Overshadowed by the First World War, the Allied Intervention in the Russian Civil War was one of the most ambitious military ventures of the 20th century.
In 1918, it drew in 180,000 troops from fifteen different countries in theatres ranging from the Caspian Sea to the Arctic. Initially launched to prevent Germany from exploiting the power vacuum in Eastern Europe, the Intervention morphed into a bid to destroy the Bolsheviks on the battlefield. Allied armaments, supplies, and loans could not prevent Russia’s anti-Bolshevik armies from collapsing, and the Allies were forced to retreat.
Acclaimed journalist Anna Reid explores how the humiliation sapped British imperial swagger, chastened American idealism, and stoked militarism and nationalism in France and Germany.