Archangel, Russia

We believe that the events surrounding the Russian Civil War are providential. It is no coincidence that the allied nations fought against Lenin in 1920. The American troops were stationed at Archangel, Russia. Satan, of course, was the archangel who denied God. Lenin denied God. God wanted the democratic world to crush Lenin's communism. Tragically, leaders such as Woodrow Wilson did not understand the evil of Lenin. Evil triumphs when good men don't fight with more conviction than the enemy.

The following is a few notes about Archangel, Russia. In time, we will complete this section of the book. For now, we want to mention the amazing historical fact that Lenin's Red Army marched into the city of Archangel in February 3 days before Sun Myung Moon was born. Coincidence? The most evil, godless empire known to man was born 3 days before the Messiah was born. Three is the number of separation. Satan struck first with his evil ideology and its spokesman, Lenin. Three days later, God gave the world His spokesman for truth, Sun Myung Moon.

Very few people know that American soldiers fought on Soviet land against Lenin's Red Army. They were helping the White Army led by Admiral Kolchak who was fighting for democracy and against the totalitarian and evil communists.

God wanted America to help the forces of good in the Soviet Union to win over the forces of evil. Many people in America and the Soviet Union knew how evil Lenin was. World War One ended in 1918 and the world was war weary. Satan often attacks when people are tired. Just at the moment when the good side feels they can't give any more, that is just the moment when they are to give more than they ever have.

President Woodrow Wilson did not realize the threat to world peace that Lenin and his violent revolutionaries were. The American troops were sent to the Soviet Union initially to help fight the Germans who may attack Siberia. When the war ended, Wilson didn't give clear leadership and the British and American commanders who were stationed at Archangel, Russia took it upon themselves to help the democratic forces that were fighting Lenin's Red Army.

Everything was confusing. Some people were advising Wilson to fight a new battle and others against it. In the end, he didn't pay much attention to the few thousand troops in northern Russia and because his determination and commitment was less than Lenin's, Lenin won. This was a golden opportunity to crush Lenin who was weak.

We all know the result of communism in the 20th century. It killed between 100 and 200 million people -- many of their own people. It has been an unbelievably horrible bloodbath because the side of good was tired and naive. Because of the poor leadership of Wilson and other world leaders (the exception was Winston Churchill), several hundred American young men died a horrible death in the rugged territory of Siberia. Most of the young soldiers had come from Wisconsin and Minnesota. There was a reason for this. God was sending men who were used to extremely cold weather. Even then, it was incredibly difficult because the winter they spent in Siberia was 45 degrees below zero.

The men were confused about why they were there. The story of what happened in Archangel, Russia is so tragic that it is difficult to express in words. God had tried to speak some people to educate everyone from Wilson down to the average American about their responsibility to help fight the worst evil that the world had ever seen. But Wilson, other world leaders, and Americans just didn't hear. This is the usual pattern in human history. God tries his best but the people don't hear. And those that do hear, reject the truth and their responsibility. Fallen man has no idea the high standard they are supposed to live. They seldom realize how deadly Satan is and how much they have to be disciplined and ready to give their life for freedom.

I'm only going to give a small part of the story of Archangel, Russia. There are books that go into great detail of this tragedy. Sadly, fallen man is so blind that many of the books see that this episode in history was a mistake. The mistake was that we did not crush Lenin. It is understandable that we didn't do it because America and the world were exhausted the first war that encompassed the world. But if the side of good in mankind knew their awesome responsibility they would do what had to be done.

Stillborn Crusade : The Tragic Failure of Western Intervention in the Russian Civil War 1918-1920

by Ilya Somin

Recently, there has been a very good book about what happened in this Russian Civil War. It is written by Ilya Somin. He is an immigrant from Russia to the US, born in what was then Leningrad in 1973. In 1995, he graduated from Amhurst College with a degree in political science and history. The book originated as his senior thesis. He went on to become a Ph. D. candidate in political science at Harvard. He says, "As I was writing it, I realized that I was saying something totally at odds with what previous scholars had written on the subject, so I decided to try to get it published and -- to my own surprise -- succeeded."

"I guess my main reason for writing Stillborn Crusade was dissatisfaction with the conventional wisdom on Western intervention in the Russian Civil War, which just condemns it out of hand. Being an immigrant from Russia added a personal dimension, since I was conscious of the fact that members of my own family had suffered greatly under Soviet rule in part as a result of our failure to eliminate the communist government early, when we had the chance."

Stillborn Crusade

The author, Ilya Somin, isomin@fas.harvard.edu, on September 17, 1996 wrote the following summary of Stillborn Crusade: The Tragic Failure of Western Intervention in the Russian Civil War 1918-1920.

"The main thesis of Stillborn Crusade: The Tragic Failure of Western Intervention in the Russian Civil War is that the US and British governments needlessly squandered numerous opportunities to eliminate Soviet Communism at its inception. At several points during the Russian Civil War of 1918-20, relatively small efforts by the US and Britain would very likely have led to the overthrow of the Bolshevik regime, thereby saving both the West and Russians a great deal of suffering, including millions of deaths. Most previous scholarship on Western intervention in the Russian Civil War simply assumes that intervention was unjustifiable and ineffective and focuses on the question of why any intervention was undertaken at all. By contrast, I ask the opposite question: Given the very large stakes, why was there not a bigger and more effective intervention? In Stillborn Crusade,I argue that there were few external constraints on the ability of Britain and the US to intervene and that there was plenty of evidence of the malevolent nature of Soviet intentions towards both the West and their own people. Therefore, the failure to mount an adequate intervention is largely attributable to the ideological misconceptions of American and British leaders, particularly President Woodrow Wilson and Prime Minister David Lloyd George. These leaders believed that the Bolshevik government was much less dangerous than it actually was and that, in any case, intervention in a civil war was likely to be ineffective because such conflicts are usually won by the side with the greatest popular support. Wilson and Lloyd George also felt that the Bolshevik dictatorship had a measure of legitimacy because it was founded on real "social grievances," a legitimacy they were unwilling to accord to right-wing despotisms with much stronger popular support, such as those of Germany and Austria-Hungary. I contend that these assumptions were largely false, as was clearly recognized at the time by proponents of forceful anti-Bolshevik intervention, most notably Winston Churchill, the main advocate of intervention in the British government. In the first half of the book, I review the development of British and American intervention policy in Russian from the beginning of Bolshevik rule to then end of the Russian Civil War in 1920 and describe the many missed opportunities. In Chapter 4, I compare the Bolsheviks to their opponents in the Russian Civil War, the Whites, and argue that the latter, despite many flaws, had a realistic chance of winning and were clearly preferable from both Western and Russian standpoints. I also consider the moral justification for intervention in the Russian Civil War and other similar instances, arguing that outside powers have the right to intervene in a civil conflict if one of the combatants is likely to pursue an aggressive foreign policy upon winning or if one side is clearly worse than the other in its violations of human rights; In my view, both justifications were present in the Russian case. Finally, in the Conclusion, I attempt to draw out the implications of the Russian Civil War experience for the study of international relations and for intervention policy today. Stillborn Crusade is a clear challenge to the conventional wisdom on both intervention in the Russian Civil War and intervention in general. If you want to know whether it's a good challenge or not, read the book!"

The following is from the publisher:

"The triumph of the Bolsheviks in the Russian Civil War was the first great crack in the system of international relations established by the victorious Allies. The presence of a powerful anti-Western Soviet regime not only undermined the liberal values binding the signatories and member states of the Versailles Treaty and the League of Nations, but also helped to stimulate the rise of aggressive fascist dictatorships in Germany and Italy. Consequently, the failure of the Allies to intervene effectively against the Bolsheviks helped pave the way for both World War II and the human catastrophe of Soviet totalitarianism. Stillborn Crusade is a reinterpretation of the causes and consequences of that failure. In sharp contrast with previous researchers, Ilya Somin argues that the West's failure resulted not from constraints limiting the options of policymakers, but from ideological misconceptions, particularly those flowing from the 'liberal' and 'realist' theories of international politics. Against these views, Somin sets the position of Winston Churchill, who repeatedly and unsuccessfully urged decisive action when the Soviet regime was militarily vulnerable. As a consequence of British and American policy failures, the entire course of European and world history was radically altered for the worse. Stillborn Crusade also considers why earlier scholars, most notably George F. Kennan and William Appleman Williams, have ignored the issues raised here, even though they and others have not hesitated to criticize Western leaders for similar errors in other instances, especially in the case of Nazi Germany. Somin links the errors of 1918-20 to broader issues relating to the morality, feasibility, and desirability of Western, especially American, intervention in foreign civil conflicts. As a volume with important lessons for our own time, Stillborn Crusade will be of interest to historians, political scientists, and foreign policy analysts."

Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
The Development of British Policy
"Why Not Save Siberia?" The Development of US Policy
The Whites Reconsidered
Lost Triumphs: The Possibilities of Intervention
Epilogue: Conclusions and Implications

Harper's Monthly Magazine in the February, 1920 issue had a very good article by William Thayer who gives good advice of the evil of Lenin and that America should stop it. He writes, "The Bolshevist leaders, from the moment they got control in Russia, have been actuated by the most frightful, selfish motives only. They are, indeed, the final embodiment of selfishness. They proclaim as an ideal that they alone and the class which they rule shall exist in the world, and that, therefore, all other classes shall be exterminated. They have not only preached this doctrine, but they have practiced it, murdering without mercy tens of thousands of innocent persons, whose only crime it was that they were not proletarians. On the outskirts of the Russian cities and towns, when the the snow melted last spring, the open spaces were loaded with long rows of corpses, men, women, and children, shot down during the autumn and left there by the Bolshevist murderers to be buried by the snow. The ferocity of the French Revolutionists during the Reign of Terror was mild compared with that of these Russian fiends, and the total number of French who were guillotined, or otherwise massacred under Robespierre or Saint-Just, was not a hundredth part of the victims of the Russian Terror."

"They would throw over what men in many lands throughout the ages have regarded as ideals, because they have no ideal except their own material gratification. At one of the first places where they seized control the newspapers reported that they held a great mass-meeting, at which, unanimously and amid immense enthusiasm, a resolution was adopted to abolish God. Now God, however He be specially defined in different creeds, everywhere stands for the sum of men's conceptions of Good; quite logically, therefore, the Bolshevists, having no conception of Good, thought it a proof of their power to abolish God -- that is., human aspiration toward, and belief in, Good. Had they known history, had they observed individuals on fire with the passion for the good, they would have recognized that the votes of all the evil persons in the world could never abolish it. For the Bolshevists this act was mere bravado, which surely gave the measure of their insanity."