A Genuine Distaste for Communism

An interesting article at by Richard M. Langworth at the Churchill Centre, on Churchill and the Baltics:

Winston S. Churchill played a varied and crucial role in the bittersweet Baltic story. Ostensibly, after World War I, he was opposed to small national movements among the peoples of Europe. "What was needed," he wrote, "was federation and larger groupings." But a far more important objective, in his view, was to rid the world of Lenin, and he easily warmed to what he called "the foul baboonery of Bolshevism." On 31 December 1918, Churchill urged Allied intervention upon the Imperial War Cabinet: "Bolshevism in Russia represents a mere fraction of the population, and would be exposed and swept away by a general election held under Allied auspices."

The Prime Minister, David Lloyd George, viewed Churchill's antipathies with a jaundiced eye. Winston, Lloyd George wrote, "had no doubt

a genuine distaste for Communism. He was horrified, as we all were, at the savage murder of the Czar, the Czarina and their helpless children. His ducal blood revolted against the wholesale elimination of Grand Dukes in Russia. [I believed] that under the impulse of this brilliant Minister, we were gradually being drawn into war with Russia.'

Yet Great Britain had been the first nation to take a practical interest in the independence struggle of the Baltic peoples, which began in the wake of the Russian collapse and revolution of 1917. British statesmen had realized that Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania had advanced sufficiently to form independent nations, controlling their own destinies. All three Baltic States had declared independence by the end of 1918.

At the same time, if the Bolsheviks were to be overthrown, Britain looked to a Russian republic with its prewar boundaries intact. Foreign secretary Lord Balfour thus took a middle course, extending defacto, but not dejure, recognition to Estonia on 3 May 1918, and to Latvia on Armistice Day, 11 November.

Independence and recognition were not, however, won without bloodshed, nor without Allied military intervention. Churchill, writing later, gave a sympathetic view toward the struggles of the small countries. "Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania

found themselves in a peculiarly unhappy position. They were close neighbours on the East to Petrograd and Kronstadt, the nurseries of Bolshevism; on the West to the birthplace and stamping-ground of those Prussian landowners who had proved themselves to be the most rigid element in the German system and one of the most formidable. During the winter of 1918 and the early summer of 1919 the Baltic States were subjected alternately to the rigours of Prussian and Bolshevik domination .. . In these circumstances it is not surprising that the independence of Esthonia, Latvia and Lithuania existed for the time being only in the aspirations of their inhabitants and the sympathies of allied and associated Powers."

In order to support the three republics, or at least keep them out of Lenin's bloody grasp, the Allies used German troops as a surrogate army. Under the terms of the Armistice, the Germans were to withdraw gradually, leaving the republics to set up their governments. Britain also lent sea power through operation "Red Trek," a naval squadron under Rear-Admiral Alexander Sinclair. In December 1918, Sinclair sallied into Estonian and Latvian ports, sending in troops and supplies, and promising to attack the Bolsheviks "as far as my guns can reach." Latvian prime minister Karlis Ulmanis, a patriot returned from exile (he had studied agriculture in the United States), sent the first of many appeals for support to London on 3 December.

The account and analysis are fascinating, and well worth a read.

(via Leopoldo)