File No. 861.00/3434
The Chargé in Russia (Poole) to the Secretary of State
[Received December 13, 3.04 p.m.]
658. To Paris also. Tendencies noted in the last paragraph of my 625, December 2, 8 p.m., especially unrest among left elements, becoming somewhat more marked as news Siberian events spreading. Allied embassies have had following published to-day:
In view of current rumors, the Allied military command, after consulting with the Allied embassies, considers it desirable to inform the people of the Archangel government that while adhering carefully to the principle of noninterference in Russian internal politics it cannot permit public order to be disturbed in the areas protected by Allied troops. Political activity in this region must be carried on within the legal limits. Any attempts at a coup d’état or other violent or illegal political change, whether coming from the parties of the right or the left, is forbidden and will be rigorously put down.
This action was taken on my proposal. It seemed important first to put a definite stop by this means to the silly counter-revolutionary plotting of certain Russian officers, who thought they had the secret sympathy of the Allies, in which they may not have been without [Page 577] encouragement from certain French officers, although Noulens has energetically opposed all such movements; second and most important, to reassure the mass of the people whose uneasiness seems to have been largely due to a fear that the Allies might countenance or support a reactionary coup.
There is still no perceptible popular reflex from the events reported in my telegram 654 of yesterday. This disturbance was somewhat apart from the developments mentioned above, having its origin in the conditions described in the second and third paragraphs of my 654, and its most immediate cause in the unwise insistence of the Russian officers upon resuming epaulets which are to the soldiers the outward symbol of reaction.
Bolshevik propaganda has been especially active recently; it has also aimed to influence the American troops and to create ill feeling among them against the British in which it has unfortunately not been without success. The situation is reported to have been acute in M Company, since one of its popular men was killed at the front by a Canadian aviator under circumstances which are now being investigated. By the arrest of four Bolshevik agitators yesterday, Colonel Ruggles’s office broke up a Bolshevik plot directed to produce an uprising among the American troops early next month. The plot had apparently made no progress.