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Updated: May 17, 2025
Here is a striking instance of what would look to the average man very like intervention in the domestic politics of another nation well-meant and, it may be, beneficent intervention were it not that we are assured on the highest authority that it is nothing of the sort. It was devised as an expedient for getting outside help for the capture of Petrograd by the anti-Bolshevists.
With growing power they rounded up unwilling men and drafted them into the Red Army just as they had done so often before in other parts of Russia if we may believe the statements of wounded men and prisoners and deserters. Down the valley with the handful of Americans and Russian White Guards there came an ever increasing tide of anti-Bolshevists looking to Pinega for safety.
How little likely Russians are to barter ideal boons for material advantages may be gathered from an incident worth noting that occurred in the months of April and May, when the fall of the capital into the hands of the anti-Bolshevists was confidently expected. At that time, as it chanced, the one thing necessary for their success against Bolshevism was the capture of Petrograd.
They could hardly believe that, while hopefully negotiating with the anti-Bolshevists, the Conference was desirous at the same time of opening pourparlers with the Leninists, between whom and them antagonism was not merely political, but personal and vindictive, like that of two Albanians in a blood feud.
Wilson could approve. The Russian and anti-Bolshevists were in like manner compelled to give their assent to certain democratic dogmas and practices.
I watched the development of anti-Ententism among those Russians with painful interest, and in favorable conditions for observation, and I say without hesitation that rancor against the Allies burns as vehemently and intensely among the anti-Bolshevists as among their adversaries.
And as they could not resolve to accord recognition to any of the existing administrations, they hit upon the middle course, that of promoting the anti-Bolshevists to the rank of a community, not, indeed, sovereign or independent, but deserving of every kind of assistance except the despatch of Allied troops.
One such agreement was on the point of being signed between them and the anti-Bolshevists of Omsk immediately after, and in consequence of, the Allies' ill-considered invitation to Lenin and Trotzky to delegate representatives to Prinkipo. This convention, I have reason to believe, was actually drafted, and was about to be signed.
In fact, when a survey of the military resources of the European Allies had disclosed their utter lack of men for such an expedition and it was found that the only hope lay in drawing the bulk of the needed troops from the United States forces, and when the statement of the cases in the usual polite arguments brought from President Wilson a positive refusal to allow American troops to go into Russia, it was only by the emphasis, it is said, of the pathetic appeal of the North Russian anti-Bolshevists, coupled with the stirring appeals of such famous characters as the one-time leader of the Russian Women's Battalion of Death and the direct request of General Foch himself for the use of the American troops there in Russia as a military necessity to win the war, that the will of President Wilson was moved and he dubiously consented to the use of American troops in the expedition.
The result of this agreement with the Murmansk and the arrival of further troops at the Murmansk coast, together with the promise of more to follow immediately, was to influence the Russian local government of the state of Archangel to break with the hated Reds. And so, on August 1st, a quiet coup d'etat was effected. The anti-Bolshevists came out into the open.
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