Spies and Commissars: The Bolshevik Revolution and the West (34 page)

A few days later it was the Senate Committee on Public Information that called on Reed and Bryant to give an account of themselves. Reed admitted to having worked for the People’s Commissariat of Foreign Affairs in publishing Soviet newspapers in multi-language editions. The Senators had done their homework and compelled him to admit to having promised the State Department in 1917 that he would not get involved in Russian politics. But Reed argued that he had not given his word under oath – and he lied that he had received no money from the Soviet government and was not in communication with it.
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When asked about atrocities under Bolshevik rule, he and Bryant cast doubt on the veracity of the reports. Bryant argued against America’s right to intervene in Russia; but when pushed by the Committee, she refused to approve or disapprove of ‘Bolshevist interference in American affairs’. She spoke up for the Cheka’s Yakov Peters, calling him ‘an aesthetic young man’ and disclaiming any knowledge of his murky activities in London before 1914.
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When Albert Rhys Williams took the stand, he too was open about the fact that he had been in the employ of the ‘Trotzky–Lenine government’. He stated that, when leaving Russia in June 1918, he had an assignment to set up a propaganda bureau in New York but assured the Committee that this had not come to pass. By staying on in Russia five months after the Reeds had departed, moreover, he had seen more brutality than they had. But he rejected reports of the killing of
innocents by the communists, whom he declared to have ‘a sublime faith in the people’. He professed his abhorrence of violence and his feeling that if the communist experiment were to take place in the US, the means could and should be entirely peaceful.
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Politicians and reporters were deepening a debate that had begun with the October Revolution. Bolshevik rule and the consequences for Western policy were a divisive topic, and it was far from being the case that the advocates of conciliation with Soviet Russia were confined to the labour movement. Business interests too were beginning to make themselves felt.
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On the other side of the debate, of course, there were political, commercial and ecclesiastical lobbies that wanted Russia and its communist rulers kept in strict quarantine. Dispute was often angry and seldom less than spirited. In Britain and France the press led the way in inviting public exchange; this also happened in the US, where the committees of the Senate gave additional propulsion to the process. Steadily the Russian question was rising up the public agenda. At a time when national governments had to concentrate their efforts on economic recovery, Russia and its communism could still not obtain priority of attention. But it was increasingly obvious that the revolutionary tide might at any moment surge across Russian frontiers into Europe, and many people in those countries as well as in North America doubted that their leaders had yet found sound measures to deal with this prospect – and the disarray of the Western powers on the Russian question at the Paris Peace Conference in the first half of 1919 was to do little to dispel these concerns.

18. THE PARIS PEACE CONFERENCE

On 4 December 1918 President Wilson boarded the SS
George Washington
to cross the Atlantic and attend the Paris Peace Conference. He ignored advice from Robert Lansing, who said he would dilute his influence by going to France instead of dictating his wishes from a distance.
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But Wilson held the Allied purse strings and controlled fresh military power, whereas Lansing was only his Secretary of State. He and not Lansing occupied the White House and he insisted on going to France. A terrible war had been brought to a close; a second one must be prevented.

Although Wilson was being lionized on the Paris boulevards, he cut an unimpressive figure in the closed proceedings of the conference. His ‘Fourteen Points’ had prescribed no practical policy, only a set of objectives. Even his ideas about Germany lacked exactitude and he made things worse by forbidding his delegation to carry out preparatory discussion and drafting.
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He recognized his own lack of detailed knowledge about European controversies. His habit was to defer to Allied committees of experts, and Clemenceau and Lloyd George were adept at imposing their projects.
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Wilson’s ultimate passion was to gain approval for a League of Nations. The other delegations offered a flattering opinion of this project, and whenever they wished to obstruct one of his ideas they used the device of suggesting that only the League could resolve its complexities. The President forfeited advantage by never even raising his voice. His failing health was also finding him out and he simply lacked the energy for political disputes. He guarded his own counsel; even his confidant Colonel House had lost influence. French and British leaders saw that the President was a fading force and got used to agreeing the plans in advance of meeting him and gaining his imprimatur.

‘Reparations’ were on the lips of nearly every French politician except those few who sympathized with Lenin. Clemenceau aimed to
make Germany incapable of striking France ever again. John Maynard Keynes offered this portrait:

[Clemenceau] carried no papers and no portfolio, and was unattended by any personal secretary, though several French ministers and officials appropriate to the particular matter in hand would be present round him. His walk, his hand and his voice were not lacking in vigour, but he bore nevertheless, especially after the attempt upon [his life], the aspect of an old man conserving his strength for important occasions. He spoke seldom, leaving the initial statement of the French case to his ministers or officials; he closed his eyes often and sat back in his chair with an impassive face of parchment, his gray gloved hands clasped in front of him. A short sentence, decisive or cynical, was generally sufficient . . .
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Clemenceau behaved with elaborate courtesy, always asking Wilson for his opinion. But this was a feint: he wanted Germany punished.

In this environment there was little scope for the Western Allies to give careful consideration to Russia and its communist leadership. French, British, American and Italian forces were masters of the continent. They were determined to finish their business in central Europe first and foremost. The Allied Supreme War Council, founded on Lloyd George’s initiative in November 1917 to oversee military strategy as well as plans for peace, did not entirely ignore the Russian question but quickly found it difficult to handle. There was no opportunity even to hear representations from Russia without offending one group or another. The Supreme Council (as it became known) began by keeping Sergei Sazonov, the tsar’s Minister of Foreign Affairs till 1916 and now fulfilling the same role for the White Russians, at arm’s length.
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On 16 January 1919, Lloyd George spoke in the Council of Ten – representing the main victor powers – at the Quai d’Orsay. While arguing that something had to be done about Russia, he depressingly stipulated:

Firstly, the real facts are not known;

Secondly, it is impossible to get the facts, the only way is to adjudicate the question; and

Thirdly, conditions in Russia are very bad; there is general misgovernment and starvation. It is not known who is getting the upper hand, but the hope that the Bolshevik Government would collapse had not been realized.
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Intervention on an adequate scale would mean an occupation: ‘The mere idea of crushing Bolshevism by a military force is pure madness.’ And in any case it was almost inevitable that Allied troops would mutiny against any order to deploy them in yet another war, and a permanent blockade was objectionable since it would lead to mass starvation. The chances of the Whites overthrowing the Bolsheviks were therefore not the brightest. Lloyd George therefore felt it preferable to call the various sides in Russia’s armed struggles to the negotiating table in Paris and get them to agree on a definitive settlement under the eyes of the victor powers.
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President Wilson agreed. In a memorandum of 19 January 1919, he urged the need to pull out the Allied expeditions as soon as possible: he had no intention of letting himself be ‘led further into the Russian chaos’. This was the dominant opinion in the US delegation expressed by General Tasker Bliss and Herbert Hoover. When Bliss heard of Marshal Foch’s proposal for a multinational army to invade Russia after the signing of the German peace treaty, he argued for American financial power to be brought to bear against it. Most countries in Europe, including France, were bankrupt. Even the United Kingdom would ruin its economy if it started a Russian crusade. Bliss argued that the US should use its economic strength to enforce the withdrawal of troops from Russia.
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Hoover too opposed the idea of an American invasion, telling Wilson that ‘our people at home’ would look askance at US soldiers being assigned to assist the reactionary Whites. Kolchak and Denikin, he maintained, had a poor reputation in America and Wilson would be wise to take account of public opinion. Hoover added that the arrival of American soldiers in Russia would have the counter-productive result of uniting the Russians behind Lenin and Trotsky. His advice was to put aside the Russian question until such time as peace prevailed in the rest of the world. Diplomatic pressures were desirable; big armies were not.

But Allied officials who thought military intervention was the solution were still vociferous – and demanded to be heard. Joseph Noulens had left Archangel in mid-December, and on 20 January 1919 he addressed the conference with a plea for the violent overthrow of Soviet tyranny and terror since the communists were enemies of the Entente.
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The Danish ambassador Harald Scavenius took the same line. As the latest of the foreign diplomats to leave Petrograd he was up to date with recent news and stressed Moscow’s intention to spread its revolution abroad by whatever means came to hand.
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President Wilson would have none of this, however, and determined instead to send an emissary to Moscow to explore whether the Soviet leadership was willing to end the Civil War. William C. Bullitt came into the reckoning. Impressed by his State Department reports on Europe, Wilson had included him in the American delegation to Paris and made him head of the Division of Current Intelligence Summaries.
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The President thought him just the person, despite his lack of diplomatic experience, to go and talk directly to Lenin. Wilson and Bullitt agreed that peace could come to Russia if the contending ‘Russian factions’ were put in a room together and asked to settle their disputes. Lansing gave his assent to the dispatch of Bullitt even though he lacked any optimism about the outcome.
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The Council of Ten convened on 21 January to discuss Wilson’s proposal. Lloyd George gave his support, arguing that the Bolsheviks would lose influence if the Russian people felt that they had received a fair hearing in Paris. Clemenceau objected. Averse in principle to negotiating with Bolsheviks, he warned that Bolshevism was already spreading westwards. But when Wilson and Lloyd George combined against him he was forced to give way.
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Wilson’s spirits were rising. W. H. Buckler, an attaché at the US embassy in London, discussed American peace proposals with Litvinov in Stockholm. Even though Litvinov had to leave for Russia – together with Vatslav Vorovski and Arthur Ransome – when Sweden broke relations with Sovnarkom in January 1919, he had responded enthusiastically to Buckler, and the President was excited by the report he received.
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Litvinov now wrote to Wilson indicating that American companies could do good business in Russia. He urged Americans to hear the arguments of all the belligerents in the Civil War. He promised that Soviet communists, in the event of a peace being agreed, would desist from subversive propaganda in the West. He warned that a White military victory would open the door to the Romanov dynasty’s restoration. He expressed confidence in ‘the good will of the American Government’.
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Litvinov’s letter impressed Wilson and Lloyd George, and the proposal for a conference of Russia’s warring sides was prioritized. The Prime Minister had wanted to summon the Russians to Paris whereas the President preferred to assemble them on the largest of the so-called Princes Islands – Büyük
Ada or Prinkipo – in the Sea of Marmara off the coast of Constantinople; Lloyd George gave way to him.
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The impetus for a Russian conference appeared unstoppable until Winston Churchill, the recently appointed Secretary of State for War, arrived in the French capital on 14 February. This happened to be the date when Wilson, who was constitutionally obliged to limit the duration of his foreign stays, was scheduled to leave for the US. Harold Nicolson, a member of the British delegation, recorded: