‘Trotskii's Consul’: Peter Simonoff's Account of His Years as Soviet Representative in Australia (1918–21)

Abstract

In the months and years immediately following the Bolshevik seizure of power, relations between the new Soviet state and Great Britain, and therefore Australia, were marked by a level of hostility not seen since the Crimean War of 1854–56. Indeed, during part of this period Britain and Soviet Russia were engaged in an undeclared war, to which Australia made its contribution in the form of troops in the British intervention force in the north, and naval support in the south; the destroyer HMAS Swan visited Kerch and Mariupol in December 1918, in support of the White armies in the region. Diplomatic relations were subject to great strain: in August 1918, Captain Francis Cromie, hero of the Royal Navy’s submarine fleet and British Naval Attache, perished — revolver in hand — when Bolshevik troops stormed the British Embassy in Petrograd. For some