Robert Service - Spies and Commissars

When the Belgian minister Désirée tried to join in, Zalkind told him to be quiet. Lenin agreed to put the matter to Sovnarkom, but this failed to stop Serbia’s Ambassador Spalajkovic pointing his finger a yard from Lenin’s face and shouting: ‘You are bandits; you dishonour the Slav race and I spit in your face!’ 55Noulens sprang up to calm things down but Zalkind said: ‘Forget it, forget it, Mr Ambassador, we like this brutality of expression better than diplomatic language!’ Negotiations were resumed that evening and Noulens visited Diamandy next day in his underground cell in the Peter-Paul Fortress. The food was foul and Diamandy had not been allowed a knife to cut it. But the final result was positive and Diamandy was released on condition that he speedily left the country. 56Zalkind made mischief by publicly implying that Francis had consented to Diamandy’s incarceration. 57The fragility of dealings between the Bolsheviks and the Western Allies was revealed all too clearly. Each side wanted more than the other was willing to concede. And the communist authorities were willing to risk rupturing relations with the Allied powers. They were pushing their luck while simultaneously dreading the prospect that one side or another in the Great War might somehow contrive to organize an invasion. Sovnarkom was minded to bite before being bitten even though its own teeth were worn down to the gums.

In embassies around the world, the diplomats appointed by the Provisional Government denounced the October Revolution. Ambassador Vasili Maklakov, freshly arrived in Paris from Petrograd, led the way and alerted his colleague Boris Bakhmetev in Washington to the danger that America might recognize the territories breaking away from Petrograd’s control. Maklakov was a prominent Kadet and Bakhmetev had been a Marxist as a young man before withdrawing from party politics. The common nightmare of the ambassadors was the dismemberment of ‘Russia’. Maklakov spoke out against the secession of Ukraine; he argued that the Baltic littoral would always be essential to Russian military security — he demanded the retention of naval bases in Helsinki and Tallinn. 1

The Western Allies, angered by the Soviet regime’s withdrawal from the fighting on the eastern front, withdrew their financial credits to Russia while allowing the Provisional Government’s accredited diplomats to continue occupying their embassies and enjoying the immunities of their status. 2Yet they no longer represented a functioning administration and the British cabinet, needing somehow to communicate with Sovnarkom, decided to talk to Maxim Litvinov and Theodore Rothstein, who were among the few Bolsheviks who had stayed behind in Britain. 3A little Bolshevik colony survived in Switzerland, and Vatslav Vorovski informally handled Sovnarkom’s interests in Stockholm; 4but London was the only Western capital to host a leading Bolshevik such as Litvinov, and he now became Sovnarkom’s principal spokesman outside Russia. 5He had begun to attract notice just before the October Revolution and was lionized when he took Ivy out to the theatre in London. The liberal journalist Salvador de Madariaga, an acquaintance, spotted him from a few rows away and moved to sit near him. In the interval he shouted over: ‘Litvinoff, the very man I wanted to meet! What’s going on in Russia?’ Others joined in the conversation and Litvinov told them to look out for the name of Lenin. When the Bolsheviks seized power the next day in Petrograd, Litvinov’s reputation spread across London as the seer of Russian politics. 6

In January 1918 Trotsky cabled Litvinov to announce his appointment as Sovnarkom’s very first ‘plenipotentiary’ in a foreign country. Just as they did not like the word ‘minister’, the communists forbore to call Litvinov an ambassador: revolutionary times called for fresh terminology. Litvinov was pleased to have a job that genuinely aided the party’s cause. Exactly what the job should involve, however, was unclear because Trotsky had to be cautious about what he wrote in open telegrams and anyway knew little about British high politics; and Litvinov was imaginative and willing to take initiatives: his time had come at last.

The British War Cabinet discussed Russia on 17 January 1918 and confirmed what Foreign Secretary Balfour had been telling the House of Commons. The Bolsheviks had repudiated their obligations under the treaties of alliance. They had aggravated the jeopardy to Britain and France on the western front by closing down the eastern one. They were stirring up revolutions in the West. The Italians pressed for the Western Allies to sever all relations with them; but Lloyd George and Balfour wished to maintain their para-diplomatic links through Litvinov in Britain and British intermediaries in Russia. 7Balfour expressed the hope that the Bolsheviks might yet cause trouble for the Germans. 8This was not an entirely fantastical consideration. Soviet official policy as yet ruled out signing a separate peace with the Germans, and if the Russo-German negotiations broke down the assumption was that Russia would go back to war with them. Rumours spread around the world. If the British were talking to Litvinov, perhaps the same kind of arrangement might be made in France where Trotsky was said to be planning to appoint another plenipotentiary. 9The British denied that they were granting de facto recognition to Sovnarkom, and Balfour stressed that he would never speak directly with Litvinov or allow him on to Foreign Office premises. 10Litvinov would be used only as a convenient conduit for urgent discussions. 11

This, however, was progress for Sovnarkom; the same was true of Chicherin’s release from prison and the permission given for him to return to Russia. 12Litvinov made the most of the situation. He wrote to Konstantin Nabokov demanding that he vacate Chesham House and hand over the official ciphers. Nabokov replied that it was he and not Litvinov who enjoyed official recognition. 13Litvinov did better for himself when he inaugurated contact with the Foreign Office through an official called Rex Leeper, who conferred regularly with him on matters of politics and war. Meanwhile he scrambled together a working office. In fact he had no offices except the rented rooms he lived in, no designated couriers and no codebook. 14But he cheered himself up by producing headed notepaper in Sovnarkom’s name and asserting a claim of appointment to London’s diplomatic corps. 15He did the rounds of public meetings in February 1918, asking how it could be fair for the British government to prefer Nicholas II’s reactionary government to be in power rather than a democratically elected government. 16He was silent about the violent suppression of the Constituent Assembly. He relied on ignorance or undemanding sympathy among his British listeners, and he saw his task as being to turn sympathizers into enthusiasts.

Litvinov also spoke at the Labour Party annual conference and called on the British to ‘speed up your peace’. 17On Chicherin’s instructions, he wrote to the anti-war socialist John Maclean appointing him Soviet consul in Glasgow:

Dear Comrade Maclean,

I am writing to the Russian Consul in Glasgow (I am not sure that there exists such a person) informing him of your appointment and ordering him to hand over to you the Consulate. He may refuse to do so, in which case you will open a new Consulate and make it public through the press. Your position may be difficult somehow, but you will have my full support. It is most important to keep me informed (and through me the Russian Soviets) of the Labour Movement in N. B. [North Britain]. 18

He thought that the revolution he had missed in Russia was in the offing in the United Kingdom. As Special Branch reported, he actively fomented anti-war feelings among resident or visiting Russians — this included making contact with ship crews in British ports. 19