CHURCHILL’S ABANDONED PRISONERS THE BRITISH SOLDIERS DECEIVED IN THE RUSSIAN CIVIL WAR, By Ayse Dietrich^*, Published by: Casemate Publishers, UK. Written by Rupert Wieloch, Year of Publishing: 2019. Subject Area: Russian History, Civil War,  Book Type: History. Total Number of Pages: 258. ISBN: 9781612007533, $32.95 (Hardcover).

When the Bolsheviks decided to withdraw from World War I and signed the Brest-Litovsk Treaty with Germany, the British government realized that all British military material in Russia would be taken by the Bolsheviks and Germany would gain access to Russian coastal waters. As a result, the Allied forces decided to intervene to stop German advance. 300 British troops were sent by the British government to Lithuania, Murmansk, Vladivostok, Archangel and to the south Caucasus after World War I to prevent German forces from accessing Russian coasts, to protect the war material from capture by the Germans and to support the Whites in order to defeat the Bolsheviks. It was not until 1920 that all the British troops were evacuated from Russia.

This book is about 15 British captives held by the Bolsheviks during the Russian Civil War. The Allies’ effort to defeat the Central Powers was complicated by the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, and it was this factor more than ideological differences with the Bolsheviks that led the Allies to send American, French, British, Italian, Czech, Greek and Japanese troops to various sites across Russia. These troops were supposed to assist the ‘White Russian’, anti-Bolshevik forces, but the Allies were worried about becoming entangled in a Russian civil war after more than three years of bloody, inconclusive fighting in western Europe. The result was that the number of soldiers sent to Russia was sufficient for a respectable ‘show of force’ demonstrating Allied concerns about Russia’ future, but insufficient to tip the Russian Civil War in the ‘Whites’ favor.

One man who became a part of this Allied effort was an American engineer of Scottish background, Emerson MacMillan. Emerson went to England, joined the British army in 1918, and was commissioned as an officer. Emerson would see service with the only two British units in the Far East, the “Tigers and the “Diehards”. The book depicts the events and intense combat that took place along the Trans-Siberian Railroad over the course of one-and-a-half years until the Red Army’s victory. In addition to events on the fields of battle, the book also includes information on the Red Cross’ humanitarian efforts in Russia, the problems that commander of the American Expeditionary Force encountered, and the problematic relations among the Allies in Russia.

The narrative returns to Emerson and his men who were tasked in November 1919 with the evacuation of refugees from Omsk. After successfully evacuating thousands of refugees, they took the last train out of Omsk before its fall to the Bolsheviks, but were eventually taken prisoner in Krasnoyarsk.

Held incommunicado, MacMillan and his men were held in atrocious conditions; two of them contracted typhus and died. When secret negotiations between the British government and the Bolsheviks aimed at freeing the British detainees broke down, the men became a political embarrassment for the British. The prisoners were eventually moved 3500 miles west to Moscow where they were incarcerated, until their release was negotiated in 1920.

With tensions between Russia and the West increasing today in a number of arenas across the globe, understanding the roots of the today’s contentious relationship between the two sides is important. This book contributes to this goal by highlighting little-known events that helped to formulate Russian distrust of the West, an attitude that influenced developments in World War two and continues to influence Russian attitudes even today. In addition to being a rousing account of resilience and courage under the most trying circumstances, this book also provides detailed information about the experience of British prisoners of war during the Russian Civil War, making it an invaluable source for military historians in particular, and anyone researching the events of the Russian Civil War.