Trotsky in Canada
—Jason
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The imprisonment of enemy combatants is something nations have struggled to control throughout history. Beginning in the early modern period, international laws were adopted that protected soldiers who surrendered from arbitrary execution or enslavement. While many would succumb to wounds, disease, or accident, enemy prisoners of war were required to be clothed, fed, housed, and receive medical care from their captors. As the scale of wars increased, the size of these potential prisoner of war camps grew in tandem.
Governments in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries also confronted yet another conundrum: what to do with the potentially hostile civilian populations in both occupied territories and at home? The fear of immigrants from enemy countries who may conduct acts of espionage, sabotage, or terrorism haunted both civilian and military authorities. These fears led to many governments creating and enacting unsavory laws and policies that would see immigrants and naturalized citizens, whether individually or collectively, coming under surveillance, arrest, and imprisonment. The term “enemy aliens” was crafted to identify these potentially dangerous people.
The outbreak of World War I in August 1914 created an atmosphere of immediate, and intense, hostility towards “enemy” ethnic and nationalist groups within the combating nations. Once fighting had broken out, it was impossible for many people trapped outside of their home countries to escape and return home. The governments of both the Entente Powers and Central Powers passed laws that allowed for the local and federal police, as well as military authorities, to monitor, arrest, and detain anyone who fell into the “enemy alien” category within their borders. Those targeted could potentially had lived for years within their new country and still fall under suspicion.
Because the British empire encompassed territories within Europe, Africa, the Americas, and Asia it had the difficult problem of ensuring “fifth column” activities did not disrupt their war effort. In Canada, internment camps were created to house enemy aliens from Germany, Austria-Hungary, and other Central Power nations. Between 1914 and 1918 a total of 8,579 men were imprisoned in 24 camps spread throughout the country. These prisoners included foreign workers trapped when war erupted, German sailors and soldiers who had been captured, as well as recent immigrants and naturalized citizens deemed dangerous.
Nova Scotia housed three such camps in which the ethnic makeup of the men interned was wholly German. Initially the island only had two prisons, but as more and more Germans were captured another camp needed to be constructed. The third prison, the Amherst Internment Camp, was completed in April 1915. The bulk of its population was made up of German sailors whose ships were captured or sunk by British forces.
At its height, Amherst was the largest internment camp in Canada. Even with its initial contingent of prisoners of war, the camp developed a reputation for tension between inmates and their guards. A riot broke out in June 1915 when the internees refused to enter the camp. Violence broke out resulting in the death of one prisoner and one guard being injured. Order was restored and the internees entered the camp and grudgingly adapted to their situation. The original camp commander was replaced, and the new commandant enacted closer monitoring to ensure violence did not erupt again. For the next two years, tensions cooled, and Amherst operated without major incidents.
Perhaps the strangest episode for those within Amherst Internment Camp occurred when the Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky was briefly held as an internee. Trotsky was a Marxist agitator and had been in international exile from his home country. His revolutionary activities had seen him arrested and imprisoned multiple times in Russia, despite this he constantly escaped the isolated villages in Siberia to which he had been exiled. Eventually, he fled Tsarist Russia and took up a wandering residence within Central and Western European.
When World War I broke out, Trotsky was a newspaper editor in France who “volunteered” to cover the Western Front. The French quickly tired of his articles discussing the waste of life and calls for complete armistice. Trotsky maintained his Russian citizenship, even with his tirades against Tsar Nicholas II’s reign, and since that empire was an ally of France, he could not be legally detained. To get around this legal issue, in 1915 the French government expelled Trotsky; he and his wife traveled to the still neutral United States.
The outbreak of the January 1917 Russian Revolution was turning point for once again for the exiled Trotsky. Nicholas II abdicated his crown and the Romanov Dynasty swept from power: a new day potentially dawned in Russia. The new Russian Provisional Government was a loose coalition of competing political parties struggling to create a functioning state.
The Entente Powers feared that this unstable and fledgling government would not honor its commitments to the war effort. The Bolsheviks, one of the major Marxist parties, were a minority group within the Provisional Government and had, since the outbreak of the war, called for a ceasefire with the Central Powers. Trotsky felt that his aid was needed by his fellow Marxists in Petrograd and so attempted to leave the United States.
Trotsky booked passage for himself, his wife, and children, on the passenger liner SS Kristianiafjord, which was scheduled to sail on 27 March 1917 from New York to Oslo, Norway. The ship temporarily anchored at Halifax Harbor, Nova Scotia, to take on supplies before continuing its voyage. Trotsky was detained by Canadian authorities due to his identity as a known political agitator, revolutionary, and escapee: he was exactly the type of person who could not be allowed to disrupt an already unstable Russia. He was sent to Amherst Internment Camp as another enemy alien too dangerous to be allowed to move freely.
Upon arriving at Amherst, Trotsky immediately made himself a nuisance to his captors. He refused to perform any of the mandatory labor required of the other prisoners such as peeling vegetables, sweeping the barrack floors, and other housekeeping tasks. When the camp guards insisted that he participate in this maintenance, he refused and organized mass meetings discussing Marxism to the sailors and other internees throughout much of April.
Trotsky’s activities not only disturbed not only the Canadians, but also the German officers imprisoned there. They felt that his growing relationship with the sailors and civilian internees was dangerous. Several officers visited the camp commander Major Arthur Henry Morris and openly complained about their “foreign guest.” Major Morris acted by putting Trotsky into isolation so he could no longer conduct his political sermons.
The British Government was contacted by Pavel Milyukov, the new Russian Foreign Minister, to release Trotsky as a citizen of Russia. On 29 April 1917, the authorities and some of the internees at Amherst Internment Camp breathed a sigh of relief as their Russian revolutionary and his family were quickly placed aboard a ship and sent on his way Europe. Trotsky arrived in Russia on 17 May 1917 where he began to work closely with the Bolsheviks.
The Provisional Government had honored their alliance with the fellow Entente members during the summer of 1917 and this led to their downfall. A major offensive against the Germans and Austro-Hungarians in June resulted in a major defeat. The Bolsheviks launched an unsuccessful coup at the beginning of August. This resulted in hostile political organizations being suppressed. This was closely followed by a failed military coup against the Provisional Government at the end of August.
All these events completely undermined the ability, and legitimacy, of the Provisional Government. Trotsky had again been arrested and imprisoned for forty days. He was released in September 1917 and fully committed himself to Bolshevik Party. Trotsky spent the remainder of September and October of 1917 finalizing plans to violently overthrow the Provisional Government. After seizing power, the Bolsheviks signed a separate peace treaty with the Central Powers: they had helped to usher in the very thing the Entente feared would happen in Russia.