The World Reacts
Excerpt from The Soviet Civil War by Joshua Reddings
From the very start of the war the West was strongly on the side of the CNS. A mere 5 days after the August Revolution President Knowland promised “We stand with the anti-Soviet Russians and promise to provide them with anything they need. At long last our crusade against Soviet Communism is nearing its end, and we shall see it through to the finish.” Congress quickly passed the Jackson-Goldwater Act[1], more commonly known as the Second Lend-Lease. Like the First Lend-Lease this act allowed America to send war materials and weapons to the CNS. The biggest problem with the Second Lend-Lease was that the aid didn’t come fast enough. It took until August of 1968 for the program to reach its full effect, which meant that the rebels were outmatched in early battles such as the Moscow Offensive. Knowland would later call the Second Lend-Lease’s failure to get up and running quickly “the greatest failure of my Presidency.”
More important than weapons was food. Unfortunately for the rebels most of the agricultural land in the Soviet Union was in the hands of the regime, which meant that the rebels didn’t have nearly enough food to supply all of their people. The situation was so bad that for the first year or so of the war famine, not the Soviets, was the main concern of the CNS. As Kashnikov put it “The people may want freedom in their hearts, but when you get down to it they’ll always listen to their stomachs.” Luckily the Americans had plenty of food they could export. One of the American’s biggest food exports was a crop that most Russians didn’t eat: corn. Corn production had never really taken off in the Soviet Union[2], but in the American Midwest corn was a huge crop. Corn quickly established itself in the Russian diet, to the point where in some areas corn beer replaced vodka as the drink of choice (at least for the duration of the war).
Of course, the Americans weren’t the only country to aid the rebels. Many European nations also contributed to the war effort. In fact, rebel forces preferred the French FN FAL over the American M16, which had a tendency to jam. Even the Chinese sent a limited amount of aid, less out of an interest in democracy and more to get back at the Soviets for the Sino-Soviet War. But the nation which intervened the most in the conflict, oddly enough, was Romania. Although one might think this was done as payback for what had happened under the Iron Curtain it was in fact carried out because of Moldova. There was a strong irredentist movement in Romania that wanted to retake Moldova, much of which had been part of Romania before the Soviets seized it in 1940. Many Moldovans also wanted to rejoin Romania, with a pan-Romanian movement becoming very popular after the August Revolution. While Romania never declared war on the Soviet Union it allowed many Romanians to join the Moldovan National Army. By the war’s end a good 15% of the MNA’s forces were Romanian volunteers.
Excerpt from The White Emigres by Marlene Laruelle
For the White Émigré community, the August Revolution gave a newfound hope. For many this was simply a chance to return home. As Alexander Kerensky put it “My one wish is to be buried on Russian soil.” For others, mostly on the younger end of the spectrum, it was a call to arms against the Soviet regime. Perhaps the most famous of these groups was the National Alliance of Russian Solidarists (NTS). The NTS had been founded before World War II with the goal of starting a revolution to overthrow the Soviet Union. After the August Revolution the group relocated from Frankfurt to St. Petersburg, and began trying to build their party into a political force. While this effort largely failed the NTS was able to influence the direction of a number of small Russian political parties, the most notable of which was the far-right Svoboda. The NTS was also able to organize a small band of emigres (around 500 men) into a military unit, which would end up serving in Latvia. All in all however the Whites’ contribution to the rebels’ military effort was minimal.
Excerpt from The Refugee Crisis by Abraham Voloda
The Soviet Civil War would displace 40-50 million people. Of these roughly 8 million would flee abroad, creating the largest refugee crisis Europe had seen since the end of World War II. The majority of the refugees came from western or southern Russia, the Baltic States, Ukraine, and Belarus. The most common route to Europe was either overland or crossing the Baltic and Black Seas in small boats (many of which sank). The nations of Eastern Europe would end up playing host to most of these refugees. Unsurprisingly the refugees were quite unwelcome, given the history between Russia and Eastern Europe, as well as the fact that most of Eastern Europe was still rebuilding from their independence wars against the Soviets. Nowhere was this truer than in Poland, which saw around 3 million refugees pass through it. In November 1967 the Polish government passed a law restricting refugees to specially built camps, and giving criminal penalties for those who tried to settle in Polish cities. While these were nowhere near the death camps that Russian nationalists would later portray them to be, conditions in the camps were poor. There was severe overcrowding, and since there wasn’t a lot to do or ways to make money crime was endemic. Men in the camps were also investigated to see if they had served in Poland during the Soviet occupation. Those who had were classified as war criminals and sent to prison, and sloppy investigations meant that many were wrongfully imprisoned. But even in these harsh conditions refugees kept coming, and by October 1968 there were 2.5 million refugees in Poland. To reduce these numbers, the Polish government disbanded several of the larger camps and ordered 700,000 refugees to leave the country. Many fled to Germany, greatly increasing Polish-German tensions.
At the beginning of 1969 the European countries met in Schengen, Luxembourg to discuss refugee policy. By this point the refugees had flooded Eastern Europe, and those countries demanded that Western Europe take around 3.5 million refugees. After some negotiation it was agreed that Western Europe would take around 2.5 million refugees, a compromise that left no one happy. However, problems soon emerged. First, the regime of Francisco Franco in Spain refused to accept any refugees, and the Swiss soon followed suit. The Schengen Agreement quickly fell apart, leaving Eastern Europe with millions of refugees and little way to support them. The rise of the far-right in Eastern Europe can be directly traced back to the refugee crisis.
[1] Named after Senators Henry "Scoop" Jackson and Barry Goldwater
[2] Corn production in Russia really took off under Khrushchev (who was obsessed with the crop). With Khrushchev having been purged there's no one to advocate for corn.
