Foreign Business and Revolution: The British Engineering Company of Russia and Siberia, 1918–1921

Abstract

This article examines the activities of the British Engineering Company of Russia and Siberia and of its managing director, Arthur Marshall, in the almost three years between the Bolsheviks’ seizure of power and the signing of the Anglo-Soviet Trade Agreement. Sources from the Leeds Russian Archive outline how the company attempted to continue operations in Russia after the establishment of the Soviet government. In Great Britain, meanwhile, the managing director sought compensation for losses incurred during the Revolution and attempted to influence government policy towards permitting commerce with Soviet Russia. This article argues that although Marshall was unsuccessful in securing recompense for his company’s losses, his outward support for establishing Anglo-Soviet trade contributed to the pressures which, some interpretations conclude, make the 1921 agreement chiefly an economically rather than politically motivated arrangement from Britain’s perspective.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Jones, Merchants to Multinationals, 24–5, 61–2; Jones, ‘British Business in Russia’; Neilson, Strategy and Supply, 266–7.

2 Williams, Trading with the Bolsheviks; White, British and American Commercial Relations. For broader overviews of the economic and commercial contexts within which British policy towards Soviet Russia was conceived, see Boyce, British Capitalism at the Crossroads and Jones, Merchants to Multinationals, 84–7.

3 White, Britain and the Bolshevik Revolution, 175.

4 Kennedy, Mining Tsar, 143; Martin, ‘The Urquhart Concession and Anglo-Soviet Relations’, 555.

5 Sergeev, The Bolsheviks and Britain, 107; Ullman, Anglo-Soviet Relations, Vol. 3.

6 White, Britain and the Bolshevik Revolution, 175–6, 182; Munting, ‘Becos Traders and the Russian Market’; F. R., ‘Arthur Grotjan Marshall', 510. Munting’s article bears obvious similarities with this one, its main focus being the company’s activities in the years after the trade agreement. This paper focusses on a shorter and slightly earlier period and utilises a different collection of sources found in the Leeds Russian Archive at the University of Leeds.

7 Leeds Russian Archive (hereafter LRA), MS 1424/254/9. A list of investors can be found in Munting, ‘Becos Traders and the Russian Market’, 96.

8 LRA, MS 1424/258/21.

9 LRA, MS 1424/258/9; Munting, ‘Becos Traders and the Russian Market’, 81–2.

10 LRA, MS 1424/279.

11 White, British and American Commercial Relations, 41–4. For more on Vickers’ operations in Russia see Goldstein, ‘Vickers Limited and the Tsarist Regime’.

12 LRA, MS 1424/279.

13 Ibid.

14 LRA, MS 1424/258/7.

15 Ibid. For an overview of the VSNKh see Nove, An Economic History of the USSR, 44–7.

16 LRA, MS 1424/254/16.

17 LRA, MS 1424/279.

18 LRA, MS 1424/254/34.

19 House of Commons (HoC), vol 199 cc144; HoC vol 121 cc1106.

20 White, British and American Commercial Relations, 143–60. Meanwhile attempts at facilitating trade with anti-Bolshevik Russia yielded poor results, see Kolz, ‘British Economic Interests in Siberia’; Ponsot, ‘Keynes and the “National Caisse d’Emission” of North Russia’.

21 LRA, MS 1424/256.

22 LRA, MS 1424/254/16.

23 LRA, MS 1424/254/29.

24 For more on the Russian Government Committee, see Hughes, Diplomacy Before the Russian Revolution, 180; Neilson, Strategy and Supply, 312. Records of the submitted formal claims and related correspondence are spread throughout the company’s records but can primarily by found under references MS 1424/254-260.

25 LRA, MS 1424/254/24.

26 Caillard was an associate of arms dealer Basil Zaharoff, who was responsible, while employed by Vickers, for the original Tsaritsyn contract according a 1934 biography. Davenport, Zaharoff, 139. Caillard was also involved in later attempts by Vickers to establish the facts behind claims to losses suffered during the Russian Revolution. Details of this, including relevant correspondence between Caillard and Zaharoff, can be found in the company’s records at the Cambridge University Library special collections, under reference Vickers Document 1947. See also White, British and American Commercial Relations.

27 The National Archives (hereafter TNA), CAB 24/75/47.

28 TNA, CAB 24/78/37.

29 LRA, MS 1424/254/32.

30 LRA, MS 1424/254/33.

31 The letter from the Ministry does not appear in the company’s records, however there is reference to it in both Marshall’s letter to Lloyd George (see note 45) and a letter to the Ministry in November 1918, LRA, MS 1424/254/22.

32 LRA, MS 1424/254/25.

33 LRA, MS 1424/260.

34 LRA, MS 1424/261.

35 LRA, MS 1424/274.

36 LRA, MS 1424/258/9.

37 Ibid.

38 From his notes in Foreign Office records, this was a position Balfour had been forming as early as December 1917, see TNA, FO 800/214.

39 TNA, CAB 23/5/61.

40 Carley, Revolution and Intervention, 34–8.

41 For example, see Fuller, ‘Great Britain and Russia’s Civil War’; Lincoln, Red Victory, 184–7.

42 TNA, FO 603/231. Telegram no. 673.

43 TNA, FO 603/231. The comment appears in the minutes attached to the correspondence.

44 TNA FO 603/231. Letter dated 28 April 1919.

45 Debo, ‘Lloyd George and the Copenhagen Conference’.

46 LRA, MS 1424/254/22.

47 Ibid.

48 Ibid.

49 LRA, MS 1424/254/23.

50 Gaworek, ‘From Blockade to Trade’.

51 LRA, MS 1424/254/29.

52 LRA, MS 1424/254/28.

53 Thorough accounts of the negotiations in London can be found in Glenny, ‘The Anglo-Soviet Trade Agreement, March 1921’; Ullman, Anglo-Soviet Relations, Vol. 3; White, Britain and the Bolshevik Revolution, 3–26.

54 TNA, CAB 23/106/43. For more on Russia’s foreign debts and the Revolution see Malik, Bankers and Bolsheviks, 178–80; Siegel, For Peace and Money.

55 TNA, FO 418/54/32.

56 Documents on British Foreign Policy, First ser., Vol. 8, 298.

57 TNA, CAB 24/110/78.

58 TNA, CAB 24/110/83.

59 TNA, CAB 24/112/17; TNA, CAB 24/112/44.

60 TNA, CAB 24/112/54.

61 Sergeev, The Bolsheviks and Britain, 100; Ullman, Anglo-Soviet Relations, Vol. 3, 424–5.

62 Full text of the agreement and the accompanying declaration can be found as an appendix to Ullman, Anglo-Soviet Relations, Vol 3.

63 TNA, CAB 24/110/78.

64 Ibid.

65 TNA, FO 418/54/31.

66 TNA, FO 418/54/15. For more on Wise see Ullman, Anglo-Soviet Relations, Vol. 2, 327; Harris, ‘Bureaucrats and Businessmen in British Food Control’, 151.

67 TNA, CAB 24/111/93.

68 Heywood, Modernising Lenin’s Russia, 113–6.

69 Observer, 10 October 1920.

70 See, for example, Gaworek, ‘From Blockade to Trade’, 68–9; White, Britain and the Bolshevik Revolution, 25–6; Williams, Trading with the Bolsheviks.

71 White, British and American Commercial Relations, 140.

72 LRA, MS 1424/256/39.

73 LRA, MS 1424/258/12.

74 LRA, MS 1424/263. Documents in this folio are not given their own references.

75 LRA, MS 1424/263. This defence is separate from that referenced in note 74.

76 LRA, MS 1424/263. Written legal opinion from solicitor Harold Morris, dated 11 November 1921.

77 For more on the Genoa Conference, see Fink, Frohn and Heideking, Genoa, Rapallo and European Reconstruction; Williams, Trading with the Bolsheviks, 67–9.

78 White, Britain and the Bolshevik Revolution, 74–8.

79 Munting, ‘Becos Traders and the Russian Market’, 85–6.

80 LRA, MS 1424/282.

81 LRA, MS 1424/270.

82 HoC, vol. 244 cc1647.

83 Munting, ‘British Business and the Politics of Trade’; White, Britain and the Bolshevik Revolution, 158–9; Sergeev, The Bolsheviks and Britain War, 159–66; Madeira, Britannia and the Bear, 163–4.

Additional information

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Patrick Stickland

Patrick Stickland completed his PhD at York St John University in 2023. His thesis is a re-evaluation of the origins of Anglo-Soviet relations and an examination of new archival sources related to the subject.