Canadian Siberian Expeditionary Force
Encyclopedia
The Canadian Siberian Expeditionary Force (also referred to as the Canadian Expeditionary Force (Siberia) or simply C.S.E.F.) was a Canadian military force sent to Vladivostok
, Russia
during the Russian Revolution to bolster the allied presence. Composed of 4,192 soldiers and authorised in August 1918, the force returned to Canada between April and June 1919. The force was commanded by Major General James H. Elmsley. During this time, the C.S.E.F. saw little fighting, with fewer than 100 troop proceeding "up country" to Omsk
, to serve as administrative staff for 1,500 British troops aiding the White Russian
government of Admiral Alexander Kolchak. Most Canadians remained in Vladivostok, undertaking routine drill and policing duties in the volatile port city.
The Marine Cemetery in Vladivostok, a Commonwealth War Graves Commission
site, contains the graves of 14 Canadians alongside British, French, Czecho-Slovak and Japanese troops who died during the Siberian Intervention
and a monument to Allied soldiers buried in various locations in Siberia
. The Commonwealth portion of the cemetery was neglected during the Soviet era; a Canadian naval vessel restored the cemetery in the 1990s.
) could tilt the outcome of the battles on the Western Front
. There was outright hostility to the Bolsheviks, particularly on the part of Winston Churchill
, national trade and (perceived) economic interests on the part of each of the governments. The case of the Czechoslovak prisoners of war, which had been offered safe passage by the Soviet government and then threatened with interment in "concentration camps" aroused sympathy on the part of many governments, particularly the United States. When the Czech troops attempted to battle their way out of Russia - eventually controlling much of the Trans-Siberian railway - various Western governments chose to intervene.
Canadian involvement in the Siberian campaign was to a significant degree driven by the policy of Canadian Prime Minister Robert Borden
towards the United Kingdom
. As a dominion, Canada was neither a full-fledged member of the Entente
, nor simply a colony. Borden's arguments for Canada's involvement ""had little to do with Siberia per se, and much to do with adding to the British government's sense of obligation to their imperial junior partner." According to Gaddis Smith, Canadian intervention "represents the initial episode in the Canadian struggle for complete control over her foreign policy after World War I. As such, it illustrates the changing relationships within the British Empire more realistically than the scores of constitutional documents that the Commonwealth statesmen self-consciously drafted between 1917 and 1931."
Domestically, the Siberian expedition was presented to the public as a trade and economic opportunity. After the Armistice, however, domestic opinion turned against foreign involvement, particularly with conscript troops.
opened a banking branch in Vladivostok; three employees, and a "57 ton prefabricated bank building were dispatched from Vancouver for Siberia on November 28, 1918." The prefab bank building was not used, however, and the branch was closed in October 1919, after the withdrawal of the Canadian and British troops.
's agreement to support the deployment. The departure of the troops was further delayed by unsuccessful attempts to raise a volunteer force, and there were mutinous events in Victoria prior to departure. Strong labour and public criticism of the campaign was apparent, including farmers in the prairie provinces and the "Toronto Globe and Mail" newspaper.
Benjamin Isitt, From Victoria to Vladivostok: Canada's Siberian Expedition, 1917-19 (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2010), ISBN 9780774818018
Stuart Ramsay Tompkins, A Canadian's Road to Russia: Letters from the Great War Decade (Doris Pieroth, Editor)
Clifford Kinvig, Churchill's crusade: the British invasion of Russia, 1918-1920, ISBN:1852854774.
Vladivostok
The city is located in the southern extremity of Muravyov-Amursky Peninsula, which is about 30 km long and approximately 12 km wide.The highest point is Mount Kholodilnik, the height of which is 257 m...
, Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
during the Russian Revolution to bolster the allied presence. Composed of 4,192 soldiers and authorised in August 1918, the force returned to Canada between April and June 1919. The force was commanded by Major General James H. Elmsley. During this time, the C.S.E.F. saw little fighting, with fewer than 100 troop proceeding "up country" to Omsk
Omsk
-History:The wooden fort of Omsk was erected in 1716 to protect the expanding Russian frontier along the Ishim and the Irtysh rivers against the Kyrgyz nomads of the Steppes...
, to serve as administrative staff for 1,500 British troops aiding the White Russian
White movement
The White movement and its military arm the White Army - known as the White Guard or the Whites - was a loose confederation of Anti-Communist forces.The movement comprised one of the politico-military Russian forces who fought...
government of Admiral Alexander Kolchak. Most Canadians remained in Vladivostok, undertaking routine drill and policing duties in the volatile port city.
The Marine Cemetery in Vladivostok, a Commonwealth War Graves Commission
Commonwealth War Graves Commission
The Commonwealth War Graves Commission is an intergovernmental organisation of six independent member states whose principal function is to mark, record and maintain the graves, and places of commemoration, of Commonwealth of Nations military service members who died in the two World Wars...
site, contains the graves of 14 Canadians alongside British, French, Czecho-Slovak and Japanese troops who died during the Siberian Intervention
Siberian Intervention
The ', or the Siberian Expedition, of 1918–1922 was the dispatch of troops of the Entente powers to the Russian Maritime Provinces as part of a larger effort by the western powers and Japan to support White Russian forces against the Bolshevik Red Army during the Russian Civil War...
and a monument to Allied soldiers buried in various locations in Siberia
Siberia
Siberia is an extensive region constituting almost all of Northern Asia. Comprising the central and eastern portion of the Russian Federation, it was part of the Soviet Union from its beginning, as its predecessor states, the Tsardom of Russia and the Russian Empire, conquered it during the 16th...
. The Commonwealth portion of the cemetery was neglected during the Soviet era; a Canadian naval vessel restored the cemetery in the 1990s.
Background
Allied intervention in Siberia was driven by a mix of motivations. Prior to the Armistice in the fall of 1918, there was a genuine concern that military supplies would be used - directly or indirectly - by the Germans, and that access to the natural resources of the Russian Far East (over the Trans-Siberian RailwayTrans-Siberian Railway
The Trans-Siberian Railway is a network of railways connecting Moscow with the Russian Far East and the Sea of Japan. It is the longest railway in the world...
) could tilt the outcome of the battles on the Western Front
Western Front (World War I)
Following the outbreak of World War I in 1914, the German Army opened the Western Front by first invading Luxembourg and Belgium, then gaining military control of important industrial regions in France. The tide of the advance was dramatically turned with the Battle of the Marne...
. There was outright hostility to the Bolsheviks, particularly on the part of Winston Churchill
Winston Churchill
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, was a predominantly Conservative British politician and statesman known for his leadership of the United Kingdom during the Second World War. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest wartime leaders of the century and served as Prime Minister twice...
, national trade and (perceived) economic interests on the part of each of the governments. The case of the Czechoslovak prisoners of war, which had been offered safe passage by the Soviet government and then threatened with interment in "concentration camps" aroused sympathy on the part of many governments, particularly the United States. When the Czech troops attempted to battle their way out of Russia - eventually controlling much of the Trans-Siberian railway - various Western governments chose to intervene.
Canadian involvement in the Siberian campaign was to a significant degree driven by the policy of Canadian Prime Minister Robert Borden
Robert Borden
Sir Robert Laird Borden, PC, GCMG, KC was a Canadian lawyer and politician. He served as the eighth Prime Minister of Canada from October 10, 1911 to July 10, 1920, and was the third Nova Scotian to hold this office...
towards the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
. As a dominion, Canada was neither a full-fledged member of the Entente
Allies of World War I
The Entente Powers were the countries at war with the Central Powers during World War I. The members of the Triple Entente were the United Kingdom, France, and the Russian Empire; Italy entered the war on their side in 1915...
, nor simply a colony. Borden's arguments for Canada's involvement ""had little to do with Siberia per se, and much to do with adding to the British government's sense of obligation to their imperial junior partner." According to Gaddis Smith, Canadian intervention "represents the initial episode in the Canadian struggle for complete control over her foreign policy after World War I. As such, it illustrates the changing relationships within the British Empire more realistically than the scores of constitutional documents that the Commonwealth statesmen self-consciously drafted between 1917 and 1931."
Domestically, the Siberian expedition was presented to the public as a trade and economic opportunity. After the Armistice, however, domestic opinion turned against foreign involvement, particularly with conscript troops.
Trade and business
The belief that the Bolshevik revolution would be unsuccessful and lead to business and trade opportunities led the Canadian government to appoint the Canadian Siberian Economic Commission in an October 1918 order-in-council, led by trade commissioner Dana Wilgress. The Royal Bank of CanadaRoyal Bank of Canada
The Royal Bank of Canada or RBC Financial Group is the largest financial institution in Canada, as measured by deposits, revenues, and market capitalization. The bank serves seventeen million clients and has 80,100 employees worldwide. The company corporate headquarters are located in Toronto,...
opened a banking branch in Vladivostok; three employees, and a "57 ton prefabricated bank building were dispatched from Vancouver for Siberia on November 28, 1918." The prefab bank building was not used, however, and the branch was closed in October 1919, after the withdrawal of the Canadian and British troops.
Support and opposition in Canada
The force was authorized by the Privy Council (cabinet) on early August 1918 after Prime Minister Robert BordenRobert Borden
Sir Robert Laird Borden, PC, GCMG, KC was a Canadian lawyer and politician. He served as the eighth Prime Minister of Canada from October 10, 1911 to July 10, 1920, and was the third Nova Scotian to hold this office...
's agreement to support the deployment. The departure of the troops was further delayed by unsuccessful attempts to raise a volunteer force, and there were mutinous events in Victoria prior to departure. Strong labour and public criticism of the campaign was apparent, including farmers in the prairie provinces and the "Toronto Globe and Mail" newspaper.
Arrival and disposition in Vladivostok
Under General Elmsley's command, the advance party of Canadian troops arrived in Vladivostok in late October 1918. The general quickly secured base headquarers at the Pushkinsky Theatre, an ornate building in the centre of the city that housed the Vladivostok Cultural-Educational Society. The unilateral Canadian action provoked a strong protest from leading Vladivostok businessmen, who demanded that Elmsley vacate the premises. The Canadians were quartered at three main sites: the East Barracks, at the head of Golden Horn Bay, the former Czarist barracks at Gornestai (today the town of Shitovaya), and the Second River Barracks north of Vladivostok. The main body of the CSEF arrived in Vladivostok in mid-January 1919, aboard the ships Teesta and Protesilaus. The Teesta's departure from Victoria on 21 December 1918 had been delayed by a mutiny of two companies of mainly French-Canadian troops in the 259th Battalion; the Protesilaus also faced difficulties reaching Vladivostok, losing a propeller off the Russian coast when it got stuck in the ice.Victoria mutiny of 21 December 1918
On 21 December 1918, two companies of troops in the 259th Battalion (Canadian Rifles), mutinied in the streets of Victoria, BC. The mutiny occurred as the conscripts were marching from the Willows Camp to the city's Outer Wharves. Midway through the march, a platoon of troops near the rear refused to halt. Officers fired their revolvers in the air in an attempt to quell the dissent. When this failed, they ordered the obedient troops, primary from the Ontario companies, to remove their canvas belts and whip the mutinous back into line. The march proceeded through downtown Victoria to the outer wharves, accompanied by a guard of honour of 50 troops armed with rifles and fixed bayonets. Twenty-one hours later, the SS Teesta left Victoria harbour bound for Vladivostok, with a dozen ringleaders detained in cells. While a court martial found the accused guilty of "mutiny and wilfull disobedience," the sentences were commuted by Gen. Elmsley prior to the Canadians evacuation in early April, amid concern over the legality of deploying men under the Military Service Act for a mission tangentally connected to the "defence of the realm."Graves and memorials: Churkin Naval Cemetery
A portion of the Churkin Naval Cemetery (known in Russian as the "Morskoe" or Maritime Cemetery on the Churkin Peninsula in Vladivostok) is used in separate sections for soldiers of various nationalities, including Canadian, British, American, French, Czech and Japanese and a few other nationalities (including, for example, the Australian Honorary Consul). Fourteen Canadian soldiers and fourteen British soldiers are buried there. The same section contains a memorial to the ten British and three Canadian soldiers whose graves are found in other parts of Siberia. During the Soviet period, this site was largely unmaintained; in 1996, a Canadian warship visited Vladivostok, and the crew restored the graves and memorial, replacing a number of the headstones.External links
- Canada's Siberian Expedition Virtual Exhibition and Digital Archive
- Benjamin Isitt, "Mutiny from Victoria to Vladivostok, December 1918," Canadian Historical Review, 87:2 (June 2006)
- War diaries - North Russia (Siberian) Expeditionary Force, 16th Brigade, Canadian Field Artillery
- Australian War Graves: Information on the Churkin Russian Naval Cemetery, Vladivostok
Benjamin Isitt, From Victoria to Vladivostok: Canada's Siberian Expedition, 1917-19 (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2010), ISBN 9780774818018
Stuart Ramsay Tompkins, A Canadian's Road to Russia: Letters from the Great War Decade (Doris Pieroth, Editor)
Clifford Kinvig, Churchill's crusade: the British invasion of Russia, 1918-1920, ISBN:1852854774.