Author(s): Rupert Wieloch

Military/War

The Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War from 1918-1920 forms the backdrop to this extraordinary story of the fate of 15 British soldiers abandoned in Bolshevik Russia. Churchill's Abandoned Prisoners tells the previously suppressed story of fifteen British prisoners captured during the Russian Civil War. The Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 has seriously compromised the Allied war effort, a threat of failure that drove the Allies to form a military force to support the anti-Bolsheviks, or 'White Russians' in their fight for survival. Comprised of men from Britain, America, France, Czechoslovakia, Italy, Greece and Japan, the force was tasked with the daunting mission of preventing the spread of Lenin's Marxist ideology. With war-weariness setting in, the Allies deployed a sufficient number of troops to maintain a show of interest in Russia's fate, but not enough to give the 'Whites' a real chance for victory. Caught up in these events is Emmerson MacMillan, an American who served with the task force, who along with the British group was ordered to 'remain to the last' and organise the evacuation of Omsk. Captured, imprisoned and with no communication with their country, the group are forced to endure a fearful detention in the jails of Russia. Seen as an embarrassment by the then War Secretary, Winston Churchill, after he fails to secure their release, these men endure the harshness of Russia, abandoned and alone. This book explores how this secret mission to stop the tide of Bolshevism in Russia had a profound effect on Russian-West politics, as the seeds of distrust continue to dominate modern relations. This is a story of courage and adventure, and one that reveals the truth behind the event that defined events in WWII and today. AUTHOR: Rupert Wieloch is an author who was formally trained on Russian history and Soviet studies. He served as Director of Defence Studies for the British Army and completed a Fellowship in International Relations at Pembroke College, Cambridge. During the Cold War, he patrolled the Soviet frontier with Norway. Currently, he lectures to university courses about Foreign Policy options and the military relationship between Putin and the West. In 2016 he published a book on the changing face of British military operations. 16 b/w photographs