The Franco-British Plot to Dismember Russia

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June marks a number of anniversaries, almost completely unknown in the West today, of significant events in the Allied invasion of the Soviet Union. Namely, when the entire wretched project began to spectacularly unravel. The loss of the Allied Powers’ Tsarist ally to the November 1917 revolution, and the embattled Bolsheviks subsequently granting Germany political and economic hegemony over Central and Eastern Europe via the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, led to wide-ranging Western imperial intervention in the Russian civil war, starting from May 1918.

The effort was led by Britain and France. Soldiers drawn from the pair’s respective empires, and Czechoslovakia, Estonia, Greece, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Poland, Romania, Serbia and the US, were deployed in vast numbers, fighting alongside local “White” anti-Communist forces. Initially prosecuted largely in secret, come June 1919, things were going so badly for the invaders that London formally dispatched a 3,500-strong “North Russian Relief Force” to the Soviet Union. Their ostensible mission was to defend threatened British positions in the country.

Almost immediately though, this “defensive” unit was deployed on offensive missions, to seize key Soviet territory, repel the Red Army, and link up with White Russian forces. That thrust was comprehensively beaten back, however. From that point on, Allied fortunes rapidly worsened. White Russian soldiers violently mutinied against “allies” while defecting to the Bolsheviks. Concurrently, invading foreign troops simply refused to fight, due to horrendous battlefield conditions. All-out Western withdrawal began before the month was over.

Allied soldiers parade in Vladivostok, Russia, September 1918

In failing to crush the Russian revolution, Britain and France not only lost a historic opportunity to “strangle Bolshevism in its cradle,” in Winston Churchill’s pestilential phrase. London and Paris had planned to carve up the Soviet Union’s vast resources, while neutralising any prospect of Moscow emerging as a major international anti-capitalist agitator thereafter. The failure of invading powers to learn lessons from this debacle, and Russia’s visceral modern day memories of the mass invasion, in no small part account for where we are today.

‘Prolonged Enslavement’

In March 1931, Western-dwelling Russian-born academic Leonid I. Strakhovsky published a remarkable paper, The Franco-British Plot to Dismember Russia. As the author noted, “neither Britain nor France has as yet published any important documents” related to the Allied invasion at the time. This largely remains the case over a century later. Yet, Strakhovsky was still able to piece together “startling designs” of a conspiracy by London and Paris “to bring about the complete dismemberment of the Russian realm for their own political and commercial advantage.”

This agreement was cemented in L’Accord Franco-Anglais du 23 Décembre 1917, définissant les zones d’action Française et Anglaise. The document established British and French “zones of influence” in the Soviet Union. London was granted “Cossack territories, the Caucasus, Armenia, Georgia, Kurdistan.” Meanwhile, Paris received “Bessarabia, the Ukraine, [and] Crimea.” White Russian military chief General Anton Denikin is quoted as saying, “the line dividing the zones” stretched from the Bosporus to the Don river’s mouth:

“This strange line had no reason whatsoever from the strategic point of view, taking in no consideration of the Southern operation directions to Moscow nor the idea of unity of command…In dividing into halves the land of the Don Cossacks, it did not correspond to the possibilities of a rational supplying of the Southern armies, and satisfied rather the interests of occupation and exploitation than those of a strategic covering and help.”

As Strakhovsky observes, “a survey of the economic resources in the two zones of influence” lends credence to Denikin’s analysis. Territories marked out for French domination were and remain “large granaries.” Yet, Donetsk’s “famous coal region” - “worthless” to coal-rich Britain - was “of great importance to France.” In turn, London “obtained all the Russian oil fields in the Cauacasus,” and regions producing “an enormous amount of timber.” At the time, Britain urgently needed all foreign wood it could lay its hands upon.

Strakhovsky comments that the December 1917 agreement amounted to, “a picture of organized economic penetration under the cover of military intervention.” Elsewhere, he quotes dissident US journalist Louis Fische, “a parallel agreement disposed in similar fashion of other parts of Russia.” Despite this, France was “not satisfied” with its windfall. Officials in Paris attempted to compel General Denikin to sign a treaty which, if anti-Bolshevik forces prevailed, would’ve amounted to outright “economic slavery”, putting “Russia at her mercy.” 

Denikin was not persuaded. His successor Pyotr Wrangel however was. He accepted extraordinary conditions, which included granting France “right of exploitation of all railways in European Russia during a certain period,” Parisian monopoly on Moscow’s grain surpluses, oil output for an indeterminate stretch, and a quarter of all Donetsk’s coal output “during a certain period of years.” As a Soviet writer quoted in Strakhovsky’s paper observed:

“France was striving to obtain a prolonged and if possible an all-sided domination over Russia…a means of a prolonged enslavement of Russia.”

‘Half Measures’

Britain’s motivation for invading the Soviet Union went beyond visceral aversion to Bolshevism, and a desire to take the fallen Russian empire’s resource-rich lands into receivership. Namely, London’s “fear of the rising power of Russia” throughout the 19th century, which produced the “Great Game”. This confrontation in Central Asia was concerned with preventing India - “the jewel in the crown” of the British empire - falling into Moscow’s sphere of economic and political influence.

In a bitter irony, this longstanding anxiety meant British strategy in the Soviet invasion was equally concerned with crushing Bolshevism, while also preventing “the resurrection of the old great unified Russia.” Her perfunctory approach contributed significantly to the endeavour’s total failure, from London’s perspective. Strakhovsky notes, “Britain carried out her part of the intervention in Russia by half measures, which certainly did not help the anti-Bolshevik forces in their struggle for a national government.” He cites a Soviet writer:

“In the North as well as in the South and in Siberia, the tactics of the English were clearly denoted by their desire to support the Russian counter-revolution, only as much as it was necessary to prevent a unification of Russia on the one hand under the Bolsheviks, and on the other hand under the [White] supporters of the great one indivisible Russia.”

There was another ironic boomerang to Britain’s simultaneous belligerence and treachery in the Soviet Union. Strakhovsky records that a contemporary parliamentary “special report of the committee to collect information on Russia” was produced at King George V’s express command. It concluded, “abundant and almost unanimous testimony of our witnesses shows the military intervention of the Allies in Russia assisted to give strength and cohesion to the Soviet Government”:

“Up to the time of military intervention the majority of Russian intellectuals were well-disposed toward the Allies, and more especially to Great Britain…later the attitude of the Russian people toward the Allies became characterized by indifference, distrust and antipathy.”

Per Strakhovsky, this “was the reward Great Britain and France received” for attempting to dismember Russia. A similar dynamic is afoot today, as the Ukraine proxy war grinds on. The more genocidal, Russophobic rhetoric issues from EU and US officials, and the more Western-encouraged attacks on Moscow occur, the more united Russians become in opposition to their adversaries, and with each other.

Since the proxy war began, the West has made no secret of its desire to “Balkanize” Russia. In July 2022, a US Congressional body hosted a dedicated event on the “moral and strategic imperative” of shattering the country into easily exploitable chunks. Along the way, sponsoring local separatist movements for the purpose was advocated. One year later, Italian journalist Marzo G Mian toured Russia, and was supremely struck by how the local population was unified like never before. For example, a previously “mild-mannered” 79-year-old academic acquaintance of Mian’s had “become a warrior”. They said:

“[Stalingrad] is our reference point now more than ever, an unparalleled symbol of resistance, our enemies’ worst nightmare…Whosoever tries it will meet the end of all the others - Swedes, Napoleon, the Germans and their allies…Russians are like the Scythians: they wait, they suffer, they die, and then they kill.”