09:00 15.10.2026
Intervention. The permafrost of global politics
© RIA Novosti / Dmitriy Dubov
The Western civilization and the Anglo-Saxons as its long-standing leaders, ideological masterminds and administrators have been treating many matters in an unfailingly consistent manner, especially when dealing with their vital, or to be more exact, profit-seeking, i.e. mercantilist, interests. In their belief that the world revolves around them, they view the rest of the planet as their coffers, a huge planet-size supply base of sorts designed to serve their needs and cater to their interests.
Taking a posture consisting of randomly professing generalities or groundlessly accusing entire nations of doing something wrong would be quite narrow-minded and clumsy. In fact, there were quite a few humanists among the Anglo-Saxons too, along with Enlightenment figures, thinkers and descent people of good will in general. However, what we are dealing with is a global trend which cannot go unnoticed except for those who have never opened any textbooks in history, geography or political economy, or who intentionally turn a blind eye, to put it mildly, to the distortions and aberrations in the development of various territories around the world which do not exactly live up to the standard of fairness and justice.
“Anglichanka Gadit,” or the Englishwoman does the dirty
That said, how can we discuss justice in our imperfect world, if the history of humankind in its entirety can be described as a sequence of wars for natural resources and the ability to exploit countries and nations, preferably in the most unscrupulous way – the ones that happen to be weaker at a given stage? The West has succeeded on this front by sucking dry the colonies and administered territories in its claim to secure global hegemony. Others have had to come to terms with this posture, while staying on the alert.
Letting one’s guard off, be it for just an instant, or demonstrating weakness, or failing to find the right bearings in the present-day reality – do anything along these lines and you are doomed, i.e., be sure to expect the smoking pipes of the British Navy to pop up on the horizon, or, to follow the latest trend, US airplanes and missiles. Hopefully, there is no need to persuade anyone that Great Britain and the United States are descendants of a single Anglo-Saxon civilization. Of course, each has its own specific nature.
There can be all kinds of widespread and even moth-eaten statements suggesting that there is a thaw underway within the international political landscape, or, on the contrary, about a chilling in the relations between specific countries. Anything can be questioned, except for the fundamental Western predatory instincts. Do not expect any thawing here, or any fluctuation in the degree of political tension. In essence, it is like a single piece of solid and unbreakable permafrost, while the narrative may contain all kinds of visions and perspectives.
Moreover, the effect from all these alarming trends and the permanent threat emanating from the West has been felt far beyond the third-world countries, which have suffered so much during the colonial rule and continue suffering in the post-colonial age. Everyone must remain vigilant, including the closest satellites of the Anglo-Saxons, let alone Russia, both a state and civilization, acting as a mighty and, to put it bluntly, traditional geopolitical rival of the West and its ideological antagonist.
The centuries-old confrontation opposing the Russian and the Anglo-Saxon civilizations, at times spilling out in the open, but often taking place behind the scenes, has been commonly framed in Russia by a short expression which carried so much meaning to become a meme: “Anglichanka Gadit,” or the Englishwoman does the dirty. Military commander Alexander Suvorov is often designated as the one who coined this term. It proved to be so accurate that it did not need any explanation, so much so that many politicians and writers took it onboard. In fact, one of the Russian-language variations of this expression made it into the 1935 Dmitry Ushakov’s dictionary.
In reality, this system-against-system confrontation manifested itself in several episodes when the Anglo-Saxons sought to claim Russian territory and its riches, be it on their own or with the support of their allies. It is worth noting that even if you tried, you would not find a single instance of Russian troops landing on the British coast to colonize it.
Britain has long demonstrated a keen interest in getting its hands on Russia’s rich resources and the Russian north with its abundant, albeit harsh environment, was quite high on its list. This abstract curiosity started evolving into a concrete interest in August 1553, when Richard Chancellor, the Captain of the British ship Edward Bonaventure, ordered anchor to be dropped in the White Sea’s Dvina Bay.
A commemorative sign dedicated to the arrival of the first English ship, under the command of Richard Chancellor, in the Russian North. Severodvinsk
© Ruslan Marmazov
To be fair, Chancellor’s team was on a quest to find a way to reach India through the north. Of course, they thought that the planet was much smaller than it actually was, so instead of encountering Indians, they came across the residents of the Nikolo-Korelsky Monastery on the Russian island of Yagry. Today, Severodvinsk stands there – a city where Russia’s underwater shield is being forged by building new submarines. Quite symbolic in its own way, isn’t it?
That said, Chancellor’s expedition did not amount to military expansion at that point. Was he on reconnaissance mission? Yes, probably. Did he want to establish regular trade relations? Affirmative, once again. It remains to be seen who, between the Russians and the British, better succeeded in their business undertakings, but this does not really matter in this case. More importantly is that from that moment on, the Anglo-Saxons were unable to turn their gaze, filled as it was with envy, away from the incredible riches of the Russian Arctic, which could even dwarf India in its splendor. They were eager to get their greedy hands on our natural treasure trove.
From this point, London’s overt aggression in an attempt to take the Russian northern lands under control became a matter of time. Truth be said, there were reasonable people there who were unwilling to engage before the desired balance of power materialized, or in any case before Russia became unable to fully defend itself.
Kola: No ice, but with wine and a little dose of pillage
The Anglo-Saxons tested these waters several times in the 19th century by launching several trial balloons, or, to be more exact, cannon balls. The year 1809 marked the first time British guns took aim at the territory of the Russian Empire.
These were uncertain times, a time of challenge and hardship with Europe fighting the fever of the Napoleonic plague. He may not have been an Anglo-Saxon but a Corsican, but this did not prevent him from being one hell of a Western nuisance for the rest of humankind.
This was a time when military alliances and coalitions rapidly formed and crumbled just as quickly. At a certain stage in this continental confrontation, Russia had to let itself be persuaded by France in the wake of the Treaties of Tilsit to join the sea blockade of the British Isles, prompting the English to make a debut as aggressors within Russia’s sphere of interest in the Arctic.
In May 1809, an English frigate sailed into the Kola Bay along the Kola Peninsula’s coast, or, to be more precise, the harbor of the Kola fishing post, which used to be known as the Kolsky Ostrog, i.e. fortress, and opened fire at the boats of the Pomors, the locals who were bewildered by this unexpected turn of events, as well the local infrastructure. It must be admitted that there was no one and nothing to fight back.
“As for me, there is no weapon at my disposal to assure defense. Moreover, people have left on their deep-sea fishing trips making it impossible to gather them here. As for my military squad, it is so tiny, and its members are so old and disabled by their past wounds that I have no one strong enough to fight back. In order for a corresponding directive to be issued, I alerted the local district police officer and the townhall in the city. This is what I wanted to tell Your Excellency without wasting time,” Ivan Vladimirov, the Kola town governor, reported in despair about the emergency to the Arkhangelsk Governor Martyn Fondezin.
Fondezin forwarded the report to Navy Minister, Admiral Pavel Chichagov:
“The enemy is staying in the Catherine Harbor, having taken it under its control and seized 17 merchant vessels of various kind, including three from Kola. Buildings are being pillaged. As for the enemy ship, it is anchored at Kuldyuim and has been sending smaller boats around the Kola Bay, with only 40 versts separating it from Kola. It is rumored that people from Kola took refuge in the woods with their families. A report was received about the arrival of up to 70 Englishmen in Kola and their seizure of the town following the arrest of the town governor and all the officials.”
This was a genuine pirate attack against a Russian town which lacked any defenses.
Kola, Dvina Bay. A postcard. Moscow, early 20th century
© Public domain
This is how essay writer Sergei Aksentyev described in his article for the magazine Sever (North) in 2007 what the British did in the Russian Arctic back in 1809:
“Captain Frederick Cottrell led his 40-gun Nyaden to Murman in search of easy pickings.
When he was approaching the Kola Bay, he entered a settlement and persuaded several Pomors to show him the way to Kildin by promising that each of them would get a new Navy uniform, and as much bread and wine as they would want. On May 5, 1809, the frigate anchored in the Monastyrskaya Bay in the Kildin Island’s southeastern part. There were two ships there at that time, owned by merchant Stepan Popov, loaded with flour and food. The English seized them, transferred all the cargo to the frigate and burned the ships. Terrified by these developments, Popov used a small boat to hurry to Kola in order to notify the Kola town governor on what had happened.
Meanwhile, the crew from the English frigate sacked the Kildin church. Drunken sailors took everything they could get their hands on and dragged it to the ship: church ornaments, food, fishing gear, salt, and even fish barrels. Having pillaged the church, and after killing several Pomors, the pirates torched huts, wooden dens and the chapel.
After sacking Kildin, Cottrell sent five boats with 75 soldiers and three officers, led by Lieutenant Andrew Wells, to the Catherine Harbor. There, the catch for the English included ten fishing and transport ships, 7,862 poods [1 pood = 16 kilograms] of rye flour, 6,526 poods of fish, 5,318 poods of salt, as well as various items.
After that, Wells headed to Kola. Having landed on the shore, the English captured the local garrison, disarmed it and locked the soldiers together with officials and the town governor in the court building. Having thrown the confiscated rifles and cannons into the bay, the English started pillaging the abandoned dwellings and government buildings. They broke into a liquor joint and had a loud drinking party there. Drunken sailors wandered the streets singing the anthem, fired their rifles and shot at the dogs. After partying for two days, the raiders loaded the pillaged goods on their boats and left for the Catherine Harbor.
While Lieutenant Wells caused all this outrage in Kola and the Catherine Harbor, the Nyaden crew used the captured small flat-bottom fishing vessels and boats, sailing along the coast all the way to Teriberka, pillaging, destroying and torching the Pomor camps.”
Admiral Pavel Chichagov summed up the Anglo-Saxon invasion in a report to Emperor Alexander I:
“When they were in the city, they confiscated and discarded into the sea swords, rifles and all the munitions from the town governor and other officials of the Empire, as well as their staff, apart from taking away two loaded ships and up to 50 sheep and calves. While the bread and salt stores were left intact, they broke into the wine cellar.”
This was something unprecedented for people in the Kola Peninsula and, in fact, for Russia as a whole. Pomors have had to counter the aggressive moves by their Scandinavian neighbors all the time, but having to face Anglo-Saxons was something different and much more dangerous.
This may have been a short-lived incident, often overlooked amid the dramatic military developments of the first quarter of the 19th century. However, it was also quite telling in that the English demonstrated their trademark colonial style of pillaging everything they could and cruelly mistreating people. The captured goods from the seized Russian fishing vessels were sent on the same ships to the British Isles as (sic!) the spoils of war.
However, it is not that the English cared too much for their own fighters either. There was a curious incident during the Kola Peninsula raid. While sailors harassed local residents, Frederick Cottrell went hunting and killed a deer. Understanding that there was no way he could carry the carcass all the way to the ship, he left a sailor behind – Mathias Elles, to guard the game and headed off to find a helping hand.
But then the captain changed his plans, as could have been expected. Abandoned and puzzled, the sailor saw his ship sail away into the open sea at full speed. The sailor surrendered to the Russians. He had no other choice, becoming the only casualty suffered by the British Navy in this incident.
One thing is clear: had the Russian Navy retaliated against the outrageous raid by the British in Murman by, say, shelling or pillaging Bristol or Portsmouth, perorations about the atrocities perpetrated by the Russian barbarians would have remained on everyone’s lips to this day in the West. But this did not happen. In that sense, there was absolutely nothing to buzz about.
The power of the cross against the pirates of the cold seas
The next time the rowdy English made a foray into the Russian Arctic was in 1854. Timing was a deliberate choice in what amounted to a northern echo, of sorts, from the famous 1853-1856 Crimean War.
The Anglo-Saxons gathered a force consisting of their yesterday’s enemies, the French, as well as malleable Ottomans and Sardinians who just happened to be there, for some reason, and went on to attack Russia with the Western civilization’s tacit approval. London designated this flagrant act of aggression as “a battle of civilization against barbarism.” Sounds familiar, right? But at the time this tool was still in its early days, honed to be used on multiple future occasions. It remains relevant today in its somewhat updated version.
While fierce fighting raged in Crimea, the Balkans, and the Caucasus, there was no calm in the north either. Once again, Anglo-Saxons placed their dubious war methods at full display, having practiced them with so much zeal in their numerous colonial invasions.
The Illustrated London News reported that a small British detached squadron including the 26-gun frigate HMS Eurydice, the 14-gun steam corvette HMS Brisk, and the 15-gun HMS Miranda were sent to the White Sea to disrupt Russian navigation and coastal fortifications in Russia’s Lapland.
HMS Miranda (England) striking a peaceful Russian fishing village on the Kola Peninsula. The Illustrated London News, Issue #25 of October 7, 1854
© Public domain
“English steamer Miranda demanded that the city surrender, but Lieutenant Brunner, an aid-de-camp of the Arkhangelsk Governor, who was there at that time and took over the command, firmly rejected the enemy’s demands, which led the steamer to start shelling the city with fire-hot cannon balls, explosives and grenades. In addition, the adversary attempted several landing operations by dispatching longboats carrying armed men, but Lieutenant Brunner repelled one attack after another with just 50 men from the Kola Veteran Squadron and armed locals,” reads a fragment from a report by Lieutenant Colonel Sokolov to the Chief Gendarme, Aide-de-Camp General Count Orlov about the latest English attack against Kola.
It was the second time that Kola, a peaceful and unmalicious place, which did not build any reinforced fortifications since the 1809 attack, was targeted by the British. Why would it, considering how far it is removed from England? That said, distance has never been a factor for Anglo-Saxons. This time, the Kola Peninsula suffered even more than 45 years before that.
“Almost the entire city was burned to the ground, with the lonely burnt walls of a stone church standing at its very center; this square-shaped square is surrounded by a collapsed mote and one can also spot what remains of an earth rampart (remains of what used to be the Kola fortress). Behind the church, the only stone building which remained standing in the town belongs to the district treasury, and there are also three private wooden houses,” the Arkhangelskiye Gubernskiye Vedomosti (Archangelsk Governorate newspaper) told its readers on June 22, 1861.
Nikolai Golubtsov, a historian and archivist, wrote in this 1911 article, History of the town of Kola, Arkhangelsk Governorate, about the way the English shelled the town using incendiary bombs, the aggressor’s lending operation, and the heroic defense of Russia’s Arctic outpost in August 1854.
“The enemy has taken to the sea, evidently deeming it pointless to complete the destruction of the town. Therefore, even if the enemy failed to take over Kola, the town still suffered a lot of damage. Destruction following the bombings on August 11 and 12 included 92 buildings, two churches, a chapel, and state warehouses, including the salt, wine and bread stores, as well as an ancient wooden fortress with four corner towers. The structures which still stand in the city include 18 residential buildings, a church on the monastery island and the treasury. Among the torched churches there was the Resurrection Cathedral, a magnificent and revered church built during the rule of Tsars Ivan and Peter in 1684. It was surrounded by an earth rampart and had 18 domes with eight-pointed crosses averaging 120 feet (36.5 m – Editor) in height. On the cathedral’s eastern side, under a canopy, there was a plaque setting out the building’s history in Slavic alphabet.”
The Resurrection Cathedral in Kola, built in 1684 and burned by the British in 1854. Illustration from the reports of the Imperial Archeological Commission, Issue 41. St. Petersburg, 1911
© Public domain
Another distinctive and spectacular trait of these predatory forays by the Anglo-Saxons into the Russian Arctic and sub-Arctic waters during the Crimean War consisted of the fact that they had no regard whatsoever for the creed and faith of the local population. The aggressors made no distinction whether they were dealing with Africans or, for example, Indians, or Christians, for instance, Russian Orthodox monks.
When the Resurrection Cathedral in Kola burnt to the ground, this could be described as somehow resulting from an accident by arguing that the building just happened to be in the line of fire when the city was shelled. However, English ships also attacked the Solovki Monastery, an Orthodox stronghold about 150 kilometers from the Arctic Circle. This was something out of the ordinary and outrageously appalling. Led by Admiral Erasmus Ommanney, the British corsairs did not risk attacking Russia’s Arctic gate, the city of Arkhangelsk, protected by the cannons of the Novodvinskaya Fortress, and instead targeted their fire at the monastery.
Why not? Quite an easy target! Just a few veteran soldiers who are totally unfit for military service, as well as monks and the monastery’s laborers made up quite a feeble garrison. Solovki had just a couple of guns to return the fire coming from the ships. There were no rifles to speak of, apart from the obsolete arquebus-type rifles. Still, the monks had their righteousness and moral strength as their trump cards.
“In July 1854, two British 60-gun steamer frigates, the Brisk and the Miranda, approached the monastery and opened fire. The monastery returned fire with its two three-foot cannons and was so effective that the enemy was forced to withdraw.
The next day, with the monastery refusing to surrender, the shelling continued for nine long hours, and throughout this time the monks held a cross procession along the ramparts chanting the anthem titled Be Brave, For You Are God’s Children.
Built outside of the rampart for serving pilgrims flocking to the monastery, a wooden dormitory was blown into bits and pieces, while several brick monastic cells topping the outer wall suffered serious damage. Several cannon balls struck inside the church, but no one was killed or wounded, ‘not even a tiny fledgling in a nest on the monastery’s grounds’.”
This is a fragment from a very interesting book. Published in Moscow in 1913, it had as its title “The Return of the Monastic Bell from English Captivity to the Solovki Monastery on August 4, 1912.”
The English attack the stauropegial Solovetsky Monastery. Lithography. Moscow, 1854
© Public domain
Having failed to defeat the monks on the battlefield, the London pirates stole a bell from a chapel in a remote island within the Solovki archipelago. However, when the winds of global politics shifted later in history, the British had to return it, even if it seemed that they were not sincere in their repentance.
Apart from the bell, the Anglo-Saxon heretics also stole the monastery’s sheep, and also wanted to get the oxen, since the raiders were very short of food provisions. To settle this issue, the English even invited Archimandrite Alexander of the Solovki Monastery to parley on one of the islands in the White Sea, where both the cleric and the British arrived in small boats.
Archimandrite Alexander reproached the English representative for stealing the sheep, only to hear that since this was a time of war, they had to take them. As for the oxen, the priest was very firm when he told the officer that if the ships even tried to approach the monastery, the monks would kill off all the cattle and through the carcasses into the sea. Father Alexander later reported this conversation to Admiral Stepan Khrushchov who served as the military commandant in Arkhangelsk. The account of these very bizarre talks appeared in the 167th edition of the Severnaya Pchela (Northern Bee) magazine on August 2, 1855.
Another thing to mention on the subject of the bell stolen by the English is that unlike the sheep, it had a lot of symbolic importance. Therefore, a whole ceremony was arranged to mark its return to the monastery. Here is how it was described in the aforementioned book “The Return of the Monastic Bell from English Captivity to the Solovki Monastery on August 4, 1912”:
“Something very special happened in the Solovki Monastery in 1912, which mattered not only at the local level and went beyond its spiritual or religious meaning, since it resonated across the nation and consisted of the English government returning the bell that was seized by the British squadron in 1854 after it shelled the Solovki Monastery – the bell returned to the monastery after spending 58 years in captivity.
The bell is not large, and the fact that a naval ship seized it was of no particular significance in terms of material value. This could have been a non-event, especially considering that caring about earthly possessions and material losses is irrelevant for the Solovki Monastery.
That said, the shameful attack by the English warships against the defenseless Solovki Monastery during the harsh years of the Sevastopol Campaign, especially considering that this attack was repelled not so much by military force but primarily by the guidance of the Sweet Mother of God and the Holy Saints, as well as by the prayers of the Solovki monks – this fact has remained as an eternal reproach to the seagoers boasting their loyalty to reason.”
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Book illustration, Captured Monastery Bell Returns from England to the Solovetsky Monastery, August 4, 1912. Moscow, 1913
© Public domain
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Book illustration, Captured Monastery Bell Returns from England to the Solovetsky Monastery, August 4, 1912. Moscow, 1913
© Public domain
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Book illustration, Captured Monastery Bell Returns from England to the Solovetsky Monastery, August 4, 1912. Moscow, 1913
© Public domain
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Book illustration, Captured Monastery Bell Returns from England to the Solovetsky Monastery, August 4, 1912. Moscow, 1913
© Public domain
It could seem that by returning the bell, the Anglo-Saxons acknowledged their wrongdoing. But in reality, they could not avoid playing a dirty trick. Would anyone expect them to repent by making a gesture of reconciliation for promoting constructive cooperation? Not at all.
In 1912, they did return the bell to Solovki as if this was meant to draw a line under the history of their interventionist claims in the Russian Arctic. But as soon as in 1918, just six years later, Anglo-Saxon troops and their allies landed in Murmansk and Arkhangelsk. This time, it was not a simple pirate raid but a genuine, full-scale and all-out intervention with far-reaching plans.
Prodigies of colonial looting
The moment they chose for making the move was just right for them. With the civil war raging, Russia was going through a period of extreme uncertainty and was on the verge of a complete breakdown. The tsarist government was no more, and the Provisional Government with its liberals and freemasons popped up in Petrograd’s Tauride Palace for a fleeting moment before disappearing, too. These were early days for the Soviet rule, and few believed that it would last.
What a great opportunity to rip off Russia’s northern territories with their riches and strategic importance. Of course, there were other territories up for grabs, with foreign intervention troops landing in southern Russia, in the Baltics, the Caucasus, and in the Far East. But in this particular case, we will focus on what happened in the north.
In the spring of 1918, the allied expeditionary corps landed in Murmansk, and after that in Arkhangelsk in the summer of the same year. The logic behind this intervention was quite clear since these were the two main ports in the region, operating as two major gateways to the Russian Arctic, meaning that controlling these cities would amount to taking over the north in its vastness.
Arkhangelsk attracted the interventionist troops by its centuries-old track record of operating as a major marine logistics hub, and the Kola Peninsula with the Gulfstream washing its bays stood out for its unfreezing coastline. From here, they could ship anything to Europe and America, and there were so many things they wanted to get there, as will be discussed later. In addition to this, this could serve as an excellent bridgehead for pushing south deeper into Russian territory. This was also on the agenda, of course.
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HMS Glory (England) in the Murmansk waters. On March 6, 1918, the first armed unit of the Triple Entente forces, under the command of Frederick Poole, disembarked in Murmansk
© RIA Novosti
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Parade of the British expeditionary force in Arkhangelsk
© RIA Novosti
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The English troops in Arkhangelsk. An illustration from Fighting Without a War: An Account of Military Intervention in North Russia by Ralph Albertson. New York, 1920
© Public domain
In 1894, i.e., just a quarter of a century before it all happened, but in a completely different historical reality, Finance Minister of the Russian Empire, Sergei Witte, visited the Kola Peninsula. Here is what he wrote in his memoirs:
“We sailed right into the Northern Sea and on to the ocean, stopping in several bays, and after that headed to the Catherine Harbor.
In fact, the Catherine Harbor was exceptional by its size, deepness and the fact that it was well protected and shielded from the sea. It never freezes with the Gulfstream, a warm current, washing its shores.
I have never seen a magnificent bay of this kind before: it is even more impressive that the Vladivostok port and the Vladivostok Harbor.”
This is when Witte began vigorously promoting the idea of building one of the Empire’s main naval bases in the Catherine Harbor with the corresponding infrastructure. Tsar Alexander III was among the project’s proponents. This is how the city of Aleksandrovsk-on-Murman was born. Today, it is known as Polyarny Port and serves as one of the bases of Russia’s Northern Fleet.
It goes without saying that the Anglo-Saxons were well aware of all the benefits these northern ports had to offer or could acquire in the future. This is why they did not have any second thoughts when deciding to launch the intervention.
Quite tellingly, the occupation units were led by officers who had a lot of experience in fighting colonial wars. Having served in East India and the Persian Gulf, Rear Admiral Thomas Kemp headed the British Navy force near Murman as Commander of the so-called British North Russia Squadron.
As for General Frederick Poole, who commanded the allied troops in northern Russia, he was a veteran of the Anglo-Boer War and had served for many years in Somalia and Nigeria.
Leading the interventionists in the Arkhangelsk Region was Edmund Ironside, a Scottish native who had also taken part in the Anglo-Boer War, and also served in India and South Africa.
Having served in Birma and India, and fought in South Africa, General Charles Maynard was under Ironside’s command but had a lot of leeway as commander of the allied troops in Murman.
While on our land, the British relied on their usual governance practices that were entirely comfortable and familiar to them – meticulously refined and field-tested in Asia and Africa. To put it simply, this amounted to a colonial rule. The interventionists also had clear objectives: to keep the local population in submission and to extract material wealth from the territory under their control as intensively as possible.
“The interventionists seized everything they could find in the warehouses: timber, flax, hemp, etc. – worth a total of 50 million rubles in gold. The English started by capturing part of the shipments by declaring that they belonged to the British Navy as payment of interest under Russia’s government debt. However, the other interventionist forces stepped in and forced the English to give them their share of the looted goods. In addition, the interventionists exported over 100 million golden rubles worth of goods. They ordered timber to be shipped not only from warehouses, but from anywhere it could be found,” as reported in section titled Colonial Looting, which appeared in The Intervention in the North, a collection of documents published in Moscow in 1933.
“Based on incomplete data from customs documents and materials from other agencies, the losses suffered by the North, i.e., the former Arkhangelsk Governorate, exceeded 220 million rubles. That said, it is impossible to make a full account of the actual damage since the occupying forces, acting as masters of the region, exported most of the resources from this land without reporting them, paying duties or any oversight, since they were the ones calling the shots. A rough estimate puts the figure at over 649 million rubles,” Alexander Potylitsyn, the author of the 1931 book White Terror in the North, 1918-1920, wrote, and his calculations were in sterling gold Russian rubles.
Everything of value was loaded onto ships and sent to England, France, and the United States – be it heckle, flax tow, hemp, yarn, tar, coal tar, manganese ore, flax seed, potash, horse hair, stubble, furs, plywood, and cattle – anything that could be taken, and certainly anything that moves well on land or water.
There was a curious incident in October 1919, when it had already dawned on the interventionists that they would not be staying there forever and opted for quickly packing up and be ready to flee. Here is a fragment from White General Yevgeny Miller’s correspondence with Yevgeny Sablin, who was posted in London as a representative:
“Despite my insistent requests to leave three light tanks and one heavy tank here, General Rawlinson left behind only one light tank and one heavy tank arguing that the tanks were already loaded into the hold beneath other cargo, and unloading them would delay the steamer’s departure for as much as 24 hours. At the same time, they took away part of the Russian property, for example, six tractors, which were at the customs office, having been delivered to Arkhangelsk back in 1917.”
It goes without saying that the interventionists took the opportunity to fly their flags on the captured Russian ships.
The white man’s burden
It must be remembered that the intervention as it happened in 1918-1920 was not an isolated incident but part of a whole string of events constituting the complex fabric of the Civil War in our country, even if in itself the intervention was quite a unique and important phenomenon. When the fratricidal bloodshed started in Russia, there was no way the Anglo-Saxons with their dominions, the French, the Americans and other Italians and the Japanese could stay on the sidelines. The temptation to launch an intervention and line their pockets handsomely was too great.
In 1918, foreign aggressors tried taking over about 400,000 square kilometers of land in Russia’s north alone, while the whole territory of Great Britain was just 244,000 square kilometers. This was a big and praised piece of land these people wanted to get their hands on, and were not afraid that it could be too much for them to swallow.
Just as in any other colonial war, the West presented the invasion of northern Russia as anything but a brazen act of plunder and a war crime. On the contrary, those who masterminded the intervention kept humming around the world about their selfless humanism, the knightly struggle against barbarianism (not the first time for us, wasn’t it?), and went as far as claim that they were sacrificing themselves to help Russians cope with their challenges.
In keeping with London’s narrative, the British invaded the Russian Arctic for the sole purpose of fighting (sic!) Germany. They argued that unless they act in a preemptive way, the unscrupulous and dangerous Germans would easily reach Murmansk and Arkhangelsk.
The British Government compiled and circulated its statement for the Russian people. Among other things, it read:
“We are coming as friends to help you save yourself from dismemberment and destruction at the hands of Germany, which is trying to enslave your people and use the great resources of your country to its own ends.
The destiny of Russia is in the hands of the Russian people; it is for them and for them alone to define their form of government and to find a solution to their social problems.
We wish solemnly to assure you that, while our troops are entering Russia to assist you in your struggle against Germany, we shall not retain one foot of your territory. We deplore the civil war that divides you, and the internal dissensions that facilitate the German plans of conquest, but we have no intention of imposing on Russia any political system.
It is our wish to aid the development of the industrial and natural resources of your country, not to exploit them for our own benefit.”
These were marvelous goals and objectives, don’t you find? They were all so beautifully articulated and set out that no one ever doubted that they would start looting right away. And this turned out to be the case.
It is worth noting that the foreign invaders went to great lengths in perorating about their lack of appetite for siding with anyone in our Civil War. In doing so, Western countries adopted a posture of armed neutrality, while present on Russian soil and rapidly taking Russian assets out of the country.
The intervention served as an additional factor in the uncompromising confrontation between the Red and the White armies, which literally evolved into a life-and-death struggle. This is an obvious truth which does not require any further explanation. The White forces were the only ones to have foreign militaries on their side. If so, whether anyone likes this or not, but the Reds demonstrated a greater sense of patriotism when fighting against foreign occupation troops. Eventually, the Reds succeeded in expelling them from our country, while also either killing off the Whites, or sending them into exile as emigres. This is a historical fact, and it does not matter whether it is viewed from a positive or a negative perspective.
That said, in order to achieve this victory and expel the invaders from the Russian North, the Red Army had a long way to go. Foreigners ruled there for almost two years, while creating an illusion that they were barely making their influence on the local administrations felt. In fact, the Anglo-Saxons were the ones who took the most important decisions.
In August 1918, The Manchester Guardian openly reported that stating that the British would not interfere in Russia’s internal affairs would be ridiculous, since everything Britain did consisted of interfering in these affairs, and it was quite possible that this intervention would become even deeper, considering the course of events.
While acting this way, the English tried putting a light veneer, even if without much zeal, on their first steps towards occupying the Russian territory by presenting themselves as a peacebuilding force in the Russian land. They even contacted the local administration in Murmansk to reach a formal cooperation agreement. But it remains to be seen what this administration represented at that time, and how many hours went by before this agreement became irrelevant.
This was not how things went in Arkhangelsk. Here, the establishment of a puppet anti-Soviet government preceded the landing of foreign contingents. But these are just petty details. In any case, there was a time when foreigners exercised unlimited power in Russia’s north.
“In the north, like in no other place, there was a genuine foreign occupation and real support for the counter-revolution,” – this was a straightforward, albeit reasonable, conclusion in a collection of works published in Arkhangelsk in 1927 under the title, 1917-1920. The October Revolution and Intervention in the North.
“Having taken over Arkhangelsk, the invaders acted as if they were in a conquered colony. The city was instantly declared under siege, military censorship introduced, and allied and White Guard counter-intelligence units formed. Arrests started,” – this was a quote from the collection of works published in Arkhangelsk in 1939 under the title, Intervention in the Russian North. 1918-1920.
This jumpstarted the processes which came down in history as the White Man’s Burden, a notion coined by Rudyard Kipling. They were on a mission in their colonies, even if the indigenous population was often whiter, from an anthropological perspective, compared to the would-be civilized people who landed on their shores. Not that anyone cared about it, though.
Street signs dated to the occupation period of 1918–1920. Arkhangelsk Regional Museum of History and Lore
© Ruslan Marmazov
There was an interesting passage in a letter by American diplomat David Francis to Nikolai Tchaikovsky, the head of the puppet Northern Region, saying that General Poole, as head of the expeditionary corps, appointed Colonel Donop as the military governor of Arkhangelsk. The diplomat went on to say that he ignored what kind of authority the Russian governor had, and how it is interpreted by the government of the Northern Region, adding that all they knew was that Colonel Donop’s mandate focused exclusively on ensuring order and public safety in the city.
What a twist. An American is telling the head of a would-be independent Provisional Government in Arkhangelsk that he has no clue what purpose the Russian governor serves. This, however, makes it clear that it is the British military governor who actually calls the shots. How could this be? But for the interventionists forces in 1918 there was nothing unusual about this.
In a way, this was a rare instance of the British issuing orders to the Americans, and the latter obeying these orders without any objections or complaints. In his 1919 novel “Jimmie Higgins”, famous US writer Upton Sinclair expresses surprise and even turmoil through his main character, who happens to serve in an expeditionary force in the Russian North:
“Jimmie Higgins couldn’t understand that here in Archangel were Americans taking their orders from British and French officers, who wasted no breath on pacifism and sentiment, who had no fool ideas about wars for democracy. Was one obscure little runt of a Socialist machinist to be allowed to block their world domination plans? Setting himself up as an authority, presuming to accept literally the passages of his President, in defiance of their authority in Archangel! Allying himself with traitorous and criminal scoundrels, trying to poison the minds of American soldiers and light the flame of mutiny among them!”
In his capacity as the would-be commander of the entire Northern Army, General Yevgeny Miller was in charge of fighting the Bolsheviks in this region. In his memoirs, he described the actual balance of power:
“The English ruled until the British command’s departure, which means until the end of September 1919, and it was only from that moment that I assumed the military command and was able to enjoy all the rights of supreme command and civilian government.”
The routine horrors of the death islands
However, the most telling aspect that characterized the foreigner who landed in Murmansk and Arkhangelsk as true predators and sadists was their treatment of local inhabitants. These invaders viewed civilians living there as laborers, and the White military units who happened to be at the disposal of the allied command, as cannon fodder.
It is understandable that sending such goods as timber abroad required working hands. Someone had to load these goods on the ships.
In the archives, there is a letter by the British representative in the Northern Region, Reginald Hoare, to Commander of the Northern Army Yevgeny Miller with a request to find laborers for port operations. He needed thousands of people, and it was clear that workforce was in short supply. In fact, local inhabitants showed no eagerness to load anything onto British ships.
In the letter the British representative questioned the general in a rather demanding tone about the measures taken by the Provisional Government to procure the workforce and whether it intended to take any further steps to make these measures more effective.
There was even talk of bringing Chinese labor battalions to Arkhangelsk to cope with the shortfall in Russian workers.
Hoare summed up his misgivings by writing that this could be an option of last resort, arguing that it raised all kinds of obvious objections and saying that it was unlikely that his government would agree to this proposal. Still, he went on to write, he was ready to put forward this proposal if the Provisional Government so desired and if it could not find a satisfactory way of dealing with the labor issue.
As for those who not only refused to work for the occupying authority but also demonstrated a lack of loyalty, they quickly ended up in prison or in concentration camps. Can you imagine that these representatives of a would-be civilized world had several death camps up and running there within such a short period of time?
“I had to endure these harsh and horrible days in the Russian North, in Arkhangelsk, where the would-be allies covered themselves in shame, unparalleled in recent history, by their brutal reprisals against workers and peasants,” Pavel Rasskazov, who was a prisoner at the Mudyug Concentration Camp, wrote in his book, Inmate’s Notes. “There were tens of thousands of people who transited through this prison, and thousands were executed by firing squads, hundreds were starved to death while in detention, which tells a lot about the arbitrary tyranny ruling supreme in its terrifying and unhinged crudeness. The moss all around Arkhangelsk all punctured with the graves of thousands of victims, the woods and the marshes along the frontline, barbed wire around detention facilities, underground disciplinary cells where thousands of inmates suffered and died, villages and cities, looted and burned to the ground, and a region facing economic devastation – this is the horrible legacy left by the would-be cultural and civilizational beacons in the Russian North, the terrifying monument to the inhuman cruelty and barbarianism of those representing the so-called cultural West.”
Pavel Rasskazov wrote his book in France where the interventionists sent him as a hostage. In fact, this was one of the practices in their toolkit when dealing with the local population. But the prisoner survived and returned to his home country. However, this experience broke the author’s health, precipitating his death in 1922, while his book was first published posthumously, in 1928.
A prisoner of the concentration camp on Mudyugsky Island, author of A Prisoner’s Journal Pavel Rasskazov. Arkhangelsk Regional Museum of History and Lore
© RIA Novosti / Rudolf Kucherov
According to Pavel Rasskazov’s account, as many as 28,847 people, or 10 percent of the entire population of the 300,000 people living within the territory under the so-called allied occupation, transited through the Arkhangelsk governorate prison alone between August 2, 1918, and September 25, 1919. They were imprisoned, kept in underground cells, and about 4,000 people were shot dead after being convicted by the so-called military field courts. There were 310 people who died of starvation while in detention, that caused scurvy and a typhus epidemic, while over 600 people were sentenced to hard labor.
In his memoirs, Rasskazov offered a vivid and frightening description of the Mudyug Concentration Camp, where the British allowed French forces to call the shots. By the way, delegating the dirtiest work to allies was a trademark Anglo-Saxon method. The French ran the death island, while the Fins, Serbs, Italians, Americans took care of the punitive operations and shootings, and the White Army’s counterintelligence often carried out torture, etc.
“Mudyug is a small island in the White Sea’s Dvina Bay, with about 60 kilometers separating it from Arkhangelsk. Few people in Arkhangelsk knew anything about this isle before the foreign intervention, but six months later it became ominously famous across the entire northern land, with people mentioning it in a whispering voice, and only behind closed doors,” Pavel Rasskazov wrote.
The name of the island was even used to scare poorly behaving children.
“The perception of Mudyug is inextricably linked to the idea of utter suffering, human cruelty at its extreme and the inevitability of a painful death. This had a scarecrow effect on people in Arkhangelsk to a much greater extent than threatening a religious fanatic with total hell. Those who happened to enter Mudyug became live corpses and there was no way back. This was the kind of reputation this island had,”Rasskazov went on to write in his book.
Incidentally, calling this institution a concentration camp is not a counter-historical designation suggesting similarity with the facilities operated by the Nazis. In fact, this was an official designation used by the occupying force in the Russian North. For example, there was a document titled Rules for Prisoners of War at the First Concentration Camp on Mudyug Island.
Pavel Rasskazov devoted many pages in his book to describing the way prisoners were harassed, tortured, the way Russians were humiliated, as well as cynical killings. These pages were not written for the faint-hearted.
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Glacial confinement cells in the concentration camp on Mudyugsky Island
© RIA Novosti / Rudolf Kucherov
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The concentration camp on Mudyugsky Island
© RIA Novosti / Rudolf Kucherov
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A model of the Mudyugsky сoncentration сamp on the death island. Arkhangelsk Regional Museum of History and Lore
© RIA Novosti / Rudolf Kucherov
Despite the severity of Mudyug Island, there were people who ventured to escape from the concentration camp. On September 15, 1919, there was a revolt there, when 53 people breached the wire fencing, made it all the way to the shore, seized several boats and tried to flee to the mainland. All this was happening under intense machine-gun fire. Eleven inmates were killed on the spot, and another 13 got executed by firing squad the next day.
Therefore, interventionists and their accomplices needed a camp that would be more secure and reliable than Mudyug. They opened it in the Kola Peninsula’s northeastern part, near the village of Yokanga (the present-day town of Ostrovnoy in the Murmansk Region).
In fact, this was not the only place for isolating suspicious local residents in this region. There were detention facilities in Murmansk, Aleksandrovsk-on-Murman, and Pechenga. In this sense, the uninvited foreign guests spilt too much blood across our land. But the camp in Yokanga was the most brutal of all.
“After the inmates staged a revolt and fled from Mudyug, the White Army government led by Tchaikovsky, a socialist, decided to find a new location for a labor prison camp so that running away would be impossible. They planned opening prisons on Anzersky and Kondostrov islands in the White Sea’s Onega Bay, and even designed a stamp for the Kondostrov Island prison warden, only to finally choose Yokanga, an abandoned, little known encampment on the Murmansk coast. Running away from Yokanga was impossible since it was about 280 kilometers away from the nearest communities, a marshy land with no roads,” according to the collection of works titled Intervention in the Russian North. 1918-1920, which appeared in 1939.
Жертвы концлагеря западных интервентов в России. Останки заключённых Йоканьгской тюрьмы
© RIA Novosti
In his 1931 book, White Terror in the North. 1918-1920, Alexander Potylitsyn wrote about what can be even described as routine everyday horror of the Yokanga death camp. Below are several quotes from his book:
“When we opened the cell for people suffering from scurvy, so intense and pungent was the smell that it almost knocked us unconscious. Most of the detainees in this cell could not stand on their feet anymore and had to defecate right without moving. The dead lay on the bunk beds alongside those who were alive, but they looked as if they were already dead: dirty, lichenified, wearing torn rags, and decomposing while still alive. They looked like a nightmare.”
“A shed, a partial ruin, was used to deposit corpses there, and 70 of them piled up quite quickly. These corpses were lying around as if this was just a random stack of firewood, covered in snow, with the only difference being that there were frozen blue and blackened limbs sticking out from this pile.”
“Yokanga’s rocky, frozen soil refused to take in the dead. An abandoned wine cellar had to be repurposed for creating a mass grave there. By the time the Yokanga labor camp ceased to exist, there were 172 dead bodies in the mass grave, with the total number of those who died and were killed exceeding 250 people.”
Barracks in the Yokanga сoncentration сamp. Murmansk Regional Museum of History and Lore
© RIA Novosti
In 1920, the interventionists were expelled from Russia. Anglo-Saxons and their allies were prompt to evacuate themselves, while taking along with them anything they could get their hands on and without experiencing any qualms after leaving the White Army’s Northern Army to its devices. As usual, the Red Army had no forgiveness for its ideological and class enemies and went on to exterminate all of them. In some rare cases, the most human-loving solution consisted of sending the person to be rewired.
One thing to note here is that Anglo-Saxons had another trademark behavioral pattern which consisted of leaving behind their local accomplices who performed the dirtiest colonial work. At least this is what happened in the Russian Arctic in 1920, and the same situation occurred once again when the United States withdrew from Afghanistan in 2021. At the time, the local accomplices of the interventionist corps could not believe that they would have a future devoid of joy and ventured clinging to the chassis of airplanes during takeoff. This is what will inevitably take place in modern-day Ukraine, to an extent, as you shall see once the time comes. Countries and the surroundings may change, but the fundamental essence of this phenomenon has remained intact.
In the final days of the foreign intervention in the Russian North, only a handful of high-ranking local officials were lucky enough to convince the departing foreigners that they were worthy of being saved. Nikolai Tchaikovsky as head of Northern Region’s puppet government managed to flee abroad. Having wandered for some time from one masonic lodge to another, he ended his days in London. General Yevgeny Miller left through Norway and tried building a White emigration movement in Paris, only to be kidnapped by his fellow compatriots from the NKVD secret police to be executed by firing squad in Moscow in 1939.
In November 1927, a monument to the victims of intervention was erected at Yokanga’s cemetery to mark the 10thanniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution. It became a symbol and stood as a terrifying reminder about the bloody terror unleashed by the foreign occupiers and their local accomplices in Russia’s northern lands. Huge rocks form a structure symbolizing a prison with bars on its windows. Chains encircle the rocks, and a marble stele crowns the composition. The inscription on it, written in Russia, English, French and German reads: “Eternal memory to the victims of the intervention.” About 200 skulls of the inmates who perished in this camp were buried along the monument’s perimeter, with their names inscribed on the side slabs.
Monuments honoring the victims of the foreign intervention were built in Arkhangelsk, Murmansk and Kandalaksha. Not only was this a gesture of respect towards the people of Russia who died a century ago, but also a reminder for all of us.
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A memorial to the victims of the 1918–1920 intervention in Yokanga. A painting from the Museum of Artist and Storyteller Stepan Pisakhov. Arkhangelsk
© Ruslan Marmazov
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A memorial to the victims of the 1918–1920 intervention on the Severnaya Dvina Embankment in Arkhangelsk
© Ruslan Marmazov
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A memorial to the victims of intervention on Mudyugsky Island near Arkhangelsk. Installed in 1958. Arkhangelsk Regional Museum of History and Lore
© RIA Novosti / Rudolf Kucherov
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A memorial to the victims of the 1918–1920 intervention in Murmansk
© RIA Novosti / Khomenko
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A memorial to the victims of the 1918–1920 intervention at the Kuznechevskoye Cemetery in Arkhangelsk
© RIA Novosti / Rudolf Kucherov
Do you think that the Anglo-Saxon civilization has changed over the past 100 years in terms of its politics and aspirations? There was a change at the top with Washington having replaced London. Yet the essence remains the same, no matter what they do to conceal it in the international media landscape. They still view the Russian Arctic as well as its Far East with envy. Should Russia demonstrate even the slightest weakness, there will be a new intervention, dwarfing the previous one by its horrifying nature. It goes without saying that they will never get this chance. Nevertheless, Russia must be fully prepared. This is the only possible path.
Ruslan Marmazov
