Pictures of hero British captain’s tank corps during Russian Revolution uncovered in garden shed

In November 1917 the Russian Civil War broke out as several factions fought for the power to determine the country’s political future. 

The socialist Bolshevik party, led by Vladimir Lenin, had overthrown the provisional government as different groups battled for control. 

The two largest groups involved in the fighting were the communist Red Army, and the White Army, which favoured capitalism and monarchism. 

The White Army was a union of anti-Bolshevik groups, including peasant militias, the Black Army (Ukrainian anarchists) and other groups fighting for their state’s independence from the Russian Empire, led by Tsarist officers. 

The war continued until June 1923 with 13 foreign nations joining the fight against the Red Army. 

Britain, France and the United States supported the White Russian army during their bloody war with Lenin’s Bolshevik Red army between 1918 and 1920.

100,000 Allied troops were present in Siberia in March 1919, with British forces making up around 1,800 men – or two infantry battalions.

Additionally, Winston Churchill, keen on seeing the Russian tsar maintain his hold on Russia, supplied vast quantities of war materials and infrastructure to ensure the Trans-Siberian railway ran properly. 

Churchill, the most prominent supporter of the campaign, told the British parliament: ‘I think the day will come when it will be recognised without doubt, not only on one side of the house, but throughout the civilised world, that the strangling of Bolshevism at its birth would have been an untold blessing to the human race.’ 

The British were engaged in a series of small brutal battles with the enemy before evacuating.

A year after entering the fight, the French withdrew their troops in March and April 1919, closely followed by British soldiers leaving the Arkhangelsk and Murmansk areas in the autumn of that year. and South Russia in 1920. 

All Allied forces withdrew from Russia in 1920 after a decision was made at the Paris Peace Conference for all Allied forces leave Russian territory. This led to the eventual defeat of the White Russians and the overthrowing of the ruling Tsar.