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Life in Vladivostok
Most of the 4,200 Canadians never left Vladivostok, a port city that a Canadian mounted police officer described as “about 90 percent Bolshevik.” Lacking authorization to proceed “Up Country” to the Siberian interior, the Canadian troops “did nothing,” trying to keep busy with guard duty, routine parades, and recreational pursuits — hockey, soccer, and boxing matches, vaudeville shows and two brigade newspapers, Russian-language lessons, hikes on the seashore and forests, and taking leave from the barracks in vice-filled "Vladi" (as they called the city).
Sidney Rodger Collection, Beamsville, Ontario
Postcard of the street scene on Svetlanskaya Street, Vladivostok, c. 1919.
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The recollections and photographs of soldiers such as Eric Elkington offer rich insight into the social life of the military force and relations with Vladivostok’s civilian population, including a large number of ethnically Chinese and Korean residents and refugees from the Siberian interior. Soldiers’ recollections also reveal the dark side of military interventions — violence, human suffering, and the sex trade.
PROFILE
Capt. Eric Elkington and the Winter of 1918-1919
"The setting of the town of Vladivostok was indeed beautiful seen from the boat in the early morning. The city follows the half moon curve of the bay and seems to be far greater in length than in breadth. Behind the town were low snow covered hills above which the sun was just rising. We could make out several substantial and well built looking buildings one of which was evidently a Greek church with a large golden dome flashing in the early morning sun."[5]
This is how medical officer Capt. Eric Elkington described the arrival of the Canadian troopship Protesilaus into Vladivostok’s Golden Horn Bay on the morning of January 15th, 1919.
Library and Archives Canada, Raymond Gibson Collection, 1977-157, C-91765
Canadian troopship at Egersheld wharf, Vladivostok, 1919. A few kilometres south of the city centre, near the mouth of Golden Horn Bay, Egersheld was the main docking facility and the site of the Canadian ordnance and supply sheds.
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Canada’s Advance Party had reached Vladivostok at the end of October 1918, with commanding officer Major-General James H. Elmsley requisitioning the majestic Pushkinsky Theatre for his force headquarters — prompting protests by Vladivostok businesspeople.
Canadian War Museum, George Metcalf Archival Collection, 19980027-020 #10
Pushkinsky Theatre, Canadian force headquarters from 27 October 1918 to 5 June 1919. The eviction of the Vladivostok Cultural-Enlightenment Society, which owned the stately building, fueled resentment among Vladivostok businessmen, who organized a large protest meeting. The Canadians refused to vacate the premises.
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Elmsley's officers and enlisted men began preparing for the arrival of the main body of the Canadian force, organizing barrack space at Second River and Gornostai Bay, and opening a White Russian officers’ training school on Russian Island at the mouth of Golden Horn Bay (Zolotoi Rog).
Five Canadian trade commissioners also arrived in Vladivostok, establishing an office on Svetlanskaya Street for the Canadian-Siberian Economic Commission, which sought to strengthen Canada's commercial interests in Siberia and the Russian Far East. These aspirations came to nothing, reflecting the chaotic economic conditions of the civil war. But the Royal Bank of Canada briefly operated a branch in Vladivostok in the winter of 1918-19.
Library and Archives Canada, Raymond Gibson Collection, 1977-157, C-91757
Canadian barracks at Vtoraya Ryechka (Second River), north of Vladivostok, 1919. The RNWMP's B Squadron was quartered here, as well as White Russian civilians displaced by the revolution.
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With the arrival of the SS Teesta and SS Protesilaus in January 1919, the Canadian force at Vladivostok numbered nearly 4,000 men — and one woman, Nursing Matron Grace Eldrida Potter.
Canadian War Museum, George Metcalf Archival Collection, 2005110-009 p3
A rare photograph of Nursing Matron Grace Eldrida Potter, the lone women in Canada’s Siberian Expeditionary Force, taken in Vladivostok, c. 1919. Potter sailed from Vancouver in November 1918 aboard the SS Monteagle, along with her husband, Col. Jacob Leslie Potter. She served with the Canadian Red Cross Mission in Siberia.
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The Canadians spent the winter and spring of 1919 “doing nothing” in Vladivostok, as one soldier wrote in his diary. Domestic unrest in Canada, combined with disunity among the Allies and the growing partisan insurgency, convinced Canada's government to bring the troops home — rather than deploy them “up country” into the Siberian interior (the original purpose of the mission).
The Canadians occupied themselves with routine drill at their barracks and recreational forays into Vladivostok. In the cosmopolitan port, soldiers from nearly a dozen Allied armies interacted with local civilians and refugees who had fled the interior — “the backwash of the revolution” in the words of a foreign visitor. The Canadians established two brigade newspapers, hiked on the seashore, forests, and ramparts surrounding the town, and kept active with a hockey league, soccer league, boxing matches, and a “gymkhana” sports day, organized on 1 May 1919 for the Allied contingents and local dignitaries.
Canadian War Museum, George Metcalf Archival Collection, 2005110-009 p23
Gymkhana sports day, Vladivostok, 1 May 1919. Organized by the Canadians for the Allied contingents and White Russian dignitaries, the event concluded with a Bolshevik assassination attempt on General Horvath's car.
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Rank-and-file troops also frequented cinemas, cafes, outdoor markets, and the brothels that dotted seamy “Kopek Hill” above the city. More than one quarter of all hospital cases among the Canadian soldiers in Vladivostok related to venereal disease.2
Canadian War Museum, George Metcalf Archival Collection, 19980027-012 #25
A sex trade worker at "Kopek Hill," Vladivostok, 1919.
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Bryant Family Collection, Nanton, Alberta
Sex trade workers and a Canadian soldier at "Kopek Hill," Vladivostok, 1919. This seamy side of Vladivostok, a feature of all theatres of war, contributed to more than one-quarter of all hospital cases among the Canadians in 1918-1919.
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"That was a tough place, Vladivostok," Capt. Eric Elkington recalled. "It was wintertime and there were always people getting killed or shot in the streets." As a medical officer with the 16th Field Albulance, Elkington saw first hand the hardship and suffering in the city.
He recalls treating soldiers who had "annihilated themselves in a house of ill-fame" and witnessed a bank robbery in progress. The culprit ran into the street and was shot in the head by a guard: “He was piled up with the rest of the bodies, which was bigger than this room of dead bodies, frozen stiff. They couldn’t bury them. Hundreds of dead bodies in this place.”3 Canadian troops found a morbid form of entertainment visiting “The Morgue,” a dilapidated shed on a hill with “dead people just lying on the floor.”4
The Canadians had arrived in Vladivostok as a typhoid epidemic hit the city, prompting Elmsley and the Canadian command to ban contact between the troops and civilians. The order forbade the soldiers from frequently cinemas and cafes and travelling aboard the tramway system.
Eric Elkington Collection, Ladysmith, British Columbia
Canadian hospital in Vladivostok, c. 1919.
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Human suffering in Vladivostok was concentred around the city's central railroad station. Thousands of refugees had converged on Vladivostok in 1918 and 1919, fleeing the revolution and civil war in the Russian interior and riding the Trans-Siberian Railroad to the end of the line: Vladivostok. Lacking adequate shelter and sustenance, they set up camp within the railway station and in boxcars that dotted the railway sidings in the city.
Canadian War Museum, George Metcalf Archival Collection
Civilians and horses mingle in front of the Vladivostok central train station, c. 1919.
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Elkington described Vladivostok’s bullet-scarred railway station as a “foul place” that housed refugees “reeking with typhus.” He elaborated:
The Trans-Siberian railway station in Vladivostok was full of thousands of starving refugees. Literally starving. They had a little area on the floor and they all had fled from the Bolsheviks. Well, we did what we could. We took some supplies, what we could. I can always remember having a loaf of bread, and a woman came rushing up, and I gave it to her, and she had the most starving looking baby you ever saw in your life.
...There were an old general and his wife, living in this used railway carriage. And they were selling what things they’d managed to escape with their life, which was a tea and coffee service, all in gold. And they’d sell a cup, and then a plate. And I said to this old general, “What’s going to happen when you’ve sold all that?” “We will just die,” he said. “We will just die.”
I suppose that was the most tragic scene. I’ve seen a great many tragic scenes in various parts of the world, but that — Vladivostok — was the worst.5
The Canadians' experience in Vladivostok was two-sided. Lacking authorization to fight the Bolsheviks and partisan insurgents, the soldiers' memories were coloured with fond times spent in a unique and exciting corner of the world. They played sports, developed friendships with soldiers and civilians, and found entertainment in downtown "Vladi." But these 4,000 "Canadian tourists" were in a warzone, during one of the most painful moments in Vladivostok's history. They therefore experienced the human suffering of war and vices particular to foreign soldiers overseas.
Notes
- 1 Diary of Eric Elkington, n.d. (c. January 1919), p. 2, E.H.W. Elkington Family Collection (private collection), Ladysmith, BC.
- 2 Daily Routine Orders, 11 December 1918, War Diary of Force Headquarters CEF(S), Library and Archives Canada, RG9.
- 3 Eric Elkington interview, 24 January 1986, University of Victoria Archives and Special Collections, Military Oral History Collection, SC 141, 170.
- 4 Holmes to Mother, n.d., as quoted in Edith M. Faulstich, “Mail from the Canadian Siberian Expeditionary Force,” Postal History Journal 12, 1 (January 1968), p. 22.
- 5 Elkington interview, June 1980, UVASC, Military Oral History Collection, SC 141, 169.
Go to
Special Exhibit
Research Question
What was the experience of the 4,000 Canadians stationed in Vladivostok in 1919?
Key Themes
- • Day-to-day life of the soldiers, including recreational pursuits, sporting events, culture, and outings to downtown "Vladi" from the barracks at Second River and Gornostai Bay
- • Social conditions in Vladivostok, a city strained by dislocation of revolution and the influx of thousands of desperate refugees
- • Logistics of the Canadian and Allied occupation of Vladivostok, including the requisition of headquarters, barracks, docking, and ordnance facilities
Maps
- Map of key sites relating to Canada's occupation of Vladivostok
- Map of the City of Vladivostok, 1918
- Map of Golden Horn Bay, c. 1919 and surrounding City of Vladivostok
- Map of Vladivostok, drawn by a Canadian cartographer, with Pushkinsky Theatre in centre, c. 1919
- Map of Gornostai Barracks (1)
- Map of Gornostai Barracks (2)
Primary Documents
- Diary of Eric Elkington
- Protest resolution by Vladivostok Trade-Manufacturers' Assembly
- Response of Canadian command to businessmen's protest
- Diary of Charles Hertzberg (coming soon)
- Letters of Harold Steele (coming soon)
Multi-Media
- Eric Elkington interview on Vladivostok
- Video from Gornostai Bay Barracks
- CBC radio documentary on "Canada and the Siberian Intervention" (1970)
Photographs from the Digital Archive
- Gornostai Barracks
- Second River Barracks
- Droshky on Svetlanskaya Street
- Riding the tram into Vladivostok
- Korean fishers at Gornostai Bay
- Sex trade workers at "Kopek Hill"
- Vladivostok Railroad Station
- Bodies in "The Morgue"
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