> Behalf Of Alberto Monteiro
> Gautam Mukunda wrote:
> >
> > (...) Allied (i.e. American and British) forces
> > intervened in Russia during 1919, but it's hard to call that an
> > invasion (despite a lot of propaganda by the Communists on that
topic)
> > since they were acting at the request of, and on behalf of, the
White
> > Russians, who were at least marginally the legitimate government
of
> > Russia, to the extent that Russia had a legitimate government at
the
> > time. (...)
> >
> Sorry, Gautam, but this is "doublespeak" :-)
>
> If they did invade Russia to restore the Czarist monarchy, then
> I agree that it might be there "at the request of the legitimate
> g*vernment of Russia". But the "White Russians" had the
> same legitimacy of the Bolsheviks, i.e., none at all.
>
> It would be similar to France invading the South of the USA
> to restore the CSA after the North had re-conquered it :-P
>
> Alberto Monteiro
I'm afraid I don't agree with that. The Kerensky Government had been
recognized by most of the major governments around the world as the
legitimate government of Russia. This included all of the Allies,
plus a bunch of neutral powers, IIRC. They were also at least
ostensibly democratic, which gives them moral, as well as a legal,
legitimacy. The Bolsheviks, by contrast, were none of these things.
They had no legal status, and they had no moral status. Note that I
did say that the White Russians were the legitimate government "to the
extent that Russia had a legitimate government" - that extent,
obviously, was not much. The better analogy, I think, would be France
moving troops to assist the _North_ during the Civil War. In more
ways than one, in fact. The central reason that the South's claim to
being a just revolution like the American one is invalid is that the
South was fighting to defend its right to hold slaves. There are no
moral actions in the pursuit of an immoral cause. So a French
intervention on behalf of the South would have been a moral disaster -
and also a disaster for France, incidentally, given the military power
of the mobilized North. If the North had requested French assistance,
then French actions on behalf of the North would hardly constitute an
invasion. At worst you can say that the Allied powers were
intervening in an anarchic situation on behalf of the Russian faction
that was probably most likely to provide Russia with a decent
government (by Russian standards, which, again, isn't saying much).
********************Gautam "Ulysses" Mukunda**********************
* Harvard College Class of '01 *He either fears his fate too much*
* www.fas.harvard.edu/~mukunda * Or his deserts are small, *
* [EMAIL PROTECTED] *Who dares not put it to the touch*
* "Freedom is not Free" * To win or lose it all. *
******************************************************************
