The Forgotten War: When the Allies Invaded Russia

In the waning years of the First World War, as bodies piled up on the Eastern Front and the Russian Empire frayed at its seams, an idea took root among the leaders of the Western world — one that, if successful, might have rewritten the course of the 20th century. It was a desperate gamble: an invasion of Russia, not by Germany, but by an uneasy coalition of the world’s major powers, determined to stamp out a nascent revolution before it could spread.

It failed.

By the end of 1920, the last Allied troops slinked away from Russian soil, defeated not by overwhelming force but by a deadly combination of political miscalculation, logistical nightmares, and, most critically, the very people they had hoped to save. Their failure allowed Lenin to solidify his grip on power, paving the way for the Soviet Union and, eventually, the Cold War. Today, the episode is little more than a footnote in history books, eclipsed by the grandeur of the Russian Revolution and the global conflagration of World War II. Yet, had it gone differently, the world might have been unrecognizable.

A Nation in Revolt

By 1917, the Russian Empire was collapsing under the weight of its own contradictions. The once-mighty Romanov dynasty had ruled for centuries with divine-right absolutism, yet it had failed to modernize as Europe charged forward. The First World War only deepened the crisis. By that year, Russian soldiers were deserting in droves, the economy had ground to a halt, and the people — hungry, impoverished, and weary of war — turned their anger on the ruling class.

What began as scattered protests in Petrograd (modern-day St. Petersburg) quickly exploded into the February Revolution, which forced Tsar Nicholas II to abdicate. In his place, a provisional government formed, led by moderate politicians who promised reform but failed to deliver. Meanwhile, a parallel system of power emerged in the form of the Soviets — workers’ councils increasingly influenced by the radical Bolsheviks, who championed socialist revolution.

By October, the Bolsheviks, under the leadership of Vladimir Lenin, seized control in a coup that would come to be known as the October Revolution. Lenin wasted no time in consolidating power. He pulled Russia out of the First World War with the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, conceding vast swaths of territory to Germany and angering the Allies, who saw it as a betrayal. More ominously, Lenin founded the Cheka, a secret police force that would soon embark on a ruthless campaign to eliminate “enemies of the state.”

Yet, despite their ideological fervor, the Bolsheviks were far from secure. Russia descended into a brutal civil war, with the Red Army — Bolsheviks and their Marxist allies — facing off against the White Army, an eclectic coalition of monarchists, liberals, and moderate socialists who opposed communist rule. The stage was set for foreign intervention.

The Allies Enter the Fray

To the Western powers, Lenin’s revolution was more than just a domestic Russian affair; it was an existential threat. With Germany still undefeated on the Western Front, the last thing Britain and France wanted was the emergence of a hostile, communist state that could supply the enemy with resources. Moreover, the revolution represented a challenge to the existing world order — if the Bolsheviks succeeded, what was to stop similar uprisings in Paris, London, or New York?

The solution, as Winston Churchill later put it, was to “strangle Bolshevism in its cradle.”

In 1918, the Allies launched a military intervention in Russia. Officially, their mission was to reopen the Eastern Front against Germany and secure stockpiles of munitions that had been sent to Russia before the revolution. In reality, it was an effort to prop up the White Army and topple Lenin’s regime.

The operation was a staggering display of multinational cooperation. Britain, France, the United States, Greece, Italy, Serbia, Romania, and even China contributed troops. The largest contingent came from Japan, which sent a staggering 70,000 men into Siberia, ostensibly to combat Bolshevism but also with an eye on territorial expansion.

The sheer scale of Japan’s involvement raised concerns among its Western allies. While Britain and France viewed the intervention as a temporary operation to suppress Bolshevism, Japan had a more ambitious goal — establishing a long-term presence in the Russian Far East. Vladivostok and its surrounding areas, rich in resources and strategically positioned, became de facto Japanese military zones, creating friction with the already fragile coalition.

Despite the formidable numbers, the operation was doomed from the start.

A War Without a Cause

The Allies faced several insurmountable problems. First, their forces were scattered across the vast Russian landscape, launching piecemeal assaults in the Arctic north, the Baltic states, Ukraine, and Siberia — without a unified strategy. In the north, British and American troops landed at Archangelsk and Murmansk, hoping to push southward. In the south, French troops attempted to rally anti-Bolshevik forces in Ukraine. Meanwhile, Japan made its move in the east, seizing control of Vladivostok.

But there was a larger issue: the Allies had severely misjudged the Russian people.

Many Russians, even those who despised the Bolsheviks, saw the foreign intervention as an affront to national sovereignty. Lenin exploited this sentiment masterfully, painting the conflict as a patriotic struggle against foreign invaders. Bolshevik propaganda branded the Whites as puppets of imperialist powers, and the message resonated. Even White Army soldiers defected to the Reds, disgusted by the way Allied officers treated them.

On the battlefield, the intervention quickly unraveled. In northern Russia, British forces found themselves bogged down in brutal winter warfare, facing fierce resistance from Bolshevik ambushes and artillery barrages. Reports circulated that the Reds had used poison gas against British troops, further enraging public opinion back home but doing little to change the strategic reality.

In Ukraine, the French intervention collapsed almost immediately. Troops mutinied, unwilling to fight in a war that seemed increasingly futile. In Siberia, even Japan, despite its overwhelming numbers, found itself unable to make significant gains. By 1920, recognizing the growing futility of the war, Japan withdrew its forces, marking the final failure of the intervention.

A Lost Opportunity — or a Historic Blunder?

Had the intervention succeeded, history might have taken a dramatically different course. The Soviet Union would never have been formed. Stalin would never have risen to power. The horrors of the Holodomor, the Great Purge, and the Gulag system might have been avoided. The Cold War, with its nuclear brinkmanship and ideological battles, might never have happened.

Churchill, perhaps the most ardent supporter of the intervention, later lamented its failure. In 1919, he wrote:

“The strangling of Bolshevism at its birth would have been an untold blessing to the human race… If I had been properly supported, I think we might have done it.”

Yet, was success ever truly possible? The Allies’ intervention in Russia was plagued by the same fatal flaw that doomed many later foreign interventions: a fundamental misunderstanding of the people they sought to “liberate.” The Russians did not want to trade one form of domination for another, even if it meant enduring Lenin’s rule. The Western powers, arrogant in their assumptions, learned this lesson the hard way.

In the end, the intervention in Russia was not just a military failure, but a profound strategic miscalculation — one that, ironically, may have solidified the very regime it sought to destroy.