Britain’s military stirs into action to assess the growing threat from Bolshevik Russia

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/past-six-days/2018-01-27/register/britains-military-stirs-into-action-to-assess-the-growing-threat-from-bolshevik-russia-d36nd29m2

A risky train journey and reconnaissance expeditions to protect British interests were the starting point for operations against the Bolsheviks

Tsarist General Polovtsov had a huge price on his head and there was a mandatory death sentence for anyone aiding him

As the ministers of Lloyd George’s coalition cabinet gathered to review the progress of the war in January 1918, only memory of their pre-Christmas present of Allenby’s capture of Jerusalem from the Turks brightened a face or two. On the Eastern Front, the myth that Russia could fight a war and manage a revolution simultaneously, optimistically reported by the military attaché in Moscow, had exploded.
Having requested an armistice, the Bolshevik leaders were meeting the Germans at Brest-Litovsk to hammer out a peace agreement. News of the Russian delegation’s plea for a pause in negotiations raised hopes of a stiffening of its position, but only briefly because a German threat to resume their advance generated fresh anxiety round the cabinet table. The possibility of a thrust southwards towards the Caucasus and the Baku oilfields had critical strategic implications. If Baku oil fell into German hands the war industries of the Ruhr could resume full production and the U-boat fleet, at the time restricted in operations, could launch a mass attack on Allied shipping.

The southern Caucasus was already giving cause for concern after the collapse of the Russian front on Turkey’s eastern frontier because, lured by promises of grants of land, the peasant soldiery had headed for home. A hastily cobbled together British plan to persuade the Armenians of the region to take up arms, partly in self-defence against their would-be Turkish persecutors and partly in the Allied cause, by replacing the Russians, showed no sign of maturing. This raised another concern, always lurking in the minds of several cabinet ministers, of a new threat to India through the gap the Russians had left into Afghanistan and beyond.
The Armenians were happy to take the roubles generously delivered by the British consul in Baku, Major Ranald MacDonell, but the taking up of arms was a different matter. The southern Caucasus was becoming increasingly dangerous as local districts or communities were declaring their independence to set up republics of their own. Then a Russian troop train was ambushed by Azerbaijanis, killing 1,000 soldiers and capturing 15,000 rifles and a vast quantity of ammunition. Major MacDonell was requested to make a comprehensive appreciation of the situation.
He received this message while in Tiflis, the old Russian administrative capital of the region, where he had been joined by Captain Edward Noel of the Indian Political Service with a reinforcement of roubles with which to bribe the Armenians. Having recognised that they were not going to arm and fight, the pair decided their only hope lay with the Bolsheviks whose government in St Petersburg was still, at least nominally, in alliance with Britain and France.

The local communists under the leadership of Stepan Shaumian, an Armenian who had left his people to embrace the revolution, exercised control from Baku to where MacDonell and Noel resolved to return, but trains were no longer getting through the chaotic countryside. At least not until the communists of Tiflis took the matter in hand and assembled seven trains loaded with passengers desperate to leave and, led by an armoured train with detachments of Bolshevik soldiers aboard each following train, set off to force their way through to Baku.

Locomotives in Baku, Azerbaijan, c 1910ALAMY

MacDonell hitched the single carriage remaining from his diplomatic three-coach train to the end of the last train in the hope of reaching Baku and the Caspian coast. The risks were great. Not only were there thousands of roubles brought by Noel from Persia concealed about the carriage, but they took as passengers two missionaries: the Rev and Mrs Jesse Yonan, who carried American passports.
Except these travellers were not the two missionaries, who it was supposed had died, but the Tsarist General Polovtsov and his wife. The general had been responsible for frustrating Lenin’s first attempted coup against the Kerensky government in July 1917 and the consequent brief return of the revolutionary leader to Finland. There was a huge price on the general’s head and a mandatory death sentence for anyone found to be aiding him.

Colonel Frederick Bailey’s mission took him to Tashkent in Russian Turkestan

MacDonell and Noel’s humanity in taking the pair in their carriage is remarkable testimony to their courage. Their journey to Baku was fraught with incident, the Bolshevik soldiers having to disembark and clear each station on the line to pass through, the trains were fired on by Azerbaijani would-be looters. A drunken Russian nobleman turned revolutionary, suspecting MacDonell and Noel of being imperialist agents — which is what they were — tried to pursue them by briefly reversing a train on the up-line.
Eventually the pair reached Baku and reported the situation in the Caucasus to London. They endured many further adventures before reaching safety themselves, MacDonell eventually becoming the 11th Lord MacDonell and 21st hereditary chief of the Glengarry clan.
After receiving MacDonell’s appreciation of the situation in the Caucasus, London authorised Delhi to mount expeditions to assess the threat to India from or through the region and a masterplan was devised. Three missions were mounted to investigate what might best be accomplished.
The largest was led by Major-General Lionel Dunsterville, a Russian-speaking officer with experience of the region. His immediate aim was to take over from MacDonell in Baku and he planned to travel through northern Persia with a group of about 400 officers and non-commissioned officers to train and advise any local force that could be assembled.
A second mission led by Major-General Wilfrid Malleson, a career intelligence officer, was ordered to make for the northern end of the cordon maintained by Britain along the eastern frontier of Persia. Accompanied by a handful of officers and NCOs, his task was to find out what was happening in the region of Meshed on the Russian border.
Finally, a third mission led by Colonel Frederick Bailey, a former Bengal Lancer, with just two other officers from the Indian Political Service, was to head for Tashkent in Russian Turkestan to report on the situation there.
In this way began Britain’s military interventions into Russia that were to lead to ambitious operations against the Bolsheviks in the years ahead.