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 Five continued from “….left the government little choice but to withdraw or reopen these “painful divisions within the Dominion”
Borden’s Union government found itself in a political quagmire. His coalition cabinet was united in its commitment to military action in Siberia while the war with Germany persisted, but this solidarity broke down almost immediately after the armistice. Sir Thomas White, the acting prime minister while Borden was in London, faced mounting internal divisions within caucus. The threat to the Union government was heightened with the awareness that most of the opposition to continued Siberian intervention was polarized around ex-Liberals, especially the powerful Minister of Agriculture T.A. Crerar. Crerar, like the others, had supported the dispatch of troops in the beginning, but reversed his support and demanded that the Canadian soldiers in the Far East be recalled since “the whole situation had been transformed by the collapse of the Central Powers.” White eventually acquiesced to this point of view, recognizing the burgeoning public and political discontent “in favour of getting all our men home and at work as soon as possible,” and he informed Borden that:
Official advices to the Militia Department from Vladivostock state that all military reason for allied military intervention is gone and that the matter is one of purely political expediency. There is a good deal of feeling in labour and other quarters here against our continued participation and my personal view is that a serious political situation may arise later unless some definitive statement can be made as to the return of the expedition within a reasonable time.
His underlying message was echoed by the Chief of the Canadian General Staff in a communiqué to the War Office: the Canadian people were “war-weary, nervous, [and] irritable.” (37) Apart from Borden, no cabinet minister appeared to believe that post-Armistice intervention in Russia could derive sufficient benefits to justify participation. This consideration was especially acute given that reinforcements for the Siberian brigade, if required, would have to be drafted from conscripts due to a shortage of volunteers.(38)
Canada’s role in the First World War and her 60,000 dead had earned her the right to send a delegation to the Paris Peace Conference. Borden saw this all-important gathering of world powers as an opportunity to deal with the question of the Russian civil war in a peaceful manner keeping with his decision to disengage the Canadian military from action. During late January and February of 1919, Borden strongly advocated that a conference be convened between all of the rival Russian factions to negotiate a peace. To this request:
The Bolsheviks had sent a temporizing reply. The White Russians, despite the weaknesses inherent in their situation, took advantage of Allied differences to reject indignantly a proposal that would have had them sit down at the same table as the communists. The failure of the “Prinkipo Proposal” so called after the Island in the Black Sea where the meeting was to take place was the final factor in convincing Borden that no further purpose would be served by leaving Canadians in Siberia.(39)
International, domestic and government settings left Borden with little choice. Although it remains unclear when Borden announced that Canada troops would be withdrawn, by late January 1919 Lloyd George was informed that Canada was officially deviating from Britain’s interventionist policy. His proposal for a Russian peace conference allowed him to announce the withdrawal as though it were a manifestation of his faith in the course of action he was advocating at Paris. Despite the vigorous appeals of Winston Churchill, then Secretary of War, to keep the Canadian troops in Siberia, Borden would not reconsider. As soon as spring freed Vladivostok harbour from the icy grasp of winter and opened the port for navigation, the first of the four thousand Canadian troops in Siberia departed for Canada. By 5 June 1919 the last Canadian troops loaded onto ships to return home across the Pacific.(40)
Borden had expressed his belief that a Canadian military presence in Siberia was a prerequisite to establishing an economic foothold. With the withdrawal of the expeditionary force the Canadian Economic Commission to Siberia soon ended. The Canadian business community had already become disillusioned with the prospect of exporting to Siberia. The true, chaotic state of affairs in the region did not lend itself towards healthy business. Both the commissioners and the government recognized that their plans had been over-ambitious, primarily hindered by the situation on the railway, and all (except Wilgress) were withdrawn by Easter, 1919. As the Communists gathered strength during the year, and the White Russian forces began to collapse, “a general exodus” of the remaining foreigners in Siberia began. The Canadian and British Governments joined to entrust Siberian trade with a new company, the Siberian Supply Company, but this proved a futile effort. By October, the Royal Bank of Canada (who had opened a branch in Vladivostok in March, 1919) pulled out and the Canadian Department of Trade and Commerce office closed its doors almost immediately thereafter.(41) The Canadian economic dream for Siberia was dead.
George Stanley, one of Canada’s most celebrated military historians, concluded that “as far as Canada was concerned, both the people and the government were disposed to look upon the whole Russia venture as a political blunder and a military mistake.”(42) For all intents and purposes this analysis has stood the test of time. However, the net result of the campaign and the subsequent withdrawal of Canadian troops may have had important, if not symbolic, connotations for the course of Canadian foreign policy in the postwar world. Blending many strands of external policy (including the desire to participate more fully in military strategy and to exercise direct control of Canadian troops, the drive to expand Canadian overseas markets, the desire or willingness to follow the American agenda against British pressures, and grappling with the problem of Bolshevik Russia),(43) intervention testified in many ways to Canada’s growth in confidence and importance during the Great War.
To historian Gaddis Smith, the military retraction from Siberia against the appeals of Britain represented:
the initial episode in Canada’s struggle for complete control of her foreign policy after World War I. As such it illustrates the changing relationship within the British Empire more realistically than the scores of constitutional documents that the Commonwealth statesmen self-consciously drafted between 1917 and 1931. [It also serves] as an example of the interplay of Canada, the United States and Great Britain the famous “North Atlantic Triangle” at work in an unaccustomed corner of the world.(44)
To see Canada in a “linch pin” role during the latter part of the debate over Siberian intervention is to overstate the case. The Americans, after all, did not distinguish between the British and Canadian positions vis-à-vis Russian and Siberian intervention; nor did they perceive imperial and dominion positions to be different during the Paris Peace Conference.(45) However, the Canadian decision to follow American policy direction in Siberia over the British course of action represented an important development. Borden made it clear that imperial policy conflicting with the United States would no longer have the unconditional approval of Canada. The northern dominion was increasingly moving from colonial status to that of a nation; time would tell if the orientation of that nation was to be more British or North American.
From a military standpoint, the Siberian expedition also represented Canada’s growth on the world stage. As C.P. Stacey explained, the command structure for the Siberian force provided the first occurrence where:
a Canadian officer commanded a joint Commonwealth force. Perhaps this was not enormously important; it would have been more so had the force gone into action. It was important that the Canadian government insisted on maintaining control of the employment of its own troops and specified that they should not be sent into the interior without its previous consent. The Canadian Siberian contingent was under firmer national control than any other Canadian force that served abroad during the First World War. Four years of bloody battles had left the Dominion government more sophisticated, more confident and more assertive than it had ever been before. The Siberian affair prefigures much of the tone of Canadian policy in the years ahead.(46)
Canadian authorities were not entirely satisfied with the level of military control Elmsley had been granted. Regardless, a Canadian officer in command of a ‘British’ force was a forward step for the Dominion.
ENDNOTES
37. White to Borden, 25 November 1918, quoted in Stacey, 284; White to Borden, 7 December 1918, Department of External Affairs, Documents on Canadian External Relations, vol. 3 (1919-1925), 57; Chief of General Staff to War Office, 4 December 1918, Department of External Affairs, Documents on Canadian External Relations, vol. 3 (1919-1925), 56; Stacey, 284.
38. MacLaren, 156; Bothwell, 31.
39. MacLaren, 192. Gaddis Smith deemed that the Prinkipo proposal was an “unrealistic suggestion” based on an “imperfect knowledge of conditions in Russia.” This judgment appears correct, although he rightly added that “it seemed a good way out of an uncomfortable spot not only for Canada but for the greater powers.” Lloyd George welcomed the proposal and made it the basis of a formal proposal to the American, French, Italian and Japanese delegations at the conference. He also called on Borden to act as chief British delegate at the proposed conference, although it was never held. Smith, “Canada and the Siberian Intervention,” 875.
40. By the Fall of 1919, the British contingent was withdrawn, having lost the support of the Canadians and without the possibility of reinforcements. The last American troops departed on 1 April 1920, leaving Siberia to the Russians and Japanese. The last Japanese troops did not leave the northern half of Sakhalin Island until 1925, thus ending the Allied intervention. Smith, “Canada and the Siberian Intervention,” 875; Extract from the Minutes of Imperial War Cabinet, 23 December 1918, Department of External Affairs, Documents on Canadian External Relations, vol. 3 (1919-1925), 58.
41. Wilgress, 368-269.
42. Stanley, 336.
43. Smith, “External Affairs,” 54.
44. Smith, “Canada and the Siberian Intervention,” 866.
45. See George A. Brinkley, The Volunteer Army and Allied Intervention in South Russia, 1917-1921(Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1966) and David S. Fogleson, America’s Secret War Against Bolshevism: U.S. Intervention in the Russian Civil War, 1917-1920 (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1995) for American perspectives on intervention; neither distinguish between the British and the Canadian players.
46. Stacey, 283.
Continue reading CANADIAN FOREIGN POLICY AND SIBERIAN INTERVENTION, 1918-19 page 1, page 2, page 3, page 4, page 5, page 6, Appendix A, Appendix B, Bibliography