РЕАКЦИЯ В ПРАВИТЕЛЬСТВЕ И ПАРЛАМЕНТЕ ВЕЛИКОБРИТАНИИ НА СОВЕТСКО-ЭСТОНСКИЕ МИРНЫЕ ПЕРЕГОВОРЫ В 1919–1920 ГГ.

Abstract

The article focuses on the contradictions in the British regarding the continuation of military operations against the Soviet Republic at the end of 1919 and the participation of Estonia in the White struggle. Documents of British archives, and transcripts of proceedings of Parliament shows that after a series of military setbacks of the White forces, and the failure of formation with the direct pressure from the British military advisers of the government of the North-West Russia to create anti-Bolshevik coalition under the political control of the British commissioners in the Baltic countries, the mood in Parliament and the War Cabinet of Britain has changed. Speeches of liberal members of Parliament at the meetings of 1919-1920, note that the issue of concluding a Bolshevik-Estonian peace Treaty has become positively evaluated in wide circles of British society. Criticism of the «militarism» of the government became particularly acute after the peace of Tartu in January 1920, and the firmness of the Estonian government, which had making peace, was welcomed by a number of deputies. Minutes of meetings of the British Imperial War Cabinet and documents of the War Council also shows a shift from the policy of active involvement of the Baltic countries in the anti-Bolshevik struggle to recognition of the failure of this struggle and the impossibility of its revival by spending the financial and material resources, which were strongly necessary to solve other problems that arose in the British government after the end of the First world war.