Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War

Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War
Part of the Russian Civil War
Allied troops parading in Vladivostok, 1918
Date 12 January 1918[3] – 20 May 1925[4] (7 years, 4 months, 1 week and 1 day) Location Former Russian Empire Result Bolshevik victory Allied powers withdrawal Defeat and collapse of the Russian White movement Anti-Bolshevik victory in Finland and the Baltic states
Belligerents
Allied Powers: White movement Czechoslovak Legion (1918–1919)  United Kingdom (1918–1920)  Canada (1918–1919)  Australia (1918–1919)  India  South Africa[1]  United States (1918–1920)  France (1918–1920)  Japan  Poland[2]  Greece  Estonia  Serbia  Italy  China  Latvia  Romania	Bolsheviks:  Soviet Russia  Far Eastern Republic  Latvian SSR  Ukrainian SSR
Commanders and leaders
Alexander Kolchak Mikhail Diterikhs Grigory Semyonov Nikolai Yudenich Evgeny Miller Anton Denikin Pyotr Wrangel Radola Gajda Stanislav Čeček Sergej Vojcechovský Jan Syrový Kikuzo Otani Yui Mitsue Woodrow Wilson William S. Graves George E. Stewart Robert L. Eichelberger Wilds P. Richardson Joseph D. Leitch Edmund Ironside Frederick Poole Lionel Dunsterville William Thomson Wilfrid Malleson Walter Cowan James H. Elmsley Henri Bertholot Philippe d'Anselme Konstantinos Nider Ernest Broșteanu	Vladimir Lenin Leon Trotsky Jukums Vācietis Sergey Kamenev Pavel Dybenko Nikolai Krylenko Vladimir Antonov-Ovseenko Mikhail Tukhachevsky Mikhail Frunze Vasily Blyukher Alexander Samoylo Joseph Stalin Kliment Voroshilov Fedor Raskolnikov Dmitry Zhloba Semyon Budyonny Hayk Bzhishkyan Mikhail Muravyov Dmitry Nadyozhny Dmitri Parsky Alexander Krasnoshchyokov
Strength
50,000–70,000 troops 15,600 troops 30,000 troops[5] 12,950 troops 11,300 troops 70,000 troops 59,150 troops[6][7][8][9] 4,700+ troops 2,500 troops 2,000 troops 150 troops	Unknown
Casualties and losses
Czechoslovakia: 4,112 killed[10]  United Kingdom: 938+ killed[11][12][13][14]  United States: 424 killed[15]  Greece:[16] 179 killed 173 missing 46 dead from wounds or non-combat related causes 657 wounded	Unknown 1 landing craft captured by Romanians[17]

The Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War consisted of a series of multi-national military expeditions that began in 1918. The initial impetus behind the interventions was to secure munitions and supply depots from falling into the German Empire's hands, particularly after the Bolsheviks signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, and to rescue the Allied forces that had become trapped within Russia after the 1917 October Revolution.^[18] After the Armistice of 11 November 1918, the Allied plan changed to helping the White forces in the Russian Civil War. After the Whites collapsed, the Allies withdrew their forces from Russia by 1925.^[19]

Allied troops landed in Arkhangelsk (the North Russia intervention of 1918–1919) and in Vladivostok (as part of the Siberian intervention of 1918–1922). The British also intervened in the Baltic theatre (1918–1919) and in the Caucasus (1917–1919). French-led Allied forces participated in the Southern Russia intervention (1918–1919).

Allied efforts were hampered by divided objectives, war-weariness after World War I, and a rising discontent among some troops and sailors who were reluctant to fight the world's first socialist state; this reluctance sometimes led to mutiny.^{[according to whom?]} These factors, together with the evacuation of the Czechoslovak Legion in September 1920, led the western Allied powers to end the North Russia and Siberian interventions in 1920, though the Japanese intervention in Siberia continued until 1922 and the Empire of Japan continued to occupy the northern half [ru] of Sakhalin until 1925.^[20]