The Bolshevik Empire

Abstract

The most contentious policy area facing Curzon and Lloyd George in October 1919 was relations with Soviet Russia. The Bolshevik government had signed a Russo-German armistice in December 1917. Three months later, the landing of 130 Royal Marines at Murmansk, to protect vast quantities of war material supplied by the Allies, signalled the start of an Allied intervention in Russian affairs. By December 1918 Anglo-Soviet relations were deteriorating rapidly and, with the collapse of the Central Powers, the intervention had lost its ostensible raison d’être. Some 30 000 Allied troops were established in north Russia and Siberia, and were developing a presence in Russian Central Asia, where local anti-Bolshevik regimes had emerged. Increasingly these troops were used in support of White Russian forces seeking to overthrow the Bolshevik regime.