Revolution and Intervention

In early 1918 the French government adopted the policy of unremitting hostility that characterized its early relations with the Soviet government. That policy brought about political, economic, and military intervention in the Russian Revolution, and the diverse motives behind that intervention emerge in this study.

When a population exasperated by the sufferings of war overthrew the tsarist government in early 1917, French interests- military, diplomatic, business, and financial - hoped that revolution could be turned back. But although the French government viewed with distaste the subsequent Bolshevik seizure of power, it did not reach its decision to intervene without internal debate or dissent. French stakes in Russia were high because of the long-standing Franco-Russian alliance and the heavy French investments there.

As World War I drew to a close in late 1918, the French government planned to send troops freed by the armistice to Russia to begin the task of reversing Soviet power. Events proved this undertaking too difficult for a war-weary French citizenry, who rather admired the government of the Soviets and who had seen more than enough sacrifice. French troops sent to the Ukraine and Crimea were not willing men, and their commanders were unable to rally the local population to fight the Bolsheviks. In April 1919 the last French troops were withdrawn from the Crimea as mutiny swept the French fleet in the Black Sea. Still not prepared to reconcile itself to Soviet Russia, the French developed the policy of a cordon sanitaire to contain the revolutionary expansion of Bolshevism until, they hoped, the Russian people would come to their senses and overthrow the Soviet regime.

This book, the first to concentrate on French involvement in the Russian Revolution, is based on an intensive use of French archival sources, closed until recently. It is unique in its examination of the economic motivations behind intervention and provides new insights into France's relations with its allies.