‘Brilliantly depicts a disastrous failure’ Antony Beevor

From the bestselling author of Borderland: A Journey Through the History of Ukraine

The extraordinary story of the West’s intervention into the Russian Civil War

In the closing months of the First World War, Britain, America, France and Japan sent 180,000 soldiers to revolutionary Russia, in a doomed attempt to unseat the Bolsheviks. Entangled in what they termed a ‘comic opera’ conflict, they crisscrossed the shattered empire in sleds, trains and paddlesteamers, bivouacked in log cabins and felt yurts, torpedoed warships from speedboats, improvised the world’s first air-dropped chemical weapons, and organised several coups and at least one assassination. Cheered on by Churchill, they also turned a blind eye to their Russian allies’ many atrocities.

Two years later, as the Red Army swept the board, the West evacuated, leaving Russia more blood-stained and suspicious than ever. A Nasty Little War brings this forgotten misadventure vividly to life.

‘Brilliantly depicts a disastrous failure’ Antony Beevor

‘Witty and elegant . . . Excellent background to today’s events’ Anne Applebaum

‘Britain’s most forgotten war, brilliantly remembered’ Simon Jenkins

‘Vivid and remarkably timely’ Martin Sixsmith

From the bestselling author of Borderland: A Journey Through the History of Ukraine

The extraordinary story of how the West tried to reverse the Russian Revolution.

In the closing months of the First World War, Britain, America, France and Japan sent arms and 180,000 soldiers to Russia, with the aim of tipping the balance in her post-revolutionary Civil War. From Central Asia to the Arctic and from Poland to the Pacific, they joined anti-Bolshevik forces in trying to overthrow the new men in the Kremlin, in an astonishingly ambitious military adventure known as the Intervention.

Fresh, in the case of the British, from the trenches, they found themselves in a mobile, multi-sided conflict as different as possible from the grim stasis of the Western Front. Criss-crossing the shattered Russian empire in trains, sleds and paddlesteamers, they bivouacked in snowbound cabins and Kirghiz yurts, torpedoed Red battleships from speedboats, improvised new currencies and the world’s first air-dropped chemical weapons, got caught up in mass retreats and a typhus epidemic, organised several coups and at least one assassination. Taking tea with warlords and princesses, they also turned a blind eye to their Russian allies’ numerous atrocities.

Two years later they left again, filing glumly back onto their troopships as port after port fell to the Red Army. Later, American veterans compared the humiliation to Vietnam, and the politicians and generals responsible preferred to trivialise or forget. Drawing on previously unused diaries, letters and memoirs, A Nasty Little War brings an episode with echoes down the century since vividly to life.

‘A fascinating and often violent odyssey, spanning more than 1,000 years of conflict and culture’
INDEPENDENT

Flat, fertile, and fatally tempting to invaders, for centuries Ukraine was fought over by more powerful neighbours. Though its modern national movement dates back to the early nineteenth century, it did not win real independence until 1991, with the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Since then, Ukrainians have proved themselves one of the world’s most remarkable nations. In 2014 mass demonstrations forced out a corrupt pro-Russian president. Russia responded by invading, first seizing Crimea and the eastern Donbass, and then in February 2022 marching on Kyiv. With Western help, Ukraine is fighting back. But in what form it will emerge from the war – the bloodiest in Europe since 1945 – remains to be seen.

For this fourth edition of her classic history, Anna Reid returns to the scene. Talking to refugees, politicians and victims of widespread Russian war crimes, she adds a new chapter to the complex biography of a country on the frontline of the conflict between democracy and dictatorship.

‘A fascinating and often violent odyssey, spanning more than 1,000 years of conflict and culture’ Independent on Sunday

Centre of the first great Slav civilisation in the tenth century, then divided between warring neighbours for a millennium, Ukraine finally won independence with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Tiring of their own corrupt governments, Ukrainians have since mounted two popular revolutions, taking to the streets to demand fair elections and closer ties to Europe. In the spring of 2014, Russia responded by invading Crimea and sponsoring a civil war in the Russian-speaking Donbass. Threatened by Moscow, misunderstood in the West, Ukraine hangs once more in the balance. Speaking to pro-democracy activists and pro-Russia militiamen, peasants and miners, survivors of Hitler’s Holocaust and Stalin’s famine, Anna Reid combines history and travel-writing to unpick the past and present of this bloody and complex borderland.

‘Beautifully written and lovingly researched’ Daily Telegraph
‘Gripping history’ The Times