RUSSIA. (Hansard, 25 March 1919)

§ Mr. CHURCHILL

It is a very large topic to open up at this very late hour of the night, and if my hon. and gallant Friend were to persist in his request that I should enter upon the grave and general question of policy to which he has referred—a question which undoubtedly stands in order of prime importance so far as our affairs on the Continent of Europe are concerned—I should certainly feel it my duty to decline to open up that topic at such an hour, and in a Debate necessarily so limited. When my hon. and gallant Friend asks for information about the actual operations on the different fronts where fighting is in progress on the vast frontiers of Russia, I am quite ready to supplement to some extent what I said to the House in introducing the Army Estimates. If we take the different theatres in order, we begin with the far north, Murmansk and Archangel. There my hon. and gallant Friend said that the situation was very serious, and that serious fighting had taken place. That is not so. Very little fighting has been taking place, and, as I mentioned at Question Time to-day, the number killed at Archangel since the beginning of this year has been less than 369 one in 300 of the troops employed, and in Murmansk less than one in 500 of the troops employed. These are figures which compare, I believe, favourably with the death rate which we are experiencing here during the influenza epidemic. I do not think a hundred persons have been killed. On the other hand, the war is of a very sombre character. The natural conditions are very cruel and hard on the troops. The whole country is bedded in snow of great depth, sometimes thawed, sometimes frozen, intersected by streams and lakes subject to climatic changes which greatly affect the actual position. From this wilderness of snow arise dark pine forests, and in these forests are blockhouses which, linked together and joined on tactical principles, enable us to hold an immense front with the greatest possible economy of force. These blockhouses, placed in these woods, and protected by wire operate by means of radial lines cut through the woods to enable the fire of their machine guns to be brought, now in this direction, now in that, with other posts in the rear of machine-guns in case the front line should be attacked. I was reading an account the other day from a general there of an attack which he saw by the Bolsheviks about six weeks ago. There were about 1,500 of them, and they came on extremely well to attack a group of our blockhouses posted in these woods. They all were white sheets, a device which was sometimes used on the Western Front in winter time, and carried great pine branches to make their actual figures very vague. As they advanced they lost about twenty from the fire of our block-houses, but that did not prevent them coming on and smashing in the doors of two of the blockhouses and killing the occupants, but they were subsequently repulsed and driven out by the fire of the machine guns echeloned back in the rear, and the general, who had the opportunity of going over the field a few hours after the fight, counted 220 Bolshevik bodies on the ground, our losses being fifteen killed. I must explain that in that country any wounded man falling on the ground is frozen stiff in a few hours or less. Another feature of the War there, of course, is the accommodation. You cannot live out of doors for any prolonged period, and, therefore, if a farmhouse or village is shelled by distant guns and destroyed the accommodation is damaged, and the troops 370 holding it, who may have waited outside while the shelling was going on, have to go back four or five miles until other accommodation is found. There is, therefore, a warfare on each side of destroying the accommodation of the troops. Lastly, there is the question of the river Dvina, on the upper reaches of where the Bolsheviks have a considerable number of ships, some of them armed. It will be possible for the enemy to advance with their ships along the valley of the Dvina and to attack our men when the thaw begins and naturally these are circumstances which are very well known to both sides and have been very carefully considered by the War Office. The dispositions which we are making in this theatre are very simple. We are preparing for whatever policy is decided upon. We are holding the necessary forces and means of succour to proceed to the assistance of our troops there if circumstances should render it necessary to reinforce or to extricate or rescue them. But no movements are possible in the present state of the ice in the White Sea. The dispositions we are making leave it absolutely open. I need not say that, whatever our policy, it could not be announced in public, and whatever course we adopted we could only proceed to see that rumours and reports of a very mystifying character would get about, so that the enemy should be left in complete uncertainty as to what the strategic policy of the troops in that quarter should be. However, broadly speaking and judged by Western Front standards, there is really no fighting going on except occasional raids about the magnitude of trench raids, and the casualties have really not amounted to what have often been the losses of a single battalion in comparatively quiet times on the Western Front.

Coming a little farther round the circle, we get to Esthonia, Lithuania, and those small States which have appealed to the League of Nations for protection against the Bolsheviks and have been promised protection and recognition in various forms and on various dates. The Esthonians, to some extent supplied with British arms, have made a very stout fight and have really shown the weakness of the Bolshevists for quite small forces have been driven back, the Esthonians being stout-hearted and having fought well. There is also in this region a German force of considerable size, which, under General Von der Goltz, 371 has been moving forward slowly towards Windau, and will eventually move towards Riga. This force is no doubt somewhat increasing German influence in this district, which is a disadvantage. On the other hand, it has saved it from being ravished by the appalling misery and desolation which would be their lot if the Bolshevik terror overran them. Therefore we are not obstructing any longer the operations of this force, which is, in fact, rendering useful service from some points of view in this theatre of war.

Coming further South we have Poland, Hungary and Roumania. That area has recently given cause for anxiety, but I have no official confirmation of the invited invasion of Hungary by a Bolshevik army up to the present. It is clear that Poland, with Germany behind it, which is in a very anarchic condition, and with a Bolshevik army advancing upon it from the East, and with its own organisation in a most primitive condition, with great food troubles and great political embarrassment is in a very weak and anxious position, and might easily degenerate under the combined pressure of Bolshevik propaganda and Bolshevik attack. Hungary has clearly undergone a very serious and considerable political change, and shown a disposition to resist the will of the Allies while putting on the garb of Bolshevism. The position in Roumania is also anxious because that country has suffered terribly in the War. They are very short not only of food but of all the means of equipping their Armies. Locomotives have been carried off and not restored, and other locomotives are not suitable to burn oil, which is the only fuel now available, and their position is one of difficulty, but I hope and trust energetic efforts will be made to succour Roumania, which becomes the great buttress of our fortunes in that part of the world against the advancing tide of Bolshevik anarchy and terror. Still further south, on the Black Sea littoral, we have the Ukraine, which has not yet fully experienced the joy of Bolshevik rule, and therefore the people are to some extent under the first influence of the disease. The doctrines of Bolshevism make a certain appeal, and the Bolshevik Armies, profiting by the fact that the German troops were rapidly withdrawn after the Armistice and that no other ordered force took their place, advanced rapidly and overrran the whole of the Ukraine, 372 gaining this fertile and rich food-area and thereby obtaining the means of prolonging their life. They destroy wherever they exist, but by rolling forward into fertile areas, like the vampire which sucks the blood from his victim, they gain means of prolonging their own baleful existence. In the Ukraine the experience of the last two or three months has been very disastrous. The French and the Greeks, who had entered from the South and gone some distance from the coast, have been confronted not only with the attack of considerable forces but by a considerable movement of the population, which is not only of the people in the towns. This movement was hostile to the French and the Greeks and is a factor which must be very carefully weighed by everyone who studies this problem, because it shows the danger of rash interference or meddling which would enable the Bolsheviks to rally to themselves perhaps even a patriotic and national movement. The actual situation there is that two towns have been taken, and the city of Odessa is being defended. I suppose it will gradually go through the process with which we are familiar on the Western Front where towns slowly melted away under the fire of artillery. At present the French, Greeks, and Russians are holding Odessa against the Bolshevik attack. It is clear that the Bolshevik Army near Odessa and along the east of the river exposes Roumania to very direct menace of invasion which, coupled with the position in Hungary, renders the Roumanian problem especially acute. In Nicolaieff, which is one of the towns occupied, a curious situation has arisen. There were about 10,000 Germans who wished to be taken home by sea, and this being refused they endeavoured to make their way by land and they were attacked by Bolsheviks. They threw themselves into Nicolaieff and defended themselves with some success. It is possible some use might have been made of these men, but owing to the way in which this question was handled they have now finally given up their arms, and some have gone over to the Bolsheviks and the others have been brought out by sea. So much for an area which is extremely unsatisfactory. The march of events there has been wholly prejudicial to the cause and the hopes of permanent peace in Europe. Then we come to the Army of General Denikin, to which we are giving support. That Army rests 373 from the Don practically to the Caspian Sea. It is the best of the Russian Armies. It is made up of volunteers who have gathered themselves together and are fighting desperately for the honour and integrity of their native land and for the cause of civilisation not only in Russia, but all over the world.

Our policy in regard to that Army is not to involve any British troops at all. We are not sending any British troops at all up to the present, but we are sending a Mission. We have a Mission there which we have supplied with ample supplies of munitions of war of all kinds. Those supplies are well on the road, and those troops have not lacked anything we were responsible for providing them with. We also assist it with instructors and technical advisers in regard to the supply of complicated war material. General Denikin's Army has sustained a heavy reverse on its left flank in the advance of the Bolshevik attack, though the main recent attack has gone more to the west, falling more on the French and Greeks, and, as I told the House in introducing the Army Estimates, he has gained considerable success by striking towards the Caspian, taking more than 30,000 prisoners in a series of sweeping operations. The British Fleet still remains in command of the Caspian Sea, but there is a Bolshevik Fleet little inferior in strength, which is in Astrakan at present, imprisoned by the ice which blocks the northern portion of that sea at this season of the year. Beyond that, of course, we have smaller detachments of troops which are in the Trans-Caspian area, stretching towards the distant frontiers of India, without any serious operation of any kind except skirmishing with Bolshevik patrols and preventing their advance towards the disturbed borders of our Indian Empire. Lastly, there is Admiral Koltchak and the Siberian Army. These Russian armies have been lately conducting an offensive 374 as far as possible and they have regained Ufa and a great many prisoners have been taken, and it is not too unduly sanguine to say that the offensive just begun has opened auspiciously, at any rate in the northern sector.

In the Southern sector matters have not gone so well. We have there only a small force. We have a Mission there to assist Admiral Koltchak, and there is only a handful of men who are in command of Colonel John Ward. These men are not in direct contact with the enemy. They are a great many miles from where fighting is going on. They are in the City of Omsk, where they remain as a sort of symbol and guarantee of the authority and reputation of Admiral Koltschak's Government—the Siberian Government. They are extremely valuable from that point of view—they are a symbol that he is being assisted by the Allies and by Great Britain.

We have not failed in our task of supplying Admiral Koltchak's troops with arms. Over the whole 5,000 miles of Siberian railway we have transported a very large number of rifles and a certain proportion of guns and ammunition. It is intended to continue this support, and to add technical instructors and experts in the more complicated material of war to assist Admiral Koltchak in the same way as we are assisting General Denikin. I have now gone round the circumference of the Russian Empire, and explained the position at the present time, and I think that my hon. Friend will see that if for no other reason than the lateness of the hour, it is impossible to touch on the general question of policy, which I know he has got so largely in his mind.

It being half-past Eleven of the clock, Mr. SPEAKER adjourned the House without Question put, pursuant to the Standing. Order.