THE BOLSHEVIKS AND BRITAIN DURING THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION AND CIVIL WAR, 1917-24, By Richard Dietrich^*, Published by: Bloomsbury Publishing, written by Evgeny Sergeev, Year of Publishing: 2022. Subject Area: Civil War, Russian Revolution and Soviet-British relations. Book Type: Russian History. Total Number of Pages: 270. ISBN: 978-1-3502-7351-1, hardback, $103,50.

This book examines Soviet-British relations during the Revolution and Civil War, and is comprised of 10 chapters which deal with various significant issues in Soviet-British relations. The introduction outlines the topics that the book will discuss, among them: the effect of the revolutionary events of 1917 on the military alliance between Petrograd and London, the origins of dramatic transition from friendly cooperation to outright animosity in later years, the reasons for the failure of the British armed intervention, and the reasons that the British government eventually recognized the Bolshevik dictatorship. The author bases his arguments on information retrieved from diplomatic documents, declassified intelligence reports, parliamentary debates and private papers in Russian and British archives.

The book begins with a discussion of the 1907 Anglo-Russian convention on the delimitation of spheres of influence in Asia, the Bolsheviks’ peace negotiations with the Quadruple Alliance, Britain’s desire to keep Russia in the First World War, Provisional government assurance that Russia would continue fighting, and British efforts to forge a new policy towards Russia after the Bolsheviks came to power.

The second and third chapters are dedicated to the issues of British military intervention in Russia and Allied plotting to overthrow the Bolsheviks. The use of archival sources, both western and Russian, in these two chapters is particularly valuable in clarifying the complex events and developments connected with these two subjects.

The revival of Great-Game type rivalry between Soviet Russia and Great Britain, primarily in the Caucasus and northeastern Iran is the subject of the next chapter. British anti-Bolshevik machinations at the 1919 Paris peace conference, disputes related to the Baltic and Poland, and disagreements between Britain and the Soviet Union at international conferences held in 1922-24 are discussed in the following three chapters.

The tenth and final chapter discusses Britain’s recognition of the Soviet Union and the impact of this official recognition. A short epilogue conclude the book.

This work is a valuable study of the relations between two major powers, one an established empire and the other a newly formed state struggling to secure its hold on power internally and seeking to establish its presence externally. The use of Russian archival sources makes it especially useful for researchers who either lack either access to these materials, or the language skills to read the original documents. The only real criticism to be made is that the small, but numerous grammar errors that appear throughout the text indicate that the book was not written by a native English speaker. Future editions could be improved with more careful editing. Nevertheless, The Bolsheviks and Britain during the Russian Revolution and Civil War, 1917-24 is highly recommended for anyone interested in the Soviet Union’s early relations with the west, and Britain in particular.