Abstract
This article describes and analyses shifts in political preferences among Sevastopol workers during French intervention (November 1918 – May 1919). After outlining the social landscape of the city during the Russian Civil War, this paper focuses on the interactions between workers, foreign sailors and political parties. The aim of this article is to study the Bolshevisation of Sevastopol's working class based on the paths of several local workers. From the distribution of revolutionary leaflets to agitation in cafés, canteens, and factories, and many other illegal activities, what were the Bolsheviks' tactics to rally local workers to their cause?
Highlights
The French Intervention in “Southern Russia”1 [Юг России] (Russie méridionale in French sources), in 1918–1919 is still relatively underrepresented in the historiography of the final period of the First World War (Audoin-Rouzeau; Prochasson 2008)
We find a concentrated expression of the crisis of organised democracy in the memoirs of Ivan Semënov, a Left Socialist Revolutionary who cooperated closely with the Bolsheviks from the very end of the pre-war Era and made several journeys between Sevastopol and Moscow during the Civil War
We believe that the key problem of “organised democracy” in Sevastopol was the bureaucratic nature of some of the democratic tendencies in the workers’ movement, as described by Marc Ferro (Ferro 1997, 765, 768)
Summary
The French Intervention in “Southern Russia”1 [Юг России] (Russie méridionale in French sources), in 1918–1919 is still relatively underrepresented in the historiography of the final period (sortie de guerre) of the First World War (Audoin-Rouzeau; Prochasson 2008). This article introduces some new sources in French and Russian (sometimes duplicated in Ukrainian) It studies the interactions between the French intervention and the local revolutionary process from the point of view of local workers. The French government believed that the Bolsheviks were being backed by the Germans so as to reinforce German diplomacy after the defeat of 1918.3 They were aimed to protect French and Belgian business interests in the Donbass coal region, which controlled up to 82% of the capital in the mining and metallurgical industries (Бакулев 1955, 150; Зив 1917, 132), the commercial and logistical centre of Odessa, where Crédit Lyonnais had opened a first office in 1892 (Charon, Delmas and Le Goff 2012, 381) and the Nikolayev (Ukrainian Mykolaïv) shipyards.4 Both concerns were expressed publicly by Clemenceau in his interview with Associated Press published by Le Figaro on 10 February 1919 (“Inquiétudes de la France...” 1919, 1). It failed because of revolts among the French troops and the Navy, which reached their climax in April 1919, in the city of Sevastopol itself
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