Discussion of the Japanese intervention in the Far East and Siberia in the House of Commons of Great Britain on March 14, 1918 as an event of the British policy of intervention in Russia

Abstract

The subject of this study is the discussion on March 14, 1918 in the House of Commons of Great Britain of the Japanese intervention in the Far East and Siberia as the events of the British intervention in Russia. In this regard, the speeches of deputies from various political forces and a high-ranking official of the Military Cabinet of the United Kingdom in the lower house of parliament are disclosed and analyzed. Thanks to the content analysis method and the system method, not only the positions and arguments of the participants in the discussion are presented in detail, but also the connection of their speeches with the military-political and international situation that developed in March 1918 and which influenced the dynamics of the discussion is revealed. The scientific novelty is that for the first time in the historiography of the Civil War and foreign intervention in Russia, a meeting of the lower house of Great Britain on the Japanese intervention in the Far East and Siberia is considered in the context of the history of British intervention policy in Russia and the significance of this event for this policy. The main conclusions of the study are that, despite the lack of a unified position in the House of Commons on the issue of Japanese intervention in the Far East and Siberia, the War Cabinet has caught the trend in favor of Japanese intervention in these Russian regions. As a result, he cautiously began to build a policy of intervention against Russia and to determine the place of Japanese intervention in it. Only large-scale events could force the House of Commons to adopt the policy that the Cabinet considered necessary to pursue in the current circumstances.