The Small Wars Theory and the Activities of British Secret Services in the Russian North in 1918

Abstract

The article is dedicated to investigating the process of British Empire intelligence and counterintelligence structures’ interference into the escalation of Civil War in the Russian North. The research is based on the materials from native and foreign archives, which allow to reconstruct the process of selection of intervention methods by secret services during 1918 in detail. Specific aspects of this process make it possible to shed light on the causes of the subsequent British military intervention failures. Particular attention is paid to the staffing policy of foreign special services and methods of their work in the framework of C. Callwell’s “small wars” theory. As a result of the conducted research it was found that the main coordinating center in planning and implementation of intervention in the European North of Russia were to be British secret services but not military structures. The main reason for this was not only the situation on the Western Front of the First World War, which didn’t allow the War Office to concentrate on the problems of the Russian North properly, but also the stereotype vulnerability of intelligence officers on Russian military-political conflicts as the confrontations of a colonial type. This led to an incorrect assessment of the situation in the country and the region.