Doughboys in Russia 1918-20

[Originally written in 2009, edited in 2020 to address the Mosin-Nagant issue.]

I recently finished two books on this issue: America’s Siberian Adventure, by General Graves, and History of the American Expedition Fighting The Bolsheviks: US Military Intervention in Soviet Russia 1918-19, by Capt. Joel Moore, Lt. Harry Meade, and Lt Lewis Jahns.  Between them, they cover the US involvement in the Russian Civil War. 

 Siberia.  This was all the way over by Vladivostok, close to Manchuria and Japan.  Here there were no Red Army forces to fight against. Graves was the man handling the scene at the local level in command of the US troops in Siberia.  His forces were drawn from Manila, Philippines and the West Coast of the US.

            Graves was given a brief memo, the so-called Aide Memoire, as a VERY rough guideline on how to conduct his operations.  Wilson specifically instructed Graves that the US was NOT to interfere in Russian internal matters; indeed, since Wilson believed the Bolsheviks would lose anyway, intervention was unnecessary.  According to Graves, he himself stuck to this, as did his superior, General March, and HIS superior, Newton Baker, the Secretary of War.  But some yahoos in the State Dept. had a different agenda and were sympathetic to the Brits & French, so even in the US Government, different parts were working at cross purposes, though the Army was behind Wilson and not inclined to intervene.  Note below: the US forces in North Russia did enter combat against Bolshevik forces.

            For their part the French were livid that Lenin would make separate peace with the Germans and were out for blood.  They would do whatever they could to thwart the Bolsheviks.

            The Brits were looking out for their own best interests, which meant they were also anti-Bolshevik. The local Brit commander, Knox, was huge anti-Bolshevik, had been the British military attaché to Russia under the Czar, spoke fluent Russian, and blasted peasants as “swine”, and so was devoted to interfering on behalf of the Whites.  The catch was, neither the British nor French could spare any troops to go to Siberia (though they did have forces fighting in North Russia), so they hoped to trick the Americans into fighting the Bolsheviks for them.  “Look, the Yanks have all these warm bodies, cannon fodder we can use to fight the Bolsheviks”.  

            Graves said, “uhh… I don’t think so.”  Especially since he noted that so far as he could tell, the real Bolsheviks back west didn’t have nearly enough reach or power to exercise any control this far east – they had their hands full waging the civil war west of the Urals, so he never even met anyone he could tell was a legitimate “Bolshevik” (representative of the Soviet government).  Moreover, over there in the east, “Bolshevik” seemed to be defined as “anyone who doesn’t support the local Cossack or White Russian gangster or Admiral, way out here.”  Even had he been inclined to oppose the Bolsheviks, in principle, the Cossacks and White Russians were frequently bloodthirsty murderers and scoundrels (by Graves’ own description) who he would never deign to support even in policy, much less with US troops.

            The Japs seemed to be angling to take what they could get.  They threw in with some of the nastiest Cossacks, serious weasel dealing.  The Japs were trying to send in as many of their own troops as possible to grab up as much land as they could, taking advantage of the chaos going on.  They played off the Brits’ and French hatred of Bolsheviks, yet tried to conceal their own ulterior motives by allying with the most unsavory Cossacks and claiming to act on behalf of, and in the best interests of, the Russians.  Sending troops to guard the railroads was the prime example of this chicanery.  Graves was not buying any of it.

            Add to this the Czechs, who found themselves isolated but fairly well-armed, 12,000 of them stuck in limbo yet still trying to take local towns if they could muscle themselves in.  For his part, Graves was skeptical about the Allies’ alleged plans to transport this Czech army back west as no one arranged any sea transport for them in Vladivostok.  I can imagine Graves suspecting the Allies were hoping to use the Czechs to fight the Bolsheviks.  To add to the confusion, there were reports – unfounded, it later turned out – that German POWs were being let go and allowed to reform into coherent military units. 

            Ultimately the US forces were withdrawn in April 1920.  They were undefeated in battle – indeed, they had never been in battle.  A few US soldiers were murdered by Cossacks.  In one instance, some US soldiers traveling with General Graves by train were accosted by some Czarist officers who were trying to take away the railcar they had been traveling in.  A corporal had his men cock their rifles and point them at the Czarists, claiming, “back off, or you’ll have more dead Russian officers than you’ve ever seen,” which was sufficient to dissuade the Russians, and they moved on without further incident. 

            The US forces in Siberia kept their Springfield bolt-action rifles, whereas the US troops in North Russia were issued Mosin-Nagant Russian bolt-actions to simplify supply issues. 

 North Russia.  September 1918 to June 1919.  Unlike the forces in Siberia, this group did end up in combat against Red forces.  The soldiers of the US 339^th Regiment – 13,000 men, half of a division – were landed at Archangel in September 1918.  These were men from Detroit who had not fought in France.  They teamed up with British soldiers, Scots, French, and some Russians.  The Russians were a mixed bag, some were Cossacks, some were peasants, and some were Bolshevik sympathizers.  The forces drove south from Archangel on several different fronts, fighting directly against Red Guard forces.  This was northeast of Petrograd (aka St. Petersburg and Leningrad).  They were almost always heavily outnumbered by the Red units.  For their part, the Red units were of inconsistent quality.  Many stories were told of men who were forcibly conscripted into the Red Army and not particularly sympathetic to the Bolshevik cause.   Similar to “Enemy at the Gates”, there were also stories of the Reds keeping machine guns behind the lines to mow down any of their own who retreated back from the Allied lines after an unsuccessful attack.  By itself, this force was not enough to make much of a dent in the Soviet front, or even to come close to Petrograd or Moscow.  Apparently they were expecting (A) to hook up with Kolchak’s forces fighting west from the Urals, or the Czech Legion, and (B) reinforcements from the West after the Germans had been defeated.  However, after the Armistice on November 11, 1918, there was no move or intent to reinforce the troops with any more forces from any nation.  Instead of settling down for the winter, the Bolsheviks, once they knew the NREF would not be receiving reinforcements, began striking.  In some places they were held, in others they were able to overwhelm the NREF forces by sheer weight of numbers; it seems that on some fronts, the local Red commander was a brave soul who knew what he was doing and could inspire his men to victory, whereas on others the Red officers (as noted above) simply scared the hell out of their men and drove them by brutality.  Once it became apparent that no strategic victory would occur for the Allies, the whole thing looked pointless, so in June 1919 they were withdrawn and brought back to the US, undefeated on the battlefield – decades before our similar withdrawal from Vietnam in 1973. 
             On this front the US forces used Mosin-Nagant 1891 bolt action rifles.  It seems the Tsar needed them built during the war, Russian industrial capacity at the time was insufficient to do so, thus the Tsar had US firms manufacture them.  They even sent Russian advisors to the US to supervise the production, a bunch of arrogant snobs who the factory workers strongly disliked - and played jokes on.  But the Revolution occurred before any of these US-made Russian rifles could be provided to the Russian army.  So when it came time to equip the US forces sent to North Russia, they simply armed them with these, which also simplified the ammunition and supply issue: the troops could use 7.62x54R rounds like everyone else (the Springfields the US troops would normally use fired .30-06, close but not good enough).   

             This was a “what were they smoking” deal – no way, no how, was any nation, or combination of nations, going to send enough troops to break out of this small pocket around Archangel and achieve any strategic victory against the Reds.  They wouldn’t be able to take Petrograd, to link up with Kolchak, Denikin, Makhno, or the Czechs.  The most they could do is push south through forests and swamps and kill a few “Bolo” (as they were called).  In Siberia, there weren’t even any Bolsheviks around to fight, even if Graves had been inclined to do so, with what few US forces he did have.

            Another major issue was politics.  No way, no how, was any US force sent to Archangel or Siberia going to support any Czarist or monarchist forces fighting to return Russia to a monarchy – especially once the Romanovs had been murdered in July 1918, several months before any US forces entered Russia.  Even if they managed to defeat the Bolsheviks on the battlefield, then what?  There appeared to be no one around to make Russia a democracy or a republic – no centrists existed, with the possible exception of Kerensky.  Who was going to bring democracy to Russia?  The largest non-Bolshevik forces fighting in the Russian Civil War were monarchists under Admiral Kolchak or General Denikin, or Ukrainian nationalists – and the Czech Legion.  This was clearly a war in which the US really had no role or any faction it could wholeheartedly support to the exclusion of the others.