How the British Invented Communism (And Blamed It on the Jews)
How the British Invented Communism (And Blamed It on the Jews)
The Untold Story of Karl Marx, Leon Trotsky, MI6, and the Russian Revolution
SUMMARY: Was the Bolshevik Revolution fake? Was Lenin’s 1917 coup little more than a “color revolution,” a staged event, orchestrated by foreign intelligence services? Strong evidence suggests that it was. In the 1920s, prominent Russian exiles accused Great Britain of plotting the Tsar’s downfall. George Buchanan, British ambassador to Russia from 1910 to 1918, devoted 16 pages of his 1923 memoir to denying this charge. But the charge was true. The British secret services had destabilized Russia, just as they had previously destabilized France in 1789. They had infiltrated and weaponized the Bolsheviks, just as they had previously weaponized the Jacobin movement against Louis XVI. While the Tsar was technically Britain’s ally in World War I, British elites feared that a victorious Russia would threaten Britain’s global dominance. Bolshevism provided the solution, demolishing the Tsar’s once-mighty empire, and plunging Russia into chaos and civil war. — RICHARD POE
“THIS MOVEMENT among the Jews is not new,” wrote Winston Churchill. “From the days of … Karl Marx, and down to Trotsky… this worldwide conspiracy for the overthrow of civilisation… has been steadily growing.”
Churchill was talking about communism.
It was February 8, 1920. As Churchill wrote, all eyes were on Russia, where Bolsheviks and anti-Bolsheviks— “Reds” and “Whites”—were battling for control of the country.
Before it was over, some 10 million people would die in the Russian Civil War, mostly civilians, and mostly from disease, famine, and mass atrocities on both sides. From this slaughter, the world’s first communist state would emerge.
Churchill blamed it all on a “worldwide conspiracy” of Jews.
In a full-page article in London’s Illustrated Sunday Herald, Churchill wrote: “There is no need to exaggerate the part played in the creation of Bolshevism and in the actual bringing about of the Russian Revolution by these international and for the most part atheistical Jews. … [T]he majority of the leading figures are Jews. Moreover, the principal inspiration and driving power comes from the Jewish leaders. … Litvinoff… Trotsky… Zinoviev… Radek—all Jews.”
Churchill declared that the subversive role of “Jewish revolutionaries… in proportion to their number in the population” was “astonishing,” not only in Russia, but throughout Europe.
These Jewish conspirators had now “gripped the Russian people by the hair of their heads,” Churchill said. Unless something was done, many more nations would succumb to what he called “the schemes of the International Jews.”
Churchill Spoke for the British Government
Many readers will be surprised to hear such words from Churchill.
We have been conditioned to think of him as the archnemesis of Hitler and the Nazis, a role he took on later in life. But, in 1920, Churchill’s views were not so different from Hitler’s, at least on certain subjects.
As Secretary of War, Churchill spoke with the full authority of the British government. His article faithfully echoed Britain’s official propaganda of the time.
In April, 1919, the British Foreign Office issued a report called the “Russia No. 1 White Paper: A Collection of Reports on Bolshevism in Russia,” also known as the “Bolshevik Atrocity Bluebook.” It identified Jews as the driving force behind the Tsar’s murder and the Bolshevik Revolution.
The British press followed up with a coordinated, anti-Jewish propaganda campaign, largely based on the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a document of dubious origin purporting to reveal a Jewish plot to enslave the world.
Why did the British Establishment turn so suddenly on the Jews? I believe this was done to provide a scapegoat—a Jewish scapegoat—to deflect from British complicity in the Russian Revolution.
“Embarrassing Breadcrumb Trail”
The first-ever British edition of The Protocols appeared in February, 1920, under the title The Jewish Peril. Here too, the hand of the British government was evident.
The people involved in producing the book left an “embarrassing breadcrumb trail to the door of the British Establishment,” notes Alan Sarjeant in his 2021 study The Protocols Matrix.
Sarjeant concludes that the Jewish Peril was “part of a sophisticated propaganda offensive conceived and financed at the highest levels” of British power.The translators of The Jewish Peril, George Shanks and Edward G.G. Burdon, were military men with ties to Britain’s war propaganda apparatus.
Its publisher, Eyre & Spottiswoode, was a respected government press entrusted with publishing the King James Bible, the Anglican Prayer Book, and other works owned by the Crown.
The Jewish Peril’s first press run of 30,000 copies exceeded that of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby in 1925.
According to Sarjeant, the promotional campaign for The Jewish Peril “was so professionally devised that practically all of Britain’s national and regional newspapers had received a copy for review by the first week of February 1920” —that is, just in time for the splash created by Churchill’s February 8 article.
In the months ahead, leading British newspapers promoted The Jewish Peril.
The London Morning Post ran a lengthy series of articles based on the book. “Read the startling revelations of what is causing the world’s unrest. Read about the evil Jews’ influence,” ran a July 20, 1920 advertisement for the series.
The Times of London went so far as to question whether World War I had been fought against the wrong enemy. “Have we… escaped a ‘Pax Germanica’ only to fall into a ‘Pax Judaica’?” asked a Times editorial of May 8, 1920.
Blame-shifting
Why did the British Establishment turn so suddenly on the Jews?
I believe this was done to provide a scapegoat—a Jewish scapegoat—to deflect from British complicity in the Russian Revolution.
To be clear, Churchill was not wrong when he said Jews were disproportionately represented in the Bolshevik movement. They were. But that was only half the story.
The other half is that the Bolsheviks themselves were pawns in a larger game. A British game.
And Churchill knew that.
In the interest of full disclosure, I should mention that my Grandma and Grandpa—my father’s parents—were Jews, born and raised in the former Russian Empire. They lived through the horrors of the Russian Civil War, and were still experiencing those horrors when Churchill wrote his article in 1920.
I cannot claim perfect objectivity in this matter.
But I do think I can be fair.
I dedicate this small historical correction to the memory of my Grandma and Grandpa, Polina Lazarevna Burde and Rafail Aronovich Pogrebissky, in the hope that these words—long overdue—may help ease their final rest.
MI6 came to Trotsky’s rescue, ordering his release from a Canadian internment camp on April 29, 1917. Trotsky thereupon embarked for Russia and joined the Revolution.
The Bolsheviks Had Help
The reality is that the Bolsheviks had no power to overthrow the Russian government nor to defeat the Russian military. Without British help, they could have done neither.
Of all the dirty secrets of the Russian Revolution, this is the dirtiest.
Our story begins with Leon Trotsky.
It was Trotsky who directed the Bolshevik coup of November 7, 1917, and Trotsky who led the Red Army to victory in the Russian Civil War.
Without Trotsky, there would have been no Soviet Union.
But Trotsky did not accomplish these feats on his own. He had help from the British government.
Trotsky’s longstanding ties to British intelligence have never been adequately explained.
Trotsky and British Intelligence
When the Tsar was overthrown on March 15, 1917, Trotsky was working as a journalist in New York City. He set sail for Russia, but British authorities arrested him when his ship stopped in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
The British held Trotsky for a month in a Canadian internment camp.
For reasons unknown, Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) came to Trotsky’s rescue, ordering his release. The order came from William Wiseman, US station chief for Britain's foreign intelligence division, now known as MI6.
Following Trotsky’s release on April 29, 1917, he embarked for Russia and joined the Revolution. The rest is history.
In Russia, British handlers kept Trotsky close. One of his handlers was Clare Sheridan, who happened to be Winston Churchill’s first cousin. She was a sculptress who claimed to be a Bolshevik sympathizer. Sheridan sculpted Trotsky’s portrait, and was rumored to be his lover.
Reliable sources have identified Sheridan as a British spy.Trotsky was banished by Stalin in 1929, spending the rest of his life on the run.
During the Moscow Treason Trials of 1938, Trotsky was convicted, in absentia, of working for the British SIS. The star witness against him was Soviet diplomat Christian Rakovsky, who testified that British intelligence had blackmailed him in London in 1924, using a forged letter, all allegedly with Trotsky’s knowledge and approval.
“I went to Moscow and talked to Trotsky [afterwards],” Rakovsky testified. “Trotsky said that the forged letter was only an excuse. He agreed that we were to work with the British Intelligence.”
Princess Olga Paley, widow of the Tsar’s uncle Grand Duke Paul, accused Britain of complicity in the Revolution. In 1922, she wrote: “The English Embassy had become a hotbed of propaganda. The Liberals met there constantly. It was at the English Embassy that it was decided to abandon the legal ways and embark on the path of the Revolution.”
Hidden History
Soviet show trials are not the most reliable sources. However, a good deal of independent evidence corroborates Rakovsky’s testimony.
If Rakovsky’s charge is true, then Trotsky was already working for British intelligence as early as 1924. In that case, his relationship with the British was likely established some time earlier, perhaps as early as 1917, when MI6 mysteriously freed him from a Canadian internment camp.
The evidence suggests that Trotsky was already under SIS control in 1920, when Churchill publicly denounced him as a scheming “International Jew.”
Seen in this light, Churchill’s anti-Jewish rant in the Illustrated Sunday Herald begins to look like a cover story.
But covering for what?
What was Churchill trying to hide, by blaming Jews—and Trotsky, in particular—for the Russian Revolution?
You will not find the answer in conventional history books. The story has been erased.
But, in 1920, memories were still fresh. Witnesses were speaking out. The British faced hard questions about their role in the Russian Revolution. They needed a scapegoat.
British Betrayal
Sir George Buchanan, who was British ambassador to Russia from 1910 to 1918, would devote 16 pages of his 1923 memoir to denying that Great Britain had orchestrated the Russian Revolution.
Why did he need to deny this?
The reason is that prominent Russian exiles were accusing Britain of complicity in the Revolution, among them Princess Olga Paley (pronounced pah-LAY), widow of the Tsar’s uncle Grand Duke Paul.
Paul was the brother of Alexander III, who was Nicholas II’s father.
In the June 1, 1922 Revue de Paris, Princess Paley wrote: “The English Embassy, on orders from [Prime Minister] Lloyd George, had become a hotbed of propaganda. The Liberals, Prince Lvoff, Miliukoff, Rodzianko, Maklakoff, Guchkoff, etc., met there constantly. It was at the English Embassy that it was decided to abandon the legal ways and embark on the path of the Revolution.”
The Princess likewise accused French ambassador Maurice Paléologue of assisting Buchanan in these intrigues, albeit reluctantly. “His position at this period was very delicate,” she wrote. “He [Paléologue] was getting from Paris the most definite orders to support in everything the policy of his English colleague, and yet he realized that this policy was contrary to the interests of France.”
Russian liberals like the Grand Duke Paul had been led to believe that Britain would help them establish an enlightened constitutional monarchy, run on democratic principles. Instead, Russia got five years of civil war, followed by 70 years of communist rule.
France Subservient to England
Paléologue admits, in his own 1925 memoir, that Buchanan’s collusion with Russian radicals often put the French embassy in an awkward position.“I have been questioned several times about Buchanan’s relations with the liberal parties, and actually asked in all seriousness if he is not secretly working for a revolution,” writes Paléologue in an entry dated December 28, 1916.
Paléologue routinely denied such charges, insisting that Buchanan was a “perfect gentleman” who “would think it an utter disgrace to intrigue against a sovereign to whose court he is accredited.”
In response, a certain Prince Viazemsky once gave Paléologue a “challenging glance” and retorted, “But if his Government has ordered him to encourage our anarchists, he is obliged to do so!”
Paléologue countered, “If his Government ordered him to steal a fork the next time he dines with the Emperor, do you think he would obey?”
Paléologue doubtless understood that, if ordered to do so, his British colleague would not only steal a fork, but every last stick of the Tsar’s silverware.
Nonetheless, with nearly 3 million German troops inching toward Paris, France depended on Britain for her very survival, and was in no position to rock the boat.
Knowledge of British Plans
When Princess Paley identified the British Embassy as the nerve center of the Revolution, she was not just passing along gossip. She had inside knowledge of British operations in Petrograd.
Grand Duke Paul, the Princess’s husband, was deeply involved in the intrigues leading up to the Tsar’s abdication. At every step, he and his royal relatives worked closely with the British Embassy.
His son Dmitri (the Princess’s stepson) was also caught up in British intrigue.
On December 30, 1916, Dmitri took part in the assassination of the “mad monk” Rasputin. For a hundred years, historians have told us this operation was led by Prince Felix Yusupov—a gay, cross-dressing socialite—but all evidence suggests that the real leader was Lieutenant Oswald Rayner, a British intelligence operative who had been Yusupov’s close friend at Oxford.
Rayner was present at the murder scene and is believed to have fired the fatal bullet into Rasputin’s head, according to Andrew Cook’s To Kill Rasputin (2006).
Cook notes that a secret British communication confirmed the killing, stating, “our objective has clearly been achieved. Reaction to the demise of ‘Dark Forces’ has been well-received by all… Rayner is attending to loose ends.”
“Dark Forces” was British code for Rasputin and his cabal of “reactionary” followers at the Russian court.
We can thus see that Princess Paley and her family had rendered many services to the British Crown, even to the point of deceiving their own Sovereign. Despite these services, the Princess and her family were betrayed and abandoned by the British, as indeed all of Russia was betrayed.
Russian liberals like the Grand Duke Paul had been led to believe that Britain would help them establish an enlightened constitutional monarchy in Russia, run on democratic principles. Instead, Russia got five years of civil war, followed by 70 years of communist rule.
In the end, Princess Paley’s husband and her only son were murdered by the Bolsheviks, her husband shot, her son Vladimir thrown down a coal shaft and crushed by logs and stones.
Lord Kitchener viewed Russia as a permanent enemy. In his view, Germany was Britain’s adversary in Europe and Russia her most dangerous rival in Asia. “By winning in Europe, Britain risked losing in Asia. The only completely satisfactory outcome, from Kitchener’s point of view, was for Germany to lose the war without Russia winning it,” writes historian David Fromkin.
Strange Alliance
“A strange ally, Great Britain,” the Princess mused in her 1924 autobiography Memories of Russia 1916-1919.
In her book, the Princess wonders how Russians could have been fooled into trusting the British, “for, in the history of Russia,” she writes, “the animosity of England traces a red line across three centuries.”
She was right. The Princess correctly notes that Britain struggled for 300 years to stop Russia from attaining what she calls a “free sea” (by which she meant access to warm-water ports). Much blood had been spilled over this.
Bolshevism, the Princess suggests, was just one more weapon deployed by the British to keep Russia weak.
“Is it not to Great Britain that we owe the continuation of the Russian agony?” she asked. “Great Britain supports wittingly… the Government of the Soviets, so as not to allow the real Russia, the National Russia, to come to life again and raise itself up.”
Much evidence suggests that Princess Paley was right.
The Bolsheviks were indeed pawns in a British chess game.
Why Britain Could Not Let Russia Win the War
Although Britain and Russia were technically allies in World War I, the British had more to gain if Russia lost than if she won. This is the dirty secret underlying many mysteries of the Russian Revolution.
In 1915, the Russians were in full retreat, taking heavy losses. The Germans, Austrians, and Turks were advancing on three fronts.
Germany offered Russia a separate peace. Tsar Nicholas was tempted to accept.
But the Allies intervened. They made Nicholas an offer he couldn’t refuse. In March, 1915, they concluded a secret pact with the Tsar, promising to give him Constantinople and the Dardanelles, in the event of an Allied victory.
The Russians accepted. But all evidence suggests the British never intended to keep their promise.
As Princess Paley noted, keeping Russia out of the Mediterranean was a centuries-old British policy. If Russia were allowed to take the Dardanelles now, her warships could challenge British control of the Suez Canal and the trade routes to the East.
No British government in 1915 would have allowed that.
The British had long experience outwitting and outfoxing Russia. They called it the Great Game. For centuries, Britain’s strategy was to play off Muslim against Christian, backing the Ottoman Empire and other Muslim powers to keep Russia in check.
Russian Defeat—a British War Goal?
In her memoir, Princess Paley states that British Prime Minister Lloyd George, “on hearing of the fall of Tsarism in Russia, rubbed his hands together, saying, ‘One of England's war-aims has been attained!’”
The Princess does not name her source, and the quote is likely apocryphal.
Nonetheless, the story reveals the suspicion many Russians felt, regarding England’s hidden motives.
Some evidence suggests that British leaders really did hope and plan for the defeat of their Russian ally, from the very outset of the war.
This was certainly the attitude of Lord Herbert Kitchener, who served as Secretary of War from August 5, 1914 to his death on June 5, 1916.
In his 1989 book A Peace to End All Peace, US historian David Fromkin notes that Lord Kitchener viewed Russia as a permanent enemy, the only European power capable of challenging British supremacy in Asia. Fromkin writes:
“In Kitchener's view, Germany was an enemy in Europe and Russia was an enemy in Asia: the paradox of the 1914 war in which Britain and Russia were allied was that by winning in Europe, Britain risked losing in Asia. The only completely satisfactory outcome of the war, from Kitchener's point of view, was for Germany to lose it without Russia winning it [emphasis added]—and in 1914 it was not clear how that could be accomplished.”
As it happens, the British managed to achieve precisely the result Kitchener sought.
Germany lost the war, but Russia failed to win it.
The Great Game
The British had long experience outwitting and outfoxing Russia. They called it the Great Game.
British intelligence officer Arthur Conolly is said to have coined the term “Great Game” in 1840, to describe the intricate, spy-vs.-spy maneuvers of British and Russian agents vying for advantage in the wastes of Central Asia, as Britain tried desperately to slow Russia’s advance toward India.
However, the Great Game was not just about India, nor did it begin in 1840. It had been going on for centuries.
When English explorers first made contact with Russia in 1553, they found a weak, isolated realm, struggling to drive out the last of the Asiatic warlords who had conquered Russia 300 years earlier.
Mongol and Tatar princes still held the Black Sea coast in 1553, just as they had since the days of Genghis Khan. But now they were vassals of Suleiman the Magnificent, the Turkish Sultan. Russia’s southern coast was under Turkish control. Russian ships could not sail the Black Sea without the Sultan’s permission.
Tsar Ivan IV—known as Ivan the Terrible—welcomed the British traders, at first, but became angry when they demanded a monopoly over Russian trade. For their impudence, Ivan expelled the newly-established British Muscovy Company.
Catherine the Great planned to drive the Turks out of Europe and reestablish the Byzantine Empire, liberating Greece and the Balkan nations from Muslim rule. The British opposed this plan.
Why England Backed the Turks
Two hundred years later, Russia was no longer weak. The Russian Empress Catherine the Great had finally succeeded in expelling the Turks from the Black Sea shore, after fighting two wars with the Sultan (1768-1774 and 1787-1792).
Catherine’s success set off alarm bells in London.
The Russians now had seaports on the Black Sea, threatening British control of the Mediterranean.
When the Black Sea fortress of Ochakov fell to Russian forces in 1788, the English threatened war, demanding that Catherine return the fortress to the Sultan.
She refused.
The British backed down, dropping their ultimatum, but vowed to stop further Russian expansion.
Their strategy was to play off Muslim against Christian. For the next hundred years, the British propped up the faltering Ottoman Empire, as a counterweight, to keep Russia in check.
The “Greek Plan”
Catherine’s strategy was the opposite of the British.
Instead of pitting Muslim against Christian, Catherine sought to unite Christians in a common cause, to drive the Turks out of Europe.
The Ottomans still ruled a large part of Europe, including Greece and the Balkan nations of Bulgaria, Romania, Serbia, Albania, Moldova, Kosovo and Macedonia.
Catherine’s plan was to liberate these Christian lands from Muslim rule.
She sought to restore the Byzantine Empire, under the Greek Orthodox faith.
Her grandson Constantine would be crowned Byzantine Emperor.
His capital would be in Constantinople (which Russians affectionately called Tsargrad, City of Caesar).
Catherine called this her “Greek Plan” (Grechesky proyekt).
The British understood that Catherine’s new Byzantine Empire would be a faithful ally of Russia, sharing the same Orthodox faith. It would open the Dardanelles to Russian warships, threatening British control of the Mediterranean Sea and the trade routes to the East.
Russia’s Byzantine Roots
Catherine’s nostalgia for the Byzantine Empire had deep roots in Russian history.
Prior to 988 AD, the Eastern Slavs (ancestors of the Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians) were pagans, worshipping the old Slavic gods.
Vladimir the Great, the Grand Duke of Kiev, converted to Christianity in 988, embracing the Eastern Orthodox faith of the Byzantine Greeks.
Byzantine missionaries devised an alphabet for the Slavs, based on the Greek alphabet, the basis of today’s Cyrillic writing system.
When Constantinople fell to the Turks in 1453, many Byzantines fled to Russia.
The Grand Prince of Moscow, Ivan III, married the Byzantine princess Sophia Paleologa, niece of Constantine XI Palaiologos, the last Byzantine emperor, who died fighting the Turks in the streets of Constantinople.
In honor of the fallen Byzantine Empire, Ivan adopted the Byzantine double-headed eagle as Russia’s coat-of-arms. He gave himself the title “Tsar” (meaning Caesar) and declared Moscow the “Third Rome,” successor of the “Second Rome,” Constantinople, now in Turkish hands.
Thus was the Russian Empire born, like a phoenix, from the ashes of Constantinople.
For these reasons, a bond has always existed between Russia and Greece. The Russians look to Byzantium as their spiritual ancestor, while the Greeks look to Russia as savior and protector.
Why England Opposed the “Greek Plan”
Catherine hoped that her so-called “Greek Plan” would appeal to Christian rulers, be they Catholic or Orthodox.
She secretly proposed it to the Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II in 1780.
However, the British had other ideas. They soon learned of Catherine’s plan and resolved to stop it.
The British understood that Catherine’s new Byzantine Empire would be a faithful ally of Russia, sharing the same Orthodox faith.
It would completely replace the old Ottoman Empire, tipping the power balance in Russia’s favor.
The British would no longer be able to play off Turks against Russians, Muslims against Christians. They would face a united front of Orthodox Christians, guarding the gateways to the East.
Even worse for the British, Catherine’s new Byzantine Empire would open the Dardanelles to Russia, giving Russian warships access to the Mediterranean.
Britain would lose control of the Mediterranean and the trade routes to the East.
For these reasons, the British resolved to defeat Catherine’s plan.
“Defeating Russian designs in Asia emerged as the obsessive goal of generations of British officials,” wrote historian David Fromkin. “George Curzon, the future Viceroy of India, defined the stakes [as] ‘a game for the dominion of the world.’ Queen Victoria put it even more clearly: it was, she said, ‘a question of Russian or British supremacy in the world.’”
The “Eastern Question”
Catherine the Great died in 1796, but her Greek Plan lived on.
England’s opposition to the Greek Plan would ultimately lead to the Russian Revolution.
Throughout the 19th century, British strategists pondered how to keep Russia from taking Constantinople and the Dardanelle Straits. They called it the “Eastern Question.”
Unfortunately for the British, their Turkish ally was growing weaker while the Russians grew stronger. The Ottoman Empire was in long-term decline.
And so the British did a delicate dance, playing off Russian against Turk, Turk against Russian, as the occasion demanded, often switching sides with dizzying suddenness.
Thus, when the Russians instigated a Greek rebellion against the Turks in 1821, the British betrayed their Turkish allies and sided with the Greeks. By this means, the British won the friendship of the new Greek state, and prevented Greece from becoming a Russian dependency.
On the other hand, when the Russians attacked the Turks in 1853, the British sided with the Sultan. French and British armies invaded Russia, defeating her in the Crimean War of 1853-1856.
The peace terms of the Crimean War required Russia to demilitarize the Black Sea. An angry, humiliated Tsar Alexander II was forced to disperse his Black Sea Fleet and destroy his fortifications.
“Dominion of the World”
British strategists of the Victorian era believed the “Eastern Question” would one day determine who ruled the world. In their quest for global dominion, they saw Russia as their chief rival.
As David Fromkin puts it in his aforementioned book A Peace to End All Peace:
“Defeating Russian designs in Asia emerged as the obsessive goal of generations of British civilian and military officials. Their attempt to do so was, for them, ‘the Great Game,’ in which the stakes ran high. George Curzon, the future Viceroy of India, defined the stakes clearly: ‘Turkestan, Afghanistan, Transcaspia, Persia… they are the pieces on a chessboard upon which is being played out a game for the dominion of the world.’ Queen Victoria put it even more clearly: it was, she said, ‘a question of Russian or British supremacy in the world.’”
Queen Victoria took the Great Game very seriously, and was determined to prevail, as her correspondence with Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli reveals.
During the Christian uprisings of 1875-1878, the Turks slaughtered tens of thousands of Christian men, women, and children. Queen Victoria cared only about keeping the Russians out of Constantinople. If that meant abandoning Eastern Orthodox Christians to genocide, so be it. “This mawkish sentimentality for people who hardly deserve the name of real Christians… is really incomprehensible,” Victoria wrote Disraeli on March 21, 1877.
“People who hardly deserve the name of real Christians”
During the so-called Great Eastern Crisis of 1875-1878, Christian populations rose up in revolt throughout the Ottoman Empire. The Turks suppressed these risings with startling cruelty, slaughtering Christians by the tens of thousands. In Bulgaria alone, as many as 100,000 Christians may have been killed.
Europeans were outraged. At least, most of them were. Queen Victoria, however, defended the Turks.
“It is not the question of upholding Turkey: it is the question of Russian or British supremacy in the world!” she explained in a letter to Disraeli on April 19, 1877.
In Victoria’s view, the only thing that mattered was keeping the Russians out of Constantinople. If that meant abandoning eastern Christians to genocide, so be it.
Russia, on the other hand, decided to rescue the beleaguered Christians, declaring war on the Ottomans on April 24, 1877. A Russian army invaded the Ottoman Empire, marching through Romania and Bulgaria (both under Turkish rule at the time) and advancing on Constantinople.
Queen Victoria wanted the Russians stopped. As for the poor, suffering Christians, they were mostly Eastern Orthodox. Who cared about them anyway?
“This mawkish sentimentality for people who hardly deserve the name of real Christians… is really incomprehensible,” Victoria wrote Disraeli on March 21, 1877.
The eastern Christians were “quite as cruel as the Turks,” Victoria stated on June 27. “Russia is as barbarous and tyrannical as the Turks,” she added.
Victoria’s Wrath
As the Russians advanced on Constantinople, Victoria’s letters to Disraeli grew increasingly frantic.
Referring to herself in the third person, in accordance with the royal custom of the day, Victoria demanded military action, repeatedly threatening to abdicate if Constantinople fell.
“Russia is advancing and will be before Constantinople in no time!” she wrote on June 27. “Then the government will be fearfully blamed and the Queen so humiliated that she thinks she would abdicate at once. Be bold!”
On January 10, 1878, Victoria wrote Disraeli that she could not bear the shame of allowing England to “kiss the feet of the great barbarians [the Russians], the retarders of all liberty and civilisation that exists… Oh, if the Queen were a man, she would like to go and give those Russians, whose word one cannot believe, such a beating!”
Only ten days later, Victoria got her wish.
As the Russians reached the outskirts of Constantinople, the British finally intervened. They warned the Russians to halt, sending a fleet of warships through the Dardanelles to protect the Turkish capital.
Fearful of the British fleet, the Russian army came to a halt at the village of San Stefano, on January 20, 1878, only seven miles from the center of Constantinople.
This was the closest the Russians ever got to their dream of a New Byzantium.
In 1915, the Germans offered Russia a separate peace, and the Tsar was listening. So the British made Nicholas an offer he couldn’t refuse. They promised to attack the Dardanelle Straits and give Constantinople and the Straits to Russia as a war prize. All evidence suggests that the British never intended to keep this promise.
Keeping Russia in the War
Britain’s obsession with the “Eastern Question” remained undiminished at the outset of World War I.
British statesmen were just as determined as ever to keep Russia out of the Straits.
But the situation had changed. The Ottoman Empire was now at war with England. The Turks had made an alliance with Germany on August 2, 1914.
In addition, Russia’s situation had changed.
The Russian army was showing unexpected weakness. In the first month of war, the Germans annihilated two Russian armies, killing as many as 120,000 men.
The Germans offered Russia a separate peace, and the Russians were listening.
Britain scrambled to help her faltering ally, frantic to keep Russia in the war.
On January 1, 1915, Russian commander-in-chief Grand Duke Nicholas (a cousin of the Tsar) requested help from the British. The Turks were hitting the Russians hard in the Caucasus. The Grand Duke asked the British to attack the Ottomans in the West, to relieve pressure on Russian troops in the East.
The British agreed. They had no choice.
If they refused to help, the Russians would make a separate peace with the Central Powers.
The Riddle of Gallipoli
Thus began one of the strangest, most mysterious, episodes of World War I—the Gallipoli Campaign.
In response to the Russian request, the British promised a direct attack on the Dardanelles. If the attack was successful, Constantinople would fall, and the Ottoman Empire with it.
But the attack failed. Catastrophically.
Military historians have spent more than a hundred years trying to figure out why.
On March 18, 1915, an Anglo-French fleet sailed up the narrow, 38-mile Dardanelles channel toward Constantinople. But they were turned back with heavy losses from mines and artillery fire.
On April 25, the Allies tried again, this time with an amphibious assault on the Gallipoli Peninsula (which forms the northern shore of the Straits).
Over an eight-month period, more than 410,000 British and Commonwealth troops—including British, Irish, Australians, New Zealanders, and Indians—would land on the Gallipoli beaches. Nearly 47,000 would die.
About 79,000 French troops also took part in the attack, of whom 9,798 were killed, bringing the total Allied dead to 56,707.
In the end, the attack was abandoned. Allied troops were withdrawn between December 7, 1915 and January 9, 1916.
Winston Churchill was blamed, perhaps unjustly. He was forced to step down as First Lord of the Admiralty.
The British may have deliberately pulled their punches at Gallipoli, allowing the Turks to win, says Australian historian Harvey Broadbent. Better to leave Constantinople to the Turks, than let the Russians get it.
Bungling or Subterfuge?
Most historians blame the Gallipoli disaster on recklessness and incompetence. However, some suggest that the British deliberately pulled their punches, allowing the Turks to win.
One such is Harvey Broadbent, an Australian historian who has written four books on the Gallipoli Campaign, including The Boys Who Came Home (1990), Gallipoli: The Fatal Shore (2005), Defending Gallipoli (2015), and Gallipoli: The Turkish Defence (2015).
In an April 23, 2009 article titled, “Gallipoli: One Great Deception?” Broadbent hypothesized that the Gallipoli Campaign was never meant to succeed, and may have been “conceived and conducted as a ruse to keep the Russians in the war…”
Broadbent speculates that the purpose of the campaign may have been to provide an illusion that the Allies were speeding to Russia’s rescue, when, in fact, they were not.
The sheer scale and persistence of the alleged “bungling” are difficult to explain by incompetence alone, Broadbent argues, raising the question of deliberate self-sabotage. He writes:
“It… occurred to me that the under-resourcing, informing the enemy five months in advance of the intention to attack, the hurried and inadequate planning, the overly complicated landing plan on exposed and difficult beaches with no initial massive bombardments to pulverise enemy defences, selection of the most incompetent and timid commanders for a difficult operation and apparent constant bungling that characterised the Allied conduct of the campaign may be attributed to something more than ineptitude. … Professor Robin Prior, in his new book, Gallipoli: End of a Myth, lists a series of decisions and events that he describes as puzzling or incomprehensible.”
A Question of Motive
Let us assume, for the sake of argument, that Broadbent is right. Suppose the Allies deliberately sent nearly 57,000 men to their deaths, with no hope of victory.
What was their motive?
Broadbent points out that, had the Allies succeeded in taking Constantinople and the Straits, they would have been obliged to turn over these prizes to Russia, in accordance with a secret treaty of March 1915.
The Allies would have done all the work, and the Russians reaped the rewards.
“Russia alone, will, if the war is successful, gather the fruits of these operations,” said a March 15, 1915 memorandum of the British Asquith government, quoted by Broadbent.
In short, honoring the treaty would have done nothing for England. On the contrary, it would have harmed British interests by upending “nearly 200 years of British foreign policy which had opposed a Russian presence in the Mediterranean…” Broadbent notes.
Better to leave Constantinople to the Turks, than let the Russians get it.
British strategists calculated that, once the Ottoman Empire was defeated and dismembered, the Straits could be safely entrusted to a “shrunken and compliant Ottoman state,” Broadbent explains.
Such considerations might have led British commanders to conclude that it was better for the attack to fail.
“In war thousands of lives are sacrificed for such grand strategies,” Broadbent notes.
In 1907, Russia and Britain had divided Persia into two spheres of influence, with the Russians in the north, the British in the south, and a large neutral zone in between. Now, on the eve of the Gallipoli Campaign, the British suddenly asked that the neutral zone be added to the British sphere of influence, greatly enlarging Britain’s share of Persia’s oil-rich territory. The Persian oil concession may very well have been the price the British demanded for attacking Constantinople.
Saved by the Revolution
Plainly, the British would have preferred not to hand over Constantinople to the Russians. But how could they get out of it? Sabotaging the Gallipoli Campaign, in and of itself, would not have achieved this goal.
The secret treaty—known as the Constantinople Agreement—was inescapable. As long as the Allies won the war, Russia would get her prize. The promise was binding, no matter who won at Gallipoli.
Yet the British got off the hook anyway. What saved them was the Russian Revolution, says Broadbent.
“[T]he agreement never had to be honoured…. ,” he writes. “[T]he Bolshevik Government withdrew from the war and all Tzarist agreements including the Gallipoli treaty.”
In short, the Bolsheviks saved the day, by unilaterally withdrawing their claim to Constantinople.
This was a great stroke of luck for the British.
But was it luck? Or was it planning?
Broadbent suggests the latter.
Double-Crossing the Tsar
If the Russian claim to Constantinople was completely unaffected by who won at Gallipoli, then why would the British go to all the trouble of staging a phony attack and making sure they lost (as Broadbent hypothesizes)?
Why not go for the win?
In answer, Broadbent poses a hypothetical question. He asks, “If there had been a victory at Gallipoli would there have been a Russian Revolution?”
Probably not, says Broadbent.
In his opinion, the capture of Constantinople, and its subsequent occupation by Russia, would have caused such an explosion of religious and patriotic fervor in Russia, as to make revolution impossible.
Referring to Catherine the Great’s plan for a New Byzantium, Broadbent writes: “With the ultimate re-establishment of a new Byzantine Empire under the Tzar on the new Christian throne in 'Tzaragrad' on the Bosphorus, would the millions of Russian religious peasants, massively influenced by the victory, have flocked to support the Holy Tzar in the face of revolution, thus thwarting the Bolsheviks?”
Broadbent thinks they might have. In that case, the Tsar might have remained on his throne.
Such an outcome would have been contrary to British interests, Broadbent suggests.
As Foreign Commissar for the Bolsheviks, Trotsky was a dream come true for the British. First, he released them from their promise to hand over Constantinople. Then he repudiated Russia’s extensive interests in Persia, leaving everything for the British. They promptly claimed all drilling rights in Persia for the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (later renamed British Petroleum).
Did Gallipoli Cause the Russian Revolution?
From the British standpoint, a Russian victory in World War I would have been catastrophic, Broadbent insists.
It would have meant that the British and Commonwealth troops at Gallipoli were “fighting not for a war to make the world safe for democracy but for the domination of the Slav world by Tzarist Russia.”
Broadbent concludes, “The way out of all this of course was to ensure that Istanbul remained unconquered [emphasis added].”
Lord Kitchener and other high officials of Asquith’s government would have been thinking along the same lines, as they made plans for Gallipoli, Broadbent suggests.
Broadbent’s arguments are weighty. He compels us to consider whether Britain may have deliberately pulled her punches at Gallipoli precisely in order to deprive the Tsar of the one victory that might have saved his throne.
Bargaining Chip
Broadbent’s article leaves an important question unanswered, however. If the March 1915 agreement was so inimical to British interests, why did Britain make such a treaty in the first place?
Why did they offer Constantinople to Russia, if they didn’t want Russia to have it?
Broadbent argues that it was bait to keep Russia in the war. No doubt, this is partly true. But there was another reason as well.
The British did not offer Constantinople to the Russians for free. They asked something in return. Specifically, they demanded a large chunk of the newly-discovered Persian oil fields. The Russians agreed.
In 1907, Russia and Britain had signed a treaty dividing Persia into two spheres of influence, with the Russians in the north, the British in the south, and a large neutral zone in between.
Now, on the eve of the Gallipoli Campaign, the British suddenly asked that the neutral zone be added to the British sphere of influence, greatly enlarging Britain’s share of Persia’s oil-rich territory.
Whatever else we may conclude about the Gallipoli Campaign, it appears to have been a bargaining chip in a high-stakes negotiation over Persian oil.
The Constantinople Agreement was hammered out in a series of diplomatic letters between France, Britain and Russia from March 4 to April 10, 1915. Opinions vary as to when the Agreement actually became operative.
The Encyclopedia Britannica gives the date of March 18, 1915, which happens to be the very day the Allied fleet commenced its attack on the Dardanelles. If true, this would suggest that the British held off their attack until the very moment the agreement was settled.
The Persian oil concession may very well have been the price the British demanded for attacking Constantinople.
Trotsky’s actions brought no benefit to the Russian people. They helped only the British. The Anglo-Persian Oil Company was now free to expand, since its chief rival, the Russian Empire, had suddenly vanished into thin air.
Trotsky’s Unexpected Service to the Crown
In the end, the British got much more than the Persian neutral zone. The entire nation of Persia was turned over to Britain, thanks to the unexpected generosity of Leon Trotsky, whose curious connections with British intelligence we have already noted.
Following the Bolshevik coup of November 7, 1917, Trotsky held equal power with Lenin, to the point where discussions took place as to which of them would lead the new government.
“[T]he Lenin-Trotsky combination is all-powerful,” the Times of London reported on November 19, 1917.
In the end, Trotsky took the position of Commissar for Foreign Affairs, on November 8, 1917, the day after the coup. He did this to focus on making a quick peace with Germany.
But then Trotsky did a curious thing. On November 22, he suddenly announced that the Bolshevik government would repudiate all secret treaties and agreements made by previous Russian governments.
Trotsky said the treaties had “lost all their obligatory force for the Russian workmen, soldiers, and peasants, who have taken the government into their own hands…”
“We sweep all secret treaties into the dustbin,” he said.
By publishing and repudiating the treaties, Trotsky claimed he was rejecting "Imperialism, with its dark plans of conquest and its robber alliances."
What he was actually doing was enriching the greatest imperial power on earth, Great Britain.
British Petroleum and the Bolsheviks
Among the treaties Trotsky repudiated was the secret Constantinople Agreement of March 18, 1915. He released the British unilaterally from their promise to hand over Constantinople and the Straits.
Trotsky likewise repudiated Russia’s extensive interests in Persia, leaving everything for the British.
In August, 1919, the British government took advantage of the Russian withdrawal by claiming all drilling rights in Persia for the Anglo-Persian Oil Company. The Persian government never actually agreed to this, but their opinion no longer mattered.
“Russian influence in Persia was reduced to nil and the British… made themselves masters in all of Persia,” wrote US journalist Louis Fischer in his 1926 book Oil Imperialism.
Trotsky’s revolutionary rhetoric notwithstanding, these actions brought no benefit to the Russian people. They helped only the British. The Anglo-Persian Oil Company was now free to expand, since its chief rival, the Russian Empire, had suddenly vanished into thin air.
In 1935, the fast-growing British oil giant changed its name to the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, then to British Petroleum in 1954.
If Harvey Broadbent is correct—if the British really did pull their punches at Gallipoli to prevent Russia from winning the war—then it appears their ruse was successful, greatly benefitting Britain, at least from a commercial standpoint.
If we define a color revolution as a fake insurrection—that is, as a foreign-sponsored coup masquerading as a people’s uprising—then the French Revolution and the Russian Revolution both seem to fit that description. In both cases, the uprisings began not in the streets, but in the drawing rooms of liberal aristocrats. In both cases, British intelligence can be found manipulating events behind the scenes.
A 150-Year Conspiracy
The British government plainly had much to hide in its relationship with the Bolsheviks, and therefore much to gain by deflecting blame onto others, such as the Jews.
However, Churchill’s 1920 article in the Illustrated Sunday Herald went further. Churchill did not just blame the Jews for the Bolshevik Revolution. He blamed them for literally “every subversive movement during the 19th century.”
Churchill alleged a 150-year conspiracy, dating back to the Bavarian Illuminati of Adam Weishaupt and the French Revolution of 1789. He wrote:
“This movement among the Jews is not new. From the days of Spartacus-Weishaupt to those of Karl Marx, and down to Trotsky... this worldwide conspiracy for the overthrow of civilisation… has been steadily growing. It played… a definitely recognisable part in the tragedy of the French Revolution. It has been the mainspring of every subversive movement during the 19th century…”
What did Churchill mean by this? Was he simply exaggerating for dramatic effect? Indulging in a bit of rhetorical overkill?
Or was his reference to a 150-year conspiracy purposeful and calculated?
I would say it was calculated.
Churchill’s allegation of a centuries-old conspiracy appears to be yet another cover story, calculated to distract from yet another sensitive subject which the British government had reason to hide.
Britain’s Secret Weapon: Color Revolution
In an earlier article, “How the British Invented Color Revolutions,” I argued that the modern “color revolution” or bloodless coup was perfected by 20th-century British psywar strategists such as Bertrand Russell, Basil Liddell Hart, and Stephen King-Hall.
In that article—published May 14, 2021—I mentioned Portugal’s 1974 Carnation Revolution as the first, full-fledged “color revolution” of which I was aware. Since then, I have learned that color revolutions go back much farther than I had imagined.
The British have been doing it for centuries.
If we define a color revolution as a fake insurrection—that is, as a foreign-sponsored coup masquerading as a people’s uprising—then we must conclude that the French Revolution of 1789 and the Russian Revolutions of 1917 seem to fit that description in many ways.
In both cases, the uprisings began not in the streets, but in the drawing rooms of liberal aristocrats.
In both cases, the hidden hand of British intelligence can be found manipulating events behind the scenes.
In both cases, “team colors” were used to identify the rebels, in a manner similar to today’s color revolutions— specifically, the tricolor cockade and “Phrygian” cap of the French Revolution, and the red flag and “Scythian” cap of the Bolsheviks.
It seems more than coincidental that the Age of Revolution coincided with Britain’s rise to global dominance. It was precisely during that era—the late 18th to early 20th centuries—that Britain mastered the use of political subversion as a weapon of statecraft, an instrument for toppling governments that stood in her way.
Thomas Jefferson accused the British of sending “hired pretenders” to turn the French Revolution toward “destruction” and “bloody tyranny.” By such means, wrote Jefferson, “the foreigner” overthrew “by gold the government he could not overthrow by arms” — as apt a description of a color revolution as one could imagine.
Removing Louis XVI
King Louis XVI was Britain’s number one enemy when the French Revolution broke out. He had earned Britain’s hatred by intervening in the American Revolution, forcing Britain to grant independence to the Thirteen Colonies.
The British never forgave him. They devised a plan for Louis’s removal.
They did not have to wait long for their revenge. The growing demand for liberal reform in France provided an opening.
Inspired by America’s revolution, many in France hoped for a better world, in which rank and privilege would give way to liberty and equality.
French liberals of that time tended to be Anglophilic. They viewed England and America alike as beacons of hope, sharing a common tradition of English liberty.
The British secret services took advantage of this good will.
Intelligence operatives posing as English reformers infiltrated the French intelligentsia, pushing French dissidents toward violence, class warfare, and hatred of the Bourbon dynasty.
The Revolution Hijacked
No less an authority than Thomas Jefferson accused the British of using “hired” agents of influence to subvert the French Revolution. Jefferson was in a position to know, as he had been US ambassador to France when the Revolution broke out in 1789.
Jefferson and Lafayette had hoped the uprising would bring constitutional monarchy to France, leaving Louis XVI safely on his throne. But this was not to be.
In a letter of February 14, 1815, Jefferson wrote Lafayette, lamenting the failure of the French Revolution, and blaming it on British intrigue.
The British had subverted the Revolution, Jefferson wrote, by sending “hired pretenders” to “crush in their own councils the genuine republicans,” thus turning the Revolution toward “destruction” and the “unprincipled and bloody tyranny of Robespierre…”
By such means, wrote Jefferson, “the foreigner” overthrew “by gold the government he could not overthrow by arms” — as apt a description of a color revolution as one could imagine.
On November 25, 1789—four months after the storming of the Bastille—King Louis XVI was still on his throne, showing every willingness to work with the new National Assembly to form a constitutional monarchy. Sadly for Louis—and for all of France—events took a fateful turn that day. The catalyst was a letter from the London Revolution Society to the French National Assembly, which was read aloud to the members. It directly inspired the formation of the so-called Jacobin clubs, from which Danton, Marat, Robespierre, and the Reign of Terror would emerge.
Paid Agents
Jefferson expressed the same view in a letter of January 31, 1815 to William Plumer, a New Hampshire lawyer and politician.
“[W]hen England took alarm lest France, become republican, should recover energies dangerous to her,” wrote Jefferson, “she employed emissaries with means to engage incendiaries and anarchists in the disorganisation of all government there…”
According to Jefferson, these hired “incendiaries and anarchists” infiltrated the Revolution by “assuming exaggerated zeal for republican government,” then gained control of the legislature, “overwhelming by their majorities the honest & enlightened patriots…”
Their pockets filled with British gold, these paid agents “intrigued themselves into the municipality of Paris,” said Jefferson, “controlled by terrorism the proceedings of the legislature…” and finally “murdered the king,” thus “demolishing liberty and government with it.”
In the same letter, Jefferson accused Danton and Marat by name of being on the British payroll.
The London Revolution Society
Jefferson’s views find unexpected support from U.S. historian Micah Alpaugh, who has revealed the extensive influence British reformers exerted over the French revolutionaries. Unlike Jefferson, Alpaugh sees nothing nefarious in this influence, but nonetheless remarks on its surprising extent.
In his 2014 paper, “The British Origins of the French Jacobins,” Alpaugh notes that France’s radical Jacobin clubs were consciously modeled after an existing British organization, the London Revolution Society.
This was a group of English intellectuals who began meeting at the London Tavern in Bishopsgate in 1788, ostensibly to celebrate the 100-year anniversary of William III’s Glorious Revolution. It soon became clear, however, that their true goal was to agitate for revolution in the present day.
On November 25, 1789—four months after the storming of the Bastille—King Louis XVI was still on his throne, showing every willingness to work with the new National Assembly to form a constitutional monarchy.
Sadly for Louis—and for all of France—events took a fateful turn that day which would end all possibility of cooperation. The catalyst for this catastrophe was a letter from the London Revolution Society to the French National Assembly.
The so-called “English Jacobins” offered their French disciples a poisoned chalice of “cosmopolitanism, internationalism, and universalism” (Alpaugh’s words), urging the French idealists to put aside the narrow interests of their own country, in favor of the broader interests of mankind. But the broader interests of mankind pushed by the “English Jacobins” turned out to be little more than a smokescreen for British imperial interests.
British Radicals Intervene
That day, November 25, 1789, the president of the French National Assembly read aloud to the legislators a letter from the London radicals.
The letter directly inspired the formation of the so-called Jacobin clubs, from which Danton, Marat, Robespierre, and the Reign of Terror would later emerge.
The letter called on the French to disdain “National partialities” and join with their English brethren in a revolution that would make “the World free and happy.”
Alpaugh writes that the letter “produced a ‘great sensation’ and loud applause in the Assembly, which wrote back to London declaring how it had seen ‘the aurora of the beautiful day’ when the two nations could put aside their differences and ‘contract an intimate liaison by the similarity of their opinions, and by their common enthusiasm for liberty’.”
This letter fueled a “growing Anglophilia” (Alpaugh’s words), inspiring the French revolutionaries to found a Societé de la Révolution, directly modeled after the London Revolution Society.
The Societé de la Révolution was later renamed, but always kept its English-style nickname Club des Jacobins—pointedly retaining the English word “club” as a tribute to the group’s British origin, Alpaugh explains.
The Poisoned Chalice
As Jacobin “clubs” sprang up all over France, they typically retained close ties to their English mentors.
Alpaugh writes, “Early French Jacobins created their network in consultation with British models,” such as the London Revolution Society and the London Corresponding Society. “Direct correspondence between British and French radical organizations between 1787 and 1793 would develop reciprocal and mutually inspiring relationships…helping inspire the rise of Jacobin Clubs throughout France,” writes Alpaugh.
Deliberately or not, the so-called “English Jacobins” (as they came to be known) offered their French disciples a poisoned chalice of “cosmopolitanism, internationalism, and universalism” (Alpaugh’s words), urging the French idealists to put aside the narrow interests of their own country, in favor of the broader interests of mankind.
This was, in fact, a deception.
Alpaugh may not see it this way, but the broader interests of mankind pushed by the “English Jacobins” turned out to be little more than a smokescreen for British imperial interests.
The Jacobin Clubs gave rise to Marat, Danton, and Robespierre, ultimately leading to the Reign of Terror and the murder of King Louis XVI.
They also gave rise to a new ideology which has come to be known as communism.
“The term ‘communism’ in the France of the 1840s denoted… an offshoot of the Jacobin tradition of the first French revolution,” wrote Marxist historian David Fernbach in 1973. “This communism went back to Gracchus Babeuf’s Conspiracy of Equals” which was already shaking up Paris more than 20 years before Marx was born. Babeuf derived many of his ideas from British mentors, at least some of whom were British intelligence operatives.
The Invention of Communism
Communism was born on the streets of revolutionary Paris.
More than fifty years before Marx and Engels penned The Communist Manifesto, a faction of French radicals calling itself the Conspiracy of Equals was already preaching classless society, abolition of private property, and the need for revolutionary action.
Led by “Gracchus” Babeuf —whose real name was François-Noël Babeuf—the Conspiracy of Equals tried unsuccessfully to overthrow Robespierre in 1796.
Their conspiracy failed, and Babeuf was put to death. But his ideas live on.
Marx and Engels called Babeuf the first modern communist.
No record exists of Babeuf using the word communiste, though he sometimes called his followers “communautistes” (usually translated “communitarian”).
However, a contemporary of Babeuf, Nicolas Restif de la Bretonne, often used the word “communist” in his writings, beginning as early as 1785.
Babeuf’s prosecutors apparently believed that Restif was secretly in league with the Conspiracy of Equals, and some evidence suggests he may have been, according to James Billington, in his 1980 book Fire in the Minds of Men: Origins of the Revolutionary Faith.
Jacobin Communism
For all these reasons, it is not surprising that the self-styled “communistes” who emerged in Paris during the 1830s and 1840s saw themselves, at least partly, as following in the footsteps of Babeuf.
“The term ‘communism’ in the France of the 1840s denoted… an offshoot of the Jacobin tradition of the first French revolution,” wrote Marxist historian David Fernbach in 1973. “This communism went back to Gracchus Babeuf’s Conspiracy of Equals… This egalitarian or 'crude' communism, as Marx called it originated before the great development of machine industry. It appealed to the Paris sans-culottes—artisans, journeymen and unemployed—and potentially to the poor peasantry in the countryside.”
Thus, Babeuf’s “crude” communism was already shaking up Paris more than 20 years before Marx was born.
By March, 1840, the Communist movement in Paris was deemed sufficiently threatening that a German newspaper denounced it, saying, “The Communists have in view nothing less than a levelling of society— substituting for the presently-existing order of things the absurd, immoral and impossible utopia of a community of goods.”
When these words were written, the 21-year-old Karl Marx was studying classics and philosophy in Berlin. He had not yet shown a strong interest in radical or revolutionary politics.
Karl Marx’s career followed a trajectory similar to that of the French revolutionaries. Like them, Marx was influenced by British mentors, at least some of whom are known to have been intelligence operatives. In addition, Marx had family connections to the British aristocracy. He married Jenny von Westphalen, whose father was a Prussian baron, descended, on his mother’s side, from the Scottish Earls of Argyll.
Babeuf’s British Mentors
Babeuf’s status as the founding father of communism cannot be disputed.
It is therefore significant that Babeuf derived many of his ideas from British mentors, at least some of whom were British intelligence operatives. In that respect, Babeuf followed a path trod by many other French revolutionaries.
One of Babeuf’s mentors was James Rutledge, an Englishman living in Paris, who called himself a “citizen of the universe” and preached the abolition of private ownership.
“Babeuf had known Rutledge even before the revolution,” writes Billington in Fire in the Minds of Men (1980).Through Rutledge and his circle, Babeuf became acquainted with the Courrier de l'Europe, a French-language newspaper published in London and distributed in France. It promoted such radical doctrines as the overthrow of the French aristocracy and the establishment of a classless society. Babeuf became a regular correspondent of the paper in 1789.
It appears to have been a British intelligence front.
The newspaper’s owner was London wine merchant Samuel Swinton, a former lieutenant in the Royal Navy who had, in the past, performed sensitive diplomatic missions for Prime Minister Lord North.
In a 1985 paper, French historian Hélène Maspero Clerc concluded that Swinton was a British secret agent, based upon her study of Swinton’s correspondence with British Secretary of the Admiralty Philip Stephens.
Was Marx a British Agent of Influence?
In some respects, Karl Marx’s career followed a trajectory similar to that of the French revolutionaries. Like them, Marx was influenced by British mentors, at least some of whom are known to have been intelligence operatives.
In Marx’s case, the British influence was arguably stronger than it had been with Babeuf.
For one thing, Marx had family connections to the British aristocracy.
In 1843, he married Jenny von Westphalen. Her father was a Prussian baron, whose Scottish mother, Jeanie Wishart, descended from the Earls of Argyll.
In 1847, Marx and Engels were commissioned by the London-based Communist League to write the Communist Manifesto. The tract was published first in London, in 1848.
Expelled from Prussia, France, and Belgium for his subversive activities, Marx and his family took refuge in England in 1849. He lived in London for the rest of his life.
The alliance between Marx and Scottish aristocrat David Urquhart has confounded historians for generations. Marx was a communist, and Urquhart an arch-reactionary, who openly called for a restoration of the feudal system. What bound them together? What could they possibly have had in common? I believe what bonded Marx and Urquhart was their mutual hatred of the middle class (the “bourgeoisie”).
Karl Marx: Imperial Propagandist
In February, 1854, Marx met Scottish nobleman David Urquhart (pronounced ERK-art)— apparently a distant relative of Marx’s wife, through her Scottish grandmother.
Urquhart was a British diplomat and sometime secret agent, who became something of a 19th-century Lawrence of Arabia.
After fighting in the Greek War of Independence, Urquhart served as a diplomat in Constantinople, where he became a close confidant of the Sultan. In 1834, Urquhart instigated a rebellion against Russia among the Circassian tribes of the Caucasus. The Circassians named him Daud Bey (Chief David), a name by which he became famous throughout the Middle East.
Urquhart had a fanatical hatred of Russia, so intense that he publicly accused Lord Palmerston, the Prime Minister, of being a paid Russian agent.
Somewhat surprisingly, Marx joined Urquhart’s cause, becoming one of the most prominent anti-Russian journalists of his day. Marx wrote blistering anti-Russian screeds for The New York Tribune—then the highest-circulation newspaper in the world—as well as for Urquhart’s own publications in Britain.
Marx went so far as to echo Urquhart’s accusation that Lord Palmerston was secretly in league with the Russians.
In his attacks on Russia, Marx wrote not as a revolutionary, but as a propagandist for British imperial interests. His tirades against Russia proved useful to the Empire during the Crimean War of 1853-1856.
“The Revolutionist and the Reactionary”
The alliance between Marx and Urquhart has confounded historians for generations.
Marx was a communist, and Urquhart an arch-reactionary.
What bound them together? What could they possibly have had in common?
Many scholars have simply ignored this question. Some have actively tried to suppress it, by concealing the very existence of Marx’s anti-Russian work.
In his 1999 biography Karl Marx: A Life, Francis Wheen writes:
“His [Marx’s] philippics against Palmerston and Russia were reissued in 1899 by his daughter Eleanor as two pamphlets, The Secret Diplomatic History of the Eighteenth Century and The Story of the Life of Lord Palmerston—though with some of the more provocative passages quietly excised. For most of the twentieth century they remained out of print and largely forgotten. The Institute of Marxism-Leninism in Moscow omitted them from its otherwise exhaustive Collected Works, presumably because the Soviet editors could not bring themselves to admit that the presiding spirit of the Russian revolution had in fact been a fervent Russophobe. Marxist hagiographers in the West have also been reluctant to draw attention to this embarrassing partnership between the revolutionist and the reactionary. An all-too-typical example is The Life and Teaching of Karl Marx by John Lewis, published in 1965; the curious reader may search the text for any mention of David Urquhart, or of Marx’s contribution to his obsessive crusade but will find nothing.”
The Industrial Revolution had turned British society upside down, forcing men, women, and children to toil long hours under appalling conditions. The aristocrats of the Young England movement blamed these abuses on the vulgar, money-grubbing culture of the middle class or bourgeoisie. Young Englanders led the industrial reforms of the 1840s, allying themselves with communists and socialists, who hated the “bourgeoisie” as much as they did.
“Kindred Souls”
In his 1910 biography, Karl Marx: His Life and Work, John Spargo argues that, "Marx gladly cooperated with David Urquhart and his followers in their anti-Russian campaign, for he regarded Russia as the leading reactionary Power in the world, and never lost an opportunity of expressing his hatred of it.”
Spargo thus tries to explain Marx’s anti-Russian work in terms of an ideological aversion to Russia’s “reactionary” politics, which is to say, Russia’s feudal condition during the 1850s, whereby the Tsar held absolute power, and the landowning nobility kept more than 20 million peasants in a state of serfdom.
This interpretation does not pass muster, however.
In all of Britain, there was no more “reactionary” voice than David Urquhart, who openly called for a restoration of the feudal system.
In his 1845 book Wealth and Want, Urquhart argued that a serf under feudalism was better off than the paupers, miners, and factory workers of the present industrial age.
“Serfdom, I assert, to have been a better condition than dependent labour…” Urquhart wrote. “The villain was not the slave of the lord, but… a freer man than any labourer to-day.”
If Marx hated reaction, why then was he drawn to David Urquhart, whose “reactionary” views surely rivaled those of the most retrograde Russian landlord?
John Spargo writes: “In David Urquhart he [Marx] found a kindred soul to whom he became greatly attached. . . . The influence which David Urquhart obtained over Marx was remarkable. Marx probably never relied upon the judgment of another man as he did upon that of Urquhart.”
The alliance between Marx and Urquhart confronts us with a genuine mystery. If it is true that Marx found a “kindred soul” in Urquhart, then their views must have converged, in ways beyond the obvious. What exactly did these men have in common?
Hatred of the Middle Class
I believe what bonded Marx and Urquhart was their mutual hatred of the middle class.
Urquhart was a leading voice of Young England, a movement of landed aristocrats calling for a return to the feudal system.
The Industrial Revolution had turned British society upside down, forcing men, women, and children of the lower classes to toil long hours in mines and factories under appalling conditions and for meager pay.
The aristocrats of Young England blamed these abuses on the vulgar, money-grubbing culture of the middle class or bourgeoisie.
Things had been better in the Middle Ages, the Young Englanders argued. In those days, benevolent landlords cared for their serfs, as lovingly as they cared for their hounds and horses, never letting them go hungry or homeless.
The problem of “pauperism” would vanish, said the Young Englanders, if the landowning gentry were put back in charge. The aristocrat’s ancient sense of noblesse oblige would motivate blue-bloods to provide for the poor, just as they always had in the past.
The Young England movement “sought to extinguish the predominance of the middle-class bourgeoisie,” according to the 1902 Encyclopedia Britannica. The Young Englanders shared this goal with their communist and socialist allies.
“Extinguish the predominance of the middle-class bourgeoisie”
To prove their point, the aristocrats of Young England became reformers in the 1840s, agitating for a ten-hour work day and other policies to help the poor and working class.
To achieve these ends, the Young Englanders allied themselves with communists and socialists, who hated the “bourgeoisie” as much as they did, albeit for different reasons.
The 1902 Encyclopedia Britannica states that the Young England movement, “sought to extinguish the predominance of the middle-class bourgeoisie [emphasis added], and to recreate the political prestige of the aristocracy by resolutely proving its capacity to ameliorate the social, intellectual, and material condition of the peasantry and the labouring classes.”
The key phrase here is “extinguish the predominance of the middle-class bourgeoisie”—a goal the Young Englanders shared with their communist and socialist allies.
Thus the Young England movement brought Tory aristocrats such as Lord John Manners and George Smythe into alliance with socialist firebrands such as Robert Owen and Joseph Rayner Stephens.
Ultimately, it would bring David Urquhart into alliance with Karl Marx.
“Natural Alliance”
The Anglo-Irish writer Kenelm Henry Digby has been widely acknowledged as the spiritual leader of Young England.
His trilogy The Broad Stone of Honour—written between 1829 and 1848—served as the movement’s “handbook” or “breviary” (prayerbook), according to Charles Whibley’s 1925 history of the movement, Lord John Manners and His Friends.
Whibley writes: “And he [Digby] found in the champions of Young England his most willing pupils, because… he admitted that the aristocracy and the people formed a natural alliance…”
Regarding this “natural alliance” between nobility and peasantry, Whibley quotes Digby as follows: “I pronounce that there is ever a peculiar connection, a sympathy of feeling and affection, a kind of fellowship which is instantly felt and recognised by both, between these [the lower classes] and the highest order, that of gentlemen. In society, as in the atmosphere of the world, it is the middle which is the region of disorder and confusion and tempest [emphasis added].’”
By “the middle,” Digby plainly means the “middle class.”
Like Marx, Digby saw the bourgeoisie as a disturbing new force in the world, breaking the old “natural alliance” between lord and serf, and sowing “disorder,” “confusion” and “tempest.”
Marx may or may not have read Digby, but his view of the middle class is undeniably Digby-esque.
The real power in today’s world, Marx insisted, was no longer the feudal lord, but the bourgeois businessman. Contrary to Marx’s theory of bourgeois revolution, however, certain aristocratic families appear to have survived the Industrial Revolution with their wealth and power intact. They learned to thrive in the new system, living quietly in their country manors, while the bourgeoisie got all the bad press.
The Myth of the Bourgeois Revolution
“It is not the abolition of property generally which distinguishes Communism; It is the abolition of Bourgeois property,” wrote Marx in The Communist Manifesto (1848).
By distinguishing between “bourgeois property” and “property generally” Marx meant that his new Communist movement would not focus on fighting the landowning gentry because—according to Marx—that battle had already been won.
The real power in today’s world, Marx insisted, was no longer the feudal lord, but the bourgeois businessman, who had supposedly overthrown the aristocrats in a series of bourgeois revolutions.
That is why we are now asked to believe that self-made entrepreneurs such as Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, and Elon Musk are the richest, most powerful men on earth.
In reality, we have no way of knowing who the wealthiest people are, as wealth is routinely hidden in offshore trusts, beneath layers of shell corporations, where it cannot be traced.
There are, in fact, indications—contrary to Marx’s theory of bourgeois revolution—that certain aristocratic families managed to survive the Industrial Revolution with their wealth and power intact. They learned to thrive in the new system, living quietly in their country manors, while the bourgeoisie got all the bad press.
The Persistent Power of the Aristocracy
More than 70 years after Marx and Engels pronounced the feudal aristocracy dead, the power of Britain’s landed nobility emerged unexpectedly as a topic of heated debate in the U.S. Senate.
In 1919, the Senate was pondering the question of whether or not to ratify the Versailles Treaty, which would have required the US to join the League of Nations. Public opinion ran strongly against ratification, as most Americans—not unreasonably—feared the League of Nations would draw the US back into a dependent relationship with the British Empire.
Daniel F. Cohalan, a justice of the New York Supreme Court, appeared before the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee on August 30, 1919, to argue against ratification.
Born in New York, of Irish descent, Cohalan was active in the Irish Republican movement. He claimed to speak for America’s 20 million citizens of Irish descent, which is to say, for one in five Americans alive at that time.
“We believe we went to war for the purpose of ending autocracy… ,” Cohalan told the Foreign Affairs Committee.
Yet the British Empire represented, “the most absolute, most arbitrary and most powerful autocracy the world has ever seen,” he declared.Cohalan’s testimony on this point is worth quoting at length.
Like his aristocratic mentor Urquhart, Marx had a tendency to romanticize the feudal past. Marx imagined the Middle Ages as offering, at the very least, some comforting illusion of a harmonious natural order, based on “patriarchal” relations, chivalry, and faith. The money-grubbing bourgeoisie, on the other hand, had stripped away those illusions, leaving only “naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation,” said Marx.
“[T]he real ruling force is… the landed feudal aristocracy of England…”
Justice Cohalan told the U.S. Senate:
“The ordinary American… has not come to understand that the English democracy of which he hears and reads so much has little reality in fact, and that England continues to be governed by a handful of men, representing, with but few exceptions, the same small group of titled land-controlling families that have governed England since the days of Henry VIII, if not, in fact, much longer. …
“The dominating figures in England to-day—those in actual power—are the Cecils and their relations [emphasis added]. Lloyd-George or some other figure that has come to represent democracy… is put forward as the premier of governing authority. But the will that dominates, controls, and finally directs the policies and actions of England is that of the master spirit Cecil, no matter which member of that family or its connections it may happen to be. …
“Englishmen like to say that King George reigns but does not rule. That is true. The real ruling force is that handful of aristocrats who represent the landed feudal aristocracy of England and who form the most absolute, most arbitrary and most powerful autocracy the world has ever seen.”
This is not the place to debate the question of who really runs things in this world, but Judge Cohalan’s testimony at least reminds us that the obvious and familiar answers are not necessarily the right ones.
The “Naked, Shameless, Brutal” Bourgeoisie
Like his aristocratic mentor Urquhart, Marx had a tendency to romanticize the “idyllic” feudal past, and to vilify middle-class culture, in terms reminiscent of the Young Englanders.
That is not to say that Marx was blind to feudal injustice and inequality. But Marx plainly saw the bourgeois order as worse.
Marx imagined the Middle Ages as offering, at the very least, some comforting illusion of a harmonious natural order, based on “patriarchal” relations, chivalry, and faith.
The money-grubbing bourgeoisie, on the other hand, had stripped away those illusions, leaving only “naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation,” said Marx.
Marx spelled it out in the Communist Manifesto. He wrote: “The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his ‘natural superiors’, and has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous ‘cash payment’. It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom — Free Trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation.”
Digby himself could not have said it better.
In 1882—the last year of Marx’s life—two up-and-coming Oxford intellectuals, Arnold Toynbee and Alfred Milner, gave lectures on socialism. Both praised Marx as a genius. Both argued that socialism was Britain’s secret weapon for containing and heading off revolution. Of all countries, England was least likely to experience a revolution, said Toynbee, because she had implemented “socialist programmes” early on. “Some of the things the Socialists of Germany and France are now working for, we have had since 1834,” Toynbee boasted.
Young England Lives On
Most historians hold that the Young England movement petered out around 1849.
Yet the spirit of Young England lived on, under different guises.
It survived through the strange, symbiotic relationship between Urquhart and Marx.
It lingered, through the 1880s, in the teachings of Oxford professor John Ruskin, and two of his young disciples, Arnold Toynbee and Alfred Milner.
The Ruskinites embraced a philosophy that would one day come to be known as “liberal imperialism”—the notion that the best way to spread enlightened social policies across the world was by conquest and colonization, that is, through expansion of the British Empire.
Milner would go on to become one of Britain’s leading statesmen. He served as colonial governor of southern Africa during the Boer Wars, and as War Secretary for Lloyd George during World War I.
In 1920, the deposed premier of Russia, Alexander Kerensky, would call Milner the “wicked genius of Russia,” a reference to Milner’s controversial role in stirring up the Russian Revolution.
But that’s getting ahead of our story.
How Marxism Serves the Empire
In 1882, Milner was just an idealistic young journalist filled with enthusiasm for imperialism and social reform.
In that year—the last year of Marx’s life—Toynbee and Milner both gave lecture series on the topic of socialism.
Both praised Marx as a genius. Both argued, intriguingly, that socialism was Britain’s secret weapon for containing and heading off revolution.
The core of their argument was pure Young Englandism—the idea that the upper classes could save Britain from revolution by giving socialism to the masses.
They further claimed—once again in the spirit of Young England—that the middle class, or bourgeoisie, was the biggest obstacle to their goal.
These 1882 lectures of Toynbee and Milner were so similar in form and subject matter that I will quote from them below, alternately allowing Toynbee and Milner to complete each other’s thoughts.
“It is because there has been a ruling aristocracy in England that we have had a great Socialist programme carried out,” said Toynbee in 1882. Like the Young Englanders before them, Milner and Toynbee recognized a “natural alliance” between the upper and lower classes. It was the middle class, the bourgeoisie, which resisted socialism and therefore posed a problem.
Heading off Revolution
Milner began by acknowledging Marx’s core argument that the Industrial Revolution had intensified class conflict to the point that revolution was imminent.
However, England could escape revolution if she acted wisely, said Milner.
“The industrial revolution in England is the type and forerunner of that which has swept over every country in Europe,” Milner said. “We got through it sooner, we experienced its evils sooner, perhaps we shall find hereafter that we have begun to discover the remedies for these evils sooner than any other nation.”
And what were those remedies? “Socialist programmes,” said Toynbee.
Toynbee argued that, of all countries, England was least likely to experience a revolution, because she had had the foresight to implement “socialist programmes” before it was too late.
“Some of the things the Socialists of Germany and France are now working for, we have had since 1834,” Toynbee boasted. In this regard, Toynbee cited the New Poor Law of 1834, which had established workhouses for the poor, and the various Factory Acts, such as those of 1847 and 1848, which had established a 10-hour work day as well as other improvements in work conditions.
Such measures, said Toynbee, had “saved England from revolution.”
The Bourgeois Threat
Toynbee expressly credited the Young England movement for these enlightened policies, praising Lord John Manners by name.
“[L]et us recognize the fact plainly,” said Toynbee, “that it is because there has been a ruling aristocracy in England that we have had a great Socialist programme carried out. … [T]he supremacy of the landowners, which has been the cause of so much injustice and suffering, has also been the means of averting revolution.”
Milner and Toynbee both agreed that the best way to head off revolution was by meeting the revolutionaries halfway and giving them some form of socialism.
Like the Young Englanders before them, Milner and Toynbee recognized a “natural alliance” between the upper and lower classes. It was the middle class, the bourgeoisie, that posed a problem.
Milner pointed squarely to the middle class as the greatest threat to social stability.
He condemned what he called, “the dominant principles of economics, the middle-class or bourgeois principles which have been invented by Capitalists to justify the Capitalistic system and to maintain it.”
“I don't deny that Communism may be the ultimate form of human society,” Milner stated in 1882. Thirty-five years later, the same Alfred Milner played a major role in bringing the first Marxist state into being. In February, 1917, Lord Milner traveled to Petrograd to deliver an ultimatum to the Tsar—surrender power to the liberal Duma or face revolution. Milner left Petrograd on February 27. Nine days later, the Revolution began.
Communism: "The Ultimate Form of Human Society"
Milner continued: “The fundamental doctrine of the dominant [middle-class] school—and on reflection I think the Socialists are justified in calling it dominant, it is dominant in Parliament, in the Press, in nine-tenths of our laws and institutions… the doctrine of this dominant bourgeois or middle-class economy is that the whole business of the State is to protect the personal freedom and the property of the individual.”
However, Milner saw a new order on the horizon, one in which the “bourgeois or middle-class” values of “personal freedom” and “property” would no longer dominate men’s thinking.
“I don't deny that Communism may be the ultimate form of human society,” Milner stated, though he allowed that “pure Communism” might be “impracticable” for the present age.
Impractical or not, Milner had high praise for Karl Marx.
In an 1882 lecture on the “German Socialists,” Milner called Marx, “one of the most weighty, logical and learned of reasoners,” adding, “Marx’s great book Das Kapital is at once a monument of reasoning and a storehouse of facts.”
Milner’s Ultimatum to the Tsar
Strangely and fatefully, the same Alfred Milner who praised Marx in 1882 ended up, thirty-five years later, playing a major role in bringing the first Marxist state into being.
In February, 1917, Lord Milner traveled to Petrograd to warn the Tsar that Russia was on the brink of revolution. To save the monarchy, the Tsar must lay down his traditional autocratic powers and institute democratic government, Milner told him.
Nicholas refused.
In fact, Milner’s demand was unreasonable. To democratize Russia in the midst of war would have been folly. Britain had done exactly the opposite, creating a five-man War Cabinet in December, 1916, endowed with extraordinary powers which many called dictatorial. France too had radically streamlined its government decision-making for the war.
If there was a good time for Russia to democratize, February 1917 was not it.
Milner was giving Nicholas bad advice on purpose. He was trying to manipulate the Tsar into surrendering power to the Duma, knowing that the Duma’s liberal leaders were all in the pockets of the British Embassy.
The February Revolution was, in effect, a palace coup, engineered by the Tsar’s own royal relatives, working closely with the British Embassy. British ambassador George Buchanan was directly involved in the machinations surrounding the Tsar’s abdication.
Revolution From Above
Milner left Petrograd on February 27. Nine days later, the Revolution began.
On March 8, 1917 a sudden cut in food rations triggered riots in Petrograd.
The city garrison mutinied on March 12. The Tsar abdicated on March 15.
This was the so-called February Revolution (given that name because the old Russian calendar ran 13 days late, so the start of the riots was dated February 24). To avoid confusion, all dates here will be in New Style, not Old Style.
The February Revolution had been well-planned. It was a revolution from above, not below.
When the soldiers mutinied, they did not rampage through the streets. They marched straight to the Tauride Palace, where the Duma met, to pledge their loyalty to Russia’s new rulers.
The London Daily Telegraph of March 17, 1917 reported: “On Tuesday [March 12] the movement rapidly spread to all the regiments of the garrison, and one by one they came marching up to the Duma to offer their services. … [T]hey listened to speeches from MM. Rodzianko, Miliukoff, and Kerenski, and then marched off amid cheering.”
Grand Duke Cyril Vladimirovich—first cousin to the Tsar, and third in line to the throne—also marched to the Duma that day, in his naval captain’s uniform, leading the Marine Guard whom he commanded.
“I wish to declare my sympathy for the new regime, and to place myself at your disposal,” the Grand Duke told Duma President Mikhail Rodzianko.
It may be worth noting that Grand Duke Cyril had an English wife, Princess Victoria of Edinburgh, whose father, Prince Alfred, was the second son of the late Queen Victoria.
Palace Coup
The February Revolution was, in effect, a palace coup, engineered by the Tsar’s own relatives, working closely with the British Embassy.
Maurice Paléologue, the French ambassador, called this aspect of the Revolution the “conspiracy of the Grand Dukes.”
British ambassador George Buchanan was directly involved in the machinations surrounding the Tsar’s abdication.
On March 14, Buchanan met with the Grand Duke Michael Alexandrovich, the Tsar’s brother, and second in line to the throne. They discussed plans to force concessions from the Emperor.
Prime Minister Rodzianko was planning to meet the Emperor when he arrived by train that evening, and would request the Tsar’s signature on a manifesto granting a constitution to the Russian people. This manifesto would make Nicholas II a constitutional monarch, ending the 1,000-year Russian autocracy.
But it would allow Nicholas to stay on the throne.
The manifesto had been written by Grand Duke Paul Alexandrovich—Princess Paley’s husband—with help from a lawyer. It had already been signed by Grand Dukes Paul, Michael and Cyril.
The only thing left was to obtain the Tsar’s signature.
There is some mystery as to why the Tsar ended up abdicating, rather than signing the manifesto creating a constitutional monarchy. British ambassador Buchanan says the demand for abdication came from the Petrograd Soviet, a group of socialist agitators who had suddenly announced their existence three days earlier, on March 12. But the Duma leaders did not take orders from the Soviet. They took orders from Buchanan.
King George V Endorses the Revolution
During their meeting of March 14, Grand Duke Michael asked Buchanan if he had “anything special” he would like to convey to the Emperor.
Buchanan states in his memoirs, “I replied that I would only ask him to beseech the Emperor, in the name of King George, who had such a warm affection for His Majesty, to sign the manifesto, to show himself to his people, and to effect a complete reconciliation with them.”
Given the gravity of the situation, it seems improbable that Buchanan would have spoken “in the name of King George,” without first getting the King’s approval.
For that reason, it does not seem unreasonable to conclude that King George V of England—through his ambassador George Buchanan—intentionally and officially endorsed the Russian Revolution, on the night of March 14, while it was still in progress.
Who Gave the Order?
There is some mystery as to why the Tsar ended up abdicating, rather than signing the manifesto creating a constitutional monarchy.
Buchanan states in his memoirs that fate took a hand. The Tsar never saw the manifesto, he implies, because the Emperor’s train never arrived that evening. In what appears to have been a carefully planned move, workmen had sabotaged the tracks ahead of the Tsar’s train, so that Nicholas had been forced to divert to Pskov, the headquarters of General Russky, commander of the northern front.
According to Buchanan, the Tsar telegraphed Rodzianko from Pskov the next day (March 15), finally agreeing to the Duma’s demand for a constitution. But Rodzianko told him, “Too late.” Abdication was now the only course left.
Why did Rodzianko change his mind?
Buchanan says Rodzianko’s hands were tied. The demand for abdication supposedly came from the Petrograd Soviet, a group of socialist agitators who had suddenly announced their existence on March 12, claiming to represent the workers and soldiers of Petrograd, but with no legal authority to do so.
“[W]hile I was talking with the Grand Duke the proposed manifesto was vetoed by the Soviet, and the abdication of the Emperor decided,” Buchanan writes in his memoir.
There is a problem with Buchanan’s story, however.
Rodzianko did not take orders from the Soviet. He took orders from Buchanan.
The British press made no effort to conceal its glee over the Tsar’s downfall. On the contrary, British journalists implied that the Tsar had gotten what he deserved, for failing to heed Lord Milner’s warning.
“Dictator” of Russia
Let us recall Princess Paley’s accusation that certain liberal politicians used to meet at the British embassy to plot revolution, among them, “Prince Lvoff, Miliukoff, Rodzianko, Maklakoff, Guchkoff, etc..”
These are the same men who forced the Tsar to abdicate on March 15, 1917. They are also the same men appointed that day to high positions in Rodzianko’s Provisional Government. Prince Georgy Lvov was named Prime Minister, Pavel Milyukov Foreign Minister, Alexander Guchkov Minister of War, and Vasily Maklakov legal commissar.
Throughout the night of the coup, British Ambassador George Buchanan was at the center of events.
Following the Tsar’s abdication, on the evening of March 15, Buchanan was seen leaving the Winter Palace. Recognizing Buchanan as a friend of the Revolution, the mob “greeted him with loud cheers and escorted him back to the [British] Embassy, where they gave a rousing demonstration in honour of the Allies,” reported The Times of London.
On March 24, 1917—nine days after the Tsar’s abdication—a Danish newspaper correspondent reported that Buchanan now wielded the power of a “dictator” in Russia. He wrote:
“England’s domination over the [Russian] government is complete and the mightiest man in the empire is Sir George W. Buchanan, the British ambassador. This astute diplomat actually plays the role of a dictator in the country to which he is accredited. The Russian government does not dare to undertake any step without consulting him first, and his orders are always obeyed, even if they concern internal affairs. … When Parliament is in session he is always to be found in the imperial box, which has been placed at his disposal, and the party leaders come to him for advice and orders. His appearance invariably is the signal for an ovation.”
The imperial box which had been “placed” at Buchanan’s “disposal,” according to this report, was formerly reserved for the Emperor himself.
Given these facts, we must regard with some skepticism Buchanan’s claim that the Petrograd Soviet—during its three-day existence—had somehow acquired more authority than Buchanan to tell Rodzianko what to do.
Milner’s Revenge
The British press made no effort to conceal its glee over the Tsar’s downfall. On the contrary, British journalists implied that the Tsar had gotten what he deserved, for failing to heed Lord Milner’s warning.
“Every effort was shattered by the obduracy of the Tsar,” reported the London Guardian on March 16, 1917. “It is noteworthy that the outbreak [of the Revolution] followed promptly on Lord Milner’s return from Russia, where his failure was generally understood to mean that nothing could be hoped from the Tsar, and that the people must seek their own redemption.”
Of course, not everyone in Britain was pleased with Milner’s Russian intervention. Laurence Ginnell, an Irish member of the House of Commons, spoke openly against it.
On March 22, 1917, while the House of Commons composed a message of congratulation to the Russian Duma, Ginnell pointed out the hypocrisy of congratulating Russian rebels while hanging Irish ones. He sarcastically suggested the following wording for the message:
“[T]his House, while appreciating Lord Milner’s action in fomenting the Revolution which has dethroned our Imperial Russian Ally… and having betrayed its own promise of self-government to Ireland, suspends its judgment on the new institutions alleged to have been founded in Russia until time has revealed their character.”
Ginnell’s suggested wording was shot down as “irrelevant” and “negative,” but, significantly, no one challenged his contention that Milner had instigated the Russian Revolution.
“Russia takes her place by the side of the great democracies of the world. … We… feel it our privilege to be among the first to rejoice in her emancipation and welcome her into the fellowship of free peoples,” declared former Prime Minister Herbert Henry Asquith in the House of Commons seven days after the Tsar’s downfall.
Celebrating the Tsar’s Downfall
On March 22, 1917—with the Tsar and his family under arrest, and their fate uncertain— Great Britain granted recognition to the revolutionary government.
Prime Minister David Lloyd George sent a telegram that day to Prince Lvov, Russia’s new Prime Minister, stating:
“It is with sentiments of the most profound satisfaction that the peoples of Great Britain and the British dominions have learned that their great ally, Russia, now stands with the nations which base their institutions upon responsible government. … I believe that the revolution… reveals the fundamental truth that this war is at the bottom a struggle for popular government and for liberty.”
That same day, former Prime Minister Herbert Henry Asquith declared in the House of Commons:
“Russia takes her place by the side of the great democracies of the world. … We… feel it our privilege to be among the first to rejoice in her emancipation and welcome her into the fellowship of free peoples.”
The British press hastened to assure its readers that Russia’s new Provisional Government would stay in the war. There would be no separate peace with Germany. Milyukov made this clear at a March 23 press conference.
“We shall remain faithful to all past alliances...” he said. “[I]t is Russia’s duty to continue the struggle… for her own liberty, and for that of all Europe… Henceforward all rumours of a separate peace must vanish once and for all...”
Britain’s Hidden Agenda
“My only thought was how to keep Russia in the war,” Buchanan stated in his 1923 memoir.
By the time he wrote these words in 1923, the public mood had changed. Buchanan was now under fire for his role in the Tsar’s overthrow. He invariably offered the same explanation to all his critics. Tsar Nicholas was wavering, Buchanan said. The Emperor was considering separate peace with Germany. For the sake of the Allied cause, he had to be stopped.
Buchanan argued that the British Embassy had no choice but to support the Revolution.
He wrote in his memoir: “It was Hugh Walpole, the head of our propaganda bureau, who… begged me to show by the warmth of my language at some public meetings where I had to speak that I was wholeheartedly on the side of the revolution. I accordingly did so. But if I spoke with emotion of Russia’s new-won liberty… it was to render more palatable my subsequent appeal for the maintenance of discipline in the army, and for fighting, instead of fraternizing with, the Germans. My only thought was how to keep Russia in the war.”
Keeping Russia in the war certainly made sense, from the standpoint of British self-interest. But was that really Buchanan’s goal?
One is left to wonder whether the real point of Buchanan’s intrigues was simply to make sure that Russia lost the war—as Lord Kitchener intended from the beginning—and to make sure that the Russian Empire never again rose to challenge Britain for “supremacy in the world,” as Queen Victoria put it.
“[W]e shall… see a series of revolutions and counter-revolutions…”
In a letter to Lord Milner of April 10, 1917, Buchanan admitted that he did not believe Russia would be of any further use in the war.
“The military outlook is most discouraging,” he wrote, “and I, personally, have abandoned all hope of a successful Russian offensive this spring. Nor do I take an optimistic view of the immediate future of this country. Russia is not ripe for a purely democratic form of government, and for the next few years we shall probably see a series of revolutions and counter-revolutions… A vast Empire like this, with all its different races, will not long hold together under a Republic. Disintegration will, in my opinion, sooner or later set in…”
Why, then, had Britain supported the Revolution? If keeping Russia in the war was never a realistic hope, what was it all for?
One is left to wonder whether the real point of Buchanan’s intrigues was simply to make sure that Russia lost the war—as Lord Kitchener intended from the beginning—and to make sure that the Russian Empire never again rose to challenge Britain for “supremacy in the world,” as Queen Victoria put it.
Considered in this light, it begins to make sense why the British began plotting against the Provisional Government almost as soon as the Tsar was out of the way.
“Disintegration”
The practical effect of Britain’s Russia policy in 1917 was to ensure the very outcome Buchanan predicted — “revolutions,” “counter-revolutions” and “disintegration” for many years to come.
Perhaps this was intentional.
On July 1, 1917, the Provisional Government kept its promise to the British by launching a major offensive. General Brusilov attacked the Austrians in Galicia. But his offensive collapsed in three days. More than 400,000 Russian soldiers were killed, wounded, or captured. An equal number deserted.
The Brusilov offensive effectively ended Russia’s experiment with democracy, as Ambassador Buchanan had predicted. Recall that, in his April 10 letter to Lord Milner, Buchanan admitted that he had “abandoned all hope of a successful Russian offensive…” and had predicted that Russian democracy would fail.
I do not believe that the accuracy of Buchanan’s predictions was due to clairvoyance, nor to any special talent or insight on his part. Buchanan knew what was coming because he was personally involved in making it happen.
As a direct result of Buchanan’s machinations, the Russian army was now in a state of full mutiny. From July 16-30, the streets of Petrograd were filled with armed, violent soldiers, sailors and workers, demanding an end to the war. This mutiny came to be known as the “July Days.”
Prince Lvov resigned as Prime Minister on July 20. Alexander Kerensky, a socialist, took his place.
The British provided Kornilov with an armored car unit, manned by British soldiers in Russian uniforms, and led by Lieutenant Commander Oliver Locker-Lampson. The coup failed, but it fatally weakened Kerensky’s government, paving the way for the Bolsheviks.
The Kornilov Coup
On September 10, 1917, the Russian commander-in-chief Lavr Kornilov declared himself dictator and attempted to overthrow Kerensky’s Provisional Government.
Kerensky accused the British of instigating the coup. Much evidence suggests he was right.
On August 15, Buchanan wrote in his diary, “General Korniloff is the only man strong enough” to restore discipline in the army.
On September 8, Buchanan wrote further, “I do not regard Kerensky as an ideal Prime Minister, and, in spite of the services which he has rendered in the past, he has almost played his part.”The coup broke out on September 10. Kornilov sent General Krymov to Petrograd with a large force, on the pretext of putting down a Bolshevik uprising. Krymov’s true mission, however, was to overthrow Kerensky.
In his 1927 memoir, The Catastrophe, Kerensky accused the British—and Lord Milner, in particular—of supporting the coup. Kerensky wrote:
“On the streets of Moscow pamphlets were being distributed, entitled ‘Korniloff, the National Hero.’ These pamphlets were printed at the expense of the British Military Mission and had been brought to Moscow from the British Embassy in Petrograd in the railway carriage of General Knox, British military attache. At about this time, Aladin, a former labor member of the Duma, arrived from England… [and] brought to General Korniloff a letter from Lord Milner, British War Minister, expressing his approval of a military dictatorship in Russia and giving his blessing to the enterprise. This letter naturally served to encourage the conspirators greatly.”
The British also provided Kornilov with an armored car unit, manned by British soldiers in Russian uniforms, and led by Lieutenant Commander Oliver Locker-Lampson.
The coup failed, but it fatally weakened Kerensky’s government, paving the way for the Bolsheviks.
Perhaps that was its real purpose.
Trotsky Assumes Command
At this point, the strange figure of Leon Trotsky re-emerges.
Trotsky had been arrested by Kerensky’s Provisional Government in the aftermath of the “July Days” mutiny.
However, on September 17—forty days after Kornilov’s attempted coup—Kerensky decided to release Trotsky from prison. For the second time in five months, Trotsky had been set free just when the Revolution needed him.
Upon his release, Trotsky took charge of the Bolshevik resistance.
He was elected Chairman of the Petrograd Soviet on October 8. On October 10, Trotsky led the Soviet in a vote for armed revolution.
It was therefore no surprise when, on the night of November 6-7, 1917, Trotsky made his move, leading the Bolsheviks in a successful coup.
Stalin acknowledged Trotsky’s leading role in the coup, in a Pravda article of November 6, 1918. Stalin wrote:
“All practical work in connection with the organization of the uprising was done under the immediate direction of comrade Trotsky, the president of the Petrograd Soviet. It can be stated with certainty that the party is indebted primarily and principally to comrade Trotsky for the rapid going over of the garrison to the side of the Soviet and the efficient manner in which the work of the Military-Revolutionary Committee was organized ...”
On March 14, 1918, Trotsky was appointed People’s Commissar of Army and Navy Affairs, making him, effectively, commander-in-chief of the Red Army and Red Fleet.
Russia could be called the Vietnam before Vietnam, a nation that fell to Communist rule, not because the Communist forces were stronger, but because the anti-Communist forces were betrayed.
The Vietnam Before Vietnam
What happened next is one of history’s great riddles—the inscrutable mystery of the Russian Civil War.
On the night of November 6-7, 1917, the Bolsheviks had seized control of a handful of cities. But the vast Russian Empire remained unconquered. It took five years and more than 10 million dead for the Red Army to subdue the rest of the country.
At the height of the Russian Civil War, in December 1918, more than 300,000 White Russian troops, supported by over 180,000 Allied troops, faced a Red Army of about 300,000. The Reds were surrounded, boxed into a small area around Moscow and Petrograd, and cut off from supply lines. "On every front, the Bolsheviks were being pressed back towards Moscow," writes Martin Gilbert in World in Torment (1975).
How did the Bolsheviks manage to win?
Russia could be called the Vietnam before Vietnam, a nation that fell to Communist rule, not because the Communist forces were stronger, but because the anti-Communist forces were betrayed.
When Princess Paley wrote her 1924 memoir, the fighting had not yet stopped in Russia. The last scattered bands of anti-Bolshevik guerrillas were still being hunted down in Central Asia.
The Princess wrote, “Is it not to Great Britain that we owe the continuation of the Russian agony? Great Britain supports wittingly… the Government of the Soviets, so as not to allow the real Russia, the National Russia, to come to life again and raise itself up.”
Was the Princess right? Did the Red Army and the “Government of the Soviets” prevail due to British support?
Considerable evidence suggests that they did.
Opposition to Russian Nationalists
Prime Minister David Lloyd George never wanted to fight the Bolsheviks, according to British historian Martin Gilbert in his 1975 book, World in Torment: Winston S. Churchill 1917-1922.
In Lloyd George’s view, Britain’s real fight in Russia was against the nationalists and monarchists.
There were practical reasons for this policy.
In 1917, high-ranking British statesmen were pursuing plans to carve up the Russian Empire into a patchwork of buffer states and to bring the oil-rich Caucasus under British control.
Lord Milner even considered dividing up Russia’s territories with Germany.
"England's policy has always been the dismemberment of Russia,” writes US historian Louis Fischer, in Oil Imperialism: The International Struggle for Petroleum (1926). “It was for this reason that it supplied with arms, ammunition, officers, money and advice such counter-revolutionary leaders as Denikin and Koltchak. ... Britain wished to divide and then be the patron and protector of the parts."
What doomed the White armies, in the end, was their near-total dependence on Britain for funding, supplies, munitions, and military advisors. Every move had to be coordinated and negotiated with the British War Office. When the British finally cut off supplies and funding, the White armies were finished.
British and White Russian Goals Incompatible
The White Russian commanders, on the other hand, were nationalists. They opposed breaking up the Empire. Nor were they eager to bring back the liberal Duma, which had started the revolution in the first place. Many favored restoration of the Romanovs as constitutional monarchs.
These policies were unacceptable to Lloyd George.
Consequently, the White commanders and their British sponsors could never agree on essential war goals.
What doomed the White armies, in the end, was their near-total dependence on Britain for funding, supplies, munitions, and military advisors. Every move had to be coordinated and negotiated with the British War Office.
When the British finally cut off supplies and funding, the White armies were finished.
The Myth of Allied Intervention
During the Russian Civil War, more than 200,000 foreign troops were deployed on the soil of the former Russian Empire. These included nearly 60,000 British troops, 70,000 Japanese, and smaller numbers of Americans, French, Czechs, and others.
Soviet propaganda promoted the myth for 70 years that the “imperialist” nations of the world had ganged up on Russia to crush the Bolshevik Revolution. But that was never their mission. Had the Allies wished to drive out the Bolsheviks, they could have done so easily.
The British sent troops to Russia—and persuaded other countries to do so—not to fight Bolshevism, but to pursue other objectives.
As long as Germany remained in the war, Britain's top priority was to restore the eastern front, to keep up the fight against the Kaiser.
Even after the Germans surrendered on November 11, 1918, the British still saw them as a threat. If Germans and Russians joined forces, they might set up a pro-German government in Russia.
By intervening in the Russian Civil War, the British sought to counteract German influence, encouraging White Russian leaders to look to them for help, instead of looking to Germany.
However, the British offered only a false hope. Britain had no intention of helping the Whites restore the Russian Empire, which was their ultimate goal.
The first Allied troops to land in Russia were a contingent of British Royal Marines who ended up fighting alongside the Red Guards to defeat a force of anti-Bolshevik Finns. Trotsky himself had requested the British intervention.
Breaking Up the Russian Empire
As mentioned above, Britain’s true objective was to carve up the Russian Empire, breaking off border regions into independent “buffer states.”
This was the principal reason for the Allied intervention.
Separatism weakened Russia and made it easier for Britain to exert control over the region. For that reason, the Allies pursued a consistent policy of helping separatist forces in former Russian provinces.
These efforts proved successful in Finland, Poland, and the Baltics, all of which achieved independence. However, the strategy met with only temporary success in Ukraine, the Caucasus, and other regions, which were soon reconquered by the Red Army.
In the end, the Allies did very little fighting in Russia. When they did fight, it was not always against the Bolsheviks. They helped the White armies only in situations where White operations happened to coincide with other Allied objectives. On other occasions, the Allies helped the Reds.
It is a little-known fact that the first Allied troops to land in Russia were a contingent of British Royal Marines who ended up fighting alongside the Red Guards to defeat a force of anti-Bolshevik Finns.
Trotsky himself had requested the British intervention.
Trotsky’s Telegram
Murmansk was a vital Arctic seaport which had been Russia’s lifeline throughout World War I.
On March 1, 1918, Trotsky sent a telegram to the commander of the Murmansk Soviet, Alexei Mikhailovich Yuryev, stating (falsely) that peace talks with the Germans had “apparently broken off” and ordering him to “protect the Murmansk Railway” and “accept any and all assistance from the Allied missions.”
Why did Trotsky send such an order?
The official story is that Trotsky had somehow been misled into thinking the peace talks had fallen through, for which reason he feared an imminent German attack on Murmansk. But, as Commissar of Foreign Affairs, Trotsky was in charge of the peace talks, and surely knew they were nearing a successful completion.
Trotsky’s claim that the peace talks had “broken off” was a false alarm. The real problem was the peace treaty itself.
The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk ceded vast Russian territories to Germany. A German occupation force would be moving in quickly to claim them.
Large stores of British supplies and munitions were stored at Murmansk. The British did not want these falling into German hands, nor into the hands of any German allies, such as the Finnish White Guards.
Most likely, this was the real reason Trotsky sent his March 1 telegram, instructing Yuryev to cooperate with the Allies. He did it to help the British.
Trotsky thus found himself, once again, in his familiar role of helping advance British interests, while claiming to champion proletarian internationalism.
At a War Cabinet meeting of December 31, 1918, Churchill proposed using military force to compel the Bolsheviks to hold a General Election overseen by the Allies. He was certain they would lose. Lloyd George opposed this idea, as, indeed, he opposed any plan that stood a chance of toppling the Bolsheviks.
Helping the Reds
The British needed a pretext for occupying Murmansk. Trotsky provided it. But he did so discreetly.
Rather than contacting the British directly, Trotsky used Commander Yuryev to make the request.
Trotsky’s telegram to Yuryev would later be used against him as evidence in his 1937 treason trial.
The astonishing fact is that Trotsky singlehandedly legitimized Allied intervention in Russia, arranging for the British to receive a formal invitation from a Bolshevik official, Yuryev.
The first British troops landed at Murmansk on March 6, 1918.
They fought their first battle on May 2, fighting for the Bolsheviks, not against them.
Finnish White Guards had captured the nearby town of Pechenga. It was feared they might be acting as a vanguard for the Germans.
From May 2-10, the Royal Marines fought shoulder-to-shoulder with the Red Guards, driving the Finns out of Pechenga.
Churchill v. Lloyd George
Winston Churchill is not the hero of this story.
Nonetheless, in the bewildering muddle of the Russian Civil War, Churchill stands out, almost uniquely, as a voice of clarity and reason. He understood, from the beginning, that the Bolsheviks lacked popular support, and would likely collapse in the face of quick and decisive opposition.
Unfortunately, Churchill was never allowed to organize such opposition.
At a War Cabinet meeting of December 31, 1918, Churchill proposed using military force to compel the Bolsheviks to hold a General Election overseen by the Allies. He was certain they would lose.
Lloyd George opposed this idea, as, indeed, he opposed any plan that stood a chance of toppling the Bolsheviks.
“LG [Lloyd George] is opposed to knocking out Bolshevism,” wrote Sir Henry Wilson in his diary, after meeting with Lloyd George on January 12, 1919. Wilson was the Prime Minister’s top military advisor.
After dining with Churchill on January 20, Wilson wrote, “Winston all against Bolshevism, & therefore, in this, against LG.”
Prime Minister Lloyd George used the same argument against the White Russians that he had previously used against the Tsar. He claimed the Whites were “reactionary” and that helping them would undermine Britain’s commitment to “democracy,” “self-determination of peoples” and other high ideals.
No Support for “Reactionaries”
Martin Gilbert argues convincingly in World in Torment (1975) that Winston Churchill used all his power as War Secretary to fight the Bolsheviks, sincerely trying to defeat them. I have no reason to doubt this. Had Churchill been free to act, it seems likely he would have saved Russia from 70 years of Communism.
But Lloyd George blocked him at every turn.
The Prime Minister used the same argument against the White Russians that he had previously used against the Tsar. He claimed the Whites were “reactionary” and that helping them would undermine Britain’s commitment to “democracy,” “self-determination of peoples” and other high ideals.
Thus, when Churchill telegraphed Lloyd George on May 5, 1919, requesting urgent help for Admiral Kolchak’s march on Moscow, the Prime Minister replied that he had no intention of helping Kolchak establish “a reactionary military regime” in Russia.
To put it another way, Lloyd George demanded of Kolchak what no one demanded of the Bolsheviks—a commitment to liberal democracy.
Churchill was therefore obliged to demand from Kolchak binding promises to appoint a democratically-elected constituent assembly; to grant independence to Poland and Finland; and to submit to the League of Nations the question of independence for other breakaway Russian provinces, such as Estonia, Livonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Georgia and Azerbaijan.
Not surprisingly, Kolchak refused these conditions.
Words vs. Actions
Later, when General Denikin was advancing on Moscow from the south, Lloyd George once more interfered.
Churchill was then trying to provide much-needed funding to Denikin, by giving him commercial loans and opening up trade with areas under Denikin’s control. Lloyd George nixed this plan at a War Cabinet meeting of July 25, 1919, stating that he was not at all sure “Denikin and the officers with him were going to play the game.”
The Prime Minister noted that Denikin was “surrounded by persons of reactionary tendencies,” some of whom wanted to restore “a Czarist regime.”
Lloyd George made clear, on that occasion, that he opposed restoring the Russian monarchy, even in a “milder,” constitutional form.
This anti-monarchical stance seemingly contradicted an earlier statement Lloyd George had made to his War Cabinet on July 22, 1918. At that time, the Prime Minister had said the “Russian nation should have the right of setting up any Government they chose. If they chose a Republican Government, or a Bolshevist Government, or a Monarchical Government, it was no concern of ours…”
Consistency was never a strong point for Lloyd George, especially where Russia was concerned. But on one issue, he was perfectly consistent, from the beginning. Lloyd George favored the Bolsheviks over any other faction contending for power in Russia.
The French and British governments cut off all aid to the White Russian forces on December 12, 1919, declaring they would no longer provide “assistance to the anti-Bolshevik elements in Russia, whether in the form of troops, war material or financial aid…” On March 16, 1921, the British signed an Anglo-Soviet Trade Agreement with the Bolsheviks.
“At War” But Not Making War
On July 4, 1919, as White General Yudenich drew close to Petrograd, it was proposed at a cabinet meeting to provide British naval support via the Baltic Sea and the Gulf of Finland.
Lloyd George replied that, while Britain was technically “at war with the Bolsheviks,” it was his policy “not to make war,” for which reason he could not approve any naval attack on Petrograd.
With those words, Lloyd George neatly summarized Britain’s overall policy toward the Russian Civil War, which was “not to make war.”
The British malaise infected every allied army in the expeditionary force, including the Americans.
Some 13,000 U.S. troops were deployed to Russia in 1918-1919, of whom 344 died, and 125 were left behind. Most Americans never understood why they were there.
“What is the policy of our nation toward Russia?” asked Senator Hiram Johnson of California, in a speech of December 12, 1918. “I do not know our policy, and I know no other man who knows our policy.”
Lieutenant John Cudahy of the U.S. 339th regiment, deployed to Russia in 1919, later wrote that, when the last American troops evacuated the Russian port of Archangel on June 15, 1919, “not a soldier knew, not even vaguely, why he had fought or why he was going now, and why his comrades were left behind—so many of them beneath the wooden crosses.”
For Whom the Bell Tolls
The last British troops withdrew from Russia in October 1919.
The French and British governments cut off all aid to the White Russian forces on December 12, 1919, declaring they would no longer provide “assistance to the anti-Bolshevik elements in Russia, whether in the form of troops, war material or financial aid…”
General Kolchak was betrayed and turned over to the Bolsheviks, shot before dawn on February 7, 1920—barely 24 hours before Churchill’s article appeared in the Illustrated Sunday Herald.
General Wrangel—the last White commander with a substantial army—evacuated Russia on November 14, 1920.
White forces held on in the Siberian region of eastern Yakutia until June, 1923, but with no chance of victory. Wrangel’s withdrawal ended any hope of ousting the Bolsheviks.
On March 16, 1921, the British signed an Anglo-Soviet Trade Agreement with the Bolsheviks.
On March 21, 1921, the Bolshevik government adopted the so-called New Economic Policy (NEP) reintroducing limited capitalism into Russia, and inviting foreign investment.
On February 1, 1924, Great Britain formally recognized the new Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
As with so many wars in our modern age, millions were left to wonder what it had really been about.
There are few men in history I admire more than Churchill. I forgive him his faults. Nonetheless, this historical correction must be made.
Trotsky’s Secret
Leon Trotsky, at least, never entertained such doubts. His narcissism would not allow it.
While living in exile in Mexico City, Trotsky wrote a “Testament” on February 27, 1940, reflecting on his stormy legacy.
“If I had to begin all over again I would of course try to avoid this or that mistake,” Trotsky wrote, “but the main course of my life would remain unchanged. I shall die a proletarian revolutionist, a Marxist, a dialectical materialist, and, consequently, an irreconcilable atheist. My faith in the communist future of mankind is not less ardent, indeed it is firmer today, than it was in the days of my youth.”
We can assume then, that Trotsky, at least, died happy.
On August 20, 1940, an agent of the the Soviet secret police attacked Trotsky with an ice axe, a mountaineer’s tool with a pick on one side and a flat adze on the other.
The Spanish-born assassin, Ramón Mercader, buried the adze nearly three inches deep in Trotsky’s skull.
Trotsky’s wife of 37 years, Natalia Sedova, had stayed with him till the end.
It is reported that Trotsky and Natalya suffered a “serious marital rift” in Mexico, and that one of their quarrels concerned Trotsky’s long-ago affair with British spy Clare Sheridan, cousin of Winston Churchill, as related in Trotsky: A Biography (2009) by Robert Service.
Whatever the ultimate truth may be regarding Trotsky’s dealings with British intelligence, he took that secret to his grave.
Churchill’s Ghost
All over Britain today, statues of Winston Churchill are being vandalized and defaced.
He is called a “racist,” an “imperialist,” an “anti-Semite,” and a “white supremacist.”
I do not wish to add my voice to that unseemly chorus.
There are few men in history I admire more than Churchill.
I forgive him his faults.
Nonetheless, this historical correction must be made.
Nothing is deeper or darker than an ethnic grudge, and no hatred blacker than the enmity between Slav and Jew which has stained the steppe lands red for a thousand years.
The Courage to be Wrong
When a 23-year-old Churchill rode in one of the last great cavalry charges in British history, at Omdurman in 1898, he showed physical courage of a sort our present age has forgotten.
When he took up his pen in 1920 to write that article for the Illustrated Sunday Herald, Churchill showed a different sort of courage, which our age has also forgotten.
Nothing is deeper or darker than an ethnic grudge, and no hatred blacker than the enmity between Slav and Jew which has stained the steppe lands red for a thousand years.
It takes courage to wade into someone else’s blood feud, and courage to speak one’s mind bluntly.
Churchill showed such courage, even where he got the story wrong.
We must commend him for that.
Restoring the Truth
Because Churchill had the courage to speak his mind, we too may speak, a hundred years later.
We may ask questions we never dared ask, and perhaps obtain answers we did not expect.
A hundred years of lies have buried many truths about the world’s first communist state.
It will take more than this article to restore those truths to light.
But if these words inspire even a few curious souls to dig deeper, I am content.
Richard Poe is a New York Times bestselling author and journalist. He co-wrote with David Horowitz The Shadow Party: How George Soros, Hillary Clinton, and Sixties Radicals Seized Control of the Democratic Party. Poe is presently writing a history of globalism. His work is available at richardpoe.substack.com and RichardPoe.com.
FOOTNOTES
Winston Churchill, “Zionism versus Bolshevism,” Illustrated Sunday Herald, February 8, 1920, p5
“Russian Civil War,” Encyclopedia Britannica / Britannica.com, Last updated November 27, 2022
Werth Nicolas, "Crimes and Mass Violence of the Russian Civil Wars (1918-1921)," SciencesPo.fr, March 21, 2008
“Parliamentary Paper, Russia. No. 1: A Collection of Reports on Bolshevism in Russia, Great Britain, Foreign Office (London: His Majesty's Stationery Office, April 1919)
Alan Sarjeant, The Protocols Matrix: George Shanks and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (2021), page 21
Sarjeant, The Protocols Matrix (2021), abstract
Sarjeant, The Protocols Matrix (2021): "George Shanks, the man who published the first English translation of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion in January 1920 was working as a clerk in the Chief Whip's Office at 12 Downing Street under Coalition Whip, Freddie Guest. A closer look at Shanks' background also reveals he was the nephew of Aylmer Maude, the famous friend and translator of Tolstoy who became a leading voice in the pro-Interventionist movement of the Russian Affairs Committee during the Russian Civil War of 1917 to 1922. Maude’s colleagues at this time included former members of Britain’s wartime propaganda bureau in Petrograd, Harold Williams, Bernard Pares and Hugh Walpole... A brand new find also reveals that Shanks co-translator, Major Edward G.G. Burdon was serving as Secretary to the United Russia Socities Association under House of Commons Speaker, James Lowther and alongside members Sir Bernard Pares, John Buchan and Hugh Walpole in support of White Russia's war against the Bolsheviks..." (abstract); "[Robert Hobart] Cust went on to reveal that Shanks, who had served in both the Royal Navy Air Service and the Anglo-Russia supplies committee during the war, had been assisted in the translation by Edward Griffiths George Burdon OBE, a decorated Temporary Major previously attached to the 4th Northumberland Fusiliers." (page 159)
Sarjeant, The Protocols Matrix (2021): "Shanks is alleged to have solicited an original Russian copy of the book from the British Museum in autumn of 1919, carried out a translation and then approached the highly respectable government printers, Eyre & Spottiswoode Ltd with an order to produce a staggering 30,000 copies of the book at his own expense (by contrast only 20,000 copies of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby were pressed by Charles Scribner’s Sons during its initial run in June 1925)." (page 20); "Robert Hobart Cust was a friend of Major Edward Griffiths Burdon OBE, the man who had helped George Shanks translate The Protocols from Russia into English. Cust claims to have introduced Shanks to Eyre & Spottiswoode, ‘His Majesty’s’ printers." (page 177): "The choice of Eyre & Spottiswoode may well have been a reflection of the proximity of the Cust family to His Majesty, Edward VII. Robert’s cousin was Lionel Cust, son of Sir Reginald Cust, who had served not only as Director of the National Portrait Gallery but also as ‘Gentleman Usher’ to the King and Surveyor of the King’s Pictures. Eyre & Spottiswoode was ‘His Majesty’s’ printers, and attached to the Stationery Office of the British Government (the HMSO). Since 1901, the company would have handled practically anything relating to public information including government white papers and the various Gazettes. In any other circumstances, the link between The Protocols and the King’s Printers would be a fairly casual connection, but the Cust family’s reputation and status in the Royal household would certainly account for the clinching of a deal with such a highly regarded printing house from such unproven authors." (page 261)
Sarjeant, The Protocols Matrix (2021), page 20
Sarjeant, The Protocols Matrix (2021), page 20
Advertisement, Evening Standard (London), July 20, 1920, page 11
"'The Jewish Peril': A Disturbing Pamplet: Call for Inquiry," The Times (London), May 8, 1920, page 15: "What are these 'Protocols'? Are they authentic? If so, what malevolent assembly concocted these plans, and gloated over their exposition? Are they a forgery? If so, whence comes the uncanny note of prophecy, prophecy in parts fulfilled, in parts far gone in the way of fulfillment? Have we been struggling these tragic years to blow up and extirpate the secret organization of German world dominion only to find beneath it another more dangerous because more secret? Have we, by straining every fibre of our national body, escaped a 'Pax Germanica' only to fall into a 'Pax Judaica'? The 'Elders of Zion,' as represented in their 'Protocols' are by no means kinder taskmasters than William II. and his henchmen would have been."
Richard Pipes: "Solzhenitsyn and the Jews, revisited: Alone Together," The New Republic, November 25, 2002; Richard Pipes, "Solzhenitsyn's Troubled Prophetic Mission," The Moscow Times, August 7, 2008; “Parliamentary Paper, Russia. No. 1: A Collection of Reports on Bolshevism in Russia, Great Britain, Foreign Office (London: His Majesty's Stationery Office, April 1919)
Richard Norton Taylor, "MI5 detained Trotsky on way to revolution: Public records: Russian was arrested on British orders in 1917 on a boat in Canada but released after intervention by MI6," The Guardian, July 5, 2001: "Leon Trotsky, the creator of the Red Army, was detained on the orders of MI5... Trotsky was arrested with five Russian comrades. There he could have remained, had it not been for the intervention of the Secret Intelligence Service, MI6. Claude Dansey, an MI6 officer, had also just landed at Halifax. ... Dansey reported: 'I told Wiseman he had better be discharged at once, and he said that he was going to do so.' Within four weeks of his arrest, to MI5's chagrin, Trotsky and his fellow revolutionaries boarded another ship heading for Russia."
George Buchanan, My Mission to Russia, Volume II (London, New York, Toronto and Melbourne: Cassell and Company, Ltd, 1923), pp 120-121: In his memoirs, George Buchanan claims that it was he who gave the order to release Trotsky, and that he did it to appease British socialists and the Labour Party. "I am anxious to conciliate the Labour party and the Socialists...I then reminded him [Foreign Minister Miliukoff] that I had, early in April, informed him that Trotzky and other Russian political refugees were being detained at Halifax until the wishes of the Provisional Government with regard to them had been ascertained. On April 8 I had, at his request, asked my Government to release them and to allow them to proceed on their journey to Russia."
Richard B. Spence, "Interrupted Journey: British Intelligence and the Arrest of Leon Trotskii, April 1917," Revolutionary Russia, Volume 13, No. 1, June 1, 2000, pp 1-28
[From abstract] "Among its findings is that Trotskii's arrest was the work of one branch of British intelligence, but his return to Russia was facilitated by another. Circumstantial evidence suggests that the same agency [MI6] sought to recruit or manipulate Trotskii as an agent of influence in revolutionary Russia."
Robert Service, Trotsky: A Biography (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press/Harvard University Press, 2009), page 159
Richard B. Spence, "Hidden Agendas: Spies, Lies and Intrigue Surrounding Trotsky's American Visit of January-April 1917," Revolutionary Russia, Volume 21, Issue 1, 2008, pages 33-55: [From abstract] "Trotsky was surrounded by a web of intrigue and agents of various stripes throughout, and even before, his American stay. He became a pawn, knowingly or not, in assorted plots. Trotsky was the target of a scheme by elements of the British intelligence services to secure his cooperation in revolutionary Russia."
Keith Jeffery, MI6: The History of the Secret Intelligence Service 1909-1949 (London: Bloomsbury, 2010); Antony Sutton, Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution (West Hoathly, UK: Clairview Books, 2012), page 25
Anita Leslie, Cousin Clare: The Tempestuous Career of Clare Sheridan (London: Hutchinson & Co., 1976) pp 116-126; Robert Service, Trotsky: A Biography (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press/Harvard University Press, 2009), page 264-266
P.J. Capelotti, Our Man in the Crimea: Commander Hugo Koehler and the Russian Civil War (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina, 1991), pp 173-174
Norman B. Deuel, “Claims Trotsky was British Spy,” United Press International, March 5, 1938.
George Buchanan, My Mission to Russia, Volume II (London, New York, Toronto and Melbourne: Cassell and Company, Ltd, 1923), pp92-106, 140
Princess Paley, “Mes Souvenirs de Russie,” Revue de Paris, June 1, 1922
Princess Paley, Memories of Russia 1916-1919 (London, Herbert Jenkins Limited, 1924), page 42
Maurice Paléologue (Last French Ambassador to the Russian Court), An Ambassador's Memoirs, Volume III (August 19, 1916-May 17, 1917), translated by F.A. Holt, O.B.E. (London: Hutchinson & Co. Ltd, 1925), pp 129-130
Andrew Cook, To Kill Rasputin: The Life and Death of Grigori Rasputin (Stroud, Gloucestershire, UK; The History Press, 2006), pp 213-221; George Buchanan, My Mission to Russia, Volume II (London, New York, Toronto and Melbourne: Cassell and Company, Ltd, 1923), page 51: "...having heard that His Majesty suspected a young Englishman, who had been a college friend of Prince Felix Yusupoff, of having been concerned in Rasputin's murder, I took the opportunity of assuring him that the suspicion was absolutely groundless. His Majesty thanked me and said that he was very glad to hear this."
The Great War: The Standard History of the All-Europe Conflict, Vol. 9, editors H.W. Wilson, J.A. Hammerton (London, The Amalgamated Press Ltd, 1917), page 117.
Princess Paley, Memories of Russia 1916-1919 (London, Herbert Jenkins Limited, 1924), pp 295-300, 313
Princess Paley, Memories of Russia 1916-1919 (1924), pp 41-42
L.L. Farrar, Jr., Divide and Conquer. German Efforts to Conclude a Separate Peace, 1914-1918, Boulder 1978, p. 18
“Constantinople Agreement," Encyclopedia Britannica / Britannica.com, Last updated November 27, 2022: The secret Constantinople Agreement between France, Britain and Russia was worked out in a series of diplomatic communications from March 4 to April 10, 1915. Opinions vary as to the date when the Agreement actually became operative. The Encyclopedia Britannica gives the date of the treaty as March 18, 1915, which corresponds to the date of telegram No. 1226, sent by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Sazonov to Alexander Izvolsky, the Russian Ambassador to Paris, stating, "Now the British Government has given its complete consent in writing to the annexation by Russia of the Straits and Constantinople within the limits indicated by us, and only demanded security for its economic interests and a similar benevolent attitude on our part towards the political aspirations of England in other parts." The text of this telegram appears in F. Seymour Cocks, The Secret Treaties and Understandings (London: Union of Democratic Control, 1918), pp 17-18. It should be noted that Cocks's The Secret Treaties and Understandings gives the date of the Constantinople Agreement as March 20, 1915 (see page 15). Also on page 15, the substance of the treaty is summarized thus: "Britain consents to the annexation by Russia of the Straits and Constantinople, in return for a similar benevolent attitude on Russia's part towards the political aspirations of Britain in other parts. The neutral zone in Persia to be included in the British sphere of influence. The districts adjoining Ispahan and Yezd to be included in Russian sphere, in which Russia is to be granted 'full liberty of action.'"
Princess Paley, Memories of Russia 1916-1919 (1924), pp 41-42
David Fromkin, A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East (New York: Henry Holt & Company LLC, 1989), page 98: “In Kitchener's view, Germany was an enemy in Europe and Russia was an enemy in Asia: the paradox of the 1914 war in which Britain and Russia were allied was that by winning in Europe, Britain risked losing in Asia. The only completely satisfactory outcome of the war, from Kitchener's point of view, was for Germany to lose it without Russia winning it—and in 1914 it was not clear how that could be accomplished. So the War Minister planned to strike first in the coming postwar struggle with Russia for control of the road to and into India.”
Malcolm Yapp, "The Legend of the Great Game," Proceedings of the British Academy: 2000 Lectures and Memoirs, vol. 111, May 16, 2000), Oxford University Press, pp. 179–198; Seymour Becker, "The ‘Great Game’: The History of an Evocative Phrase." Asian Affairs 43.1 (2012): 61-80
"The Muscovy Company: World’s first joint stock company," tbsnews.net, July 25, 2021
Jeremy Black, British Foreign Policy in an Age of Revolutions, 1783-1793 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1994). p. 290; John Ehrman, The Younger Pitt, Volume II: The Reluctant Transition (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1996) pp xx.
Christine Hatt, Catherine the Great (London: Evans Brothers, Ltd, 2002) pp 32, 35, 59
Bernard Pares, A History of Russia (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1926), pp 28-30, 87-98
See footnote 32.
George Finlay, LL.D., History of the Greek Revolution, Volume I (Edinburgh and London: William Blackwood and Sons, 1861), p 68, 121, 123, 164-168, 189-191, 239-240
Edward Hertslet (1875). "General treaty between Great Britain, Austria, France, Prussia, Russia, Sardinia and Turkey, signed at Paris on 30th March 1856: The Map of Europe by Treaty showing the various political and territorial changes which have taken place since the general peace of 1814, with numerous maps and notes.” Vol. 2. London: Butterworth. pp. 1250–1265.
David Fromkin, A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East (New York: Henry Holt & Company LLC, 1989), page 27: “Defeating Russian designs in Asia emerged as the obsessive goal of generations of British civilian and military officials. Their attempt to do so was, for them, ‘the Great Game,’ in which the stakes ran high. George Curzon, the future Viceroy of India, defined the stakes clearly: ‘Turkestan, Afghanistan, Transcaspia, Persia… they are the pieces on a chessboard upon which is being played out a game for the dominion of the world.’ Queen Victoria put it even more clearly: it was, she said, ‘a question of Russian or British supremacy in the world.’”
George Earle Buckle, The Life of Benjamin Disraeli Earl of Beaconsfield, Volume VI, 1876-1881 (London: John Murray, Albemarle Street, W., 1920), page 148; cited in Edward E. Slosson, “The Unveiling of Victoria,” The Independent, November 6, 1920, pp 189-190.
Buckle, The Life of Benjamin Disraeli Earl of Beaconsfield, Volume VI, 1876-1881 (1920), pp 189-190.
Buckle, The Life of Benjamin Disraeli Earl of Beaconsfield, Volume VI, 1876-1881 (1920), pp 189-190.
Buckle, The Life of Benjamin Disraeli Earl of Beaconsfield, Volume VI, 1876-1881 (1920), pp 189-190.
Buckle, The Life of Benjamin Disraeli Earl of Beaconsfield, Volume VI, 1876-1881 (1920), pp 189-190.
Viscount Stratford de Redcliffe, The Eastern Question (London: John Murray, 1881) p. xix
L.L. Farrar, Jr., Divide and Conquer. German Efforts to Conclude a Separate Peace, 1914-1918, Boulder 1978, pp. 13-56; Stevenson, David: The First World War and International Politics, New York 1988, pp. 92-95; Fischer, Fritz, Germany’s Aims in the First World War, New York 1961, pp. 184f, 189.
Sir George Buchanan to Sir Edward Grey 1/1/15; in Winston S. Churchill, vol. 3, Companion, Part I, Documents, July 1914—April 1915, ed. Martin Gilbert (London: Heinemann, 1972), pp. 359–60; cited in Prior, Robin. Gallipoli: The End of the Myth (p. 253). Yale University Press. Kindle Edition.
Harvey Broadbent, “Gallipoli: One Great Deception?” Australian Broadcasting Corporation, April 23, 2009
Broadbent, “Gallipoli: One Great Deception?” ABC, April 23, 2009
See footnote 26
Proceedings of the Brest-Litovsk Peace Conference, 21 November, 1917-3 March, 1918 (Washington DC: Government Printing Office, 1918), page 49; Louis Fischer, Oil Imperialism: The International Struggle for Petroleum (New York: International Publishers, 1926), pp 212-214
“Attack on the Kremlin," The Times (London), November 19, 1917, page 8.
F. Seymour Cocks, The Secret Treaties and Understandings (London: Union of Democratic Control, 1918), pp 12
“Lenin’s Peace Decree Ready for Issue,” The Times (London), November 26, 1917, page 8
“Statement by Trotsky on the Publication of the Secret Treaties,” November 22, 1917, reprinted in Soviet Documents on Foreign Policy, Vol. 1 (1917–1924), edited by Jane Degras (New York: Oxford University Press, 1951), p31
Cocks, The Secret Treaties and Understandings (1918), page 25
Proceedings of the Brest-Litovsk Peace Conference, November 21, 1917 - March 3, 1918 (Washington DC: Government Printing Office, 1918), page 49; Louis Fischer, Oil Imperialism: The International Struggle for Petroleum (New York: International Publishers, 1926), pp 212-214
A. R. Begli Beigie, "Repeating mistakes: Britain, Iran & the 1919 Treaty," The Iranian, March 27, 2001; “Anglo-Persian Agreement,” Wikipedia
Louis Fischer, Oil Imperialism: The International Struggle for Petroleum (New York: International Publishers, 1926), page 218
Winston Churchill, “Zionism versus Bolshevism,” Illustrated Sunday Herald, February 8, 1920, p5
Richard Poe, "How the British Invented Color Revolutions," RichardPoe.com, May 13, 2021
Micah Alpaugh, “The British Origins of the French Jacobins: Radical Sociability and the Development of Political Club Networks, 1787-1793,” October 2014, European History Quarterly, Volume 44, No, 4, pp 593-619
Thomas Jefferson to Lafayette, founders.archives.gov, 14 February 1815
Thomas Jefferson to William Plumer, founders.archives.gov, 31 January 1815
Alpaugh, “The British Origins of the French Jacobins,” October 2014, European History Quarterly, pp 593-619
Alpaugh, “The British Origins of the French Jacobins,” October 2014, European History Quarterly, pp 593-619
Alpaugh, “The British Origins of the French Jacobins,” October 2014, European History Quarterly, pp 594-596
Alpaugh, “The British Origins of the French Jacobins,” October 2014, European History Quarterly, pp 594-595
"News of a political act-the king's dismissal of his reformist Finance Minister Necker-had fired the original unrest in Paris. Nine days after the Bastille fell the Paris mob hung Necker's successor, and political authority was restored by the Marquis de Lafayette. He arrived on a white horse-literally as well as symbolically-and took military com mand of Paris on July I5 [1789]... Yet this seeming guarantor of continuing order amidst revolutionary change was soon denounced not just by the Right, but by the Left as well. Burke's conservative attack on the French Revolution listed 'Fayettism' first among the 'rabble of systems.' On the revolutionary side, 'Gracchus' Babeuf, just a year after the fall of the Bastille, excoriated Lafayette as a conceited and antidemocratic brake on the revolutionary process. Later revolutionaries, as we shall see, repeatedly raged against him. ... (page 21) ... Lafayette... was soon drowned out by the more bellicose and radical Brissot. The Brissotists, or Girondists, were in turn swept aside by the more extreme Jacobins in the late spring of 1793. The relatively moderate Jacobinism of Danton was then supplanted by Robespierre; his reign of terror claimed some forty thousand domestic victims in 1793-94. ... (page 22) ...The new republican Constitution of 1 795 was far less radical than that written in 1793 (but never put in effect). Two years later the attempt of the Babeuf conspiracy to organize a new revolutionary uprising was crushed by the five-man Directory with no difficulty. (pp 22-23) ... The revolutionary egalitarianism of Babeuf, Marechal, and Restif de la Bretonne is the progenitor of modern Communism-and of revolutionary socialism, the rival ideal of revolutionary nationalism (page 71)....Babeuf was arrested and the conspiracy destroyed on May 10, 1796. (page 77)
James H. Billington, Fire in the Minds of Men: Origins of the Revolutionary Faith (New York: Basic Books, 1980), pp21-23, 72-78
"A generation later, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels built on Buonarrotti's heroic narrative by naming Babeuf the first modern communist." Laura Mason, The Last Revolutionaries: The Conspiracy Trial of Gracchus Babeuf and the Equals (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2022), page 4
"Babeuf repeatedly used the word communauté (and inventions like communautistes) in the revolutionary manner of Restif." Billington, Fire in the Minds of Men (1980), page 83
"In 1785, Restif published a review of a book describing a communal experiment in Marseilles. He cited a letter of 1782 from the book's author [Joseph-Alexandre-Victor Hupay de Fuve] who described himself as an auteur communiste-the first known appearance in print of this word. ...In February 1793, Restif used the term communism as his own for the first time to describe the fundamental change in ownership that would obviate the need for any further redistribution of goods and property. His detailed exposition of communism (and regular use of the word) began the following year with a "Regulation . . . for the establishment of a general Community of the Human Race" in his Monsieur Nicolas or the human heart unveiled. ... Restif's three-volume Philosophie de Monsieur Nicolas of 1796 called for a communauté universelle, and talked about "the Communists" as if they were active and numerous in the real world. The question of whether Restif was alluding to, or in some way connected with, Babeuf's concurrent conspiracy takes us deeper into the occult labyrinths of Paris where modern revolutionary organization began." Billington, Fire in the Minds of Men (1980), pp 79-85
"While no public suggestion of a link between Babeuf and Restif was raised at the former's public trial, the authorities, as they prepared their case, apparently believed that such a link existed... A more serious link almost certainly lies in Maréchal, the journalistic protector and sponsor of Babeuf's early career who knew Restif well before the revolution and before meeting Babeuf. Maréchal's still obscure role in the conspiracy-like Restif, he escaped prosecution altogether despite his direct involvement-leads back in turn to the links that Babeuf, Restif, and Marechal all had with Bonneville's Social Circle." Billington, Fire in the Minds of Men, page 83
“The term ‘communism’ in the France of the 1840s denoted… an offshoot of the Jacobin tradition of the first French revolution,” wrote Marxist historian David Fernbach in 1973. “This communism went back to Gracchus Babeuf’s Conspiracy of Equals… This egalitarian or 'crude' communism, as Marx called it originated before the great development of machine industry. It appealed to the Paris sans-culottes—artisans, journeymen and unemployed—and potentially to the poor peasantry in the countryside.” David Fernbach, "Introduction" to Karl Marx, The Revolutions of 1848 (New York: Random House, 1973), pp 17-18.
Fernbach (1973), pp 17-18
Augsburger Allgemeine Zeitung, March 11, 1840, cited in Billington, Fire in the Minds of Men, page 246, 583
Billington, Fire in the Minds of Men, pp 71-72, 530
Billington, Fire in the Minds of Men, pp 72-73
Hélène Maspero Clerc, "Samuel Swinton, éditeur du Courier de l'Europe à Boulogne-sur-Mer (1778–1783) et agent secret du Gouvernement britannique", Annales de la Révolution française, no. 266, oct–déc. 1985, p. 527-531.
“Jeanie Wishart of Pitarrow came of the family of the Earls of Argyll who played such a big role in the history of Scotland… The younger branch of the family, to which Jeanie Wishart of Pitarrow belonged—she was the fifth child of George Wishart, an Edinburgh minister—also produced a number of prominent men. William Wishart, Jenny’s great-grandfather, accompanied the Prince of Orange to England, and his brother was the celebrated Admiral James Wishart. Jenny’s grandmother, Anne Campbell of Orchard, wife of the minister, belonged to the old Scottish aristocracy too.”Boris Nicolaievsky and Otto Maenchen-Helfen, Karl Marx: Man and Fighter (London: Methuen & Co. Ltd., 1936), pp 21-22; “Baron Ludwig von Westphalen, a senior official of the Royal Prussian Provincial Government, was a man of doubly aristocratic lineage: his father had been Chief of the General Staff during the Seven Years’ War and his Scottish mother, Anne Wishart, was descended from the Earls of Argyll.” Francis Wheen, Karl Marx: A Life (New York and London: W.W. Norton & Company, 1999), page 18.
"The Communist League, which was the organized expression of the movement, was an international secret society with its headquarters in London. ... The headquarters of the movement, in 1847, were in London, where an Arbeiter Bildungsverein—Workingmen's Educational Club—had existed for seven years. The London Communistische Arbeiter Bildungsverein was founded in February, 1840, by three German exiles.... The organization prospered and, because of its rather unusual prosperity and stability, and the fact that there was much greater freedom in London than on the Continent, it became, naturally, the central organization." John Spargo, Karl Marx: His Life and Work (New York: B.W. Huebsch, 1912), pp 93-94
Franz Mehring, Karl Marx: The Story of His Life, translated by Edward Fitzgerald (London: George Allin & Unwin Ltd, 1936), page 243-244
Gertrude Robinson, David Urquhart: Some Chapters in the Life of a Victoria Knight-Errant of Justice and Liberty (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1920), pp 22, 320
Robinson, David Urquhart (1920), pp 12-15
John Spargo, Karl Marx: His Life and Work (1912), pp 198-199; Franz Mehring, Karl Marx: The Story of His Life (1936), page 244
Francis Wheen, Karl Marx: A Life (New York and London: W.W. Norton & Company, 1999), pp 207-213
Francis Wheen, Karl Marx: A Life (New York and London: W.W. Norton & Company, 1999), page 212
John Spargo, Karl Marx: His Life and Work (1912), page 198
David Urquhart, Wealth and Want (London: John Ollivier, 1845), page 14-17
John Spargo, Karl Marx: His Life and Work (1912), page 198
David Urquhart, Wealth and Want (London: John Ollivier, 1845), page 14-17
"Mr W. B. Ferrand, on the other hand, a Yorkshire squire, and John Manners' colleague and life-long friend, boldly attributed all the miseries of England to the greed and selfishness of the manufacturers. His eagle eye detected an immoral alliance between the Poor Law and the factory system. There was a deep-laid design, he was sure, concocted between the wealthy cotton-spinners and the Poor Law Commissioners to undo the country. The proprietors of large estates, he declared, set the very best example by their conduct toward the suffering poor, while the manufacturers made vast fortunes by the sweat of their labourers. In a speech which he made in 1842... he pictured the working men and women receiving money-payment for their wages in one room, and then driven into another in which they were compelled to spend every farthing in the purchase of food and clothing. ... The Chartists made a third party to the quarrel. ... They had the sense to perceive that the [Anti-Corn-Law] League was supported by the omnipotent middle-class, and that cheap bread meant low wages. ... Lord John, meanwhile, was doing his best to advocate a happier, more humane life for the people... '[T]he mists are rolling away [Manners wrote in 1842] and the alternaitve will soon present itself—a democracy or a Feudalism.' Thus he comes back always to a simple faith in a restored feudalism. ... 'Let us show the people, i.e. the lower orders... that we are their real friends... In a word, let society take a more feudal appearance that it presents now.' [Manners wrote in 1842]." Charles Whibley, Lord John Manners and His Friends (Edinburgh and London: William Blackwood and Sons, 1925), pp 121-123, 136-137
Rutland, John James Robert Manners, 7th Duke of (1818- ____), Encyclopedia Britannica, Volume 32, (Edinburgh and London, Adam & Charles Black, 1902), pp 352-353
Charles Whibley, Lord John Manners and His Friends (Edinburgh and London: William Blackwood and Sons, 1925), pp 121-125;
[Arnold Toynbee, 1884] "Now, who really initiated these movements, and who opposed them? Robert Owen was the founder of co-operation... Again, who passed the factory legislation? Not the Radicals; it was due to Owen, Oastler, Sadler, Fielden, and Lord Shaftesbury, to Tory-Socialists and to landowners. And let us recognise the fact plainly, that it is because there has been a ruling aristocracy in England that we have had a great Socialist programme carried out." Arnold Toynbee, Lectures on the Industrial Revolution in England (London: Rivingtons, 1884), p 214;
[Joseph Rayner Stephens, 1868] "You know what a hard, up-hill battle we have had to fight, and after what fearful opposition at last we won the day. But we did win it; and by whose help did we bring the struggle to a peaceful issue? I need hardly tell you. With the exception of a few noble-hearted men in the ranks of Radicalism such as Fielden, Brotherton, Hindley, and one or two more — our patrons and co-adjutors were found amongst the Tories. When we wanted help, it was not to Cobden and Bright and the political economists that we went to seek it. It was to the ‘bloated’ aristocrat, to the much-maligned clergyman and country gentleman that we made our appeal, and from them that we obtained active assistance and influential patronage." Joseph Rayner Stephens, The Altar, the Throne, and the Cottage: A Speech (Stalybridge: John Macleod, 1868), page 9.
Whibley, Lord John Manners and His Friends (1925), 133-135
Whibley, Lord John Manners and His Friends (1925), 134-135
Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, The Communist Manifesto (Chicago: Charles H. Kerr & Company, 1906), page 34
"Statement of Hon. Daniel F. Cohalan, Justice of the Supreme Court of New York," (August 30, 1919), United States Senate, Committee on Foreign Relations, Hearings on the Treaty of Peace with Germany (First Session), Sixty-Sixth Congress (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1919), pp 761, 768
Cohalan, U.S. Senate, August 30, 1919, page 761
Cohalan, U.S. Senate, August 30, 1919, page 770
Cohalan, U.S. Senate, August 30, 1919, page 770
Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, The Communist Manifesto (Chicago: Charles H. Kerr & Company, 1906), page 16
Carroll Quigley, Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1966), pp 130-134
“Kerensky on Allied Intrigues,” Soviet Russia: Official Organ of the Russian Soviet Government Bureau, Vol. II (New York, The Russian Soviet Government Bureau, January-June, 1920), page 619
Carroll Quigley, Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1966), pp 130-134
"A View of Socialism by the Late Viscount Milner," The National Review, No. 575, January 1931, pp 36-58
Arnold Toynbee, Lectures on the Industrial Revolution in England (London: Rivingtons, 1884), p 213
Toynbee, Lectures on the Industrial Revolution in England (1884), p 214
Viscount Alfred Milner, “German Socialists,” lecture at Whitechapel, 1882; published posthumously in The National Review, No. 578, April 1931, pp 477-499.
Viscount Alfred Milner, “German Socialists,” lecture at Whitechapel, 1882; published posthumously in The National Review, No. 578, April 1931, pp 477-499.
"A View of Socialism by the Late Viscount Milner," The National Review, No. 575, January 1931, pp 36-58
Viscount Alfred Milner, “German Socialists,” lecture at Whitechapel, 1882; published posthumously in The National Review, No. 578, April 1931, pp477-499.
“Czar’s Stubbornness Caused his Downfall: Refused to Listen to British Statesman Who was Sent to Advise Him,” Evening Star (Washington, DC), March 16, 1917
P.A. Lockwood, "Milner’s Entry into the War Cabinet, December 1916," The Historical Journal, VII, I, (1964), p.123
Sir George Buchanan, My Mission to Russia, Vol. 2 (1923), page 52; The Great War: The Standard History of the All-Europe Conflict, Vol. 9, editors H.W. Wilson, J.A. Hammerton (London, The Amalgamated Press Ltd, 1917), page 117.
The Great War: The Standard History of the All-Europe Conflict, Vol. 9, editors H.W. Wilson, J.A. Hammerton (London, The Amalgamated Press Ltd, 1917) pp 121-122
“On January 29 the Allied delegates arrived, and a preliminary meeting was held in the afternoon under the presidency of the Foreign Minister, Pokrowski. Great Britain was represented by Lord Milner, Lord Revelstoke, General Sir Henry Wilson and myself…” Sir George Buchanan, My Mission to Russia and Other Diplomatic Memories, Vol. 2 (London, Cassell and Company, Ltd, 1923), page 52; “On February 27th, 1917, the Conference of the Allies at Petrograd… came to an end, and the chief British representative, Lord Milner, left for England in a troubled frame of mind.” The Great War: The Standard History of the All-Europe Conflict, Vol. 9, editors H.W. Wilson, J.A. Hammerton (London, The Amalgamated Press Ltd, 1917), page 117.
“Revolution in Russia: Progress of Revolt,” The Daily Telegraph (London), March 17, 1917, page 7
Maurice Paléologue, An Ambassador’s Memoirs: Last French Ambassador to the Russian Court (Volume III, August 19, 1916-May 17, 1917), trans. F.A. Holt, O.B.E., (London, Hutchinson & Co., 1925), p 232
“Revolution in Russia: Progress of Revolt,” The Daily Telegraph (London), March 17, 1917, page 7
Paléologue, An Ambassador’s Memoirs (1925), p 167
Sir George Buchanan, My Mission to Russia and Other Diplomatic Memories, Vol. 1 (Boston, Little, Brown and Company, Ltd, 1923), pp 67-71
Mark D. Steinberg and Vladimir M. Khrustalev (eds), The Fall of the Romanovs (Yale University Press, 1995), p. 91; Romanov Autumn: Stories from the Last Century of Imperial Russia, page 342; "Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, Rodzianko and the Grand Dukes' Manifesto of 1 March 1917," Canadian Slavonic Papers / Revue Canadienne des Slavistes, Vol. 18, No. 2 (June 1976), pp. 154-167
Sir George Buchanan, My Mission to Russia, Vol. 1 (1923), page 68
Sir George Buchanan, My Mission to Russia, Vol. 1 (1923), page 68
Sir George Buchanan, My Mission to Russia, Vol. 1 (1923), page 68
Princess Paley, “Mes Souvenirs de Russie,” Revue de Paris, June 1, 1922
“Sir G. Buchanan Cheered,” The Times (London), March 16, 1917, page 7
“Britain’s Envoy is Active Real Power for Entente: Newspaper Correspondent Describes Buchanan as a Dictator,” The Salt Lake Tribune (Salt Lake City), March 25, 1917, page 17
“An Attempt to Avert Revolution: Lord Milner’s Mission,” The Guardian (London), March 16, 1917, page 5
Parliamentary Debates (Hansard). House of Commons official report, Volume 91, By Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons, 1917, page 1938
“Lord Milner and the Rebellion,” The North Star (Durham, England), March 23, 1917, page 1; Parliamentary Debates. House of Commons, March 22, 1917, Vol 91, Col 2093
The Times History of the War, Volume XIII (London: The Times, 1917), page 108
Parliamentary Debates (Hansard). House of Commons official report, Volume 91, By Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons, 1917, page 2087
“Foreign Policy: ‘All Rumours of a Separate Peace Must Vanish’,” Evening Standard (London), March 24, 1917, page 2
Sir George Buchanan, My Mission to Russia, Vol. 1 (1923), p 99
Sir George Buchanan, My Mission to Russia, Vol. 1 , pp 113-114
Prit Buttar, Russia's Last Gasp: The Eastern Front 1916-17 (Oxford: Osprey Publishing, 2017), pp 138–155
Sir George Buchanan, My Mission to Russia, Vol. 1 (1923), pp 114
Sir George Buchanan, My Mission to Russia, Vol. 1 (1923), pp 179-181
Sir George Buchanan, My Mission to Russia, Vol. 1 (1923), page 166
Sir George Buchanan, My Mission to Russia, Vol. 1 (1923), page 173
Alexander F. Kerensky, The Catastrophe: Kerensky's Own Story of the Russian Revolution (New York and London: D. Appleton and Company, 1927) p 315
"Oliver Locker-Lampson had gone to Russia with a British armoured-car squadron, whcih had been sent as a gesture of Allied solidarity in the fight against Germany, and had been wounded. This eccentric but admittedly brave man involved himself in political intrigues from the moment he arrived in the country, even to the extent of, so he claimed, being invited to help to murder Rasputin. It was not surprising, therefore, that the commander-in-chief of the Russian army, a tough Cossack called Lavr Kornilov, strongly urged Locker-Lampson to help him stage a counter-revolution. Locker-Lampson agreed, and plans were finalised. The British Ambassador, Sir George Buchanan, knew about the plot, did nothing to stop it, and got himself well out of the way by arranging to spend the day on the British residents' golf course." Philip Knightley, The First Casualty: The War Correspondent as Hero and Myth-Maker from the Crimea to Iraq (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004), p 156; "[When] Kornilov ordered the troops under his command to march on the capital to unseat the government, one of the few units which proved faithful to him was a British armoured-car squadron, under Commander Oliver Locker-Lampson, whose members were furnished with Russian uniforms for the occasion. Warth speculates that Knox arranged for their participation..." Richard Henry Ullman, Anglo-Soviet Relations, 1917-1921, Volume 2: Britain and the Russian Civil War, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1961), pp 11-12; "They hoped that I would assist them by placing the British armoured cars at their disposal and by helping them to escape should their enterprise fail. I replied that it was a very naïve proceeding on the part of those gentlemen to ask an Ambassador to conspire against the Government to which he was accredited and that if I did my duty I ought to denounce their plot. Though I would not betray their confidence, I would not give them either my countenance or support. I would, on the contrary, urge them to renounce an enterprise that was not only foredoomed to failure, but that would at once be exploited by the Bolsheviks. If General Korniloff were wise he would wait for the Bolsheviks to make the first move and then come and put them down." Sir George Buchanan, My Mission to Russia, Vol. 1 (1923), p 175-176
Leonard Schapiro, The Origin of the Communist Autocracy: Political Opposition in the Soviet State, First Phase 1917-1922, (London: Macmillan/Palgrave, 1977), p 52
Joseph Stalin, “The October Revolution," Pravda, No.241, November 6, 1918, cited in Joseph Stalin, The October Revolution (Moscow, 1934), page 30
Steve R. Dunn, Battle in the Baltic: The Royal Navy and the Fight to Save Estonia & Latvia 1918-1920 (Barnsley, UK: Seaforth Publishing, 2020), p 34
Gilbert, World in Torment (1975), p 229
"By the end of December 1918 there were more than 180,000 non-Russian troops within the frontiers of the former Russian Empire, among them British, American, Japanese, French, Czech, Serb, Greek, and Italian. Looking to these troops from military and moral support, and depending on them for money and guns, were several anti-Bolshevik armies of 'White' Russians, amounting to over 300,000 men. On every front, the Bolsheviks were being pressed back towards Moscow." (p 227) "On December 31, 1918 Lloyd George invited Churchill to attend a meeting of the Imperial War Cabinet... (p 228)... The minutes of the meeting recorded [Lloyd George saying]... "The Bolsheviks had raised their forces to 300,000, which might exceed 1,000,000 by March, and had greatly improved their organisation." (pp 229-230); Gilbert, World in Torment (1975), pp 227-230
149. Princess Paley, Memories of Russia 1916-1919 (London, Herbert Jenkins Limited, 1924), pp 41-42
"England's policy has always been the dismemberment of Russia. It was for this reason that it supplied with arms, ammunition, officers, money and advice such counter-revolutionary leaders as Denikin and Koltchak. ... Britain wished to divide and then be the patron and protector of the parts." Louis Fischer, Oil Imperialism: The International Struggle for Petroleum (New York: International Publishers, 1926), p 32; "There is a possibility that he [Lloyd George] hoped for the ultimate division of Russia into a number of independent states, each too small to cause trouble." Robert W. Sellen, "The British Intervention in Russia, 1917-1920," Dalhousie Review, Volume 40 (1960-61), page 525; Martin Gilbert, World in Torment (1990), pp 234-235, 228-229; "Without Russia, Alfred Milner feared, the Allies might not be able to defeat Germany. And the spread of revolution could prove a more dangerous enemy to the established order than the Germans. Why, he wondered, should Britain and France not settle their differences with the Germans—and then partition Russia among themselves? Britain's share, it hardly need be said, would include the central Asian parts of the Russian Empire that adjoined Persia and Afghanistan, strategic borderlands to India. If Germany were willing—and, also willing, of course to withdraw from France and Belgium—there were many interesting ways in which Russia could be divided. For a full year to come, Milner quietly but doggedly promoted this idea. There is no clear evidence that he or anyone else ever approached the Germans and his proposal apparently never moved beyond the realm of confidential talk within the British government, but it bears a strange resemblance to the world of abruptly shifting superpower alliances that George Orwell would later imagine in 1984." Adam Hochschild, To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion 1914-1918 (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011), pp. 293–294; "Churchill again envisaged a compromise peace... in which the Bolsheviks would accept the permanent existence of a non-Bolshevik South Russia, with Kiev as its capital, and the Black Sea as its southern frontier. Once a secure dividing line were reached, Britain could sponsor negotiations between Lenin and Denikin." Martin Gilbert, World in Torment (1990), p 329.
Gilbert, World in Torment (1990), page 288, 291, 296-297, 306-309
Gilbert, World in Torment (1990), page 241, 254.
Nearly 60,000 British troops served in the Russian Civil War, most in the oil-rich Caucasus (40,000), a lesser number in North Russia (14,378), with smaller numbers in Siberia (1,800), Trans-Caspia (950), and elsewhere. “By January 1919… the British presence in the Caucasus totalled 40,000, the largest of all British intervention contingents in Russia.” Timothy C. Winegard, The First World Oil War (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2016), p. 229;
For British troop strength on other fronts, see the following:
Clifford Kinvig, Churchill's Crusade: The British Invasion of Russia 1918–1920 (London: Hambledon Continuum, 2006), p. 35;
Michael Sargent, British Military Involvement in Transcaspia: 1918–1919 (Camberley: Conflict Studies Research Centre, Defence Academy of the United Kingdom, April 2004), p. 33;
Damien Wright, Churchill's Secret War with Lenin: British and Commonwealth Military Intervention in the Russian Civil War, 1918-20 (Solihull, UK: Helion & Company Limited, 2017), pp 305-306, 394, 526-528, 530-535.
[See footnote 150 for additional sources on British plans to break up the Russian Empire.] "Churchill wrote to Lloyd George on 17 June 1918: ... 'It we cannot reconstitute the fighting front against Germany in the East, no end can be discerned to the war. Vain will be all sacrifices of the peoples and the armies.'" (page 221) "Lloyd George was opposed to using Allied troops to destroy Bolshevism, or to force the Russians to negotiate with each other. The farthest he was prepared to go was to help those border States in the Baltic and the Caucasus which were struggling to be independent from Russia, and which contained non-Russian majorities." (page 229) "On January 13 [1919], the Imperial War Cabinet met in Paris, with Lloyd George in the chair, to discuss future action in Russia. Sir Henry Wilson, who was present, wrote in his diary: 'It was quite clear that the meeting favoured no troops being sent to fight Bolshevists but on the other hand to help those States which we considered were Independent States by giving them arms, etc.'" (p 234). Martin Gilbert, World in Torment (1990), pp 221, 229, 234; [Churchill speech, February 15, 1920] "Now Russia is no longer available. She is no longer the great counterpoise to Germany. On the contrary, she is very likely to go over to the other side, very likely to fall into the hands of the Germans and make a common policy with them. Out interest has been to try to secure a Government in Russia which will not throw itself into the hands of Germany. ... It is also in our interest not to drive Germany into the arms of Russia." "Mr. Churchill on Bolshevism," The Times (London), February 16, 1920, page 7.
Richard H. Ullman, Anglo-Soviet Relations, 1917-1921, Volume I: Intervention and the War (London: Oxford University Press, 1961), pp 116-119
Ullman, Anglo-Soviet Relations, 1917-1921, Volume I (1961), pp 116-119
Ullman, Anglo-Soviet Relations, 1917-1921, Volume I (1961), pp 116-119
The consistency with which Trotsky acted in British interests—as opposed to German ones, as in the matter of the Yuryev telegram—casts doubt on the long-held belief that German intelligence controlled the Bolsheviks. While the Germans did provide funding for the Bolsheviks and even arranged for Lenin’s transport from Zurich to Petrograd in April, 1917, it appears German spymasters were never able to gain operational control over the Bolshevik leadership, because the British influence on them was stronger. Indeed, the man who persuaded the Germans to help the Bolsheviks in the first place—one Alexander Parvus—appears to have been a British agent, for which reason, it seems likely that German operations in support of the Bolsheviks had been penetrated and compromised from the beginning by British intelligence. See, for instance, Nathan Goldwag, “The Extraordinary Life of Alexander Parvus,” Goldwag’s Journal on Civilization, September 4, 2019: "There is a persistent rumor that he [Parvus] was working for the British intelligence services... After WWI began in 1914, Parvus approached von Wangenheim with an ambitious plan: Germany should support and fund... revolution against the Czar."
Damien Wright, Churchill's Secret War with Lenin: British and Commonwealth Military Intervention in the Russian Civil War, 1918-20 (Solihull, UK: Helion & Company Limited, 2017), page 21.
Wright, Churchill's Secret War with Lenin (2017), p 21
Wright, Churchill's Secret War with Lenin (2017), p 22
Wright, Churchill's Secret War with Lenin (2017), pp 23-25
Martin Gilbert, World in Torment: Winston S. Churchill 1917-1922 (London: Minerva, 1990; originally 1975 by William Heinemann Ltd), pp 228-22
Martin Gilbert, World in Torment (1990), page 234
Martin Gilbert, World in Torment (1990), pp 234-235
Martin Gilbert, World in Torment (1990), page 288
Martin Gilbert, World in Torment (1990), page 291
“On June 4 Kolchak replied to an Allied note of May 26, refusing the Allied demand to summon the Constituent Assembly of 1917, and giving an evasive answer about the future sovereignty of Finland and the Baltic States, both of which had been Russian before the revolution. … [D]espite Kolchak’s refusal to accept the Allies’ democratic demands, both Churchill and his War Office advisers continued with the Kotlas plan to link Kolchak’s forces with those in North Russia.” Martin Gilbert, World in Torment (1990), pp 296-297; Jonathan Smele, The "Russian" Civil Wars, 1916–1926 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), pp. 111–112.
Martin Gilbert, World in Torment (1990), pp 306-309
Martin Gilbert, World in Torment (1990), p 309
Martin Gilbert, World in Torment (1990), p 306-309
Martin Gilbert, World in Torment (1990), p 224
Martin Gilbert, World in Torment (1990), 307-308
Erick Trickey, “The Forgotten Story of the American Troops Who Got Caught Up in the Russian Civil War,” Smithsonian Magazine [online], February 12, 2019
Trickey, “The Forgotten Story of the American Troops Who Got Caught Up in the Russian Civil War,” Smithsonian Magazine [online], February 12, 2019
Trickey, “The Forgotten Story of the American Troops Who Got Caught Up in the Russian Civil War,” Smithsonian Magazine [online], February 12, 2019
"The last British troops left Archangel on September 27, 1919, and Murmansk on October 12, sealing the fate of North Russia. ... The British mission in Siberia was abolished in March, 1920. ... The tiny British force at Batum was finally withdrawn in July, 1920." Robert W. Sellen, "The British Intervention in Russia, 1917-1920," Dalhousie Review, Volume 40 (1960-61), page 524, 527
Martin Gilbert, World in Torment (1990), page 362.
Boris Egorov, "How a French General Betrayed the Supreme Ruler of Russia," Russia Beyond, August 16, 2021
P.J. Gapelotti, Our Man in the Crimea: Commander Hugo Koehler and the Russian Civil War (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1991), page 168
David Renton, Trotsky (London: Haus Publishing, 2004), page 143
Pavel Sudoplatov and Anatoli Sudoplatov, Special Tasks: The Memoirs of an Unwanted Witness—A Soviet Spymaster (New York: Little, Brown & Company, 1994), page 65-86; Enrique Soto-Pérez-de-Celis, "The Death of Leon Trotsky," Neurosurgery, Volume 67 Number 2, August 1, 2010, pp 417–423
"The rumour spread that they were having an affair. Although she did not confirm this in her memoir she gave a lot of tactile details which in inter-war Britain fell only just inside the boundaries of the seemly—and the liaison would be brought up by Natalya against Trotsky when they had a serious marital rift in Mexico. The rest of his entourage in the 1930s shared the suspicion about the relationship with Sheridan. Nothing was ever proved; and if an affair took place it was a brief one. In mid-1920, when he had to rejoin the Red Army on its Polish campaign, Trotsky invited her to go along with him on his train but she refused. Instead she left for England, published her diary and went on a publicity tour of America." Robert Service, Trotsky: A Biography (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2009), page 266
"The charge of the 21st Lancers at the Battle of Omdurman on Friday, 2 September 1898, was the largest British cavalry charge since the Crimean War forty-four years earlier. Although there were a few afterwards in the Boer War and Great War, it was the last significant cavalry charge in British history. Churchill, riding a 'a handy, sure-footed, grey Arab polo pony', commanded a troop of twenty-five lancers. Many of the Dervishes they attacked were hidden in a dried-out watercourse when the regiment set off, and it was after the charge had begun that the regiment realized they were outnumbered by approximately ten to one." Andrew Roberts, Churchill: Walking with Destiny (New York: Penguin Books, 2019), page 57
“Parliamentary Paper, Russia. No. 1: A Collection of Reports on Bolshevism in Russia, Great Britain, Foreign Office (London: His Majesty's Stationery Office, April 1919)
An excellent, comprehensive and well-sourced essay covering this period in history. I must say that I was unaware of much of what is disclosed here, especially of the role that Great Britain played in all of this. Thank you.
Truly a brilliant article that is both eye opening and sobering, lending a fresh perspective on the historical background of current situation in the Ukraine and the complex British-Russian relationship. Rarely have I read an essay that has opened my mind to such an extent regarding modern history. Many thanks for this work.