WHY SIBERIA?
CANADIAN FOREIGN POLICY AND SIBERIAN INTERVENTION, 1918-19
P. Whitney Lackenbauer, University of Waterloo
©April 1998 published on Canadian Military Heritage Project with author’s permission
Page Two continued from “Canada’s prestige would be heightened and the Canadian Expeditionary Force would, in Borden’s eyes, increase Canadian power within the machinery of the Empire…..”
Another key factor behind Canadian intervention was economic interest in Siberia. Borden announced his belief that, while other nations would make determined efforts to obtain a foothold in the region, Canada’s “interposition with a small military force would tend to bring Canada into favourable notice by the strongest elements” in Siberia and place it in an advantageous position for future relations.(13) The prime minister’s vision of Siberian trade struck a chord that was already popular within Canadian industrial circles and amongst government officials (who had previously sought ways to open up Siberia to Canadian exporters and dispatched two trade commissioners to Russia in 1915 with this aim).(14) His pragmatic considerations of trade and development in Siberia made his political move salable to the public. His economic aspirations were also consistent with British policy; it was the British consul in Vladivostok who first suggested the appointment of a Canadian trade mission.(15)
Several historians have stressed that Canadian involvement was based upon an anti-Bolshevik, ideological impetus. Raymond Davies, in his Canada and Russia: Neighbours and Friends(1944), noted that the Canadian public (except for the small internationalist socialist groups) was bewildered by developments in Russia in 1917 and 1918. Although most Canadians did not actively oppose the revolution, “powerful voices” bellowed against the Marxist nationalization measures including Toronto’s Evening Telegram and the Catholic Church in Quebec. Despite the official reasons given for the dispatch of the Canadian Expeditionary Force to Russia, Davies argued, the political impetus was to crush the “Bolsheviki.”(16) Tim Buck, the chairman of the Communist Party of Canada at the time he wrote his account of the intervention, also described an anti-Bolshevik agenda and saw the Canadian initiative in Siberia as a calculated imperialist move. He argued that demands for official explanations revealed two important facts:
The first was that the British High Command, without reference to the Canadian government or even to the commander-in-chief of the Canadian forces overseas, had diverted Canadian troops to its counter-revolutionary invasion of Soviet Russia. There was a wave of public protest against that. The protests were still being made when the pressure upon the Canadian government brought out the second important fact, which was worse than the first. The second revelation was that the Government of Canada had entered into an arrangement with the British government to send a Canadian military force of five thousand men to Vladivostok to be part of the United States Army there which, along with the Japanese Army, had launched a counter-revolutionary invasion of Soviet Russia from the East, in an attempt to conquer Siberia.(17)
The anti-Bolshevik, imperialist agenda that Davies and Buck have attributed to Borden is misleading. As Robert Bothwell noted in his article on the intervention, Borden was more concerned that Siberia would fall under the domination of another foreign power (Germany, Japan or the United States) than he was with Bolshevik ideology or the threat Bolshevism posed for international relations.(18)
Military considerations, a deep loyalty to Britain, political pragmatism, and economic reasons appeared paramount to ideological concerns in the government’s decision to intervene in Siberia. When the War Cabinet, attended by the dominion prime ministers (including Borden), approved intervention on 22 July 1918, Borden was already poised for action. Six days later he had conferred with his minister of militia and defence (Sydney Mewburn) and received cabinet approval “in principle” for participation. On 7 August he telegraphed Ottawa, ordering that troops be dispatched for Siberia as soon as possible. In October 1918, an infantry brigade, a cavalry squadron of the Royal North West Mounted Police, a field battery, and other supporting troops (totaling about 4000 men, including conscripts) embarked for Vladivostok under the command of Canadian officer Major-General J.H. Elmsley (freshly promoted for the campaign to give him more status in international councils).(19)
Concomitant Canada’s military commitment, several steps were taken on a diplomatic level to establish economic ties with Siberia. In October 1918, a four-man Canadian trade commission (the Canadian Economic Commission) was established under the Department of Trade and Commerce to function at Vladivostok.(20) Charged with investigating various facets of the Siberian economy (agricultural, mining, forestry and fishing) to determine commodity needs that could be met by Canadian imports, the Canadian Economic Commission also took upon itself to assume the attributes of a trading corporation and to promote Canada to the Siberian populace.(21)
ENDNOTES
13. Borden to Mewburn, 13 August 1918, Borden Papers, OC 518, quoted in Smith, “Canada and the Siberian Intervention,” 870. The strongest proponent of the idea that economic considerations were foremost in Borden’s mind was Aloysius Balawyder. See Chapter 1, “Trade and Canada’s Intervention,” in his Canadian-Soviet Relations Between the World Wars.
14. Smith, “Canada and the Siberian Intervention,” 871.
15. Robert N. Murby, “Canadian Economic Commission to Siberia, 1918-1919,” Canadian Slavonic Papers, 11, 3 (1969), 375. Murby explained that the possibility for Allied trade with Siberia was not possible in the pre-war period because the Germans had a near monopoly in the region. German economic influence in the region declined because of the war and the subsequent ‘trade vacuum’ attracted attention in Canada, the United States, Britain, and Japan.
16. Raymond Arthur Davies, Canada and Russia: Neighbors and Friends (Toronto: Progress Books, 1944), 53-54, 56-57.
17. Buck, 43.
18. Bothwell, 27.
19. P.C. 1983 (12 August 1918) authorized the mobilization of a force consisting of the following units: headquarters, one field battery, one field company of engineers, one signal section of engineers, two infantry battalions, one machine gun company, one field ambulance, one Army Service Corps unit (transport and supply), and one ammunition column for battery and small arm ammunition. P.C. 2073 (23 August 1918) and P.C. 2151 (5 September 1918) added: one cavalry squadron (furnished by the RNWMP), one stationary hospital, one sanitary section, one remount depot, two depot units of supply, one bakery section, one butchery squad, half an ordnance company, one pay office, one postal detachment, one general base depot, one base guard, and a Mobile Veterinary Section. Canada, Department of External Affairs, Documents on Canadian External Relations, vol. 1 (1909-1918) (Ottawa: Queen’s Printer, 1967), 207-209. Bothwell, 27; Stanley, 335; Stacey, 278. The dates cited in the text of this paper appear subject to some confusion. In his memoirs, Borden said that he discussed the Canadian contingent for the Siberian expedition on 27 July 1918. Robert L. Borden, Memoirs, volume II (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1969), 146.
20. The commission was eventually composed of: a transportation man, an agricultural expert, a mining specialist, a financial expert, two direct government representatives (W.D. Wilgress, already installed as Trade Commissioner at Vladivostok, and C.F. Just, former Trade Commissioner at Petrograd), and one military official (Colonel J.S. Dennis, acting liaison officer for the CEF, Siberia). The British explicitly welcomed the creation of this commission. P.C. 2595 (21 October 1918), Department of External Affairs, Documents on Canadian External Relations, vol. 1 (1909-1918), 211-213; Stacey, 278.
21. Murby, 377-379, 381.
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