06/07/2026
Between 1918 and 1920, the United States sent roughly 13,000 troops into Russia during the Russian Civil War, joining a multinational Allied intervention against the Bolsheviks after they seized power in the 1917 Revolution.
American forces fought in two separate campaigns, one in northern Russia around Archangel and another in Siberia around Vladivostok, operating thousands of miles apart in some of the harshest conditions imaginable.
President Woodrow Wilson publicly framed the mission as protecting war supplies and assisting allied forces, but American troops soon found themselves engaged in direct combat against Bolshevik forces.
The intervention failed to alter the outcome of the Russian Civil War, and U.S. troops were withdrawn by 1920 as the Bolsheviks consolidated control and established the foundations of the Soviet state.
The little-known expedition marked the first time American soldiers fought on Russian soil and helped sow decades of distrust between Moscow and Washington.
