For Them the War Was Not Over

As the guns fell silent of the Western Front on 11 November 1918, and thousands of men were looking forward to their demobilisation, civil war still raged in Russia. For the Allied forces in Russia, the war was not over and they faced an implacable foe, as Leon Trotsky energetically reorganised the rabble of revolutionaries into an effective fighting force – the Red Army. The White Russian Army, in support of the Tsar, was still fighting the Bolsheviks, especially in the north of Russia, and the Royal Navy sent a squadron of ships in support with British troops fighting against the Bolsheviks on land. The Russian towns of Murmansk and Archangel became British enclaves as our soldiers and sailors fought a valiant but doomed war against the Bolsheviks for, despite the intervention of the many Allied forces in various parts of Russia and regardless of the efforts of the various White armies, the Bolsheviks were victorious on all fronts when the civil war was over in 1922. In this captivating history, Michael Wilson tells the story of the Royal Navy’s part in this little-known war.