Seeds of Fire: A People’s Chronology

Recalling events that happened on this day in history.
Memories of struggle, resistance and persistence.

Compiled by Ulli Diemer

August 2, 1918
Workers in Vancouver hold a one-day general strike to protest the killing of labour activist Albert Ginger Goodwin. Related Topics: General Strikes – Labour History – Strikes: Canadian
August 2, 1918
British forces invade the Soviet Union. They are the first elements of an Allied Intervention Force whose purpose is to “strangle at its birth” the newly formed revolutionary state, as Winston Churchill puts it. Fourteen countries send forces: Britain, the United States, Japan, Poland, France, Canada, Estonia, Serbia, Romania, Czechoslovakia, Italy, China, Greece, Australia. The intervention forces comprise a quarter of a million soldiers, but they fail to defeat the Bolsheviks, and most of them withdraw by 1920; though Japanese forces remain in parts of Siberia until 1922. Related Topics: Counter-Revolution – Imperialism – Intervention – Russian Revolution – Soviet Union
August 2, 1943
In a prisoner uprising in the Nazi death camp Treblinka, some 100 prisoners succeed in breaking out of the camp. Related Topics: Concentration Camps – Nazi History – Rebellions