‘A Bad Business’: British Responses to Mutinies Among Local Forces in Northern Russia

Abstract

This article examines a series of mutinies that occurred in 1918 and 1919 among military units in Northern Russia and how the British command responded to them. The specific incidents under consideration are the 1918 mutiny of the 1st Arkhangel'sk Regiment, the mutiny of the British-recruited Dyer’s Battalion, and the 1919 Onega mutiny. This study explores the response of the British command to these incidents, and the impact that mutinous outbreaks had on overall British morale and strategy. These episodes are discussed within the broader context of mutinies that occurred during the Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War.

Notes

1 Ullman, Anglo-Soviet Relations; Kinvig, Churchill's Crusade; Occleshaw, Dances in Deep Shadows.

2 Kinvig, Churchill's Crusade, 133–34.

3 Halliday, The Ignorant Armies, 181.

4 Bentinck, Mutiny in Murmansk.

5 Long, ‘Civil War and Intervention in North Russia’, 330–31.

6 Swettenham, Allied Intervention in Russia, 205.

7 Carley, ‘Episodes from the Early Cold War: Franco-Soviet Relations, 1917–1927’.

8 Bennett, Cowan's War, 195–98.

9 Isitt, ‘Mutiny from Victoria to Vladivostok, December 1918’.

10 Ironside, Archangel 1918–1919, 54.

11 Strakhovsky, Intervention 36, 97; TNA WO 106/6240, Appreciation of the Internal Situation in Russia, 12 January 1919.

12 Strakhovsky, Intervention, 111–12.

13 Jackson, At War with the Bolsheviks, 77; Lincoln, Red Victory, 280.

14 Jackson, At War with the Bolsheviks, 77.

15 Karasik, ‘Revolution and Civil War in Arkhangel'sk’, 100–01.

16 Ibid., 77; Dobson and Miller, The Day We Almost Bombed Moscow, 141.

17 Jackson, At War with the Bolsheviks, 77–78.

18 Ironside, Archangel 1918–1919, 69.

19 Jackson, At War with the Bolsheviks, 77–78; Silverlight, The Victors' Dilemma, 182.

20 Ironside, Archangel 1918–1919, 69.

21 TNA AIR, 1/22/68/209/70/218, Resume of Events in N. Russia by Major-General Ironside, 4 August 1919.

22 TNA WO 33/962, Secret Telegram No. 751, General Officer Commanding, Archangel, to War Office,12 December 1918.

23 Francis Oswald Lindley, TS Memoirs. University of Leeds Special Collections, Leeds Russian Archive. LRA MS 1372/2, p. 87.

24 Ironside, Archangel 1918–1919 112–13; Hudson, Intervention in Russia 1918–1920, 64.

25 Ironside, Archangel 1918–1919 43–44.

26 Ibid., 44.

27 Ibid., 91.

28 Gazette of the Archangel Force, 7 June 1919, 1.

29 Gazette of the Archangel Force, 21 June 1919, 2.

30 Gazette of the Archangel Force, 21 June 1919, 2.

31 Gazette of the Archangel Force, 7 June 1919, 1.

32 Strakhovsky, Intervention, 196.

33 Kettle, Russia and the Allies 1917–1920, Volume 3: Churchill and the Archangel Fiasco, November 1918–July 1919, 548.

34 E. M. Allfrey, Five Months with 45th Battalion Royal Fusiliers in North Russia. Imperial War Museum, 31.

35 Dobson and Miller, The Day We Almost Bombed Moscow, 210.

36 ‘Dyer's’, Gazette of the Archangel Force, 21 June 1919.

37 Francis Oswald Lindley, TS Memoirs. University of Leeds Special Collections, Leeds Russian Archive. LRA MS 1372/2, pp. 97–98.

38 Imperial War Museum Sound Archive Recording 965, R. H. Earnshaw, 1970.

39 Ibid.

40 Dobson and Miller, Allied War, 210.

41 Ironside, Archangel, 157.

42 Ibid., 158.

43 TNA AIR 1/22/68/209/70/218, Resume of Events in N. Russia by Major-General Ironside, 4 August 1919.

44 ‘The 2nd Battalion in Russia’, Hampshire Regimental Journal Volume XV, April 1920.

45 TNA AIR 1/22/68/209/70/218, Resume of Events in N. Russia by Major-General Ironside, 4 August 1919.

46 TNA WO 32/9545, Ironside to the War Office, 17 July 1919.

47 TNA WO 32/9545, Lt-Col. Barrington C. Wells to Archangel, 8 July 1919.

48 TNA WO 32/9545, Ironside to the War Office, 17 July 1919.

49 TNA AIR 1/22/68/209/70/218, Resume of Events in N. Russia by Major-General Ironside, 4 August 1919.

50 Quoted in Long, ‘Civil War and Intervention in North Russia’, 351.

51 Thompson, Diary of A. E. Thompson, Imperial War Museum, 15/7/19.

52 Neville, History of the 43rd and 52nd, 356.

53 E. M. Allfrey, Five Months with 45th Battalion Royal Fusiliers in North Russia, Imperial War Museum, 73.

54 E. M. Allfrey, Five Months with 45th Battalion Royal Fusiliers in North Russia, Imperial War Museum, 80.

55 Neville, The War Letters of a Light Infantryman, 166–67.

56 Neville, History of the 43rd and 52nd, 352.

57 Daily Mail, 26 July 1919, 8.

58 Thompson, Diary of A.E. Thompson, Imperial War Museum, 17/7/19.

59 Thompson, Diary of A.E. Thompson, Imperial War Museum, 18/7/19.

60 Manual of Military Law 1914, p. 39.

61 E. M. Allfrey, Five Months with 45th Battalion Royal Fusiliers in North Russia, Imperial War Museum, 84.

62 D. N. Wimberley, Transcript of an interview with D. N. Wimberley, August 1977, Leeds University, Liddle Collection, GS 1771/13.

63 E. M. Allfrey, Five Months with 45th Battalion Royal Fusiliers in North Russia, Imperial War Museum, 84–85.

64 TNA WO 33/967A, Secret Telegram No. 2672, General Officer Commanding-in-Chief, Allied Forces to War Office, 16 July 1919.

65 TNA WO 33/967A, Secret Telegram No. 2689, War Office to General Officer Commanding-in-Chief, British Forces, Archangel, 18 July 1919.

66 ‘The 2nd Battalion in Russia’, Hampshire Regimental Journal Volume XV, February 1920.

67 Dobson and Miller, The Day We Almost Bombed Moscow, 209.

68 Ironside, Archangel 1918–1919, 126; Kinvig, Churchill's Crusade, 185–86.

69 Maynard, The Murmansk Venture, 288.

70 TNA AIR 1/22/68/209/70/218, Resume of Events in N. Russia by Major-General Ironside, 4 August 1919.

71 Dobson and Miller, The Day We Almost Bombed Moscow, 213–14.

72 TNA AIR 1/22/68/209/70/218, Resume of Events in N. Russia by Major-General Ironside, 4 August 1919.

73 Footman, Civil War in Russia, 199.

74 James, Mutiny: In the British and Commonwealth Forces, 1797–1956, 196–97.

75 R. Jowett, Diary of R. Jowett, Imperial War Museum, 19.

76 E. J. Hales, Diary. University of Leeds Special Collections, Liddle Collection. RUS 18.

77 Maurice Edwin Dayman, A Story of my Enlistment and Seven Years, Two Hundred and Fifty Four Days with the Colours, and Four Years and One Hundred and Fifteen Days in Section ‘B’ Army Reserve. Imperial War Museum.

78 Ironside, Archangel 1918–1919, 161.

79 Strakhovsky, Intervention at Archangel, 210.

80 Kinvig, Churchill's Crusade, 203.

81 Henry Wilson, The Diaries of Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson, Imperial War Museum, HHW 1/28 22.7.19.

82 Rawlinson, The Life of General Lord Rawlinson of Trent: From his Journals and Letters, 262.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National University of Ireland under the 2013 Travelling Studentship for History.