Archangel in the First World War

Archangel, a port on the Dvina about 40 kilometres from its mouth on the White Sea, was during the war one of the two routes by which the Allies could supply Russia. Arms, ammunition and coal passed over its quays, and huge stocks piled up in its warehouses. In August 1918 interventionists seized the port, and for more than a year it was the headquarters of the Allied expedition in northern Russia and the seat of an anti-Bolshevik government. The last British troops sailed from here in September 1919.

A window to the west (1914–1917)

From the autumn of 1914 Russia was almost cut off from its allies. The Baltic was closed by the German fleet, and the Black Sea by Turkey, which held the straits. Two routes remained: through Vladivostok and the Trans-Siberian Railway, or through Archangel. The port, however, froze for about half the year, and it was linked with the interior only by a narrow-gauge railway to Vologda. In winter the British sent old warships here to break the ice: the battleship Jupiter in February 1915, and in the winter of 1915–1916 the battleship Albemarle and several old cruisers.

The route drew the Germans’ attention. In the summer of 1915 the German raider Meteor, disguised as an inconspicuous merchant ship, laid mines in the White Sea on the way to Archangel, and in the autumn of 1916 German submarines operated along the route, sinking Norwegian ships in particular. Archangel was also a gateway for people. In June 1916 Lord Kitchener was sailing to this port when he lost his life on the way, and in 1916 a Russian brigade sailed from here to France, later ending up at Salonika. When in August 1916 Romania joined the Entente, the arms promised to it could only be delivered through Archangel and over the overloaded Russian railways.

At the end of 1916 a railway was opened to the ice-free port of Murmansk, but Archangel did not lose its importance. At a conference in Petrograd early in 1917 the Allies promised to deliver 3.5 million tons of supplies and coal to the two ports that year.

A port in the interventionists’ hands (1918)

As Russia was leaving the war, huge stocks of delivered equipment lay in Archangel’s warehouses. The Allies feared that the Germans would seize them, and in June 1918 their military representatives at Versailles concluded that both northern ports had to be held. From May General Frederick Poole waited at Murmansk for the ice to break, and in the meantime the Bolsheviks managed to move a large part of the stocks inland and to fortify Mudyug Island at the entrance to the port.

On 1 August 1918 an Allied squadron captured Mudyug, and at dawn on 2 August conspirators overthrew Bolshevik rule in the town and Poole’s warships sailed into the port. Nikolai Chaikovsky’s government was formed. On 4 September about 4,500 Americans arrived, mainly from the 339th Infantry Regiment, and the same day the Allies took Obozerskaya station on the railway to Vologda. On 1 October Canadian artillery arrived, and with it General Edmund Ironside, who took over command on 14 October. He concluded that he could reach neither Vologda nor Kotlas before winter, and ordered his troops to dig in and prepare for defence. According to a newspaper review of his memoirs, he had 13,000 British, 4,000 American and 2,000 French troops in his care.

Evacuation (1919–1920)

After the armistice of November 1918 the intervention lost its original purpose, and weariness with it grew in Britain. In March 1919 the British War Cabinet decided that Archangel and Murmansk would be evacuated before the next winter. In the spring brigades of volunteers arrived to cover the withdrawal, and in August General Henry Rawlinson came to direct the evacuation. On 27 September 1919 the last British soldiers boarded their ships at Archangel, and 6,535 Russians and people of other nationalities left with them.

General Yevgeny Miller’s White Northern Army held out through the winter. When the front collapsed, Miller fled Archangel by icebreaker in February 1920, and on 21 February the Red Army entered the town.