The soviet government came to power with a battery of ideas that threatened the West. Although its ability to carry through on the ideas was uncertain, the mere positing of the ideas sufficed to make Western governments take notice. The 1917 revolution staged by the Bolsheviks in Russia sent shock waves through the industrialized West. Prime ministers and monarchs feared lest their heads be next on the chopping block, figuratively and literally.

Western leaders, albeit not with one voice and not with great consistency, initially opted to put the Bolshevik Revolution down militarily. The Bolshevik government was too great a menace to allow it to consolidate its hold on the vast territory of the tsars.

In December 1917, France and Britain concluded a secret pact for military intervention against the Bolsheviks. They agreed to fund the anti-Bolshevik forces in the south of Russia. They anticipated dividing southern Russia into spheres of influence. France would take Bessarabia, the Ukraine, and the Crimea, while Britain would take the Caucasus and Kurdistan.

World War I was still in progress, and Russia was on the Allied side against Germany. Under pressure from Germany, which rapidly moved to take over the Ukraine and threatened to go farther, the Bolsheviks concluded a unilateral peace, the treaty of Brest-Litovsk. Russia's withdrawal from the anti-German alliance eliminated the eastern front against Germany and left the prospect that Germany might successfully attack to the west and defeat France and Britain.

The German offensive came in the spring of 1918.