The Lenin Plot: The Untold Story of America's Midnight War Against Russia

by Barnes Carr

It remains the most audacious spy plot in American history—a bold and extremely dangerous operation to invade Russia, defeat the Red Army, and mount a coup in Moscow against Soviet dictator Vladimir Ilich Lenin. After that, leaders in Washington, Paris, and London aimed to install their own Allied-friendly dictator in Moscow as a means to get Russia back into the war effort against Germany.


The Lenin Plot had the “entire approval” of President Woodrow Wilson. As he ordered a military invasion of Russia, he gave the American ambassador, the U.S. Consul General in Moscow, and other State Department operatives a free hand to pursue their covert action against Lenin. The result was thousands of deaths, both military and civilian, on both sides.


A must-read for anyone seeking to understand the true beginning of the Cold War, The Lenin Plot tells the shocking story of this untold episode in American history in fascinating and striking detail.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Russia, Politics, American History, War, Espionage

400 pages, Hardcover

Published October 6, 2020

Reviews

[Christopher Saunders · Rating 2 out of 5]

Barnes Carr's The Lenin Plot offers compelling evidence that "History That Reads Like A Novel" isn't always a complement. Carr reconstructs the Anglo-American efforts to undermine the Russian Revolution, by hook, crook or all-out invasion with a mixture of lively prose and breathless speculation. At its best, the book is a fair introduction to a subject known only fleetingly in the west, with colorful appearances by the likes of Sidney Reilly, the British "Ace of Spies"; Bolshevik double agent W. Bruce Lockhart; the gloriously-named American spymaster Xenophon Kalamatiano; and Boris Savinkov, a disaffected terrorist-for-hire who serves as a go-between for Allied agents and White Russian opponents of Communism. There are also brief sketches of the Allied military missions to North Russia and Siberia, resulting in pointless skirmishes with the Bolsheviks by soldiers who never knew just what they were fighting for. Unfortunately, Carr's book founders on one basic level: he never proves his underlying thesis, that the various plots against Lenin's life (culminating in Fanny Kaplan's shooting of Lenin in August 1918) were all the handiwork of Allied agents. It's an assertion that, in fiction, would feel plausible enough, but an historian needs more than claims that X person "might have" known Y person, therefore X was responsible for Y's action. "Might have" does a lot of heavy lifting here, with Carr drawing connections (Kaplan might have received her weapon from Savinkov, therefore she was an Allied agent!) that the evidence doesn't warrant, rendering the book's central conceit hollow. Add some odd nonsequitirs (claiming that the Bolsheviks were "weak-kneed" in defiance of all evidence), references to contemporary politics (Lenin is dubbed guilty of "alternative facts") and a bunch of historical errors, some minor (John Pershing was too young to serve in the "Mexican-American War"), some mind-wracking (Cossack leader Grigory Semenov is identified as a "Social Revolutionary terrorist"), and Carr's unreliability escalates. The result is a lively but dubious book that would have worked fine as an historical novel; as nonfiction, it's of marginal value.

[Mimi · Rating 3 out of 5]

I studied Russian history in college, and I cannot believe that I had no idea that the US both tried to assassinate Lenin (the eponymous plot,) and that the allies had tried to invade Russia in the aftermath of the Bolshevik revolution. How did I not know this? I saw an interesting review of this bookthat pointed out that it is taught in Russian/Soviet history lessons but not in ours.
The cast of characters are straight out of a Dickens novel in their names and are well described. Sometimes in excruciating detail and it is hard to keep everyone straight. Which leads to my main critique – I enjoy non-fiction with a tight narrative. This was not this. However, it was interesting, informative, and I’m glad I read it.
It was a NY Times Book Review review that caused me to pick it up and I was glad that I did.

[Христо Блажев · Rating 4 out of 5]

Заговорът срещу Ленин и историята на съюзническата интервенция срещу болшевиките: http://knigolandia.info/book-review/z...

В историческа книга след историческа книга бегло се споменава съюзническата интервенция в Русия след Октомврийската революция и изваждането на страната от войната срещу германците, но така и не откривах повече информация по темата. И точно тук малко случайно посегнах към “Заговорът срещу Ленин. Историята на една непозната война” на Барнс Кар, която за мое удовлетворение разглежда в детайли точно този изключително интересен епизод от края на Първата световна война и началото на Гражданската война в бъдещия Съветски съюз. Разбира се, не по-малко това е книга за един почти бутафорен заговор за убийството на Ленин и свалянето на болшевиките от власт, но тази част ме впечатли основно със странните типове, които са натоварени с такива опасни задачи – едни смели и малко абсурдни авантюристи, които повече подходжат на холивудски филм, не на професионални заговорници сред едни от най-обърканите и сложни исторически периоди.

Издателство ЕРА
http://knigolandia.info/book-review/z...

[Mark Lashley · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not good. I'm kind of shocked to discover that this guy has written fiction, because this reads as if it's from an author who has no idea how to craft a story. It's pretty lousy at constructing the timeline, and it's filled with tedious minutiae about the participants' personal characteristics, without fully fleshing out what they actually did, or how those events fit together.

I may be a little overcritical because I crave good narrative history ever since reading Say Nothing, which I think was a just about perfect take on the genre. But this was not that. This is a slog.

[Sagar Jethani · Rating 3 out of 5]

Few Americans know that we had US troops fighting on behalf of the Tsar in Russia in 1918. Our ignorance of such critical chapters in our history contributes to our confusion later when these countries view us with hostility, and fuels unconvincing bromides like "They hate us for our freedom."

Actually, they hate us because we sent in troops to meddle in their internal affairs.

It was therefore with high hopes that I approached Carr's "The Lenin Plot". While I was aware that the US sent troops to fight the Bolsheviks, I knew none of the particulars. Carr's credentials as a journalist promised a well-researched look into the events that defined our relationship with Russia (and the USSR) during the 20th century and up to the current moment.

Unfortunately, his narrative is often overwhelmed by unnecessary detail. When informed that an American woman, Marguerite Harrison, traveled to Europe under the cover of being a war correspondent, does the reader really need to know that—

"It wasn't unusual for American women to go over as war correspondents. Peggy Hull of the El Paso Morning Times was already in Europe. So was Mary Boyle O'Reilly for the Newspaper Enterprise Association; Alice Rohe from United Press; Mary Roberts Rinehart and Corra Mae Harris of the Saturday Evening Post; Bessie Beatty for the San Francisco Bulletin; Marie Hecht from the Chicago Daily News; Rheta Childe Dorr of the New York Evening Mail; Mrs. Harrison Cotton for the Associated Press; and Inez Milholland, Margaret Fuller, and Madeline Z. Doty for the New York Tribute.. Mary Roberts Rinehart later became a novelist; Marie Hecht was married to Ben Hecht, who because the highest paid screenwriter in Hollywood."

What does any of this have to do with America's illegal war in Russia? Time and again, Carr infuses his account with excessive information which—though possibly of interest to the professional historian—leaves the reader awash in a sea of detail, looking for some clue as to how they got there.

More concerning, however, is the moral subtext of "The Lenin Plot." Lenin is described as having "puffed-up superiority and a rude disdain for the views of others," being a "hateful, spiteful radical." He "lived off his mother," and "ate in greasy cafés." His speeches contained "signature messages of hatred, paranoia, and vengeance." Carr casts Lenin as an ideological bioterrorist for wishing to spark worker uprisings around the globe: "Russia was simply a laboratory where he could grow revolutionary bacillus to spread across the world." Trotsky is described as "unreasonable, heady, high-handed," "moody, gloomy, irascible, and lacking in steadfast patience and nerve," possessing "extreme ego" and "arrogance."

Those who sought to kill Lenin are described in somewhat different terms. DeWitt Poole, America's spymaster in the Lenin Plot, "reflected the best of his country—young, optimistic, confident patriotic, religious." He had an "All-American smile." Xenophon Kalamatiano, described by the British as the head of the American secret service, is a "very remarkable American." British spy Sidney Reilly is described as walking through Moscow, "forging ahead in a brisk British military manner, with back straight, chin up, swagger stick tucked under his arm, eyes bright with determination."

If it's shades of grey you're seeking, keep looking: Carr's world is divided into Cowboys and Indians. Indeed, the reader cannot help but feel that the true tragedy of "The Lenin Plot" is not that the United States betrayed its noninterventionist principles by meddling in Russian affairs, but that we were unsuccessful in actually murdering Lenin and restoring the provisional government to power.

While President Woodrow Wilson publicly denounced foreign adventurism and sought to establish the League of Nations, he was quietly funding known terrorists like Boris Savinkov, a man who "killed many people and produced 'collateral' casulaties such as innocent bystanders, including women and children... He became known as the General of Terror, and Bloody Boris." At least Savinkov recognized the true motive for Allied intervention in Russia. The stated noble motives about coming to aid of those in need was only "'official twaddle which no one believed.' He said it was all about economics—oil, in particular."

Indeed, the desire of American industrialists to gain access to Russia's vast markets and natural resources is hinted at in early chapters but never fully developed. The reader is left wondering how much of the Lenin plot was motivated by altruism and how much with the goal of creating a postwar Russia favorable to American business interests.

Carr is right when he traces Russia's steadfast suspicion of American intentions back to the events of 1918. As he notes, Russians are taught about America's 1918 intervention; Americans are not. This asymmetrical education contributes to a one-sided view in which bewildered Americans are only able to make sense of Russian hostility by attributing it to Russian "paranoia." A fuller, truer explanation requires us to learn the truth about our history, and to take responsibility for the gap that exists between our rhetoric and our actions.

[Adam G · Rating 5 out of 5]

A spy story and a seldom emphasized sliver of American foreign policy history. Helps toward an explanation of why things are how they are in US-Russia relations.

[William Fuller · Rating 4 out of 5]

The 338 pages of text in The Lenin Plot left me wondering whether the author's forte lies in his skill as a historian, a raconteur, or a comic. Let's address these categories in order.

Viewed by a reader who has never studied Russian history in any depth and whose understanding of it was largely shaped by long-ago public school history classes, the historical revelations in this book are phenomenal. My formal education was not exactly paltry, but I cannot recall having learned anything of Kerensky's rather lenient and liberal provisional government that followed the fall of the tsar, a government that would itself be overthrown by a coup that saw Lenin's Bolsheviks take power. I certainly knew nothing at all about the military invasion of Russia by U.S., French, and British troops that aimed at supporting Russians wanting to overthrow Lenin. Something else new to my understanding was that the destructive bias against their U.S. and French allies by the British commanders of the invasion force helped to assure the failure of the incursion. It appears as though the deaths of 563 American soldiers on Russian soil in their abortive attempt to help Russians assassinate Lenin and eject the Reds from the seat of government were either too paltry to rate a footnote in my history textbooks or else the U.S. government was, for quite a while, pretty successful in hiding this embarrassing failure at regime change.

Based on the astounding history that Carr reveals and the clarity of his descriptions and explanations, The Lenin Plot easily rates five stars and is an excellent source for anyone wishing to understand Russia a bit more completely and accurately as to its involvement in World War I and the preliminaries leading to the Cold War, the Iron Curtain, the Arms Race, and maybe even Bob Dylan's song lyrics: “I've learned to hate the Russians all through my whole life. If another war comes it's them we must fight.”

At times, however, Carr's writing of historical events is, shall we say, supplemented by wording that seems to originate in his imagination and that he adds in an effort to make the facts of history more immediate, more visual, and therefore more interesting to the reader. Closely related to this are occasional similes that strike the reader as melodramatic. This technique makes Carr appear less of a historian and more of a raconteur, an entertaining story teller. Page 210 offers an example of a peculiar comparison that, rather than enhancing the reader's visualization, actually detracts from the seriousness of the topic: “But then, as he reached the exit, a series of things began to happen in rapid succession like the ticks of a metronome.” By the way, someone should explain to the author that a metronome need not be rapid. Try this one from page 212: “Gunsmoke [sic] formed an aura around Lenin as if he were a tragic figure in a Renaissance painting.” Whether we call this melodramatic or merely sophomoric, the mental imagery is obviously out of the author's imagination, not out of historical reality. But Carr is now on a roll and, a few lines later, tells us that Lenin's car “bounced” as his driver got in to carry the wounded Lenin to safety. We are to conclude that the vehicle desperately needed new shock absorbers?

Have you the patience for a few more examples of Carr's occasional writing techniques that are more fitting for a story teller than a historian? Page 226 lets us know that “... Lenin and his government were on the rocks in the summer of 1918.” On the rocks comes across as a trifle casual for a serious book. Three pages later, we learn that “The building was dark and they [Cheka operatives] had to use lighters as they climbed the stairs....” That description has to be right out of the author's imagination and nowhere else. Likewise, on page 249, Kal “was whisked off to the Lubyanka, leaving behind a cloud of exhaust smoke and a grinding of gears.” Carr seems to be confused as to whether he's writing a history or a fictional spy novel. Continuing as an entertaining anecdotist, on page 325 Carr writes that “Border guards smiled and opened the barbed-wire gate and waved the Russian train through.” Smiled? Really? Was Carr there in 1921 to witness those lovely smiles? More examples than these exist, of course, but I believe these are sufficient to demonstrate that Carr repeatedly comes across as an imaginative story teller, donning his raconteur persona.

We now come to the author's third persona, that of a comedian. Conducting a thorough search for possible conspirators after Lenin's shooting, Bolshevik agents are described on page 228 as inspecting “every apartment house, rooming house, flophouse, priest house, outhouse, dog house, and cathouse.” I can enjoy meaningful hyperbole as much as the next reader, but this struck me as way over the top. On page 247 when a red shroud mysteriously (or “miraculously”) falls to pieces from a religious icon, it was taken as a sign that “The Russian people would be saved from the Reds. They didn't know it would take seventy-one years.” The “seventy-one years” comment, while totally irrelevant, does suggest that the Almighty has a significant backlog before He can get around to saving the people. All right, I admit that's funny, but this book is not intended to compete with Mel Brooks' History of the World, Part 1. Speaking of injecting preservative polymers into Lenin's body, Carr observes (page 336) “That would make the man, like his ideas, permanently mummified.” Admittedly, inasmuch as ideas are scarcely subject to mummification, I am assuming that this is an attempt at humor, but it may be that the author is simply editorializing.

One final nit that demands picking appears on pages 207 and 208, where the author engages in (hopefully unintended) malapropisms. On the earlier page, a factory is said to be manufacturing “ordinance” for the Red Army. There is a substantial difference between a word that refers to a piece of municipal legislation and the correct term (“ordnance”) for weapons and ammunition! The latter page describes Lenin as “spouting simplistic warnings of wreck and ruin.” The actual expression is “wrack and ruin,” now generally simplified to “rack and ruin,” but neither uses the spelling “wreck.”

Still with me? Now, finally, comes the summary: In educational content,The Lenin Plot is outstanding for a reader who is not already well versed in Russian history of the World War I / Lenin / Trotsky / Bolshevik Revolution period. Five stars! The author's writing style, however, is uneven. The book is generally quite readable, but splashes of obviously imaginative writing, unsuccessful similes, and touches of humor that seem inappropriate given their context lead me to a three-star rating. Averaging those two ratings (though applying a mathematical operation to a literary assessment is probably not logical) gives the four-star rating I've egotistically assigned. Just remember that author and critic Edmund Wilson noted that no two people ever read the same book, so your conclusion may be radically different from mine!

[Mark Schueler · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book has great potential, however the author gets caught up in himself. While reading this book, you need a glossary to keep track of all the characters. Additionally, the narration style makes the story really hard to follow.

[Peter Goodman · Rating 4 out of 5]

‘The Lenin Plot: the unknown story of America’s war against Russia,” by Barnes Carr (Pegasus, 2020). I knew that the US, along with France and Britain, invaded Russia toward the end of 1918 to overthrow the Bolsheviks and keep Russia in the war against Germany. This account describes what happened in miserable detail. Carr describes pretty much what happened building up to the several revolutions, including the final Bolshevik revolution; Lenin’s own bloodthirsty, ruthless nature from the beginning; how the Allies tried and failed to respond. Lenin, of course, was a Johnny come lately to the overthrow of the tsar---he wasn’t even there. He was a German asset, and they sent him into Russia to try to further destabilize the country. The western Allies were desperate to keep the Russians in the war; they supported anyone who promised to do that. Meanwhile, there were a series of attempts to assassinate Lenin, the last of which almost succeeded. By
Carr’s account, many of the Western attempts were amateurish. The Reds were justifiably afraid of Western hostility toward them. The Allied invasions were also amateurish. The American sent in the most troops (a few thousand, never enough to actually defeat the Red Army), but there were command problems from the beginning—the British assumed command of the American troops, which did not go over well. After stalling in their attempts to drive south to Moscow, finally the Westerners withdrew. No wonder the Soviet were always afraid that we would try to drive them out: we had done it before. Carr gives detailed biographies of the various personalities involved. He doesn’t have much respect for Trotsky, who was mostly a windbag, he says, who was more interested in worldwide revolution. Tragic story.

http://pegasusbooks.com/books/the-len...

[Joe Vitovec · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an exceptional book and a must-read for anyone who respects history. It describes the American involvement in Russia and its effort to manipulate the Russian Revolution to its advantage in similar ways it has operated ever since--with its money through proxies. As a first-person account, it is invaluable to anyone seeking the truth behind the official 'truth.' I find that re-reading the book is highly beneficial; at least, it was and is for me. This is because a considerable amount of information is presented to the reader, and I at least encountered difficulty with some of the previously mentioned figures. The second reading was/is like turning on the light for me. I found it easier to relate to the characters when I relearned their former positions of importance in the story. Perhaps it was just my problem since I am old and afflicted with all the anomalies of old age. Again, the book is excellent, well-written, eminently factual, and very interesting.

[Susan · Rating 3 out of 5]

So many Russian names to try and keep straight along with the German, British and American!!! The author further confused me when he would refer to person by their last name and then their first.

It was disappointing that there was no detail as to whether the woman who shot Lenin was part of the Allied conspiracy. Apparently, most of this history is not shared or known by many so it is worthwhile that Carr brought it to light. I think it could have been written more clearly and engaged me more strongly than I experienced.

[K C · Rating 3 out of 5]

As promised in the preface, the spy action was incredibly complicated and hard to keep all the personalities straight. Most of the time I was convinced that a better editing job would have been a big help to the reader. The invasion section was more straightforward and clear, and all of it was mind-boggling. How have we not heard more about this?

[Ron Nurmi · Rating 4 out of 5]

a story of how the U.S. plotted to have Lenin killed.

[Dan McCarthy · Rating 4 out of 5]

A well told account of the Western interventions, both covert and overt, in the Russian Revolution.

[Стефан Петков · Rating 4 out of 5]

Книгата като цяло бива, но освен неизбежните две-три фактологични грешки, Кар е поредният автор, придържащ се към отдавна отхвърления мит за парите на Парвус и болшевиките.

[Robert DeChellis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Was vaguely aware of an “unsettled” period in Russia after the Bolshevik revolution. This book is a fairly detailed explanation of the people and events of that period. The Revolution was a very close thing and this book explains it very fairly and concisely. Very much enjoyed it.
Bobby D