Fight for the Pacific - Defeat of the intervention of American imperialism by the Soviet people

Fight for the Pacific 

Avarin

1. Defeat of the intervention of American imperialism by the Soviet people 

The Soviet people had to enter into a long and bitter struggle against imperialist intervention soon after the October Revolution. The invasion of American imperialism into the Soviet Far East and North and its attempts to seize Soviet territories (1) were especially bloody.

When, after the February Revolution of 1917, the imperialists began to develop plans for dismembering Russia and dividing it into spheres of influence, American robbers began to launch tentacles into both the European and Asian territories of the former Russian Empire.

During the Kerensky government, the American monopolies, not without success, sought to transfer control of the Siberian railways into their hands. This was to be, from the point of view of the American monopolies, the best beginning for mastering the richest regions of Russia. American expansion was carried out under the guise of providing "technical assistance."

To this end, in the spring of 1917, a commission of engineer Stevens was sent to Russia. In the summer of the same year, Stephens was appointed adviser to the Ministry of Railways of the Provisional Government. Soon, under the pretext of American "technical assistance", he put forward a plan to seize Russian railways, according to which groups of American engineers and railway transport technicians were located at large railway stations of the Trans-Siberian Railway, as well as on the Ural-Moscow-Petrograd lines, who actually had to manage the work of the railways. roads. The Kerensky government accepted this plan. Harry Man and other American railroad kings were jubilant. They believed that first the Siberian and then other Russian railways would soon be in their pocket. Then, according to the plans of the US financial magnates, the introduction of American monopolies through loans, investments, military and political pressure into these and other regions of Russia and their transformation into US colonies was to follow.

The American rich, opposing the revolution in Russia and spending huge sums to support the reaction, hoped in time to recoup these expenses a hundredfold.

Exposing in August 1917 the policy of the American big bourgeoisie, hostile to the revolutionary movement, Comrade Stalin wrote: “At a time when the Russian revolution is straining its forces to defend its gains, and imperialism is trying to finish it off, American capital is supplying the Kerensky-Milyukov-Tsereteli coalition with billions in order, having completely curbed the Russian revolution, to undermine the revolutionary movement that is growing in the West” (2) .

The Great October Socialist Revolution shattered the predatory plans of the invaders and saved the peoples of Russia from enslavement by American and other billionaires and millionaires.

But the American imperialists did not want to give up their tempting plans to plunder Russia. Having begun the struggle against the liberation movement of the working people of Russia after the overthrow of tsarism by financing the reactionary, anti-people coalition of Cadets, Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks, American imperialism continued this struggle even after the victory of the October Revolution.

The intervention of American imperialism against the Soviet people was particularly stubborn. The American bourgeoisie everywhere sought to carry out their bloodthirsty plans, displaying their inherent promiscuity in the means for their implementation. Stigmatizing the American invaders, Lenin wrote in 1918: "Wilson's idealized democratic republic turned out in fact to be a form of the most rabid imperialism, the most shameless oppression and strangulation of weak and small peoples" (3) .

Materials published in 1940 from the archives of former US Secretary of State Lansing showed that both Lansing and President Wilson were already developing a plan in December 1917 to provide financial assistance to the Kaledin counter-revolutionaries. Characteristic was also the proposal of the US Ambassador to Russia, Francis, who wrote to Lansing in November 1917: “What is your opinion on treating Russia the same way as China?” (4) . Francis, in his stupidity, offered to treat revolutionary Russia in the same way as semi-colonial China, enslaved by the imperialists at that time!

In December 1917, the US government had already focused its attention on diplomatic preparations for an anti-Soviet intervention, with the aim of eliminating Soviet power in Russia, dividing Russian lands, and turning them into colonial possessions of large imperialist countries. At the same time, the United States expected to receive not only Siberia and the Far East, but also the Caucasus and other regions.

In an effort to mislead the American people and world public opinion, as well as to appear in a "good light" before the peoples of Soviet Russia and deceive the Soviet government, the American imperialists formally objected to the Japanese invasion of the Soviet Far East without the participation of other powers, but in fact, as it is opened many years later, encouraged Japanese intervention. The American financial tycoons, who had grown fat in the war in Europe, hoped that in the intervention against Soviet Russia others would drag chestnuts out of the fire for them.

After Japanese troops landed in Vladivostok on April 5, 1918, the Wilson government continued for some time to publicly play "non-intervention" or even "opposition" to Japanese intervention. But at the same time, agents of the American government were feverishly engaged in organizing anti-Soviet conspiracies in the European part of Soviet Russia and the Far East.

Trying to carry out the plan of tearing away Siberia and the Far East and subordinating them to American monopolies, Wilson's agents entered into contact with the counter-revolutionary organization of the Socialist-Revolutionary Derber, who created an underground "provisional government of autonomous Siberia." Derber's counter-revolutionary conspiracy was uncovered at the end of 1918. Documents were found that testified to the involvement in the conspiracy of the commander of the American squadron in the Pacific, Knight, as well as foreign consuls.

In this regard, the Soviet government, in a note addressed to the US government, demanded that the American consul be recalled from Vladivostok. However, the American imperialists, like the Churchill clique, took the path of intervention against Soviet Russia increasingly more openly.

The American imperialists also very energetically played a hand in organizing the counter-revolutionary rebellion of the Czechoslovak prisoners of war and in their temporary seizure of the Siberian railway; it was them who provoked the Czechoslovaks and sent them a large number of weapons through the Far East. The Czechoslovaks were considered by them as another weapon not only for the fight against the revolution, but also for the capture of Siberia, the Far East and the CER.

On July 6, 1918, the Wilson government decided on open military intervention in the Far East. American troops landed at Vladivostok on 16 August.

A few days later, V. I. Lenin, in a letter to the American workers, emphasized: “It is now that the American billionaires, these modern slave owners, have opened a particularly tragic page in the bloody history of bloody imperialism, having given their consent - it doesn’t matter, direct or indirect, open or hypocriticaly covered, - on the armed campaign of the Anglo-Japanese beasts with the aim of strangling the first socialist republic " (5) .

Calling American and British imperialism "a gluttonous beast," Lenin warned that this beast "will fall into the abyss just as the beast of German imperialism fell" (6) .

The American Expeditionary Forces in the Far East, as well as in the North, together with other interventionists mocked the population and committed monstrous atrocities. The Soviet people will never forget the atrocities committed by American soldiers and officers. So, in the village of Kazanka, Olginsky district, Lieutenant Veger shot a pregnant woman. Other residents were also shot, after which the village was burned. In the village of Chuguevka, the American invaders subjected the commander of the partisan detachment Baybura,  to terrible tortures who had been captured by them, two employees of the detachment headquarters and several peasants, and then shot them. Shpariychuk, a former partisan, says in his memoirs:

“All those captured were tied up and brought into the priest's yard. The peasants were driven there, they tore the clothes of the arrested and began to beat them with ramrods. Bloody wounds sprinkled with salt, they poured water on them and beat the people again. And when they lost consciousness, they were doused with cold water and the torment continued - five-pointed stars were cut out on the body, their nails were torn off, they were stabbed with daggers under the sides, they were burned with fire. The American officer Kerry photographed the victims in all positions ... ” Having achieved nothing from the patriots, the American officer ordered them to be tied to poles for the night for even more terrible torture. Clouds of mosquitoes and midges attacked the bloodied people... When partisans approached Chuguevka at night, the American detachment fled. (7)

Such atrocities by the mercenaries of the American imperialists further strengthened the love for freedom and for their homeland among the Soviet people, further intensified their hatred of rapists and murderers. Soviet troops and partisans, fighting heroically, threw the invaders out of the Soviet country.

The American interventionists provided extensive assistance to Kolchak and other leaders of the counterrevolution, stubbornly and invariably supported all anti-Soviet, reactionary forces. According to the decision of the US government, adopted at the end of 1918, one hundred thousand rifles, guns, shells, machine guns and other weapons and ammunition were transferred to Kolchak. The Soviet government, in a note dated October 24, 1918, asked whether the ruling circles of the United States, Britain and France intended to stop demanding "the blood of the Russian people and the lives of Russian citizens"(8) .

For the sake of receiving tribute and "land increments", American billionaires supported the intervention of Japanese imperialism, inspiring other anti-Soviet campaigns of imperialist executioners. The atrocities of the Japanese imperialists were no less than those of the Americans. For every murder and violence committed by the Japanese interventionists, the American imperialists are also responsible, who undertook an invasion of Soviet Russia together with the Japanese, who encouraged this invasion in the hope of using the Japanese army as a strike force and seizing the lion's share of the fruits of joint robbery.

The iron will and organizing power of the Bolshevik Party, the strategic genius of Lenin and Stalin crushed the vile plans of the bloody American imperialism, as well as other imperialists. The Soviet Army and the partisans gave a decisive rebuff to the interventionists and their agents - the White Guards. The American and other imperialists were forced to withdraw from the Pacific shores of Soviet soil.

In the grandiose military and political battles against the intervention, revolutionary Russia emerged victorious. However, the lessons of history have taught nothing to the magnates of monopoly capital.

Attempts at anti-Soviet aggression by the imperialists continued almost uninterrupted. In subsequent years, they repeatedly encroached on the Soviet borders in the Far East; these attempts were connected with the aggressive activities of the imperialists against other peoples in the Far East. The policy of peace pursued by the Soviet Union ultimately smashed all the insidious machinations of the imperialists. It provided great assistance to other peoples in their struggle against external imperialist and internal reactionary forces.

(1) See also chapter six.

(2) I. V. Stalin, Soch., vol. 3, pp. 234-235.

(3) V. I. Lenin, Soch., vol. 28, p. 169.

(4) "Foreign Relations", 1918, Russia, vol. I, p. 265-266.

(5) V. I. Lenin, Soch., vol. 28, p. 44.

(6) Ibid., p. 140.

(7) See Labor, April 1, 1951; Izvestia, December 29, 1951

(8) Izvestia, October 25, 1918