Revolution

The Great War did not go well for Russia. Although possessing far superior numbers, its armies lacked good logistics, and were generally badly led. By the time the infrastructure of armaments, food, and clothing supplies were showing signs of improvement, the administration of the Tsarist government had collapsed. Of several political parties, one, the Bolshevik, succeeded in mounting a coup in Petrograd (the new westernized name for St Petersburg) and the October Revolution of 24-26 October 1917 changed the course of history. The autocratic monarchy was replaced by an idealistic but ruthless ruling class.

Brest-Litovsk

One of the Bolshevik policies had been, effectively, ‘peace at any price’. When it signed the Treaty of Brest Litovsk on 3 March 1918, Russia lost all the western provinces as, one after another, independent republics were formed (see map). The Bolshevik leader Vladimir I. Lenin, was forced to surrender territory as the price of peace — territory that Josef Stalin was to regain (Finland and Poland excepted) after World War II.

Siege and Counter-Attack

The agony was not yet over. In April 1918, a contingent of British troops had landed at Murmansk, at first in support of its Russian ally, but quickly becoming part of an international alliance of intervention whose objective was to destroy the threat of a communist Russian state. As the map shows, the intervention was widespread, encircling the besieged Bolsheviks with a ring of opposing forces that became known as The Whites, to distinguish them from the Bolshevik Reds. The British in the North, at Murmansk and Archangelsk, were joined by the troops and naval forces of many nations, both on land and in the Black Sea. Many Russians themselves, with their Slavic cousins in the Ukraine, Byelo-Russia, and Poland, took up arms in a bloody civil war. In the east, a makeshift army including Czech prisoners-of-war, under the leadership of Admiral Kolchak, actually set up a Government of West Siberia at Omsk on 1 July 1918, and changed its name to the All-Russian Government on 18 November 1918. On 8 August of that year, British and French troops landed at Vladivostok, to be joined by the Japanese on 12 August and the Americans on 15 August. By 6 September, the British and Japanese had reached Chita, in a westward march to outflank the Russians.

But the tide turned. Just as the British troops in the north, reinforced by White Russians, reached the shores of Lake Onega, posing a threat to Petrograd, the Red Army, under the direc­tion of Leon Trotsky, counter-attacked in the east on 28 April 1919, repulsing the Czechs, who had reached the Volga at Samara. In October, the Red Army went on to the offensive against General Denikin in the Ukraine and against General Yudenich on the Baltic front. During the next year, the Bolshevik forces steadily re-occupied the lost territories, meeting, however, stiff resistance from the Poles, who won a great victory under General Pilsudski, with considerable losses on the Russian side. But by the end of 1920, it was all over. The White forces under General Wrangel evacuated southern Russia, and the Peace of Riga on 18 March 1921 ended the war with Poland.

Lost Opportunity

One of the casualties in the terrible conflict had been the dismemberment of the Escadra vozduzhnykh korablei E. V.K. (see page 10), and the destruction of many of the Il’ya Muromets aircraft. A few were assembled near Moscow and in spring 1920, were sent to the western and southern fronts. The Russo-Baltic Works ceased production. Igor Sikorsky him­self was on the wrong side, and, like thousands of other educated technicians and scholars, he fled to the West, arriving in New York on 30 March 1919.