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The Documentary: The Red and the White: The Red and the White: Intervention

Bulletins

The Red and The White (Episode 1 of 3)

17/10/2017 GMT

The Red and the White: Intervention

The Red and the White

BBC World Service - The Documentary, The Red and the White, The Red and the White: Intervention

The story of a forgotten war fought by Western troops in Arctic Russia at the end of WW1

In 1918 thousands of foreign troops were ordered to Russia in the Allied Intervention. Lucy Ash tells the story of this little known and ill-fated adventure in the Russian Arctic.

In 1918, towards the end of World War One, tens of thousands of foreign troops, Americans and British among them, were ordered to Russia in what became known as the Allied Intervention. Lucy Ash travels to the Arctic port of Archangel to look for evidence of a conflict which took place a century ago and transformed Russia’s relations with the West for decades to come. Accompanied by historian Lyudmila Novikova and producer Natalia Golysheva, who grew up in this region, Lucy uncovers the controversy still raging around this ill-fated war. In this episode, Lucy joins a group of local battlefield archaeologists as they comb the forest with a metal detector, explores the impact of Allied Intervention on the local population and meets the 93-year-old son of the Allied Commander, General Edmund Ironside, who kept detailed diaries of his Arctic mission and the frustrations behind it.  

Producer: Natalia Golysheva

(Photo: British troops march through the streets of Archangel, Russia in the Spring of 1919. Credit: From the diaries of Field Marshal Edmund Ironside)

The Documentary: The Red and the White

Lucy Ash tells the story of a forgotten war fought by Western troops in Arctic Russia, and the mayhem which followed.

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