North Russia Intervention - Reasons Behind The Campaign

Reasons Behind The Campaign

In March 1917, a number of events occurred which changed the dynamics of World War I. Following the abdication of Russian Tsar Nicholas II and the formation of a provisional democratic government in Russia, the U.S. entered the war. The U.S. declared war upon the German Empire (and later upon Austria-Hungary). The Russian provisional government, led by Alexander Kerensky, pledged to continue fighting Imperial Germany on the Eastern Front. In return, the U.S. began providing economic and technical support to the Russian provisional government so they could carry out their military pledge.

The Russian offensive of June 18, 1917 was crushed by a German counteroffensive. The Russian Army was plagued by mutinies and desertions. Allied war material still in transit quickly began piling up in the already well-stocked warehouses of Arkhangelsk (Archangel) and the ice-free port of Murmansk.

The Bolsheviks, led by Vladmir Lenin, came to power in October 1917 and established a communist government. Five months later, they signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with Germany, which formally ended the war on the Eastern Front. This allowed the German army to begin redeploying troops to the Western Front, where the depleted British and French armies had not yet been bolstered by the American Expeditionary Force.

Coincidental with the Treaty, Lenin personally pledged that if the Czechoslovak Legion would stay neutral and leave Russia, they would enjoy safe passage through Siberia on their way to join the Allied forces on the Western Front. However, as the 50,000 members of the Legion made their way along the Trans-Siberian Railroad to Vladivostok, only half had arrived before the agreement broke down and fighting with the Bolsheviks ensued in May 1918. Also worrisome to the Allies was the fact that in April 1918, a division of German troops had landed in Finland, creating fears they might try to capture the Murmansk-Petrograd railroad, the strategic port of Murmansk, and possibly even the city of Arkhangelsk.

Faced with these events, the leaders of the British and French governments decided the western Allies needed to begin a military intervention in North Russia. They had three objectives they hoped to achieve:

1. prevent the Allied war material stockpiles in Arkhangelsk from falling into German or Bolshevik hands,
2. mount an offensive to rescue the Czechoslovak Legion, which was stranded along the Trans-Siberian Railroad and
3. resurrect the Eastern Front by defeating the Bolshevik army with the assistance of the Czechoslovak Legion and an expanded anti-communist force drawn from the local citizenry.

Severely short of troops to spare, the British and French requested that US President Woodrow Wilson provide U.S. troops for what was to be called the North Russia Campaign, or the Allied Intervention in North Russia. In July 1918, against the advice of the US War Department, Wilson agreed to a limited participation in the Campaign by a contingent of U.S. Army soldiers that was hastily organized into the American North Russia Expeditionary Force, which came to be nicknamed the Polar Bear Expedition.