Robert Service - Spies and Commissars

Lenin and Trotsky saw things no straighter. Having seized power in Petrograd in a spirit of millennial optimism, they could not afford to let themselves think that capitalism might survive and flourish around the world. They sieved out information that might deflate their optimism, preferring the news that pointed to trouble for the post-war settlement in Europe. They looked keenly for disturbances in central Europe. Viewed from the Kremlin, Western countries appeared ripe for Soviet-style revolutions.

The Soviet communist leadership may have magnified the prospects of ‘European revolution’ but it did not invent them out of nothing. Country after country to the west of Russia was experiencing disorder and discontent. Russia itself emerged under Bolshevik rule from years of civil war and foreign armed intervention. The victor powers in the Great War had irresistible force at their disposal if only they could muster the will to deploy it. But they increasingly lacked that will. The Western Allies had not had properly agreed strategic aims since at least 1917, when America joined them.

After the defeat of Yudenich’s North-Western Army outside Petrograd in October 1919, Denikin and the Volunteer Army became the last hope for the White cause. Yudenich tried to transfer his men in British vessels to southern Russia. Denikin himself was allowing the Volunteer Army to rest after the forced retreat to Crimea; his troops needed time for recovery and re-equipment. The French expeditionary force had departed Odessa in April 1919; the Americans who had landed in Siberia spent the second half of the year straggling eastwards from Omsk. Lloyd George had then ordered the British withdrawal and in August 1919 General Henry Rawlinson went to northern Russia to discuss evacuation. His plan was for a complete pull-out by mid-October, but he failed to persuade General Yevgeni Miller’s small White force to accompany the departing British troops — and even General Poole continued to say that he himself could advance on Kotlas and Vologda if reinforcements were made available to him. 1While continuing to supply equipment and military advisers to Denikin’s beleaguered forces, the United Kingdom now left the fighting entirely to the Russians. Although the Japanese maintained their armed occupation in eastern Siberia, the foreign military intervention against Soviet rule was all but over. 2The Allied Supreme Council still refused to make peace with the Bolsheviks; instead it resolved in late December to create a cordon sanitaire between Russia and central Europe. Bordering states would be helped to defend themselves and keep Bolshevism in quarantine behind Russian lines. 3

Lloyd George was rumoured to want to go further and negotiate a peace treaty with the communists regardless of the other Allies. 4But on 16 January 1920 the Supreme Council limited itself to resolving to lift its economic blockade; and this decision was confirmed at its London meeting on 26 February. 5

Litvinov delightedly told the Press Association in Copenhagen that the Allied powers would soon have to make ‘a formal and unqualified peace’ with Soviet Russia. 6Bolshevik commentators had always said that greed would bring foreign capitalists to press for a resumption of trade. Even so, the ending of the Allies’ blockade was only a decision in principle, which was not the same thing as help from the government in facilitating the making of contracts and financial transfers. If Western businessmen dealt with the men of the Kremlin, they would be doing so at their own risk. The Allied powers still worried about Sovnarkom’s commitment to revolutionary expansion and about the activities of its agents and supporters in the West; they were equally agitated by the nationalization of foreign property in Russia since the October Revolution. Furthermore, the Bolsheviks hung on to Western prisoners — and their governments demanded their release before any trading could be sanctioned by treaty. The Allies were angry, too, about the Soviet disregard for the rule of law. Western leaders — or most of them — had yet to be convinced that Sovnarkom would allow businesses to operate without political interference. The French, indeed, were incensed by any suggestion that entrepreneurs of the Allied countries should re-enter Russia.

The Estonian government feared a Red Army invasion after Yudenich’s crushing defeat. Ministers had no confidence in the Allied Supreme Council and its talk about a regional barrier under Western tutelage. They looked after themselves by beginning talks with Moscow in November. 7Soviet Russia had its own pragmatic reasons for a Baltic settlement. If Tallinn became an entrepôt for Russian international commerce, Estonia could be its window on to the West. When the world learned of the profits to be made, other foreign states would surely see the advantage of recognizing Sovnarkom. 8Wanting to appease its powerful neighbour, Estonia ordered the disarming of Yudenich’s forces on its territory. 9Clothes and equipment were taken from the North-Western Army. 10A Soviet–Estonian truce was agreed while the discussions continued — and there was nothing the Allied missions in Tallinn could do to halt the process: independent Estonia was acting independently. 11And on 4 February 1920 the Estonian government signed a diplomatic and commercial treaty with Soviet Russia. 12

The Kremlin advertised its plan to pay for imports with its gold reserves and to sell Russian natural resources to the highest bidders. Western businessmen flocked to Tallinn. Many were not distinguished by their honesty, but all of them were willing to take the gamble of investing in Russia’s international trade. In fact the goods traffic to Petrograd outweighed what went in the opposite direction by a factor of ten to one. Urban Russia remained unproductive and the villages were no longer covering the country’s requirements. Flax and veneers were practically all that the People’s Commissariat of Foreign Trade could lay its hands on for sale abroad. 13According to the Estonians, a third of Russian imports consisted of agricultural machinery and equipment. 14Traditionally Russia had exported food, paper and leather to Europe, but now these items had to be bought abroad. 15The Estonians were happy to oblige. Estonia had barely started to recover from war and revolution and its ministers now judged it in the national interest to enable the Russians to acquire the products they wanted. The transit fees were too valuable to be ignored.

Soviet leaders continued to press for recognition by the Allies. At the end of 1919 Litvinov affected surprise that the Bullitt proposals of earlier months had not been acted upon. This was nonsense: Lenin on his side had never been genuinely committed to ending the Civil War except with a Red victory. Litvinov was really trying to appeal to all those lobbies in the West which might be tempted to trade with Soviet Russia. And a sequence of events appeared to confirm that the ice was beginning to crack. In mid-January 1920 Radek was released from German custody and sent back to Russia across Poland. He had by then decided that the ‘European socialist revolution’ was not going to happen very quickly, but he thought that his own liberation indicated the growing willingness of German ministers to adopt a gentler line in their Russian policy. The Soviet leadership made its own moves in the same period. On 7 March the Cheka resolved upon a mass release of seventy-four prisoners with English names from its prisons and camps. 16The purpose was easy to guess. The Bolsheviks had identified the United Kingdom as the likeliest of the great powers to come to an accommodation immediately after the war. A show of goodwill might be useful before negotiations commenced.

But even though Lloyd George was eager for commerce to be resumed, it would take time for him to clear away the political obstacles. The next move for Soviet leaders was therefore to set their caps at Sweden. The Swedes themselves wanted a share of the Russian trade and had industrial products for sale. Lev Krasin, who in 1918 had served in the Soviet mission in Berlin, joined Litvinov in Stockholm on 1 April 1920. While Litvinov handled the diplomacy, Krasin would lead any talks on trade. Krasin himself was viewed favourably in Europe — by some at least. The Manchester Guardian had picked him out as a man to be trusted, its Moscow correspondent W. T. Goode offering this warm portrait: ‘In the prime of his powers, sparkling with energy, Krassin [ sic ] is a well-set-up man, with black hair and full beard, a dark but bright complexion, and an engaging man. He is supremely competent, and his personality and conversation convey that impression swiftly to those with whom he speaks.’ 17Having worked in Germany and Russia before 1917 as a manager in the Siemens-Schuckert company, Krasin had an intimate experience of industry. His post in 1920 was as People’s Commissar of Foreign Trade. His assignment abroad was to help start the Russian economic recovery by selling off manufacturing and mining concessions. Concentrating on the Scandinavians, Krasin now set out to drive a wedge into world ‘capitalist imperialism’ as Lenin had demanded. The plan was to use foreign capital for the benefit of communism in Russia.