Description of persons involved

By Eric Vandenbroeck and co-workers

Today both Russian and Western scholars, in their way ( although an exception could be made about the prevention of grain supply from Ukraine to Germany and Austria-Hungary), see a replay of the current Ukraine/Russian war, with what happened with the British and Russian interplay during the  1917-18 period.

The British desire in 1917 was for Russia to remain in the war and the Eastern front to be maintained, and if this required changes in war aims, then the British were willing to do so. 

Against this international background, the sensational news began to come from Petrograd, where the Maximalists, as European periodicals called the Bolsheviks, arrested the members of the Provisional government on 7–8 November, and only Alexander Kerensky escaped from the capital at the last moment. 

Meanwhile, the Allied diplomatic corps conferred at the premises of the British mission in Petrograd at the initiative of Josef Noulens, the French ambassador to Russia. The 9 November to further consultations between Buchanan and Noulens on 9 November, when both diplomats did not exclude the occupation of the Russian capital by the Entente military contingents, should Kerensky regain control over it. Yet, the insurgency from the Petrograd army cadets, along with the ineffectual attempt by the Committee for the Salvation of Motherland and Revolution to fight back against the Maximalists, ended in a complete debacle. The coup in Petrograd triggered the pro-Bolshevik Red guards to take over their opponents in Moscow following a week of intense street skirmishes. 

The apparent void of administration in Central Russia and the demagogic decree of peace proclaimed by the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets on 8 November spurred Buchanan to set up at least temporary contacts with the Bolshevik administration. According to the intelligence, merely three active Russian armies out of five had submitted to the Bolshevik rule by mid-November 1917.2

The transformation of his attitude to the Bolsheviks might also be explained by allegations of the prearranged selling of the Baltic Fleet battleships to the Germans. These rumors even encouraged the Admiralty to scheme a torpedo attack against the Russian men-of-war by seven submarines stationed at the naval base proxy to the Finnish seaport of Helsingfors (Helsinki). On the other hand, the War Office instructed the Captain of the First Rank (later Commodore) Francis Cromie, the acting naval attaché in Petrograd, to persuade the Baltic Fleet chief officers either to boycott the transfer of Russian dreadnoughts to the enemy or to arrange for sinking them by themselves. 

The insufficient and conflicting intelligence from various sources led Whitehall to opt for a ‘wait-and-see’ political course. Another reason is inadequate knowledge of new Russian political front-runners. As a diplomatic historian remarked, ‘the titular government of Russia was composed of unknown quality, mouthing phrases of unmeasurable menace.

Russian domestic affairs also fueled London’s initial restraint. In the first place, the authority of Kerensky’s last administration inside the country declined to such an extent by the end of October 1917 that the possibility of the Bolshevik coup merely worried foreign diplomats. According to their forecasts, if Lenin overthrew Kerensky, the road to a ‘new, more vigorous government’ would be opened in a few weeks. 

On 3 December 1917, the Cabinet’s meeting resolved to provide ‘effective military assistance to any representatives of the Russian people who wish to resist German armed intervention. This decision was supported by Paris joining in the diplomatic blockade of Soviet Russia.

By the end of 1917, the war became so aggravated that the Entente military strategists did not anticipate the collapse of the Quadruple Alliance before 1920. According to their calculations, the armistice on the Eastern front would mean a transfer of German infantry divisions, from thirty to sixty to France and Italy, the repatriation of 1,600,000 Central powers’ POWs from Russia to Europe, and the capture by the Bolsheviks of the stockpiled munitions, delivered to Russia by the Entente in 1914–16.

Distrust of the Entente’s capability to take the upper hand in the global military conflict affected the views inside the British ruling circles on any adequate response to the Bolshevik challenge. 

Distrust of the Entente’s capability to take the upper hand in the global military conflict affected the views inside the British ruling circles on any adequate response to the Bolshevik challenge. Many top politicians accredited at the Russian army supreme headquarters during the war dismissed any political contacts with the Bolshevik ‘usurpers.’

The attitude of ‘aloofness’ towards Soviet Russia by the British political elite in the critical situation can also be illustrated by Francis Bertie, the ambassador to France, who wrote in the diary on 14 December 1917: ‘As for Russia, let them fight each other until the Bolsheviks harden the majority and are killed. Meanwhile, here [in France], there are people, and serious ones, succumbing to the belief that we shall receive armed assistance from Russia next summer. By then, that country will possibly cease to exist.’ The necessity of Russia’s dissuasion from signing a separate peace with the Central empires continued to dominate the UK official and public discourse through the early period of Soviet rule. 

Almost simultaneously, the Cabinet drafted the “Convention entre la France et l’Angleterre’ the Anglo-French program of measures to be carried on by France to divide the ‘spheres of responsibility in European Russia, meaning Bessarabia, the Crimea, Southern Ukraine, and the Caucasus. 

Approved by George Clemenceau, the French prime minister, the agreement gave way, albeit circuitously, to the Entente’s armed interference in Russia’s domestic affairs. That is why London and Paris immediately notified Rome and Washington about the Anglo-French convention program, also-called Cecil–Milner memorandum signed on 23 December 1917. The latter statesman, perhaps with a modicum of sarcasm, commented on the event to Lloyd George: ‘Civil war or even the mere continuation of chaos and disorder [in Russia] would be an advantage to us [the British].’

Around the same time, the Cabinet dispatched Robert Bruce Lockhart to Petrograd on a special mission. He was a thirty-year-old diplomat serving as the British vice-consul and later acting general consul in Moscow for several years before the Russian revolution. Scottish by birth, Lockhart was chosen at Milner’s recommendation.

This appointment was precipitated by the intensive consultations between the Cabinet members, military experts, and diplomatic pundits from 18 to 21 December 1917. The Foreign Office invited Lockhart to share his vision on the current events in Russia with such politicians as Milner, Curzon, Smuts, Cecil, and Edward Carson, the minister without portfolio. The prime minister had a final lengthy conversation with the nominee, instructing him on dealing with Lenin and Trotsky.

Yet the interdepartmental disputes doubtlessly influenced the mission’s tangible results. While Lloyd George ordered Lockhart to probe the Bolsheviks’ position on the strain of the Russian military efforts, Milner recommended his protégé ‘to put a spoke in the wheels of the separate peace talks and ‘by any means strengthen the Russian resistance to German demands.’ 

The acting charge d’affaires maintained that Lockhart’s special mission should be presented to the Bolsheviks as a commercial representative. Otherwise, in Lindley’s opinion, it would diminish the status of the regular diplomatic mission. Thus, Lockhart’s credentials should be restricted to mediating disputes between British diplomats and the NKID’s top clerks.

 

 

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