In his recent television interview with Tucker Carlson, President Putin talked about a prisoner exchange deal for US Journalist Evan Gershkovich. This diplomatic tactic has been a Russian point of reference with the West for more than a century to the early days of the Soviet Union. The Copenhagen Agreement was signed on 12th February 1920 between the British Prime Minister’s representative, Jim O’Grady (the MP for Leeds South East) and the Soviet Government’s Assistant Commissar for Foreign Affairs, Maxim Litvinov, who had been exchanged for Britain’s agent in Russia, Robert Bruce Lockhart.
The agreement reaped immediate dividends with hundreds of British civilians and prisoners-of-war released from Moscow jails in April. They followed a well-worn route by train to Petrograd (now St Petersburg) and then across the Finnish frontier to Helsingfors (now Helsinki) where they were picked up by British ships. Among this cohort were several officers captured in Siberia, including Captain Francis McCullagh, who was with Brian Horrocks in Krasnoyarsk and Lieutenant Colonel Johnson, captured at Tomsk.
During my research I found several newspaper articles with lists of refugees and prisoners-of-war returning to Britain. It has been particularly rewarding when I have been contacted by descendants of some of the military personnel, including a Victoria Cross winner and a Royal Naval Air Service officer, Anthony Mantle, who was captured in Southern Russia in 1919 and can be seen wearing his RNAS hat in the photograph below (taken, it is believed, outside the last Tsar’s summer palace).
Some of the British Prisoners-of-War in Russia Exchanged in April 1920
Rupert Wieloch 
Hello. I have just finished reading your fascinating Churchill’s Abandoned Prisoners. Got there by a rather circuitous route; Antony Beevor’s Russia, Revolution And Civil War, Ironside’s Archangel and Damien Wright’s Churchill’s Secret War With Lenin.
I knew that my grandfather had been in Russia and a prisoner of the Bolsheviks and that he hadn’t returned to Britain till ‘sometime after the end’ of the Great War. Until Antony Beevor’s book came out it all seemed far to complicated a history to try to piece together particularly with only the snippets that have been handed down through the generations, some of which sounded too fanciful to me to be true (skis being issued as part of the gear, Ironside, the Lubyanka, prisoners shot in the back of the head, ….). My grandfather apparently came back to London a very taciturn man, unable to eat in company.
What I do know about Sidney Arthur Foster (1897-1971) is that he was in the Royal Engineers (Pioneer 254480) and that he went out to North Russia. I have no idea whether he volunteered to go there, when he went or even what he did beforehand (he would have been into his 20s when he went to North Russia), how or where he was taken prisoner. His military card has him down as having received the two campaign medals (Victory Medal and British War Medal) . I have a handful of photos. In one he is wearing a cap with badge (which Damien Wright has confirmed is a Royal Engineer badge), in another he is wearing furs and the brassard of a Signaller (again as per Damien Wright) and in a third he is part of a uniformed but rather disorderly group of soldiers (perhaps prisoners?).
I’m also pretty convinced that he appears in two of the photos in Damien Wright’s book (the group photo at St Andrew’s Anglican Church in Moscow and the one where a handful of soldiers are assembling gas bombs) but I can’t authenticate that.
I’m particularly interested in what might be in the Nuffield College archives. Some sources suggest that all returning prisoners were interviewed, others only that most were. I wonder whether the committee would have bothered interviewing a Private? Have you by any chance come across my grandfather’s name in your research? Would the archivist at Nuffield College entertain a novice like myself looking through the Emmott boxes? I guess there’d be no harm in my contacting the College?
Any thoughts/information welcome.
Many thanks
Steve Foster
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Hello Steve,
Thanks for getting in touch and I am glad you enjoyed my book. I am on my way to Wales today, so this is in haste. I spent much time trawling the Siberian records in the National Archives, but only delved into the North and South Russia campaigns where they touched my story, so I am afraid I did not come across your grandfather. The RE Pioneers was made up of intrepid and resourceful men who were given isolated and dangerous tasks, so I am not surprised if SAF returned as a changed man. The brighter ones worked on communications until the Royal Corps of Signals was created in June 1920. Ordinary British soldiers were treated harshly by the Bolsheviks unless they agreed to work for them as spies. They were starved and kept in lice-infested cells with no privacy and de-humanising conditions. As far as helping you with your research, there is a link in my bibliography to the University of Warwick digital version of Emmott’s interim report, which I recommend as a starting point. Nuffield will certainly host you, but I recommend that you book a visit during their holidays when there are fewer undergraduates in the library. Have you also tried the Great War Forum, which is an excellent network to ask questions about individuals who served in the First World War, including the Eastern Front/Russian Campaign? Best wishes, Rupert
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Good afternoon Rupert and thanks for your response.
I had bookmarked your University of Warwick link and had already skimmed through the interim report hoping to find a list of the PoWs interviewed. No luck. The first of the two interim reports will nonetheless help to paint a picture of life and conditions for those PoWs.
I have now contacted Nuffield College and will follow your recommendation to visit when the students are on vacation.
I am indeed on The Great War Forum. Much help and information garnered there.
Best wishes
Steve
PS: it looks as though I am about a year late on your talks on the subject. Any plans for more?
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Mostly Western Desert talks this summer, but I will be at the Battles Through History Military Show in Sussex. What part of the country are you?
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