In the summer of 1918, hoping to somehow re engage the Russians in the First World War as the Allied offensive on the western front began, thousands of Allied troops began to land in ports in Russia’s far north, far east, and far south. It was the beginning of one of the most ambitious military ventures of the twentieth century. Following the armistice with Germany, Allied forces in Russian not only remained, but expanded. Eventually 180,000 troops from fifteen different countries would participate. As either a means of bringing Russian into the war, or strangling the Bolshevik regime in its crib, the intervention was a failure, and quickly forgotten in those nations who had participated in it. But it was a long-cherished memory in the Soviet Union, it arguably stoked global turmoil for decades to come, and it remains firmly a part of the “pick-n’-mix, might-is-right narrative” of Vladimir Putin’s Russia. 

Anna Reid was the Kyiv correspondent for The Economist and The Daily Telegraph, from 1993 to 1995. She has written about Ukraine for Foreign Affairs, the Observer, and the Times Literary Supplement. Her books include The Shaman’s Coat: A Native History of Siberia; Leningrad: The Epic Siege of World War II; and Borderland: A Journey Through the History of Ukraine. Her most recent book is A Nasty Little War: The Western Intervention into the Russian Civil War, which is the subject of our conversation today.

For Further Investigation

There are numerous podcasts in the Historically Thinking archive that relate to this one. You might begin with Episode 65: The First Year of the Russian Revolution, before moving on to Episode 193: The Plot to Bring Down the Soviet Revolution, which covers some of the same territory as this conversation.

We talk a little about Siberia; you might also be interested in listening to Episode 212: The Perennial Russian Pivot to Asia