America's secret war against Bolshevism: United States intervention in the Russian Civil War, 1917-1920

From the Bolshevik Revolution of November 1917 to the end of the Russian Civil War in 1920, the United States sought to encourage and support anti-Bolshevik movements through a variety of methods which evaded public scrutiny and avoided the need for Congressional appropriations.;President Woodrow Wilson refused to establish diplomatic relations with the Bolshevik regime. Instead, he signaled his hope for a restoration of democracy in Russia by continuing to recognize the Ambassador of the defunct Provisional Government, Boris Bakhmeteff.;U.S. officials arranged to use the Russian Embassy as a covert channel for aid to anti-Bolshevik armies. With American approval, Bakhmeteff was able to send many shipments of war supplies to anti-Bolshevik forces.;The U.S. also decided to give the British and French funds which they could transmit to Cossacks and White officers in southern Russia. British and American documents reveal that Wilson repeatedly reaffirmed his support for the plan and that U.S. representatives persistently struggled to provide the promised funds.;American diplomats and military attaches inside Soviet Russia organized intelligence-gathering networks which maintained contact with underground counterrevolutionaries, passed information to Allied agents, and conducted anti-Soviet sabotage. Thorough analysis of Soviet sources and unused American documents demonstrates that the U.S. "information services" gathered military intelligence about the Red Army, but were not directly involved in plots against Lenin.;Reluctant to interfere openly and directly in Russia, Wilson hesitated for months before he finally dispatched American troops to Archangel and Vladivostok in July 1918. In North Russia, U.S. soldiers fought on the front lines against the Red Army. The Siberian expeditionary force played a more indirect role in the Civil War, but by securing the railroad supply line from Vladivostok, it supported the White armies in western Siberia.;The Wilson Administration was never fully candid about the purposes of these expeditions. While Wilson was influenced by concerns which he stressed in public, such as protecting military stockpiles and aiding a Czech Legion, the military interventions can best be understood as efforts to make Russia safe for democracy and as parts of a war against Bolshevism.