Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Forgotten Expedition Of The Michigan Polar Bears, Laura Anthon, Jamie Breyfogle, Timothy Embertson, Natalie Weg

18th Annual Celebration of Undergraduate Research and Creative Activity (2019)

The Michigan Polar Bear expedition saw Allied forces leading a controversial excursion into Northern Russia during the concluding years of World War I. Despite thousands of soldiers being sent to interfere with the Russian Civil War, the Polar Bear Expedition has been lost from collective memory. We publicly inquired about the expedition, then combined this research with a found scholarly consensus about the lack of cognizance relating to the events. This revealed a disconnect, which led us to inquire as to the nature and origin of its historical omission. Our primary sources of research focused on the oral histories of …