Robert Service - Spies and Commissars

Krasin, fresh from his success with the Anglo-Soviet trade agreement, urged that Soviet Russia and the US should agree to disagree about each other’s political order. He repeated that America could do itself a favour by supplying the industrial machinery, railway stock and countless spare parts that Russia needed for its economic recovery. Russia had the wherewithal to pay, and Krasin denied that Soviet gold was tainted. Furs, wool, bristles, leather and oil were already available for direct trade, and Sovnarkom was inviting tenders from foreign companies for concessions in timber-felling, fisheries and metal mining. Krasin depicted Russia as an Eldorado waiting to be rediscovered. 8

Yet while Krasin painted an enticing picture for foreigners, the Soviet leadership hardened their measures against their own rebellious citizens. Strikes were settled by negotiation, but communist officials typically retaliated against identified troublemakers when things had settled down. 9The Red Army was given no rest. Mikhail Tukhachevski was put in charge of suppressing the Tambov peasant revolt. He denied himself no ruthless method in achieving this objective, deliberately applying terror in those districts where resistance was stubborn — and the Kremlin was kept fully abreast of his progress. 10Other military units were distributed across southern Russia, Ukraine and western Siberia. Wherever the communist authorities faced armed resistance, they reacted with force. And following behind the infantry and cavalry were teams of propagandists to explain the merits of the New Economic Policy to the peasantry. The villagers were told that in return for their political obedience they would receive the freedom to trade their harvest for their own profit after meeting any fiscal requirements — and the government promised to hasten the delivery of industrial goods for peasant households. First the stick, then the promise of carrots.

Nevertheless there remained much unease among Bolsheviks about the New Economic Policy, and a dispute exploded at the Party Conference in May 1921. Lenin was left alone to defend the Politburo measures. He was usually not one to indulge in self-pity — one of his mottoes was: ‘Don’t whinge!’ Even so, he indicated that the widespread incidence of physical ill health in the leadership had placed an undue burden on him. Trotsky had a mysterious chronic ailment and Zinoviev was recovering from two heart attacks; neither was passed fit enough to go to the Conference. (In fact Zinoviev did attend fleetingly to defend his reputation over the March Action.) Kamenev was also out of action because of a cardiac condition. Bukharin had been convalescing until a few days before the opening of proceedings and Stalin was laid low by acute appendicitis. It was true that Tomski, Central Committee member and head of the Soviet trade unions, had been politically active; but Lenin was annoyed with him because he had given unapproved assurances to trade unions about their freedom from party control — and Lenin for a while campaigned for his removal from the Central Committee. 11Lenin was often described as a dictator and in the spring 1921 he indeed came close to being the supreme leader of Soviet Russia; but this was only because so few fellow leaders were available and willing to work co-operatively.

After getting this off his chest, Lenin led the line in defence of the New Economic Policy. Had he not done so, it is open to question whether the official measures would have survived intact. 12In the Civil War, Bolsheviks had grown accustomed to thinking that forcible requisitioning of agricultural produce accorded with the communist way of life. The restored markets and the deals with foreign capitalists were anathema to them. Although Lenin had got away with little criticism and short debates at the Congress in March, now at the Conference he had to withstand fierce, sustained assault. But his critics had little to offer as an alternative beyond calling for greater state regulation and planning. In Russia’s current circumstances this would be hugely difficult. It would also be risky. The Conference could not bring itself to overturn a leader who had brought them through the October Revolution and the Civil War. Lenin swiftly sensed the mood and cheered everyone up by declaring that private entrepreneurship was only going to be temporary. He assured them that he was still committed to bringing about communism in Russia.

International affairs were easier for him to handle. Ernst Thalmänn, freshly arrived from Berlin, claimed that German workers were turning to the communists in impressive numbers despite the defeat of the March Action. 13Indeed Béla Kun wanted the Russian Communist Party to applaud the Action. He and Zinoviev infuriated Trotsky by going around hinting that Lenin and the People’s Commissar for Military Affairs were divided on this question. Lenin agreed to support Trotsky, issuing a rebuke to those responsible for the débâcle in Germany. Radek was ordered to toe the line in his report on the Comintern. Obediently he explained that the main reason for the defeat was poor leadership. According to Radek, objections to the plan for insurrection by Paul Levi had rendered the German communists ineffective, but other German leaders were also astonishingly inept. Nonetheless Radek also argued that the Comintern had to prepare itself to exploit turbulent situations as they arose, suggesting that the current stabilization of European capitalism would be vulnerable to future shocks. He was following the recent analysis by Trotsky as well as that by the Hungarian communist Jeno Varga; he also cited J. M. Keynes in arguing that the Paris peace settlement was inherently unstable. Radek contended that the US was the only power with reason for confidence. Even victor powers like Britain, France and Italy had difficulties. Rivalries among capitalist states were ineradicable. 14

This was close to vindicating an early attempt to organize another German insurrection, and Lenin intervened for the sake of clarity, commenting: ‘Of course, if revolution arrives in Europe we’ll change policy.’ But he insisted that no one could make a sensible guess about when this might occur. 15The Soviet press immediately set about relaying the message that Moscow’s international priority was for trade with the big capitalist countries — and articles on revolutionary war disappeared.

Senator Joseph I. France continued to offer hope to the Politburo. In May 1921, convinced that America’s interests lay in trading with Russia, he set forth for Moscow to see things for himself. He gave an interview to the New York Times before he left in which he sketched out his intentions: ‘It is not a matter of personal opinion, political or economic. Approval will be a matter of practical politics. We did not approve of the regime of the late Czar. We do not need to approve of the Soviet. There are many of my colleagues in the Senate of whom I do not have to approve.’ 16Trotsky asked Litvinov to set up a meeting with him. 17Litvinov had in fact been disinclined to let him into the country, but Krasin had persuaded Lenin and Chicherin that it would be folly to admit Washington B. Vanderlip while closing the frontier to the Senator. 18Yet Soviet bureaucrats shared a lingering distaste for dealing with prominent ‘bourgeois’ politicians. On his journey from Riga, Senator France was allotted a crowded, second-class carriage and compelled to obtain his own sleeping bag. 19He was forbidden to bring his personal assistant or interpreter with him or even to raise questions about the detention of Americans in Russian prisons. 20

Even so, he obtained his interview with Lenin in Moscow and put a warmer case for US–Soviet relations than he had dared to express publicly in America. Afterwards, Lenin told Chicherin:

I have just finished a conference with Senator France… He told me how he came out for Soviet Russia at large public meetings together with Comrade Martens. He is what they call a ‘liberal’, for an alliance of the United States plus Russia plus Germany, in order to save the world from Japan, England, and so on, and so on. 21