File No. 861.00/2079
The Chargé in Great Britain (Laughlin) to the Secretary of State
[Received June 20.]
Sir: I have the honor to transmit, herewith, a copy of a memorandum1 on Allied assistance to Siberia which was yesterday submitted to me by … a prominent Siberian, and a former member of the Kerensky government.
… represents the Siberian Cooperative Creameries comprising over 3,000 cooperative associations and acting on behalf of 500,000 farms in western Siberia. He represents also the Yenisei Cossacks and a number of commercial and industrial organizations in eastern Siberia. Mr. A. F. Whyte, M. P., editor of New Europe, who brought him to the Embassy, informed me that a copy of this memorandum has just been sent to the British Foreign Office, and that in Mr. Whyte’s opinion the advice given by … seems practical.
This advice, briefly, is that the Allies should immediately send into Siberia a force of about 30,000 men, which he states would be ample to hold the railway from Vladivostok to the Urals and to police Siberia and protect it from the anarchy of the Red Guards and Bolsheviks while the government was being organized and elections being held. He says it is highly important that this force should be international, but that if 5,000 men are British, French or American, or all combined, it will do no harm if the remaining 25,000 should be Japanese. A purely Japanese expeditionary force should in his opinion not be contemplated.
He informs me that he escaped from Russia with much difficulty, from Murmansk, and has been in England only about a month. His family consisting of wife and four children are shortly proceeding to Archangel and he hopes that they will soon rejoin him. He does not know of any one either in France or the United States who is in a position to offer the advice given by him in this memorandum. That is why he has asked me to forward these copies.
When I asked … whether an invitation to the Allies could be elicited from any public body in Siberia suggesting intervention of the Allies proposed in this memorandum, he replied that this was doubtful because of the difficulty of holding meetings at [Page 194] present owing to the fear of Bolshevik terrorism. If, however, the Allies would at once occupy the country and dispel the Bolshevik terror, he has not the remotest doubt that all Siberians anxious for a sound democratic government would rally to the support of the Allies. He also feels sure that the Kirghiz republic recently formed in southwestern Siberia, the president of which was formerly a fellow pupil of his own at the University of Petrograd, will gladly join the Siberian republic, which shall have been established under Allied auspices. He is emphatic in the opinion that if his advice be taken, Siberia from the Urals to Vladivostok can be saved from German infiltration, and he feels sure that when once a democratic government is established in Siberia, it will be the means of saving from German control large portions of European Russia as well.
I submit this report merely for the Department’s information and without venturing any recommendations of my own.
I have [etc.]
- Not printed.↩