American Soldiers in Siberia, 1918

The American Expeditionary Force, Siberia, was a formation of the United States Army involved in the Russian Civil War in Vladivostok, Russia, after the October Revolution, from 1918 to 1920. The force was part of the larger Allied North Russia Intervention. As a result of this expedition, early relations between the United States and the Soviet Union were poor.

President Woodrow Wilson’s claimed objectives for sending nearly 8,000 troops to Siberia was to rescue the 40,000 men of the Czechoslovak Legion who were being held up by Bolshevik forces and to protect the large quantities of military supplies and railroad rolling stock that the US had sent to the Russian Far East in support of the Russian Empire’s war efforts. The intervention was largely a failure.

As it had during the First World War, the American Library Association’s Library War Service cooperated by making sure that American soldiers were supplied with a variety of good reading materials. ALA representative Harry Clemons wrote to ALA War Service Headquarters on December 22, 1918, shortly after his arrival in Vladivostok: “I hope to be able to send sets [of books] to all the detachments, large and small, of the Expedition during Christmas week. Thus we introduce the short story into the long Siberian night. In my position of ‘middleman’ I am sure I can send to you and the others who are making the war work possible the grateful Christmas greetings of the Expeditionary Force in Siberia.”

To publicize its work, the ALA published this Christmas greetings postcard from the American Expeditionary Force in Siberia in 1918. From the personal postcard collection of Larry T. Nix.