A Nasty Little War The Western Intervention into the Russian Civil War

by Reid, Anna

• ISBN13: 9781541619661
• ISBN10: 1541619668
• eBook ISBN(s): 9781541619654
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2024-02-06
• Publisher: Basic Books
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Summary

The first comprehensive history of the failed Allied Intervention in the Russian Civil War, a decisive turning point in the relationship between Russia and the West

Named a Best Book of 2024 by Foreign Affairs

Overlapping with and overshadowed by the First World War, the Allied Intervention in the Russian Civil War was one of the most ambitious military ventures of the twentieth century. Launched in the summer of 1918, it drew in 180,000 troops from fifteen different countries in theaters ranging from the Caspian Sea to the Arctic, and from Poland to the Pacific. Though little remembered today, its consequences stoked global political turmoil for decades to come. 
  
In A Nasty Little War, top Russia historian Anna Reid offers a sweeping and deeply researched account of the conflict. Initially launched to prevent Germany from exploiting the power vacuum in Eastern Europe left by the Russian Revolution, the Intervention morphed into a bid to destroy the Bolsheviks on the battlefield. But Allied armaments, supplies, and loans could not prevent Russia’s anti-Bolshevik armies from collapsing, and the Allies were forced to retreat in defeat. The humiliation sapped British imperial swagger, chastened American idealism, and stoked militarism and nationalism in France and Germany. 

Combining immersive storytelling with deep research, A Nasty Little War reveals how the Allied Intervention reshaped the West’s relations with Russia, and set a pattern for other interventions to come.

Author Biography

Anna Reid was Kyiv correspondent for the Economist and the Daily Telegraph from 1993 to 1995, and has since written about Ukraine for Foreign Affairs, the Observer, and the Times Literary Supplement. She is the author of Borderland, The Shaman’s Coat, and Leningrad, which was published in eighteen languages and short-listed for the Duff Cooper Prize. She lives in London.