26 Baku Bolsheviks.
12. Arthur Henderson (1863-1935), a leader of the British Labour Party, who rallied the party to support World War I and became a government minister. He later served as Home Secretary in the first Labour government (1924) and Foreign Secretary in the second Labour government (1929-1931). – Ramsay MacDonald (1866-1937), Scottish Labour politician, member of Independent Labour Party (ILP), adopted pacifist position during World War I, prime minister in the first (1924) and second (1929-1931) Labour governments, defected in 1931 with Philip Snowden and Jimmy Thomas to form National Government with the Conservatives after the Labour government split on the question of cutting unemployment benefits, served as prime minister until 1935. – J.R. Clynes (1869-1949), British trade unionist and Labour politician; supporter of British involvement in World War I; became leader of the Labour Party after the war; served as Home Secretary in the second Labour government (1929-31), but split with Ramsay MacDonald in 1931 over the proposed austerity measures. – Jimmy Sexton (1856-1938), British trade unionist and Labour politician; a founder member of the ILP, later became general secretary of the National Union of Dock Labourers; member of parliament from 1918 to 1931. – William Adamson (1863-1936), Scottish trade unionist and Labour politician, leading member of the national union of mineworkers, elected to parliament in 1910, leader of the Labour Party from 1917 to 1921; Secretary of State for Scotland in the first (1924) and second Labour (1929-31) governments; refused to support Ramsay MacDonald’s austerity measures. – John Hodge (1855-1937), Scottish trade unionist and extremely right-wing Labour politician; helped for the British Steel Smelters Association and became its secretary; elected as a Labour MP in 1906; adopted a patriotic stance during World War I and became Minister of Labour and then Minister of Pensions in the wartime coalition government. – Frank Rose (1857-1928), British journalist and Labour politician. – C.W. Bowerman (1851-1947) British trade unionist and Labour politician; first general secretary of the TUC (1921-1923). – Robert Young (1872-1957), British Labour politician. – Benjamin Spoor (1878-1928), British labour politician, government chief whip during the first Labour government (1924).
13. Ethel Snowden (1880-1951), British socialist and feminist campaigner, member of the Independent Labour Party (ILP), wife of Philip Snowden.
14. Winston Churchill (1874-1965), British politician, started as a Conservative, switched to the Liberals in 1904, returning to the Conservatives in 1924, served as minister in various positions in both Liberal and Conservative governments; served as prime minister 1940-1945 und again 1951-1955.
15. Alexander Kolchak (1874-1920), Russian admiral and leader of the counter-revolutionary White forces in Siberia; captured and executed in 1920.
16. Nikolai Nikolaevich Yudenich (1862-1933) Tsarist general during World War I, led counter-revolutionary White army in North-western Russia 1919-20.
17. Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924), President of the United States 1913-1921; re-elected on an anti-war platform in 1916, Wilson brought the US into the war in April 1917; architect of the Versailles Treaty and the League of Nations.
18. During February and March 1919, a number of British, French, American and Canadian companies refused to go up to the line on the Northern Front.
19. Some 40,000 French troops landed at Odessa and other Black Sea ports between December 1918 and April 1919. The operations were co-ordinated with those of Denikin’s Volunteer Army and at first clashed with the forces of the Ukrainian nationalists (the Directorate). Serious mutinies occurred in both the French Army and Navy in the early part of 1919.
20. British forces entered Georgia in December 1918 following the collapse of the Turkish and then German forces. They withdrew towards the end of 1919. The Georgian republic became in this period an involuntary agency of British imperialist policy in Transcaucasia.
21. Henderson was a Methodist and not a member of the Brotherhood Church.
22. On 22nd January 1919 United States President Wilson invited the belligerent parties in Russia to a conference on the Prinkipo Islands near Constantinople. The Soviet government agreed to attend but the various White Guard regimes declined.
23. Georges Clemenceau (1841-1929), leading French bourgeois politician. He emerged as a radical during the period of the Paris Commune (1871). In the 1890s he became popular through his part in the case of Dreyfus, defending him along with Zola and Jaurès. As a prominent deputy Clemenceau more than once occasioned the fall of a government with his energetic speeches, being nicknamed “the breaker of ministries”. From 190 he held Cabinet office, for part of the time as Prime Minister. In this office from 1917 to 1920 Clemenceau was hailed as the “architect of victory” and was the leading figure at the Versailles peace conference in 1919. At the same period, he was the inspirer of intervention against Soviet Russia.
24. Hohenzollerns: electors of Brandenburg (1415-1806), dukes of Prussia (1657-1701), kings of Prussia (1701-1918) and emperors of Germany (1871-1918) – Hapsburgs: dukes of Austria (1282-1453) and archdukes of Austria (1453-1804), one of the dynasties that provided the Holy Roman emperors – all emperors after 1438 except a brief interlude (1740-45) came from this dynasty; emperors of Austria-Hungary (1804-1918).
25. Pyotr Krasnov (1869-1947), Tsarist general, commanded a Cossack brigade during World War I; appointed by kerensky in October 1917 as commander of the army sent against Petrograd; defeated and taken prisoner by the revolutionary forces; released after promising not to take up arms against the revolution; fled to the Don region, where he was elected Ataman of the Don Cossacks; led counter-revolutionary White forces armed by the Germans in southern Russia but was eventually defeated in late 1918; after the German defeat he attempted to get support from the Entente, but went into exile in Germany early in 1919; active in various counter-revolutionary organisations between the wars; organised a pro-German Cossack force during Wold War II; surrendered to the British at the end of the war and was handed over to the Soviet authorities; sentenced to death. - Gustaf Mannerheim (1867-1951), Finnish aristocrat and Tsarist officer; after October Revolution formed a White army in Finland and bloodily suppressed the revolutionary forces in May 1918; led the Finnish forces during the Russo-Finnish War (1939-40 and 1941-1944); president of Finland 1944-1946.
26. Pavlo Skoropadsky (1873-1945), Tsarist general, seized power in Ukraine wioth German support in April 1918; ousted by Symon petliura in november 1918; went into exile in Germany where he was active in anti-Soviet organisations and maintained close contacts with the German military.
27. A.P. Bogaevsky, Cossack general who was elected to replace Krasnov and placed the Don Cossacks under the supreme command of Denikin.
28. In the House of Commons on 20th February 1919 a British Foreign Office spokesman confirmed that M. Phillips Price had been editing a Bolshevik newspaper, The Call, which was spread among British troops in the Murman territory (North Russia) and incited them to revolt.
29. The truce was signed on 8th August 1919 following fighting on the Indian border since May. As a result Britain conceded recognition of Afghanistan’s complete independence.
30. British forces finally evacuated North Russia in October 1919 and Baku in November 1919.
31. The British occupying forces had installed Chaikovsky (1850-1926), formerly a Socialist-Revolutionary, as head of a puppet “National Government of the North” at Archangel in 1918.
Last updated on: 2.7.2007