Siberia: 27th Infantry in the American Expeditionary Forces

Editor's note: The following article translation and accompanying photo collection of the AEF operations in Irkutsk was provided by Mikhail Kulekhov of the Campus 38 Foundation, a non-profit group dedicated to improving the civil and social lives of people living in the Irkutsk region.

The friends in need is the friends indeed

In 1917, the Russian Empire, together with its allies in the Entente - Britain, France, Japan, and from this year the United States - fought for three years in the First World War against Germany, Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire. Russia was losing this war, which was largely the reason for the poor development of industry and transport.

Back in 1915, the Russian government began to make massive orders for everything needed abroad. They ordered rifles and cartridges, guns and shells, aircraft and motors. And of course, we ordered a lot of railway equipment and machinery. In particular, at least 1000 E-series steam locomotives were ordered in the USA (by the end of 1919, 881 steam locomotives were received), as well as thousands of cars. The new American steam locomotives were noticeably more powerful than those that previously worked on Russian railways, and could pull trains of almost twice the carrying capacity.

Basically, steam locomotives and carriages from the United States were delivered to Vladivostok, and from there they were diverted to specific work areas throughout Russia. In total, by the end of 1917, in Vladivostok and on the Transsib line, there were more than $ 1 billion worth of American railway property (the then dollar correlates with the current one by about 1:20). And when the Bolsheviks came to power in October 1917 in Petrograd as a result of a coup and decided to conclude a separate peace with Germany, Russia's allies in the Entente were worried that the weapons and equipment they supplied would fall into the hands of the Germans and their allies.

In the spring of 1918, the Bolsheviks themselves invited the British and American troops to Arkhangelsk and Murmansk, as they were afraid that German and Finnish troops would seize these important ports with military equipment located there. The Japanese, British and Americans landed in Vladivostok.

The main forces of the US Army at that time were in France and actively participated in the last battles on the Western Front. An American Expeditionary Force in Siberia was formed to be sent to Siberia in the Philippines under the command of General William Sidney Graves.

General Graves received personally from President Woodrow Wilson the following tasks, which he was required to perform during the expedition to Siberia:

1. To ensure the free and speedy withdrawal of the Czechoslovak corps to Vladivostok, from where it should be sent to France to continue the struggle against Germany.
2. Protection and protection of military and transport equipment (mainly supplied from the USA) in the amount of about 1 billion US dollars in order to prevent it from falling into the hands of Germany and its allies, as well as for its intended use - the establishment of railway transport in Russia.
3. To ensure the possibility of the inhabitants of Russia to establish the government they need, the form of state structure they have chosen, without allowing the intervention of external forces (first of all, the Japanese were meant).

Far from home

Czechs and Slovaks at the beginning of the twentieth century were part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Long before the outbreak of the First World War, a national movement was developing among the Czechs and Slovaks, aiming to restore the Czechoslovak state. When the war began, many Czechs and Slovaks surrendered to the Russian army in order to fight for the establishment of their state on the side of the opponents of Austria-Hungary. In the end, the Czecho-Slovak Corps was formed in Russia, which in 1917 managed to fight against the Austro-Germans. And when the Bolsheviks in March 1918 concluded a separate Brest-Litovsk Treaty with Germany and Austria-Hungary, the Czechoslovakians decided to move to France and continue their struggle on the Western Front. 60 thousand Czechoslovaks in echelons stretched along the railways of Russia from Penza to Vladivostok. But the dispatch was delayed. On the one hand, there were not enough trains, on the other, Germany demanded from the Bolsheviks that they disarm the Czechoslovakians, since they understood that they were their enemies.

In May 1918, the Bolsheviks tried to fulfill Germany's wishes. But the Czechoslovakians did not obey. And, in turn, they dispersed the Bolshevik authorities throughout the entire space from Kazan to Vladivostok. The Soviet power, about the strength of which the Bolsheviks spoke so much, collapsed almost without resistance. The Czechs themselves were not particularly willing to participate in the Russian Civil War. But the governments of the "whites" that replaced the Bolsheviks demanded allied help from them.

The end of the First World War and the proclamation of the Czechoslovak Republic forced the Czech volunteers to hurry up. They were especially impressed by the coup of Admiral Kolchak in Omsk on November 18, 1918, when the Provisional Siberian Government was overthrown and a dictatorship was established that did not differ much from the dictatorship of the "Reds". In the winter of 1918-1919, the Czechoslovakians concentrated on protecting the Trans-Siberian Railway. But the Kolchak government was in no hurry to release them to their homeland. It was precisely helping the Czechoslovakians to leave Russia that was one of the tasks of the American Expeditionary Force in Siberia.

Both the Czechoslovakians and the Americans tried in every possible way to avoid participation in the Russian civil strife. This position of theirs later allowed the “white” emigrants to accuse them of “betrayal” and even “aiding the Bolsheviks”. Interestingly, there are some grounds for these accusations. In July 1919, Kolchak ordered tanks from the United States. In March 1920, American troops delivered 10 Renault M1918 tanks to Vladivostok. They were stored in American Red Cross carriages. According to one version, the driver and coupler who sympathized with the Bolsheviks sent carriages with tanks to the "Reds" in Blagoveshchensk. According to the head of the Political Directorate of the People's Revolutionary Army of the Far Eastern Republic of the NRA, P.S. Parfenov, the tanks were transferred to the partisans by the Americans themselves. The "Reds" used 2 tanks on October 19, 1920 at the Urulga station and the Kaidalovo junction, causing a real panic among the "whites".

The emphasized neutral position of the Americans often led to their clashes both with the "whites" and with the troops of other Entente countries in Siberia, primarily with the Japanese. There is a known case when Colonel Charles Morrow did not allow Ataman Grigory Semyonov to storm and plunder Verkhneudinsk.

In general, clashes between American troops and the troops of Ataman Semyonov took place constantly. Semyonov did not hesitate to seize trains and cargo even of Admiral Kolchak, and repeatedly tried to seize American military and railway property, the protection of which was an important part of General Graves' task.  Sooner or later, these skirmishes should have led to something more serious.

US Army defends Irkutsk

The reality of the Russian Civil War was disappointing. Those forces and groupings ("White Movement"), on which the allies initially pinned their hopes, turned out to be obviously inadequate to the tasks and problems that had accumulated in Russia. The supreme ruler, Admiral Alexander Kolchak, came to power in Omsk during a military coup. Considered a formal "ruler", he was unable to maintain elementary order on the territory of Siberia, which led both to the atrocities of the variegated armed contingents of the "White Movement" and widespread armed resistance to his regime from the local population. The allies (including the Americans) were especially outraged by the behavior of the "Semenovites" - the armed contingents of Ataman Grigory Semyonov, who mainly hunted for ordinary robbery on the railroad (including the cargo of Admiral Kolchak himself).

In this situation, uprisings constantly took place against Kolchak, and not so much the uprisings of the "Reds" - the Bolsheviks and their sympathizers, as the local population, represented by peasant and consumer cooperative unions, the Socialist Revolutionary Party (SR).

In Irkutsk, the Social Revolutionaries were always the most popular, and since 1918 all key posts were occupied by the Social Revolutionaries: the governor of the province was P. D. Yakovlev, the mayor - A. N. Kruglikov, the chairman of the city council - P. V. Zitserman, the chairman of the Irkutsk zemstvo council - I. Kh. Petelin.

In early October 1919, the Autonomous Siberian Group of Socialist Revolutionaries was formed in Irkutsk. On October 22, a Socialist-Revolutionary party conference was held in Irkutsk, which spoke out for the immediate start of an armed struggle against the regime of A.V. Kolchak. The Social Revolutionaries took a course towards creating a "buffer" statehood based on a homogeneous socialist government with a center in Irkutsk (that is, an independent East Siberian state, neutral between "whites" and "reds").

On November 12, in Irkutsk, on the initiative of the local zemstvo council, the All-Siberian meeting of zemstvos and cities was opened. At the meeting, the Political Center was formed. The Social Revolutionaries made their main bet on agitation in the rear units of the Kolchak army.

On the night of December 21, the Socialist-Revolutionary action began in Cheremkhovo. Workers in the Cheremkhovsk mines traditionally sympathized with the socialists, and the rebel control over coal forced the Czechoslovakians to refrain from interfering. The 400-strong Cheremkhov railway battalion, led by Warrant Officer Khoroshy, joined the rebels. At the Zabituy station, 250 political prisoners transported from Krasnoyarsk were released from the train. At the same time, the power of the Political Center was established in Nizhneudinsk and Balagansk.

On December 23, the Social Revolutionaries performed in Krasnoyarsk. On December 24, in Nizhneudinsk, the Czechoslovakians, under the pretext of protecting from the rebels, took a train with the supreme ruler of Russia A.V. Kolchak under an actual secret arrest for two weeks.

On December 24, by order of the Political Center, Staff Captain N. S. Kalashnikov and V. P. Merkhalev led the performance in Glazkov of the 53rd Siberian Rifle Regiment, at the same time the Irkutsk local brigade took the floor. With the transition to the side of the rebels of the local brigade, the rich military warehouses of the Batareinaya station, which it guarded, turned out to be in their hands. The rebels became the People's Revolutionary Army, led by N. S. Kalashnikov. The insurgents also deployed workers' squads: one in Glazkov, out of 450 railway workers, the other in Znamenskoye suburb, out of 400 workers.

Ataman Grigory Semyonov, whom Admiral Alexander Kolchak promoted to lieutenant general on December 24, sent about 1000 people to Irkutsk from Verkhneudinsk, led by Major General L.N.Skipetrov. The Semyonovsk units arrived by rail to Irkutsk on December 30. The Semyonovites landed 600 people at the semaphore with 4 guns and 8 machine guns, and began an attack on Glazkov. The Whites managed to capture part of Glazkov to the railway station. However, the Czechoslovakians unexpectedly intervened in the matter, who demanded an immediate end to the battle and the withdrawal of troops to the Baikal station, threatening otherwise to use armed force. In confirmation of their intentions, the Czechoslovakians put forward the Orlik armored train, which in terms of armament and equipment was stronger than the three armored trains of the Semyonovites combined. Due to the impossibility of contacting the city and the small size of the detachment, L.N.Skipetrov had to withdraw his troops.

The protection of the section of the Trans-Siberian Railway from Verkhneudinsk to Irkutsk was carried out by two battalions of the 27th Regiment of the US Army under the command of Colonel Charles Morrow. They supported the Czechoslovak units in the disarmament and capture of the Semenov units at the Podorvikha stations (the 57th kilometer of the Circum-Baikal railway, now flooded by the Irkutsk reservoir), Marituy (120th kilometer of the Circum-Baikal railway), Slyudyanka and Posolskaya. At the station of the Posolskaya, the Semenovites attacked a platoon of the 27th regiment of the US Army under the command of Second Lieutenant Kendall, located there, but their attack was repulsed, and their parts were scattered.

At the Marituy station on January 9-10, 1920, the Czechoslovakians with the Orlik armored train, supported by the forces of the 27th regiment of the US Army, disarmed the so-called “wild division” of Ataman Semyonov, capturing about 1000 soldiers from its composition.

General Graves was on a personal assignment from President Wilson. With regard to Russia, Wilson's position was stated as follows: the evacuation of all foreign troops from the territory of Russia, the settlement of all issues affecting Russia in order to ensure its best and free cooperation with other countries of the world. Providing a guarantee of unhindered independent determination by Russia of its own political development and nationality policy.

The American Expeditionary Force left Siberia in March 1920. General Graves received the Distinguished Service Medal for his service in Siberia, the defense of the Trans-Siberian Railway from the encroachments of Semyonov and the defense of the insurgent Irkutsk from the impending bloody reprisals. He died in 1940, leaving a book of memoirs about his expedition to Siberia.