Russian Sideshow

by Robert L Willett

  The aftermath was a bloody one. As soon as the outcome became obvious, Colonel Krakovetsky and several others escaped and rushed past the American sentry at AEF headquarters to beg for asylum. Graves knew that a consulate was American territory and could grant asylum, but a military headquarters was not the same thing. As the colonel and his men waited for a decision, Rozanov was already beginning the methodical execution of the men captured at the station. Graves knew the fate of his guests should he refuse their plea; he could not in good conscience turn them over to Rozanov for certain execution. He wired the War Department in Washington for instructions and Washington replied that he was not authorized to grant sanctuary. He wired again, but no answer came.

  A simple solution to the problem was devised by Colonel Bugbee. While waiting for an answer to the second telegram, Colonel Bugbee came to Grave office’s, saluted, and reported, “General, the prisoners have escaped.” Graves wrote later:

  I could not say to him that I was glad, as a matter of fact, I could not say anything, but I know of nothing in my whole life that removed such a load from my conscience as did that report of Colonel Bugbee, and I decided I would not report this to Washington, as nothing could be done about it.40

  After his capture, Gaida was released to the Czechs with the provision he leave Siberia immediately. Wounded and shaken by the events, Gaida left as soon as he could be taken to a ship.

  Most of the Americans in Vladivostok viewed the carnage in the railway station, where many of the first executions had taken place, adding to the bodies of those killed in the uprising. “When I reached the railway station the last batch of prisoners was lined up against the wall to be shot, however, they marched them into the station and shot them while they were going downstairs. . . . About noon it started to snow and the bodies were soon covered,” wrote Eichelberger.41 Another witness was more disturbed:

  The aftermath was dreadful and unbelievable and more than one man belched up good army rations as he looked down at dead bodies in parts everywhere. Headless trunks and thighs and pools of dried blood in the cold streets and station. . . . The only things in quantity that seemed to have escaped the massacre were the lice and rats who ran like little armies over the corpses piled in places like cordwood.42

  Eventually, the bodies were removed, the debris cleaned up, and life in Vladivostok resumed. Of the four leaders of the revolt, Gaida was gone; Col. Pavel Yakushev was dead, his body found in the bay; Morovsky was dead, killed in the station; and Krakovetsky had disappeared.

  The abrupt ending of the revolt, which had hoped to establish at least some form of democratic rule, was to put the brutal Rozanov in almost total control, with Kalmykof and Semenov unchecked. Eichelberger wrote, “It was a sad blow to democracy as these murderous cut throats backed by the Japanese are in full control.”43

  There is some irony in the fact that in late summer 1919, after the U.S. forces had left North Russia, the White Army was really at the height of its success. The Kolchak Army, even without Czechs, had driven the Reds west of Kazan, only five hundred miles from Moscow. Gen. Anton Denikin’s southern army was in the outskirts of Moscow, Gen. Nikolai Yudenich and his ragged army pressed on to Petrograd and were virtually in the suburbs by fall. Also, Ironside’s final offensive in July had come close to Kotlas on the Dvina River and seemed able to continue.

  But it was all an illusion. Ironside’s push was only for the purpose of protecting his already planned evacuation; Kolchak by July was in retreat; and by late fall Denikin and Yudenich had begun their retreats. Christopher Dobson and John Miller, in their book The Day They Almost Bombed Moscow, write, “By the end of the year nothing remained of the White Russian Army.”44

  In Vladivostok, one positive event took place when the deserter Anton Karachun was captured while trying to bribe a supply company guard in February. He was trying to obtain clothing for himself and his colleagues when he was recognized and seized.45

  Christmas came and went with few celebrations for the Americans or their Russian hosts; however, on December 29, 1919, Graves received orders to prepare the troops for withdrawal. The information was not passed to the Japanese diplomats in Washington until January 9, 1920, a fact that caused the Japanese much resentment since information leaked before their official notice was received.46 As one historian summed it up, “In fact, the Americans abandoned intervention without any grace at all.”47

  25

  The American Red Cross

  From the beginning the purpose of the Red Cross was to help the people of Russia without regard to political situations, and with utter indifference to the policies of the political party that happened to be in power.

  —Henry Davison, The American Red Cross in the Great War

  MANY months before the decision to intervene was made, Col. Raymond Robins of the Red Cross Mission in Moscow played an important, though unsuccessful, role in the complicated formation of U.S. Russian policy.

  Robins became convinced that recognition of the Soviet government by the United States was the proper protection of U.S. interests in the region. To reinforce his views, he developed a relationship with Trotsky; it was through Robins that Trotsky’s overtures to the United States were directed. In the opposite camp was U.S. consul general Maddin Summers, who was equally adamant that the new Russian government posed a real threat to U.S. interests.

  One explanation of the two opposing views was their interpretation of Germany’s threat to Russia. In March 1918, Summers believed that the Bolsheviks were agents of the German government, while Robins was convinced that the Soviets were as strongly anti-German as the remaining Allies. In fact, both men were deeply troubled about German domination of Russia, but disagreed about how to prevent that domination.1 This disagreement shaped the widely varying information sent to Washington in the spring of 1918. The friction between Summers and Robins ended abruptly in May with the death of the consul general and the recall of Colonel Robins. But the Red Cross was established as a part of the turbulent Russian scene even before the Allies landed.

  President Wilson hoped that humanitarian efforts could be included in his Russian Intervention and voiced that hope in his Aide Memoire. The Red Cross had a very visible presence in Russia throughout the Intervention and sometimes found itself at cross-purposes with General Graves and his mission. Interestingly, the Red Cross in Siberia was managed by Mrs. Wilson’s first cousin, Dr. Rudolf Teusler.

  American Red Cross workers landed in Vladivostok in July 1917, met by the Russian Red Cross, an organization in some disarray.2 A history of the Red Cross set forth the role of the organization in Russia: “From the beginning the purpose of the Red Cross was to help the people of Russia without regard to political situations, and with utter indifference to the policies of the political party that happened to be in power.”3 They would find that lofty goal difficult to achieve.

  First, the Czechs required medical care not only in the Far East, but in their new participation on the Ural front. Also, the refugees, a constant stream of displaced humanity, needed not only medical care, but the basics of housing and food. As the Intervention neared, the navy assisted in medical help in Vladivostok, and the Red Cross began to set up a network of hospitals across Siberia. Vladivostok became the relief base, distributing food and supplies, procuring housing, and eventually entertaining the masses of refugees and military. Russian Island in Golden Horn Bay became a hospital and a refugee camp and, later, an orphanage, which involved new and unusual requirements of the Red Cross volunteers.

  In North Russia, the Red Cross was important for its humanitarian efforts. A Red Cross shipment arrived in Murmansk in 1917 before winter set in, and the cargo was distributed to the various needy population segments. In 1918 a chain of Red Cross hospitality centers sprang up as American troops fanned out across the vast and frigid lands of the north. However, in Siberia they found it difficult to stay out of internal Russian affairs.

  One of the volunteers was Grace Bungey of Palo Alto, Cali
fornia. She explained their role: “The Red Cross went in with the army and we ran trains of supplies up into the interior for the Army camps guarded by American servicemen. The Red Cross established hospitals, and American railway engineers helped the Russians get the railroads running.”4 The Trans-Siberian Railroad provided the transportation that linked all these organizations across eastern Siberia: Czechs, Red Cross, Allied armies, Railway workers, and Cossacks. It was obvious that most of these factions supported the Kolchak government, in spite of the disclaimers of the organizations involved. It would have been almost impossible for Bolsheviks to obtain Red Cross supplies, let alone use the railroad for its own purposes.

  The Red Cross not only sent supplies and medical equipment by train, but even equipped many of the cars as hospital cars to be used primarily for Czech, Kolchak, or Allied sick or wounded. Adding more weight to the identification of the trains with the White cause were the U.S. Army troops sent to guard them. There were refugee trains, and later typhus trains that attempted to halt the spread of the deadly disease. What they found often were appalling conditions.

  Rudolph Beckley, a Red Cross captain, reported his arrival in Omsk in May 1919 to distribute medicine to a Kolchak prison camp housing Bolshevik prisoners. He found 1,935 prisoners, 1,040 of them with typhus.

  Think of it and try and imagine the horror of the scene and the fearful, indescribable stench that greets you as you open the door. . . . These men are prisoners of the Kolchak Govt, a Govt recognized by the Allied powers, and these things are happening in this, the 20th century under the very eyes of the representatives of these Allied powers, who do not interfere, I presume from matters of “policy.”5

  Beckley’s was one of the few attempts made to aid Bolshevik forces, and he faced an overwhelming task.

  One of the train guards on Red Cross Train #15 was Cpl. Jesse A. Anderson of the 146th Ordnance Depot Company. He was ordered to take ten men to guard a train headed for the Ural front. The train left Vladivostok on June 3, 1919, rolled across Manchuria, and arrived in Chita, Russia, on June 11. From there they began to see the effects of the civil strife. They were escorted by a Czech armored train after Lake Baikal, passing a refugee train headed east. Anderson wrote, “It is an awful sight to see, the refugee passengers getting on their trains (box-cars). We saw one car of gypsies. They had two naked children, about four years old.” After they passed Irkutsk, he wrote, “We are in Bolshevik territory now. Had lots of fun and hard work fixing our bunks and putting in sandbags, blankets, fish plates and rails. Let the B’s come.”6

  Anderson was disturbed by the chaos of the railroad. Even though the American railroaders had identified problems in management and efficiency, they could do little to correct the problems. The Red Cross cars were continually being hooked onto various train segments; they were never really sure where they would be the next day. On June 19, in Kansk, Anderson wrote in his journal, “We have seen a lot of the dirty work of the Bolsheviks today. Buildings burned, railroad track blown up and 12 wrecks from 3–30 cars each.”7 Train #15 reached its destination, Ekaterinburg, on July 12, unloaded its medical supplies and headed back east, finally reaching Vladivostok on September 4. The round trip took just over three months.8

  The largest hospital in Siberia was the Red Cross Hospital in Omsk, which was organized in November 1918 with twelve nurses and six doctors who arrived with Colonel Teusler on Train #2. Their first tasks were to find a building suitable for a hospital, staff it, and obtain supplies and equipment. The Red Cross personnel had a frustrating beginning; they spent eight weeks in the Omsk train yards waiting for the bureaucratic approvals required for them to occupy, convert, and staff the warehouse they had selected. However, by the end of 1918, they had a building, beds, supplies, and staff, but no patients. Gradually, the word spread that they were in operation, and their first Russian patients arrived on a sanitary train coming from the front near Perm. Nurse Gertrude Pardee Carter described the sight:

  [A] more neglected crowd of individuals I have never set eyes upon, from a medical and human standpoint. We had them scrubbed, bathed, shaved and put into clean pyjamas and bathrobes then sent them to bed between clean sheets, apparently the first articles of this kind many had seen for months and I doubt whether many of them had ever known some of these things before.9

  By mid-1919 the Red Cross had established three divisions: eastern, from Vladivostok to Manchuria Station; central, from Manchuria Station to Krasnoyarsk; and western, everything west of Krasnoyarsk. There were Red Cross hospitals in Omsk, Irkutsk, and Manchuria, as well as Vladivostok and Russian Island. There were also supplemental facilities for typhus, hospital trains equipped for surgery, and dressing stations in various rail yards.10 Soon, however, many of those installations would have to be abandoned as the Kolchak government collapsed and the safety of Red Cross staff became paramount.

  The evacuation of Red Cross personnel in Omsk began September 4, 1919, when Train #52 pulled out at 6:45 P.M., headed for Irkutsk. It was a difficult trip with seemingly needless delays and confusion. The Red Cross personnel left depressed by feelings of helplessness and frustration. An Army officer, E. Alfred Davies, wrote in his diary on September 4:

  The American Red Cross has surely spent millions, while the Russian Railway Service is trying hard to help. . . . Officialdom—the same petty type of official which betrayed Russia’s great army before, and which is betraying Russia today. Department jealous of department, each working against each other, conscious of only one thing—their own interests.11

  The evacuation of Red Cross personnel from Siberia would take months. They abandoned medical equipment and supplies as the American support of the hospitals was withdrawn. One of the last trains to leave Irkutsk with Red Cross staff was that of Consul General Harris, which was part of a fleet of trains evacuating Irkutsk, shepherded by Czech armored trains. Even with that protection, Semenov’s and Japanese trains interrupted their journey repeatedly.12 The last train reached Vladivostok on February 6, 1920. The first group to return to the United States left on the Great Northern on February 5. The ship would return on March 30, leaving Vladivostok on April 1 to take most of the remaining personnel to Manila and then to San Francisco. As the ship sailed, it left eight women to liquidate Red Cross affairs.13 On the same ship were General Graves, quartered in the finest accommodations, and Anton Karachun, locked up in the ship’s brig.

  The Red Cross found itself at cross-purposes with the AEFS. General Graves was hostile to the mission of Colonel Teusler’s group, because of their virtually total connection to Kolchak’s government. They established a medical branch of his army, delivering supplies to his troops, including Semenov.14 A crowning blow was the January meeting, only days after Americans were killed by Semenov at Posolskaya, when Harris reported his and Teusler’s relations with Semenov were most cordial, even though he knew of the killings.

  There was, however, one Red Cross success story that rivals fiction. It involves Mrs. Hannah Campbell, “Mother” to many in Siberia. She began her Red Cross duties as a housemother for personnel in Vladivostok, a challenging enough position, but she became famous for her work with the children at Russian Island. During the turbulent days of 1917, a group of Russian children living in and around Petrograd was sent to Siberia, away from the violence. It was anticipated that they would be sent back home in a few months, but with war raging across the whole country, the children were put under the care of the Red Cross, first in Omsk and later on Russian Island.

  After the Americans left Vladivostok in 1920, the Red Cross chartered a ship to return the eight hundred children to Petrograd. The Yomei Maru would be the home for the 350 girls and 450 boys, twelve to fifteen years old, for months as they crossed the Pacific to San Francisco, then through the Panama Canal to New York, and on to Brest, France, finally ending in Finland. In those months, Mother Campbell was helped by numerous volunteers, but the incredible responsibility of that exodus rested squarely on her shoulders. Eventually, the
children were repatriated across the Finnish border to Petrograd, where they were reunited with their families after years of separation. The success of her personal dedication showed when in July 1973, one hundred of the children were located and attended a reunion in Petrograd, meeting with some of the Red Cross workers who had been on the ship. It was an emotional gathering.15

  It is fitting that this episode should close the chapter on the role of the Red Cross in Siberia. They had become embroiled in the politics of the times, as had so many other organizations, trying to do what they did best, distribute humanitarian aid and medical help. Sadly, some of their efforts were channeled in directions that were contrary to the Siberian mission. The organization paid a price for its service: seven of its personnel died of disease during their Siberian stay.16

  There were other organizations that helped the Army in Siberia: the Salvation Army, YMCA, and the Knights of Columbus. Graves wrote, “As far as I could see, all American welfare organizations, excepting the Red Cross, were not only in favor of, but followed the policy of non-interference in the internal affairs of the Russian people.”17