Thinking they were returning home from World War One, the 310th Infantry found themselves in Siberia. There to suppress the Bolsheviks, the 310 responded to appeals and refused to fight against the Revolution. Here is their story.

‘The Mutiny of the 310th United States Infantry at Archangel’ by Harry Raymond from the Daily Worker. Vol. 9 No. 79. April 2, 1932.

ON November 28, 1918, exactly 17 days after the armistice was signed, the 310th infantry regiment, then stationed in France, was told to pack up. The officers informed the men they were going home and at once there was great jubilation among the ranks.

The soldiers busied themselves putting their gear in order, cleaning their mess kits and straightening out their packs. Everybody washed and shaved and went cootie hunting. Everybody was happy. For they were going home, back to America.

A little corporal in Company C was talking to a group in the corner of the barracks.

“No more war for me,” he said, as he swung his feet over the edge of the bunk and stood up. “I’ve been in it from the beginning. Enlisted in the Jewish Legion of the Canadian Army to protect Palestine, transferred into the American army with the rest of the Yanks In 1917. Believe me, four and a half years of hell and murder is more than enough for me. I’ll never fight another war.”

The rookies listened to the corporal with an air of approbation. For the corporal was an old timer, and the new recruits and draftees always stood in awe when veterans of many battles spoke. These veterans were wells of wisdom for the new soldiers.

And there were many old timers in the 310th. The regiment was composed of 4,500 men and officers and most of them were American Jews who fought with the Canadian Jewish Legion and were later transferred to the U.S. forces. They fought on the Marne, at St. Mihiel and wove their way through the Argonne Forest under shrieking avalanches of steel and over dead and wounded bodies with arms and legs and heads torn off.

Yes, they all had enough of the war and were glad they were going home.

Mr. Wilson Has Other Plans

But Mr. Woodrow Wilson, who was then acting as dictator for the Wall Street bankers and the owners of big industries, had other plans for the 310th Infantry.

The workers and peasants in Russia under the leadership of Lenin and the Bolshevik Party had kicked out the czar and Kerensky and had set up their own government, the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics. Mr. Wilson said that this new budding Socialist state must be crushed. So America, along with British imperialism, French imperialism and Japanese imperialism. declared war (unofficially, of course) against the Soviet Union.

The war to end all wars and to make the world safe for democracy was ended. A new war to make Russia safe for the czar and Mr. Kerensky and the bankers and industrialists and unsafe for the workers was started.

On the morning of November 29 the soldiers of the 310th Infantry were awakened from their sleep at three o’clock. They were herded aboard a transport in the harbor at Brest and sailed at 6:30 the same morning. Joy and laughter still permeated the ranks of the soldiers, for were they not on the last leg of their journey home?

Off To Siberia

But soon the troops were disillusioned. Word was passed around that the government had changed its mind. The 310th was not going home to America. It was on its way to Vladivostok, Siberia!

“Why to Siberia?” This question arose in the minds of every soldier in the regiment. “What have we done to be sent up to that cold country?” they asked one another.

“We thought the war was over. Who in hell are we going to fight anyhow?” grumbled a tall lean youth from Detroit.

They soon learned who they were to fight. They were being sent to fight the Bolsheviki, to “protect American lives and property” in Russia. It was the old story all over again about American lives and property. The soldiers didn’t like the idea. They wanted to go home.

In Vladivostok

The ship carrying the 310th landed in Vladivostok January 4, 1919. The men were tired and cramped from their long voyage in close quarters. Their legs and backs ached. They were disgusted with the way the government had treated them and they talked more and more about going home.

In the sub-zero weather the soldiers were put to work unloading guns and ammunition. There was much grumbling, much cursing about the cold and the aching backs and bones. But still they continued to unload the heavy crates, the field kitchens, the machine guns. The unloading, spurred by the cold, was completed in record time. In two hours the regiment was on its way to a camp 15 miles distant.

A Barrage of Leaflets

After 35 minutes marching aeroplanes were sighted high up in the clear sky. There were about four or five planes circling above the marching troops. The officers, acting on in- formation given them by a white guard officer accompanying them, shouted to the soldiers that enemy planes were overhead. Orders were given to mount all guns.

The line of march was broken. Soldiers scattered along the road, some looking for cover, others preparing to shoot. Terror was in every heart, for the men remembered the bombing raids in France.

They waited. But no bombs fell. Not a shot was fired from the planes. Hardly a man moved. It seemed that they had waited hours. Finally thousands of white specks were seen floating in the air. The Red aviators were bombing the American soldiers with leaflets. The 310th Infantry was to learn for the first time the truth about the American intervention into Siberia.

Naturally the soldiers scrambled for the leaflets as they reached the ground. They were printed in English and, as the soldiers began to read them the officers ordered that they be thrown away. Most of the men, however, put the leaflets in their pockets and read and discussed them before they went to sleep in the camp that night.

The leaflet said:

“To the American and British Soldiers: Did you ever stop to think why they don’t send you home?

“The war is over. Armistice is concluded. Peace negotiations are already being conducted. Months have already elapsed since the great slaughter has stopped. Millions of soldiers–French, British, American, are returning home from the battlefields. Millions of prisoners are returning from prison. This is the time of joy and happiness for thousands of humble homes–the boys are coming back! Hundreds of ships are carrying American boys in khaki from the Western  front back to the shores of Columbia. Why, then, don’t they let you go home?

“Sweet Home” is waiting for you. Those whom you love are waiting for you. Your gray, old dear mothers are waiting for you. Are they waiting in vain?

“Your mother is asking every newcomer from the front: “Where is my boy?” “Don’t know! Somewhere in the steppes of Siberia.” What are you doing here, “somewhere in Russia?” What do they want you here for?

“The war is over because there is nothing left to fight for, and nothing to fight against.

“They have been telling you that this was a war against German autocracy, against German imperialism, against kaiserism. But now there is no more kaiserism, there is no more autocracy. The German workers have risen in revolt–and they have themselves defeated kaiserism. Themselves!–without the help of British and American troops…

“Is it true that you were fighting for freedom and democracy? If this was true you would have been sent home when the German revolution broke out. But instead of home they sent you to the steppes of Russia. Why?

“Because this is not a war for Freedom. This is not a war for democracy, but against democracy.

“Do you know that Russia is the freest and most democratic country in the world? Do you know that all the wealth in Russia now belongs, not to a small group of greedy capitalists, but to the vast majority of the people, the workers and poor peasants? Do you know that the land, the mines, the shops, the factories of Russia are now owned by the people and operated for the benefit of the people. Do you know that the present government of Russia-the government of the Soviets (councils of workmen’s and peasant’s deputies) is the only real democratic government in the world?

“Of course you don’t know this. Because your masters are afraid to tell you the truth about revolutionary Russia. They are telling you lies about the atrocities of the Bolsheviks. Don’t believe them! There is no disruption, no disorder, no anarchy in Russia. Revolutionary Russia is, indeed, as one of your American journalists has said, the paradise of the workers and the poor…

“We don’t want war. We want peace with you American and British fellow workers. Don’t you want peace with us? Don’t you want to go home?…

“Demand to go home. Hold meetings in your regiments, form soldiers councils and force your demands on your governments and your officers. If you are convinced in the justness of the cause of labor then come over to our side and we will give you a hearty welcome into the ranks of those who are fighting for the emancipation of labor.”

Things moved fast after the aeroplane and leaflet incident. The Bolsheviki fraternized with the officers and men of the 310th. During the seven weeks the 310tth was in Vladivostok many of the soldiers and officers became staunch friends with the revolutionists who were working in their midst. A small group of soldiers held meetings with the revolutionary workers. Plans were discussed to force the U.S. government to send the 310th home from Russia.

In Archangel

The regiment was then moved to Archangel. Here the soldiers met more of their Bolshevik friends. More meetings were held. More soldiers were drawn into the meetings. After three and a half months it was calculated that over 85 per cent of the officers and men in the regiment would back up the demands to be sent back to the states.

A general meeting was called by a rank and file committee of soldiers and officers to discuss the demands and grievances of the regiment. The meeting was held in a church in a village near the garrison. All those who spoke against the intervention and demanded that the 310th should be returned home the same as the rest of the soldiers who served in France.

The meeting lasted eight and a half hours. The soldiers voted unanimously not to fight the Russians and demanded to be returned at once to the United States. It was also decided that all information coming from Wrangel, the Russian white guard general should be relayed to the Red forces in the vicinity of Archangel.

310th Refuses to Fight

In the meantime the American general headquarters was working out plans to attack a section of the Red forces which numbered around 9,000. The attack, however, never developed. The 310th U.S. Infantry refused to fight. Not one shot was fired by the 310th at their Russian brothers. The 310th mutinied in face of the workers’ revolution.

This was a very serious military offense. But Mr. Woodrow Wilson and General Graves (who conveniently overlooked the mutiny in his book on Siberia) could not shoot the whole regiment. They placed the regiment under open arrest, however, but the soldiers kept their arms.

The 310th Infantry was recalled at once. They arrived at the Hoboken docks February 14, 1920, and were transferred to the detention camp at Tenafly, N.J.

Mr. Wilson and his banker friends thought it would be a good policy to put the soft peddle on the mutiny. It would be dangerous, they thought, to deal harshly with these 4,500 soldiers even though they had committed one of the highest military offenses against the capitalist system. So they discharged the soldiers and quietly gave them $2 a day extra pay for each day they spent in Siberia. The news was kept out of the press and the soldiers went home. Although the soldiers at the time did not understand the political significance of their action in Siberia, the mutiny of the 310th Infantry will go down in history as an important contribution of the American working class to the victorious Russian Revolution.

The Daily Worker began in 1924 and was published in New York City by the Communist Party US and its predecessor organizations. Among the most long-lasting and important left publications in US history, it had a circulation of 35,000 at its peak. The Daily Worker came from The Ohio Socialist, published by the Left Wing-dominated Socialist Party of Ohio in Cleveland from 1917 to November 1919, when it became became The Toiler, paper of the Communist Labor Party. In December 1921 the above-ground Workers Party of America merged the Toiler with the paper Workers Council to found The Worker, which became The Daily Worker beginning January 13, 1924.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1932/v09-n079-NY-sect-one-apr-02-1932-DW-LOC.pdf