ABSTRACT
On November 29, Balfour tried to clarify British policy for his harassed officials in the Foreign Office, who were asking why British troops were being kept in Russia, and for their equally harassed colleagues in the field, who were asking why these British troops were not being used to put down Bolshevism. While admitting that the Armstice had ‘profoundly’ modified the principal motive of the intervention, Balfour explained that it was not a ‘partial and imperfect’ effort to put down Bolshevism; while the clamour for reinforcements demonstrated a ‘complete misapprehension’ of what the British Government ‘are able to do, or desire to do’. After four years of war, the British people would never allow their troops to be scattered over Russia to carry out political reforms: ‘We have constantly asserted that it is for the Russians to choose their own form of government; that we have no desire to intervene in their domestic affairs.’ If, during anti-German operations, Britain had cooperated with pro-Ally Russian forces, ‘this does not imply that we deem ourselves to have any mission to establish, or disestablish, any particular political system among the Russian people’.1
