Allied Intervention From Russia’s Perspective: Modern-Day Interpretations

Abstract

ABSTRACTThe narrative of the foreign intervention in the Russian Civil War changed its meaning for the Soviet and post-Soviet Russian scholars and ideologues several times. Stalin put all the blame for starting Civil War on the intervention, with emphasis on the British leading role. During Cold War, Soviet propagandists highlighted the role of the US Expeditionary forces. In the 1990s the lifting of ideological control permitted new research of the Civil War and intervention written from multiple points of view to emerge. However, after 2000 increasingly anti-revolutionary and anti-Western policies of the Russian government facilitated the return of the early Soviet narrative into semi-official interpretations: The West again was to blame for igniting the Russian Revolution and Civil War. Nevertheless, contemporary Russia provides professional historians relatively more freedom than the USSR did. They continue scholarly research leading to a better understanding the Russian Civil War and the complexity of the domestic and foreign forces’ motives and actions.