this is what today they call mission creep. you start with one mission and you end up with another. the reason they stayed a year and a half is that wilson began to see the bolsheviks. he looked around at the postwar world, especially europe and he said you've got all these hungry

all collapsed, the government's collapse nation. this is a perfect breeding ground for bolsheviks. so all of a sudden the bolshevik menace became the chief men. they said maybe we shouldn't ring those troops back home. maybe we should defend their. they still tried to overthrow the government rather than as a means to re-creating. >> first of all, was that taken into account that the fraud was a good nation away from siberia? >> yes. that's one reason why he never believed in the allied version where they have to go all the way to europe to build another funding and didn't think that was practical. he said if we send a few thousand soldiers to control the eastern part, very on a tree survey, then we can send out they stayed because the united state, we don't know for sure,

but at least $50 million, which in those days is not. that was a lot of money for the government back then. in addition to some month they got for the anti-bolshevik and british gave even more. they gave something like 100 million pounds college would be like $200 million. a lot of aid has been sent to anti-bolshevik and i went through the railway, the only way to get it to them. there was no transportation in siberia except for that one railway. so wilson's idealistically control part of that, we can get all this aid and let them create -- re-create brescia. >> host: professor richard, did that have any effect on the bolsheviks? >> guest: it blew up in our faces as interventions often do. it reminds me of the light philosopher who said we learn

from history that we do not learn from his jury because the same thing that blew up on our faces strengthen the bolsheviks. if we think about these foreign armies committing to russia, even though ours is very small, the japanese who would agree to his dad that most 12,000, sent 72,000 soldiers. their idea was not -- you couldn't care less about the bolsheviks. their idea was to control the eastern siberia. this is exactly what wilson didn't want because he knew the russians would react violently to that. the foreign imperialist coming in our country, supporting anti-bolshevik government that was really a czarist government at the russian people wouldn't react to that and they didn't. they went over to the bolsheviks because they didn't like foreigners coming in and support

name the regime. if you look at the elections in russia, i find this very interesting. anyone can say the russian people believe this or the russian people believe that, who knows. but there is an election in 1917, ark teacher and assembly, democratic election, which the bolsheviks canceled and took over. but we do have those election returns. what we found is the bolsheviks went less than a quarter and actually only what 10% of the vote in siberia, 10%. siberia was the least bolshevik part of the country because there was no tradition of feudalism there. they were landowners, a lot of small landowners and they were particularly bolsheviks. i'll be darned if we didn't turn them in to bolsheviks. >> host: do you think that this venture perpetuated

communism? >> guest: i think it did. we have testimony from some other political parties. for instance, the mensheviks and the socialist revolutionary who receive state sort of left wing, but not communist parties. their leaders told our ambassadors, get out of here. this is a big mistake. as long as you are here, we cannot oppose the bolsheviks because the look click the for in my case. he said you're hurting us, and you are forcing us into thayer team. >> host: carl richard, how will notice this at the time in 1917? >> guest: at the time of the intervention, people knew we had troops there and nobody knew why. wilson did put out a statement, which is very confusing statement. this was before the armistice, so is talking about all kinds of

things. alleged german war prisoners running loose in siberia, trying to drum up support. a very confusing statement he put out. all the supernova of soldiers there but don't know why. they are the senators, republican isolation senators who are making speeches come in saying what are we doing there? mr. president? what's going on? they were taking political advantage. they were also thinking we have no reason to be there. i miss actually forced wilson to come up with some innovative finance team, the aid for the anti-bolsheviks because congress did not allocate money for these. >> host: how did he do with? >> guest: he had a war fun to be granted him. that's well thought of the money came from. also, they've got in quotation marks a lot of money to the

russian government before the bolsheviks took over. the provisional government, which is a pro-democratic government. they still have this money, even though they been overthrown there is still a russian in this day. none of the bolsheviks, but the previous government in washington and they told the russian embassy, you can go ahead and send that money to the anti-bolsheviks. so he found a lot of clever ways of getting money to anti-bolsheviks. an interesting thing about the anti-bolsheviks, when we got there was a pro-democratic government in siberia. but the same month as the armistice with the central powers, germany and austria to one, the same month, november 1918, the admiral overthrew the pro-democratic government. we still continue to send most of the money because he was in there for a long time. this is a very unpopular czarist

government and became more popular as time went on because they did things like forcibly draft people into their army would go to villages and take the unmanned and draft them. if the young man had committed torture the old men and even some of the women to say where are they and burned down villages. it was like some thing from ivan the terrible. >> host: professor richard, why is this not more well known today, this did or did history? >> guest: that's a good question. there were only 8500 troops and also was a huge intervention. it wasn't something people are very fond of. i guess just like vietnam people are not fond of. we send hundreds of thousands of troops there. this is an innate rather forget about, but the soviets didn't forget about it. they really used this not only

to take over, but in the years after ribfest propaganda. their little children learned in school like we learned about washington and a cherry tree, they learned about the american imperialism in here and try to impose czarist government, especially after world war ii and the cold war. >> host: why do you have an interest in this? >> guest: well, i was fascinated back in the 80s, i spent a lot of time doing other things. but i first got involved aedes when there was some theories that came out was called america about a fictional soviet invasion of the united states. and that was interesting. nni how professors telling me that they never invaded us, but we invaded them. that is interesting because i'd

never never heard of that. so i started doing research on it. and then i went off and did some totally different. but then in the last few years or so, late 2000, i became interested in again as an example of a conference urging the campaign. here we were in siberia and even though we claimed we were neutral, we were not. the regarding and 89 massively. we were on his side and not involved sort of try and to assuage the population so that they did not enforce bolsheviks. kind of a counterinsurgency. we were not involved in iraq or afghanistan, these interventions, but also does the many send troops to a country

and you're trying to make it democratic, how do you go about doing that? is even possible? so i found a parallel very interesting. we are trying to do the same income to create a democratic government in afghanistan. there we failed miserably. did we learn anything? to be just our tactics or anything like that? so i went back and explored more in the news sources. >> host: we've been talking with carl richard, professor of history at the university of louisiana lafayette. here's the cover of the book published by relman and littlefield, "when the united states invaded russia." you were watching the tv on c-span 2. >> here are some of the books

published in 1998. but tvs first year on c-span c-span 2.

>> edicts have a place for rest and repair close not to d.c. that he could get out here as often as needed, but far enough away that there was wilderness. this is a family place. in that sense it was unique because it had become a place where tr had politicians and press and constantly a hubbub about tvs. this is the one place where his private family time and roosevelt made it clear they did not want anyone but family here.

>> next, laura gottesdiener looks at how much bush is an's innovations in african-american communities around the world. this is a little over an hour. >> thank you, everyone, for being here. i want to explain some of the music you might've heard when he walked in. it's a mix tape created by oral historians who work for the production house called somatic black future in the oral history interviews into recording. and musical conversation for struggled housing and you can get a free download along with the book outside. now, let's begin with the truce dori. the police were out the