A century ago,the last U.S. troops were withdrawn from the USSR. They had been sent to support the white Christian armies trying to restore Czarist rule in the wake of the workers uprising known as the Bolshevik Revolution. Then as now the U.S. government backed grotesque atrocities in hopes of restoring deeply unpopular dictatorial rule.
1920: Vladivostok
U.S. General Graves Reports On
U.S.-Occupied Soviet Union, 1918-1920
“The fighting that occurred in Eastern Siberia was confined to the efforts of considerable groups of peasants and workers some of whom were probably led by the Bolsheviks and known as ‘partisans,’ to protect themselves and their families from the atrocities committed by the [White Russian Admiral] Kolchak troops.”
“[The peasants of Siberia] were the ones always mobilized to do the fighting in all Russian Wars and had lost more, in killed, during the World War, than any other nation.... I had the greatest sympathy for these people and found them generous, kindly, and very hospitable.”
“If a peasant was discovered with a rifle and ammunition it often meant his death and certainly meant a frightful lashing with the knout. The two methods succeeded in getting nearly all arms out of the hands of the peasants and this enabled the Cossack troops, in the Far East, to safely carry on their ruthless campaign of murder and robbery.”
“Admiral Kolchak surrounded himself with former Czarist officials and because these peasants would not take up arms and offer their lives to put these people back in power, they were kicked, beaten with knouts, and murdered in cold blood by the thousands, and then the world called them ‘Bolsheviks.’ In Siberia, the word Bolshevik meant a human being who did not, by act and word, give encouragement to the restoration to power of representatives of Autocracy in Russia.”
“All Allied representatives and the United States State Department representatives were solidly behind Admiral Kolchak.... after the terrible excesses committed by his [Kolchak’s] supporters, and others who claimed to support him, no power on earth could have driven the peasant to support his cause.”
“I doubt if history will show any country in the world during the last fifty years where murder could be committed so safely, and with less danger of punishment, than in Siberia during the regime of Admiral Kolchak.”
“In one case, the men struck for higher wages, the Kolchak management called it bolshevistic, and executed some of the leaders of the strike.”
“During the night some Kolchak officers took the members of the Constituent Assembly from the jail, telling them they were taking them to a place of trial for their alleged offenses, and shot and killed all of them.”
“The word [Bolshevik] was, and is, loosely used but always carries with it a malevolent meaning in the United States, while in Siberia it was used in a special political sense, and was applied to every one who did not support Kolchak and the autocratic class surrounding him.”
“I was never able to determine who was a Bolshevik or why he was a Bolshevik. According to Japanese representatives and her paid puppets in Siberia, all Russians were Bolsheviks if they were not willing to take up arms and fight for the Semeonoffs, the Kalminoffs, the Rozanoffs, and the Ivanoff-Rinoffs [White Russian Generals], and the annals of crime in the United States will not show worse characters than these. According to the British and French representatives, all Russians who were not willing to take up arms and fight for Kolchak were Bolsheviks.”
“The British, the French, and the American State Department representatives were all very friendly to Admiral Kolchak from the start...were all doing everything they could to help Kolchak while I tried to remain neutral.”
“There can be no question that the United States Consul General in Siberia, Mr. Harris, was an ardent supporter of Kolchak, and the principles of Government for Russia espoused by the Kolchak regime. The people put in office by Admiral Kolchak were practically all former Czarist officials and Absolutists...”
“There were horrible murders committed, but they were not committed by the Bolsheviks as the world believes. I am well on the side of safety when I say that the anti-Bolsheviks killed one hundred people in Eastern Siberia, to every one killed by the Bolsheviks.”
“The foreign press was constantly being told that the Bolsheviks were the Russians who were committing these terrible excesses, and propaganda had been used to such an extent that no one ever believed that atrocities were being committed against the Bolsheviks.”
“As I see it, the effect of keeping troops in Siberia, is to permit the crowd of Reactionaries...to try to firmly establish themselves while Allied troops are in Siberia.”
“...no matter what attitude the troops took towards internal conflicts, we could not escape responsibility for some acts against the Russian people that could not have been committed if foreign troops had not been in Siberia.”
“Kolchak’s mobilization order was not complied with by the great mass of Russians within the military age...the [White] Russian troops had come to Gordyevka looking for young men to force them into the Army, but the young men had escaped, so the troops took ten men of the village, who were beyond military age, tortured and killed them, and were guarding the bodies to prevent their families from burying them.”
“The object of this [White Russian] terrorism was not only to spread terror among the peasants, but...to create a situation that would force the peasants to try to protect themselves, and this would justify calling for more Allied troops to put down the Bolsheviks.”
“...at no time while I was in Siberia was there enough popular support behind Kolchak in Eastern Siberia for him, or the people supporting him, to have lasted one month if all Allied supports had been removed.”
“After the Armistice there was no effort made to conceal the fact that Allied troops were trying to destroy bolshevism. As a matter of fact, this was the only logical reason that can be advanced for keeping foreign troops in Siberia.”
“American soldiers...by their presence and by guarding the railroad which was used for the exclusive benefit of Kolchak...contributed to the atrocities which shocked all people with normal sensibilities.”
“I am sorry to have to record this fact, but truth demands that I state that the American Red Cross in Siberia was acting as a supply agent for Kolchak. . . The American Red Cross ran hospitals exclusively for Kolchak people . . .”
“We learned that [White Russian General] Rozanoff kept hostages, and, for every supporter of his cause that met death, he would kill ten of the people kept as hostages.”
“[Cossack leader] Semeonoff had established what were known as his ‘killing stations’ and had openly boasted that he could not sleep at night when he had not killed some one during the day.... two American Russian Railway Service Corps men...told us of the killing by Semeonoff soldiers, two or three days before our arrival, of a trainload of Russians consisting of three hundred and fifty people.”
“Colonel Morrow, in command of American troops in the Trans-Baikal sector, reported a most cruel, heartless, and almost unbelievable murder of an entire village by Semeonoff. When his troops reached the village, the inhabitants apparently tried to escape by flight from their homes, but the Semeonoff soldiers shot them down, men, women, and children, as if they were hunting rabbits, and left their bodies where they were killed. They shot, not one, but everyone in the village.... In addition...the bodies of four or five men…had evidently been burned alive.”21
------William S. Graves, America's Siberian Adventure, 1918-1920 (New York, 1931)
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