Appendix 6

Donald Jack, “Me Among the Ruins” The Bandy Papers Vol. 4

Nobody seemed to be quite sure Why the Allies intervened the civil war that followed the Russian Revolution. At least i never met anyone who knew what he was doing in Russia. The right—wingers said we were fighting for ideological reasons, (Mr. Winston Churchill, the main driving force behind intervention, hated the Communists enough to have attacked them single—handed.) The left- wingers believed that intervention was a plot by the international financiers, to overthrow Lenin and Company because they had repudiated Russia‘s foreign debts. The Canadians supported the anti- Bolsheviks in the hope that this might give them a post-war trade advantage. The Czechs fought in Russia for Political reasons, that the Allies might look favorably on the establishment of their new state, Czechoslovakia. The Japanese, who provided most of the manpower for the Siberian expedition, were mainly interested in getting a solid foothold on the Asia, mainland and in snapping up choice pieces of China.

As for Mr. Wilson, the American President, it was his uneasiness about that same Japanese expansionism that drove him into dispatching several thousand US. soldiers to Siberia, following this up by sending several thousand more to Archangel, because everybody else was doing so; and then trying to pretend he wasn’t intervening at all.

Initially, though, the basic motive for intervention was Military. Even at the end of August 1918, it looked as if the war would last into the following year, and the Allied brass considered it essential that the Eastern Front should be reactivated.

It was only later that the Allies, principally Britain and France

turned their guns on the Communists for more personal reasons. .It was bad enough that the Reds had failed to fight the good fight to the bitter

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