United Colleges - Vox Yearbook (Winnipeg, Manitoba Canada)

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United States and Russia to remove Japanese forces from Eastern Siberia aided the Soviet cause in the Far East. Secretary Hughes of the United States of America ilicited from Baron Shidehara a statement pledging evacuation, non intervention and respect for Russian territorial integrity. The end of October, 1922 saw the com¬ pletion of evacuation of Japanese troops from Vladivostok. In November of the same year the Far Eastern Republic set up by Russia as a buffer zone against Japan joined the Soviet Union. On May 1, 1925 Japanese forces with¬ drew from Northern Sakhalin. At Genoa in April, 1922, Chicherin produced a rapprochement between Russia and Germany. By the Treaty of Rapallo, signed on April 16 by Chicherin and Walter Rathenau, the Soviet Government was given de jure recognition from the German Republic, a mutual cancellation of all financial claims, and a regulation of German- Soviet trade on the basis of the most-favored- nation clause. By this treaty both Russia and Germany enhanced their bargainin g power in Western European power politics. Attempts at financial settlement at the conference met with failure. Against Allied claims of £13 billion against Russia for Tsarist and Kerensky debts and confiscated property, Chicherin pressed Soviet counter claims for £60 billion for dam¬ ages suffered by unlawful intervention. At Lausanne in late 1922 a conference was begun to settle the control of the Dardanelles and the Bosporus. During the course of the negotiations Vaslov Vorovsky, a Soviet delegate, was as¬ sassinated by a Russian emigre of Swiss descent, but the conference ignored the incident and the Swiss courts acquitted him. On July 24, 1923 the Straits Convention signed at Lausanne de¬ militarized the Dardanelles and the Bosporus, but limited foreign naval forces permitted to enter the Black Set. The Russian government approved the settlement and became a member of the Straits Commission. During the long and protracted negotiations carried out by Chicherin and Litvinov, positive gains were made for more friendly relations with the Western powers. De jure recognition was granted by many states during 1934: Britain, February 1; Italy, February 7; Norway, Febru¬ ary 13; Austria, February 20; Greece, March 8; Sweden, March 15; China, May 31; Denmark, June 18; Mexico, August 1; France, October 28 and Japan, January 20, 1925. The United States, alone among the great world powers refused to formally recognize the new Soviet regime but for all intents and purposes Chicherin had broken the isolation of Russia and it was once more a recognized member of the family of nations. 1 Soviet diplomacy was determined in large measure upon the fears of a renewal of Western intervention. Marxian theorists believed that the Capitalist powers could not remain long at peace especially with a Socialist neighbour. Added to this fear was the realization of the inadequacy and, in many cases, frank injustice perpetrated by the Versailles Treaty that the Russian government as well as the United States refused to sanction. There was little doubt in Russian political strategists’ opinion about the likelihood of a further war and that it could be directed against Russia. Russian strategy there¬ fore had to resolve upon the establishment of mutual defence agreements to remain neutral in any new major conflict. Russia feared the domination of Europe by any single power or group of powers and sought to overcome this through systems of mutual alliances whereby she could safely remain neutral until the op¬ portune moment when her entrance on one side would tilt the scales and be of great bargaining power to her. “Russia sought to counteract the domination of the Continent by a single military power.” 2 Despite the fact that similar interests and parallel actions may be traced between the Soviet Union and the United States the latter remained openly hostile to the government of the Soviet Union, refusing recognition until 1933. American distrust and fear of Japanese aggrandizement at the expense of Russia caused the United States of America to further the re-establishment of the Soviet position in East¬ ern Siberia. Both the Soviet Union and the United States denounced the Versailles Treaty. The United States was the first to break the anti-Soviet group and argue for the respect of Russian territorial integrity, refusing to recog¬ nize the Baltic States and maintaining that Russia’s boundaries should include the whole of the former Empire with the exception of Fin¬ land, ethnic Poland and Armenia. The United 1. Frederick L. Schuman, Op. Cit., p. 191. 2. Deutscher, Op. Cit., p. 390. Page Twenty-one

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“Russia suffered a temporary ‘eclipse’ in the early period because of: political isolation, ma¬ terial weakening due to loss of territory, in¬ dustry and prestige. In addition to internal havoc, Russia had lost considerable territories which included cities of great industrial im¬ portance, as well as all but a fraction of her Baltic coastline—territories lost contained some 28 millions of people distributed between a newly enfranchised Finland, Esthonia and Latvia, a resurrected Poland and Lithuania and an aggrandized Roumania.” ’ Having decided that the revolution was per¬ manent in Russia and that the revolution must spread throughout the world from Russia, the leaders of the revolution found themselves with a complex problem. If the international policies of the Communist party expressed by the Com¬ intern or the Illrd International were too mili¬ tant it would cause the distrust, fear and open hostility of the Capitalist powers to grow and further weaken the revolution in Russia. The leaders realized that Russia needed time and peace from external attack in order that recon¬ struction along socialist lines might take place. At first the new government abandoned entirely the old Tsarist diplomacy and international treaties since they believed the world revolution would very soon be a reality. “The Bolsheviks at first regarded their manoeuvres in the diplomatic field as temporary half measures. They still expected upheaval in the west. The Comintern was the main lever of their foreign policy; diplomacy was a poor auxiliary.” 1 2 3 As the realization of an early world revolu¬ tion became less likely the Soviet leaders sup- lemented Comintern activity with the more familiar methods of international diplomacy seeking to prevent coalition of the hostile Capi¬ talist powers against her. “The defeat of World Revolution necessarily obliged Moscow to defend the sovereignty of the Soviet State in an anarchic world of sovereign¬ ties in which all others were ‘bourgeois’ and therefore actually or potentially anti-Soviet.” 4 1. Max Beloff, The Foreign Policy of Soviet Russia, 1929-1941, (London, Oxford University Press, 1947), Vol. I, 1929-1936, p. 2. 2. The Illrd International founded in 1919 in Moscow was from the outset dominated by the Bolshevik Party and its declared objective was to work for the spread of Com¬ munism throughout the world. Comintern, (short for The Communist International). 3. Deutscher, Stalin, (Oxford University Press. 1949), p. 390. 4. Frederick L. Schuman, Soviet Politics at Home and Abroad, (New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1946), p. 224. In order that Soviet foreign policy might be effective in forestalling any concerted action by the Western Capitalist powers against her, it became increasingly necessary to ‘play down’ the role of the Comintern, or the International in its sponsorship of world revolution and to use these agencies as supplements to the main Russian foreign policies. Domestic policies were relaxed during the early period with the enunci¬ ation of Lenin’s New Economic Policy in 1921, which the ruling party frankly realized to be a necessary backward step and a postponement of further socialization and collectivization in order that the country might resume a more healthy economic condition in the shortest pos¬ sible time. The Soviet leaders realized that if their country was attacked again their situation would be hopeless if the economy of the coun¬ try was in a state of chaos and the people did not have the will to fight. During the 1920‘s Soviet diplomacy was di¬ rected by Chicherin and his aide, Maxim Lit¬ vinov who succeeded as Commisar for Foreign Affairs on July 25, 1930. After the dark days of 1919 and 1920 had passed and with them, many of the highest hopes for an early world revolution, Chicherin in 1920 expressed the de¬ sire of the Soviet Union to re-establish friendly relations and a resumption of trade with the Western powers. “Seeing that in America and in many other countries the workers have not conquered the powers of Government and are not even con¬ vinced of the necessity of their co nquest, the Russian Soviet Government deems it necessary to establish and faithfully to maintain peace¬ able and friendly relations with the existing Governments of those countries.” 3 After protracted negotiations Chicherin’s ef¬ forts began to bear fruit with the signing of an Anglo-Soviet agreement implying de facto recognition of the Russian Government. The agreement provided for an immediate resump¬ tion of trade, repatriation of war prisoners, mutual abstention from hostile acts and propa¬ ganda, and a postponement of a settlement of financial claims. On May 6, 1921 a German- Russian trade agreement was signed. Trade agreements with Norway, Austria and Italy fol¬ lowed on September 2, December 7, and Decem¬ ber 26, respectively. Common interests of the 5. Quoted by Frederick L. Schuman, Op. Cit., p. 189. Page Twenty

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States at first refused to recognize the Treaty of Riga of March 18, 1921, following the close of the Polish-Russian war since it clearly violated the territorial integrity of Russia. The United States and Russia were in the early period the only major powers outside the League of Na¬ tions constantly advocating non-aggression, neutrality and disarmament. Nevertheless, the United States withheld recognition and made rapprochement between itself and Russia impos¬ sible while it maintained that the Soviet regime was based on ‘force and cunning’ and ‘the nega¬ tion of every principle of honor and good faith and every usage and convention underlying the whole structure of international law’. The Russian government’s support of the Third International made its diplomats ‘the agitators of dangerous revolt’ and rendered it incapable of discharging its international obligations. 1 In the mid Twenties Stalin emerged as the strongest single figure in the Communist party. With his ascendance came an even more clearly defined shift of Soviet strategy. Stalin enun¬ ciated and championed the ‘socialism in one country’ theory. This was not an entirely new theory since Lenin had foreseen possibilities for this as early as 1915, but Stalin was the first to champion this concept while pushing the world revolution to the background—not denying it but, in his viewpoint, putting first things first. When Stalin came to the fore Russia was reap¬ ing the first fruits of Chicherin’s efforts at Rappalo and London. The isolation of Russia had been broken. This hopeful situation made Stalin even more skeptical of the possibility of world revolution. Stalin, on June 9, 1925 in a speech before the students of Sverdlov Uni¬ versity, estimated that Russia could remain at peace with the Capitalist world until 1945. “Thus extreme skepticism about world revo¬ lution and confidence in the reality of a long truce between Russia and the Capitalist world were the twin premises of ‘socialism in one country.’ ” 2 The failure of an early world revolution was brought home with the debacle of German Com¬ munism in 1923. It may well have been that the failure of the German revolution was caused in no small part by Stalin’s undervaluation of the 1. Notes on the Colby Letter quoted by Frederick L. Schu- man, Op. Cit., p. 181, 182. 2. Deutscher, Op. Cit., p. 391. revolutionary potential in Germany. In 1927, the hopeful development in China collapsed with the seizure of power of Chiang Kai-shek and his middle class supporters. Chiang cruelly suppressed his former partners in the Kuomin- tang, the product of the Sun-Yat-Sen revolu¬ tion. The subsequent coalition of the Com¬ munists with leftist liberals of the Kuomintang broke down in turn and left the Communist hopes in China extremely poor. Here again it may be argued that Stalin directly contributed to the failure in China by his view that a bourgeois revolution was all that the Chinese could now achieve. He argued that a revolution in China would unify and modernize China but would not bring socialism. The failure of the revolution in Germany and the severe set back in China emphasized the hopelessness of pro¬ letarian revolution and gave support to Stalin’s theories of ‘socialism in one country.’ The need for strengthening the Soviet base of Communist world operations and tentative abandonment of world revolution in favour of security and ‘socialism in one country’ was evinced by Con¬ gress XV in 1927 when it voted to expel Trotsky and his supporters of world revolution as the immediate goal of Communist strategy. England was recognized by the diplomatic strategists of Russia to be one of the keys to Russia’s success or failure in its attempts to break down the hostility of the Capitalist na¬ tions tow ard her. England was probably the strongest of the victorious allied powers in Western Europe and had played a leading role in the wars of intervention against Russia. The Kremlin recognized that any armed coalition against Russia could very well be led by an English Tory government against her and there¬ fore it was of prime importance to win friend¬ ship with her or at least to come to some mutual agreement against a renewal of war between the two powers. Anti-Soviet sympathies played a key role in the election of 1924 in Britain. The Tories widely criticized the Anglo-Soviet trade treaty signed by the first Labor cabinet on August 8, 1924. The treaty provided for the most-favored-nation treatment and for an ex¬ tension to the U.S.S.R. of the British program of export credits and a loan to the Soviet gov¬ ernment guaranteed by the British government. On October 25, just five days before the general election, the famous Zinoviev letter was pub- Page Twenty-two