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The Day They Almost Bombed Moscow: The Allied War in Russia 1918-1920
An undercover RAF squadron prepares to bomb Moscow from a makeshift landing ground in the Steppes two hundred miles from the Russian capital ...Two British regiments land at Vladivostok ... The Japanese invade Siberia with 70,000 troops ... American infantrymen fight the Bolsheviks in a bitter winter war south of Archangel ... British spies in Moscow plot the overthrow of the Russian government ...
Thriller fiction? No. These events actually happened in a little known and much misunderstood war conducted in the early years of the twentieth century. The Allied intervention began in 1918 as a desperate attempt to maintain the Eastern Front against the Germans after Russia's decision to withdraw from the First World War. But it swiftly escalated into a haphazard and often chaotic offensive against Bolshevism itself that even included the spectacle of an undercover RAF squadron steaming through the heart of Russia with its aircraft strapped to railway flatcars. Its mission: to bomb Moscow.
Christopher Dobson and John Miller have based their account of this extraordinary and neglected episode on extensive research conducted in London and Moscow. The authors are experienced and award-winning foreign correspondents, with access to archives never before opened and to diaries and letters written by the men who were players in the drama. They have also interviewed the diminishing band of surviving veterans. Among them is one of the men who was eventually refused permission to bomb Moscow because Winston Churchill, then Minister of War, ruled that there was "no military value to the operation."
The result is a fascinating piece of modern history, grippingly revealed with accuracy and detail, that overturns a number of misconceptions and untruths that have shrouded the campaign over the decades. The Day They Almost Bombed Moscow also traces the origins of much of today's Superpower antagonism back to that bizarre and half-remembered clash of arms on the savagely contested soil of Revolutionary Russia, a clash that set the pattern for East-West relations which persists, with all its dangers, today.
Thriller fiction? No. These events actually happened in a little known and much misunderstood war conducted in the early years of the twentieth century. The Allied intervention began in 1918 as a desperate attempt to maintain the Eastern Front against the Germans after Russia's decision to withdraw from the First World War. But it swiftly escalated into a haphazard and often chaotic offensive against Bolshevism itself that even included the spectacle of an undercover RAF squadron steaming through the heart of Russia with its aircraft strapped to railway flatcars. Its mission: to bomb Moscow.
Christopher Dobson and John Miller have based their account of this extraordinary and neglected episode on extensive research conducted in London and Moscow. The authors are experienced and award-winning foreign correspondents, with access to archives never before opened and to diaries and letters written by the men who were players in the drama. They have also interviewed the diminishing band of surviving veterans. Among them is one of the men who was eventually refused permission to bomb Moscow because Winston Churchill, then Minister of War, ruled that there was "no military value to the operation."
The result is a fascinating piece of modern history, grippingly revealed with accuracy and detail, that overturns a number of misconceptions and untruths that have shrouded the campaign over the decades. The Day They Almost Bombed Moscow also traces the origins of much of today's Superpower antagonism back to that bizarre and half-remembered clash of arms on the savagely contested soil of Revolutionary Russia, a clash that set the pattern for East-West relations which persists, with all its dangers, today.
288 pages, Hardcover
First published March 1, 1986
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October 27, 2011A book written by a couple of journalists after a chance chat with an old man on a golf course who insisted on telling them about the day he almost bombed Moscow. I can't say I have had a similar conversation, but then I only play crazy golf .
Anyhow, after a couple of gin and tonics, their journalistic instincts begin to crank into life, the result of which is this book. As a result it is a readable popular history of the allied intervention in Russia during the civil war after the slow collapse of the Government in 1917, but it is a mixed bag.
They look at the intervention largely from a British perspective. French assistance in the war in Poland is not included and Japan's involvement in the Russian far east only briefly mentioned. Britain's role in the Ukraine and Archangel area is best served with some attention given to Baku, Central Asia and the Baltic republics (where the Soviet advance was stopped by blocking the railway lines with tanks). There are lonely chapters about Sidney Reilly who was a British spy active in Moscow for a while during the civil war and the adventures of the Czech Legion. The Czech Legion had been formed from prisoners of war prepared to fight for the allies against the Central Powers during WWI. When the Soviet Union left WWI the Czechs agreed to be shipped from Vladivostok, round the world, to serve on the Western Front. However the best laid plans of mice and men so oft go awry, changing circumstances within Russia after the 1917, coupled with the fact that the Czechs were well armed led to them controlling a good portion of the Trans-Siberian railway for several years until eventually over 60,000 of them and their dependants were evacuated from Vladivostok in 1920.
The British intervention was most directly active in the far North around Archangel where units of anti-Bolshevik troops were recruited and equipped by Britain, but the soldiers happened to have a keen sense of the political realities of the situation and so tended to desert. Down in Southern Russia British intervention was limited to supporting the efforts of the White generals. The promised raid on Moscow with biplanes flying at the limits of their range, as suggested by the book's title, was aborted.
There is not much attempt to draw out the broader themes or to reach overall conclusions, just an introduction to some of the odder events that took place on the fringes of the Russian revolution and Civil War (the oddest maybe was the Emir of Bukhara's use of his dancing boys, left behind one by one to delay the pursuit of the Red Army as he fled across Central Asia, but that has nothing to do with this book ). Naturally since this is a conflict largely forgotten among the countries that intervened in the Russian civil war I found my copy in one of those bookshops that only sell sharply discounted remainders that would otherwise be pulped.
Timeless moral lessons of all this are don't get militarily involved in other countries civil wars, and do hang about the golf course in pursuit of odd stories.
Anyhow, after a couple of gin and tonics, their journalistic instincts begin to crank into life, the result of which is this book. As a result it is a readable popular history of the allied intervention in Russia during the civil war after the slow collapse of the Government in 1917, but it is a mixed bag.
They look at the intervention largely from a British perspective. French assistance in the war in Poland is not included and Japan's involvement in the Russian far east only briefly mentioned. Britain's role in the Ukraine and Archangel area is best served with some attention given to Baku, Central Asia and the Baltic republics (where the Soviet advance was stopped by blocking the railway lines with tanks). There are lonely chapters about Sidney Reilly who was a British spy active in Moscow for a while during the civil war and the adventures of the Czech Legion. The Czech Legion had been formed from prisoners of war prepared to fight for the allies against the Central Powers during WWI. When the Soviet Union left WWI the Czechs agreed to be shipped from Vladivostok, round the world, to serve on the Western Front. However the best laid plans of mice and men so oft go awry, changing circumstances within Russia after the 1917, coupled with the fact that the Czechs were well armed led to them controlling a good portion of the Trans-Siberian railway for several years until eventually over 60,000 of them and their dependants were evacuated from Vladivostok in 1920.
The British intervention was most directly active in the far North around Archangel where units of anti-Bolshevik troops were recruited and equipped by Britain, but the soldiers happened to have a keen sense of the political realities of the situation and so tended to desert. Down in Southern Russia British intervention was limited to supporting the efforts of the White generals. The promised raid on Moscow with biplanes flying at the limits of their range, as suggested by the book's title, was aborted.
There is not much attempt to draw out the broader themes or to reach overall conclusions, just an introduction to some of the odder events that took place on the fringes of the Russian revolution and Civil War (the oddest maybe was the Emir of Bukhara's use of his dancing boys, left behind one by one to delay the pursuit of the Red Army as he fled across Central Asia, but that has nothing to do with this book ). Naturally since this is a conflict largely forgotten among the countries that intervened in the Russian civil war I found my copy in one of those bookshops that only sell sharply discounted remainders that would otherwise be pulped.
Timeless moral lessons of all this are don't get militarily involved in other countries civil wars, and do hang about the golf course in pursuit of odd stories.
April 21, 2020
The Day They Almost Bombed Moscow is an action-packed, accessible primer on elements of the Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War, with two major caveats. The work is virtually entirely focused on the series of small British wars in far-flung parts of what became the Soviet Union, particularly the more Bond-like escapades, with no real interest in analyzing what motivated, say, the Japanese, French, Italians, Greeks, or Canadians to intervene. Likewise, since the work was first published in 1986, it views the entire episode through a narrow Cold War lens, perceiving events in Russia, including the civil war itself, as if there was a clear line between 1918-20 and the then present.
Still, recommended as a fun way to begin wading into a very complicated subject.
Still, recommended as a fun way to begin wading into a very complicated subject.
February 15, 2021
I found this fascinating. British attempt to overthrow Communist Russia.
November 4, 2021
Great fun , very readable account of the british part of the intervention in Russian during the Russian Civil War .
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews