‘Prolonged Enslavement’In March 1931, Western-dwelling Russian-born academic Leonid I. Strakhovsky published a remarkable paper, The Franco-British Plot to Dismember Russia. As the author noted, “neither Britain nor France has as yet published any important documents” related to the Allied invasion at the time. This largely remains the case over a century later. Yet, Strakhovsky was still able to piece together “startling designs” of a conspiracy by London and Paris “to bring about the complete dismemberment of the Russian realm for their own political and commercial advantage.”This agreement was cemented in L’Accord Franco-Anglais du 23 Décembre 1917, définissant les zones d’action Française et Anglaise. The document established British and French “zones of influence” in the Soviet Union. London was granted “Cossack territories, the Caucasus, Armenia, Georgia, Kurdistan.” Meanwhile, Paris received “Bessarabia, the Ukraine, [and] Crimea.” White Russian military chief General Anton Denikin is quoted as saying, “the line dividing the zones” stretched from the Bosporus to the Don river’s mouth:“This strange line had no reason whatsoever from the strategic point of view, taking in no consideration of the Southern operation directions to Moscow nor the idea of unity of command…In dividing into halves the land of the Don Cossacks, it did not correspond to the possibilities of a rational supplying of the Southern armies, and satisfied rather the interests of occupation and exploitation than those of a strategic covering and help.”As Strakhovsky observes, “a survey of the economic resources in the two zones of influence” lends credence to Denikin’s analysis. Territories marked out for French domination were and remain “large granaries.” Yet, Donetsk’s “famous coal region” - “worthless” to coal-rich Britain - was “of great importance to France.” In turn, London “obtained all the Russian oil fields in the Cauacasus,” and regions producing “an enormous amount of timber.” At the time, Britain urgently needed all foreign wood it could lay its hands upon.Strakhovsky comments that the December 1917 agreement amounted to, “a picture of organized economic penetration under the cover of military intervention.” Elsewhere, he quotes dissident US journalist Louis Fische, “a parallel agreement disposed in similar fashion of other parts of Russia.” Despite this, France was “not satisfied” with its windfall. Officials in Paris attempted to compel General Denikin to sign a treaty which, if anti-Bolshevik forces prevailed, would’ve amounted to outright “economic slavery”, putting “Russia at her mercy.” Denikin was not persuaded. His successor Pyotr Wrangel however was. He accepted extraordinary conditions, which included granting France “right of exploitation of all railways in European Russia during a certain period,” Parisian monopoly on Moscow’s grain surpluses, oil output for an indeterminate stretch, and a quarter of all Donetsk’s coal output “during a certain period of years.” As a Soviet writer quoted in Strakhovsky’s paper observed:“France was striving to obtain a prolonged and if possible an all-sided domination over Russia…a means of a prolonged enslavement of Russia.”
