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."
