Russian Sideshow Page 4

  credit: Richard Barber

  PART I

  North Russia

  The American Expeditionary Force

  North Russia, 1918–1919

  1

  The Early Days in Murmansk

  On the Murmansk Railway, which they have seized, the Anglo-French bandits are already shooting Soviet workers.

  —Soviet document, August 1918

  WHEN the first gunfire of World War I sounded in August 1914, Murmansk did not exist. The only town of any size in that remote area was Kola, named for its geographic territory, the Kola Peninsula. Any description of the area, miles above the Arctic Circle, was a combination of unpleasant terms: winters featuring unrecordably low temperatures; bleak, snow-covered stretches of frozen tundra; settlements that possessed no sanitary facilities; and near inaccessibility to the Russian capital of Petrograd, eight hundred miles away. The summers proved almost as difficult as the winters: swampy surfaces of the soil covered permanently frozen subsurfaces that harbored mosquitoes of huge proportions. It did have one advantage: it was an ice-free port, unlike Archangel well to its south, which was usable only five or six months a year. The Gulf Stream currents in the Barents Sea kept the Murmansk port from freezing.

  In 1915 the Allies and Russia determined that a new port was needed to receive the goods being shipped to Russia for its war effort. Although iced in half the year, Archangel, six hundred land miles away, was the only existing port for even limited Allied use. The British entered the waters off the Kola Peninsula to protect the area from potential threats from the Finnish border, only a few miles away, and to safeguard the waters from the German Navy. Since Russia was an ally, it was logical to have the powerful British Navy as the area defender. As the 1915 winter season began to close in on Archangel, the British ships, which had patrolled there in the summer, moved up to Murmansk. There were eight ships: the battleship HMS Glory, the cruiser HMS Vindictive, and six smaller ships.

  The British ships provided not only defense, but also some funds and expertise for building a town. Construction of Murmansk was begun in September 1915; at the same time, construction of a railway south to Petrograd was also begun under British supervision with Russian prisoners and German prisoners of war (POWs) providing the labor. In some ways the construction of this railroad was comparable to the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railroad. The difficulties were enormous. “Twenty-five percent of the line had to be laid through marshland. There were severe technical problems connected with permanently frozen subsoil. To avoid an even higher percentage of swampy foundation, forty percent of the line had to be laid out on curves.”1 Then there were the waterways that required bridging, the long Arctic winter nights, and the required transporting of all supplies across hundreds of miles from Petrograd, factors which made its completion in the spring of 1917 a construction miracle.

  As the railroad progressed, buildings sprang to life in the city. Warehouses, barracks, and other structures were completed in record time. Soon Murmansk became a thriving port; tons of supplies, furnished by the Allies, began piling up in new warehouses near the docks.2

  But its utility was short-lived. The October 1917 Revolution shut down the railroad, and Murmansk was virtually cut off from the rest of Russia, dependent on shipments and supplies from the Barents Sea. The Bolshevik influence in Russia was then primarily confined to the central European areas, and its philosophies, although spreading, had not reached many of the outer edges of the huge country. With British ships off the coast, French and British diplomats in the city, and little contact with the Petrograd Central Soviet, it appeared that Murmansk needed Allied help. However, that was not a universal opinion in the city. Russian sailors and railroad men had harbored communist leanings for years, and the city had recently formed its own Murmansk Soviet, led by Aleksei Yuryev. The local Soviet was technically allied with Petrograd, but since they were so isolated and communications were so poor, there was considerable disagreement with the Central Government. The railroad workers and rebellious sailors, in port without ships, opposed the local Soviet. Murmansk was a seething mass with no real governing body with the strength to enforce itself.

  Then came a change: in February 1918, Germany reattacked Russia in the Ukraine, although Germany was still in negotiations with the Bolshevik Soviet. In Murmansk there was concern that the nearby Finnish border would offer Germany a haven from which it could launch a North Russian offensive. The threat of German attack brought some harmony to the three diverse Murmansk groups—the government, rebellious military, and allies—as they recognized the need for British defense and supply. At this time, an American, Lt. Hugh Martin, a passport control officer, was the senior U.S. representative on the scene. A few other Americans were also there: Allen Wardell of the Red Cross had made his second appearance in the new city, while YMCA official Reverend Jesse Halsey was a more recent arrival.

  With this new spirit of cooperation among the three Murmansk groups, the area faced a new concern: a civil war had begun in Finland, and it was feared that Germany would aid the White (anti-Bolshevik) side, possibly invading Murmansk with a combined force. In retrospect, we know that both Germany and Finland had their hands full and gave little thought to any additional fronts. However, anticipation provided fuel for those who saw the possibilities of a German threat. Historian George Kennan wrote, “In March and April there was no serious danger of attack on Murmansk by Finns under German command; but by the time the British and the French had spent some weeks acting as though there were such a danger, they succeeded in conjuring it into real existence.”3 As tensions heightened, the British sent another cruiser, HMS Cochrane, and the French sent the heavy cruiser Amiral Aube. At last pleas to Wilson finally caught his attention. Rumors flew about, all indicating German-Finnish forces heading toward Murmansk or its railroad.

  Eventually, in April 1918, Wilson relented and reluctantly made a step toward intervention by sending the USS Olympia, Admiral Dewey’s old flagship, Capt. Bion B. Bierer commanding. However, Wilson cabled, “to caution him [Bierer] not to be drawn in further than the present action there without first seeking and obtaining instructions from home.”4 With Bierer’s instructions was the added information that he would be under the command of the British naval commander Adm. Thomas W. Kemp. Admiral Kemp had telegraphed earlier:

  I beg USS Olympia may have orders to come to Murmansk and that she be put definitely and fully under my orders the same as the French cruiser Amiral Aube. There can be only one Allied head here and I consider this step indispensable for both military and political reasons.5

  The decision to have American forces commanded by British officers would lead to a host of problems in coming months.

  By mid-April the USS Olympia was steaming from Charleston, South Carolina, toward Murmansk, stopping several times en route, with Captain Bierer on a collision course with the president’s cautionary advice. With him on the Olympia was the new Allied commander, British major general Frederick C. Poole, who took command of all Allied forces in North Russia on his arrival in Murmansk on May 24, 1918.

  With mounting concern over threats of German or Finnish invasion, the Murmansk Soviet telegraphed the Central Soviet on May 18, 1918, “The representatives of the friendly powers, the French, American and British missions currently at Murmansk, continue to show themselves inalterably well-inclined toward us and prepared to render us assistance, running all the way from food supply to armed aid, inclusive.”6

  An immediate answer on the same day was an important piece of the Murmansk story. It came from People’s Commissar Leon Trotsky, who warned:

  The Germans are advancing in small detachments. Resistance is possible and obligatory. Abandon nothing to the enemy. Evacuate anything that has any value; if this is impossible, destroy it. You must accept any and all assistance from the Allied missions and use every means to obstruct the advance of the plunderers.7

  Threats of invasion by German and Finnish troops worried even Petrograd
Soviets, so the telegram opened the door for cooperation between the Murmansk Soviet and the Allies, even if it eventually antagonized the Central Soviets. The wire would also haunt Trotsky in years to come, as he fell from favor.

  From this point on, the Allies began a gradual buildup. The French already had a Slavic command of a few soldiers in the town of Kola. Admiral Kemp had landed about 130 Marines from his ship HMS Glory on March 6, 1918; they had quietly housed themselves in barracks and awaited developments. These British marines were the first purely military troops to take part in the Allied Intervention.8

  On June 8, apparently at British request, but with the blessing of U.S. ambassador David Francis, Captain Bierer was ordered to land a shore party to help garrison Murmansk. Captain Bierer sent Lt. H. C. Floyd with eight officers and one hundred men and their equipment to Murmansk. Murmansk was under Soviet control, but already some Allied troops were in the city; the local Soviet anticipated a break with the Central Bolsheviks in Petrograd, so the landing was not contested. The American sailors also kept busy, assisting British and French marines in capturing the Russian cruiser Askold and other smaller ships, whose Bolshevik-sympathizing crews had mutinied.

  On June 23, a six-hundred-man force under British major general Sir C. Maynard was put ashore with its equipment. Major General Maynard’s writings after the war indicated that the goal of these and subsequent troops was to protect Murmansk and Archangel and the southbound railway, but he also stated, “When ready to take the field, the whole force was to endeavor to join hands with the pro-Ally forces in Siberia, and then to assist in opening up a new front against Germany.”9 The misinformation and lack of understanding of the situation was evident in this stated goal of the expedition.

  As General Maynard’s task force landed, his commander was already in Murmansk. Major General Frederick C. Poole had been an honored guest on the USS Olympia when it sailed into the Russian harbor on May 24. He was the overall commander of the Allied North Russian land forces. Poole was noted for his colonial approach to Russians: he patronized them, scolded them, misunderstood them, looked down on them, and generally made himself heartily disliked by those hapless souls he was preparing to liberate. His first contingent of British soldiers was not impressive; most of them were veterans of the western front who were classified as unfit for active service, yet they were expected to conduct themselves with typical British stoicism in an utterly hostile climate and topography.

  Poole and Maynard conferred for hours as the contingent arrived. George Kennan says, “From his initial discussions with Poole, Maynard, as will be seen in his memoirs, derived a wildly distorted picture of the situation, including the impression that 15,000 White Finns, in German service, were already on the march against the Murmansk Railway.”10 Maynard set out on a mission to strengthen his defenses, traveling south on a locomotive with several cars full of troops. His reception by the Russian railway workers and stationmasters as he rode south was decidedly antagonistic, to the point of open rebellion. Later Maynard explained, “Bolshevik Russia was a recognized enemy, and I had a free hand to take such military measures as were possible to combat a Bolshevik–White Finn combination.”11 South of Murmansk in the town of Kandalaksha, he was confronted by a northbound train filled with Red troops. Maynard’s unfortunate response was to mount machine guns covering the Bolsheviks and order the Red trains to turn around and return south. He called for reinforcements from the port and visited a nearby Allied base at Kem, where he forcibly disarmed two more Red trains and sent them back south. His high-handed actions opened armed hostilities between Allies and Bolsheviks, the first real signal of the conflicts to come.

  Even before Maynard’s railroad journey, the relations between the Murmansk Soviet and Central Soviet in Moscow had soured. Murmansk, concerned with its daily survival, depended almost entirely on Allied supplies. The Central Soviet in Petrograd saw things very differently. Trotsky’s invitation had disappeared; the Petrograd government now issued a decree to the Murmansk government to throw the Allies out. The tone of a June 26, 1918, telegraph from Petrograd grew even more critical: “If you still refuse to understand Soviet policy equally hostile to English and to Germans, blame it on yourselves.”12 Murmansk fired right back in the same tone, “It is all very well for you to talk that way, sitting there in Moscow.”13 Lenin could not tolerate that kind of behavior and promptly called the party members of the port city Soviet traitors and declared them outcasts, subject to execution. “The President of the Murmansk Soviet Yuriev (Yuryev) having gone over to the side of the Anglo-French imperialists and participating in inimical actions directed against the Soviet Republic, is hereby proclaimed an enemy of the people and outlawed.” The telegram was signed by Lenin and Trotsky.14

  In an action which completely frustrated the Soviets in the capital, the Murmansk Soviet signed an accord with the Allies, British, French and even American. This agreement pledged the Allies to defend Murmansk and recognize the Murmansk Regional Soviet as the acknowledged government of the area. Captain Bierer of the Olympia signed on behalf of the American government, even though he had no authority to do so. It is interesting to note that this document was executed several days before Wilson’s Aide Memoire, which authorized intervention in Russia. The Murmansk agreement was completely unauthorized by the U.S. government, yet it was finally approved in October 1918.15 While it was a stroke of luck for the Allies to have the tie-in with a Russian government, even an out-of-favor one, the Allies pledged to protect those individuals who had faced the wrath of their own people by separating themselves from the Central Soviet. From then on, only Allied strength would keep the North Russians in Murmansk from the typical Soviet purges. Sadly, this was a pledge that the Allies could not fulfill in the disastrous months ahead. The U.S. government recognized the serious position these loyal governments would be in if Allied support were withdrawn. American colonel J. A. Ruggles voiced his concern: “This act [the break with the Moscow Soviet] of the newly organized government and of all who actively supported it was equivalent to a death sentence should the Bolshevik government return here.”16 This prediction would prove tragically true in coming months.

  Maynard’s memoirs show the anger he felt toward the Americans as he viewed their role in the Great War and the Intervention.

  This lack of effective co-operation on the part of the United States can, I think, be ascribed almost wholly to the attitude adopted by President Wilson, who, totally devoid of strategic insight, refused to be guided by those who had been responsible during four tumultuous years for the conduct of a world-wide conflict. . . . One thing was now abundantly clear. America was determined to avoid pulling her weight in Russia. . . . But if America failed the Allies in North Russia, the British Empire did not.17

  Maynard, throughout his months in Murmansk, was convinced that German forces would wipe out his small garrison. Even as late as 1928, he wrote in his memoirs, “Had Germany been left to carry out her designs unimpeded, it may be assumed fairly that, by early autumn at latest, Murmansk would have been in her hands, and her submarines stealing down the Kola Inlet.” Citing the movement of German divisions from the eastern to the western front, he added:

  But the stream [of German divisions] ceased abruptly with the first landing of the Allies at Murmansk. During June, July, and August no single unit was sent from east to west. For these three months the Murmansk force tied down the whole German army in Finland, and put a stop to the transfer to France of the probable equivalent of from three to four enemy divisions.18

  That was a considerable exaggeration; most sources state that few German troops actually served in Finland.

  On July 30, 1918, the Archangel invasion fleet left the Murmansk harbor, sailing into the Barents Sea, down the White Sea toward the mouth of the Dvina River. Led by General Poole, these fifteen hundred troops were the initial forces of the Archangel campaign; Major General Maynard was left to his own devices in Murmansk with very few men.

  The in
vasion force, code-named ELOPE, would involve many Allies, but few Americans. Some of those Americans would find danger, excitement, and adventure as they took part in the Allied Force B.

  2

  Force B—Archangel

  My arm was raised near my face when shrapnel from one of the enemy rounds struck my arm. If my arm hadn’t been raised, the shrapnel would have killed me.

  —Seaman George Perschke, USS Olympia

  THE Allied fleet was impressive for that era: two subchasers, several armed trawlers, the HMS Nairana with its seaplanes, the light cruiser HMS Attentive, the HMS Salvator, and the French Amiral Aube. The landing forces were on transports Stephans, Asurian, Westborough, and Kassala.1 The senior U.S. navy commander, Capt. Bion B. Bierer, with two officers and a detachment of fifty men joined the Archangel invasion fleet on the British transport HMT Stephans. Leaving the Olympia in Murmansk, they took part in the landings and occupation of Archangel, in spite of Wilson’s warnings to avoid conflict.2

  The fleet set out on July 30 at 10:40 P.M. from Murmansk into the White Sea, seeking the mouth of the Dvina River and the upriver city of Archangel. At 3:00 A.M. July 31, in dense fog, the Amiral Aube went aground off Intzi Point, close to the river’s mouth. The fleet waited there until the fog cleared and the Aube could be refloated. The crews of the small boats launched from the Attentive captured a Russian lightship and two trawlers; from the lightship they telephoned the Bolshevik shore battery defending the river, requesting their surrender, emphasizing the “massive” force opposite the battery.

  Without waiting for their decision, the Allies began a bombardment and sent two seaplanes from HMS Nairana over the enemy guns, strafing and bombing the Reds. The shore battery fired a few shots, one breaking the smokestack of the Attentive, causing no casualties and little harm. As the fleet came into sight of the battery, the Soviet gunners made a hasty evacuation, leaving their undamaged guns intact.3 Later that day, August 1, two small ships were sunk in the channel by the Bolsheviks to keep the Allied fleet from going further; later a third ship was sunk, which delayed, but did not stop, the Allies. The following day the Allied ships cleared the sunken Red boats and sailed up to Economie, just north of Archangel. There the Allies were given a royal welcome by the townspeople; the fleet then sailed on up to Archangel, where they learned a new government was in place.