The Americans, British, French and Japanese all invaded Russia in 1918.
American troops in Vladivostok parading before the building occupied by the staff of the Czecho-Slovaks. Japanese marines are standing to attention as they march by.
Siberia, August 1918
The Allies became concerned at the collapse of the Eastern front and the loss of their Russian ally to Communism and there was also the question of the large amounts of supplies and equipment in Russian ports, which the Allies feared might be commandeered by the Germans or the Bolsheviks.
Also worrisome to the Allies was the April 1918 landing of a division of German troops in Finland, increasing speculation they might attempt to capture the Murmansk-Petrograd railroad, and subsequently the strategic port of Murmansk and possibly Arkhangelsk.
Other concerns regarded the potential destruction of the Czechoslovak Legions and the threat of Bolshevism, the nature of which worried many Allied governments.
Meanwhile, Allied matériel in transit quickly accumulated in the warehouses in Arkhangelsk and Murmansk. Estonia had established a national army with the support of Finnish volunteers and were defending against the 7th Red Army's attack.
Faced with these events, the British and French governments decided upon an Allied military intervention in Russia.
They had three objectives:
prevent the German or Bolshevik capture of Allied material stockpiles in Arkhangelsk
mount an attack helping the Czechoslovak Legions stranded on the Trans-Siberian Railroad
resurrect the Eastern Front by defeating the Bolshevik army with help from the Czechoslovak Legions and an expanded anti-Bolshevik force of local citizens and stop the spread of communism and the Bolshevik cause in Russia
Severely short of troops to spare, the British and French requested that President Wilson provide American soldiers for the campaign.
In July 1918, against the advice of the United States Department of War, Wilson agreed to the limited participation of 5,000 United States Army troops in the campaign, this force, which become known as the "American North Russia Expeditionary Force" (a.k.a. the Polar Bear Expedition) were sent to Arkhangelsk while another 8,000 soldiers, organised as the American Expeditionary Force Siberia, were shipped to Vladivostok from the Philippines and from Camp Fremont in California.
That same month, the Canadian government agreed to the British government's request to command and provide most of the soldiers for a combined British Empire force, which included Australian and Indian troops.
A Royal Navy squadron was sent to the Baltic under Rear-Admiral Edwyn Alexander-Sinclair. This force consisted of modern C-class cruisers and V- and W-class destroyers.
In December 1918, Sinclair sallied into Estonian and Latvian ports, sending in troops and supplies, and promising to attack the Bolsheviks "as far as my guns can reach".
In January 1919, he was succeeded in command by Rear-Admiral Walter Cowan.
The Japanese, concerned about their northern border, sent the largest military force, numbering about 70,000. They desired the establishment of a buffer state in Siberia,[8] and the Imperial Japanese Army General Staff viewed the situation in Russia as an opportunity for settling Japan's "northern problem". The Japanese government was also intensely hostile to communism.
The Italians created the special "Corpo di Spedizione" with Alpini troops sent from Italy and ex-POWs of Italian ethnicity from the former Austro-Hungarian army who were recruited to the Italian Legione Redenta.
They were initially based in the Italian Concession in Tientsin and numbered about 2,500.
Romania, Greece, Poland, China, and Serbia also sent contingents in support of the intervention.
Personnel of the Canadian Siberian Expeditionary Force with truck in Vladivotok.
Jan.-May 1919
Numbers of foreign soldiers who occupied the indicated regions of Russia:
50,000 Czechoslovaks (along the Trans-Siberian railway)
40,000 British (in the Arkhangelsk and Vladivostok regions)
28,000 Japanese, later increased to 70,000 (in the Vladivostok region and north)
23,351 Greeks (part of I Army Corps under Maj. Gen. Konstantinos Nider, comprising 2nd and 13th Infantry Divisions, in the Crimea, and around Odessa and Kherson)
17,000 Poles - mostly 5th Rifle Division (almost 12,000 men) in Siberia and 4th Rifle Division (ca. 4000 men) in "Southern Russia", also a single 400-men-strong battalion in Murmansk within the Anglo-Slavic Legion
13,000 Americans (in the Arkhangelsk and Vladivostok regions)
12,000 French and French colonial (mostly in the Arkhangelsk and Odessa regions)
11,500 Estonians in northwestern Russia
4,192 Canadians (in the Vladivostok region)
4,000 Serbs (in the Arkhangelsk region)
4,000 Romanians (in the Arkhangelsk region)
2,500 Italians (in the Arkhangelsk region and Siberia)
2,300 Chinese (in the Vladivostok region)
1,100 Canadians (in the Murmansk and Arkhangelsk regions)
150 Australians (mostly in the Arkhangelsk regions)
41 Canadians (in the Baku Region)
These numbers make a total of 255,503 foreign troops stationed in Russia during the civil war.
Captured British Mark V Tank in Arkhangelsk
A Japanese lithograph showing troops occupying Blagoveschensk.
Plane dicthes alongside HMS Vindictive after returning from air raid,
Baltic Sea, 1919
British forces denied the Bolsheviks the ability to move by sea, RN guns bombarded the Bolsheviks on land in support of Estonian and Latvian troops, and provided supplies.
On the night of 4 December, the cruiser HMS Cassandra struck a mine while on patrol duties north of Liepāja, and sank with the loss of 11 of her crew.
On 26 December, British warships captured the Bolshevik destroyers Avtroil and Spartak,which at the time were shelling the port of Tallinn.
Both units were presented to the Estonian Provisional Government and, as Lennuk and Vambola, formed the nucleus of the Estonian Navy. Forty Bolshevik prisoners of war were executed by the Estonian government on Naissaar in February 1919 despite British protests.
The new Commissar of the Baltic Fleet—Fedor Raskolnikov—was captured onboard Spartak. He was exchanged on 27 May 1919 for 17 British officers captured by the Soviets and later appointed Commissar of the Caspian Flotilla by Trotsky.
In the summer of 1919, the Royal Navy bottled up the Red fleet in Kronstadt.
Several sharp skirmishes were fought near Kotlin Island.
In the course of one of this clashes, on 31 May, during a Bolshevik probing action to the west, the battleship Petropavlovsk scored two hits on the destroyer HMS Walker from a distance of 14,000 yards (12,802 m), when a flotilla of British destroyers attempted to catch the outgunned Bolshevik destroyer Azard.
Walker suffered some damage and two of its crew were wounded, but the British destroyers disengaged when they came too close to Bolshevik coastal artillery and minefields.
A flotilla of British Coastal Motor Boats under the command of Lieutenant Augustus Agar raided Kronstadt Harbour twice, sinking the cruiser Oleg and the depot ship Pamiat Azova on June 17 as well as damaging the battleships Petropavlovsk and Andrei Pervozvanny in August, at the cost of three CMBs in the last attack.
The British claim that the motor boats damaged the Petropavlosk is dismissed by Soviet records.
The first raid was intended to support a significant mutiny at the Krasnaya Gorka fort which was eventually suppressed by the 12 in (300 mm) guns of the Bolshevik battleships.
In early July the British received reinforcements which included the aircraft carrier HMS Vindictive whose aircraft carried out bombing and strafing runs against gun and searchlight installations at Kronstadt.
Significant unrest took place among British sailors in the Baltic.
This included small-scale mutinies amongst the crews of HMS Vindictive, Delhi—the latter due in part to the behaviour of Admiral Cowan—and other ships stationed in Björkö Sound.
The causes were a general war weariness (many of the crews had fought in World War I), poor food and accommodation, a lack of leave and the effects of Bolshevik propaganda.
RN ships lost in the Baltic include:
Light cruiser HMS Cassandra – mined
V-class destroyers:
HMS Verulam – mined
HMS Vittoria – torpedoed by Bolshevik submarine Pantera
Submarine HMS L55 – surface action against Bolshevik destroyers.
Arabis-class sloop: HMS Gentian and Myrtle – mined
Coastal Motor Boats: CMB-24, CMB-62 and CMB-79 – surface action against Bolshevik Fleet
CMB-67 – stranded
The 112 deaths of British servicemen—107 RN personnel and five RAF personnel—are commemorated on a memorial plaque, which was unveiled in 2005 at Portsmouth Cathedral in England,with similar memorials in churches in Tallinn and Riga.
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