The allied intervention in Russia, 1918-1920: the diplomacy of chaos

Chaos has many names: anarchy, pandemonium, turmoil, or, utter confusion; and there is no better example than the events concerning Russia during the Great War and the debacle that was the Allied attempts at intervention there. This chaos was self-inflicted by the Allies themselves. The Allied strategic objectives in Russia changed over the course of three distinct time periods. From the first Russian Revolution in March 1917 to the November Bolshevik revolution, the Allies tried to keep Russia in the war as an active ally. From November 1917 to the November 1918 Armistice, they tried to prevent the Bolsheviks from making a separate peace and, failing that, to re-establish an Eastern Front. Finally from the Armistice to the fall of the Whites in Crimea in 1920, the Allies tried to strangle Bolshevism. Throughout, Britain remained the driving force despite Lloyd George's antipathy towards military action and President Woodrow Wilson's efforts to minimize intervention.