Spies and Commissars

by Robert Service

  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.9 The 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.10 Other 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.11 Lenin 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.12 In 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.13 Indeed 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.15 The 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.’16 Trotsky asked Litvinov to set up a meeting with him.17 Litvinov 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.18 Yet 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.19 He 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

  Senator France returned to the US an enthusiast for full diplomatic recognition: ‘I found that the Russian Government was handling the situation in a statesmanlike way.’22 His endorsement of Lenin and Trotsky was unconditional. He even swallowed the official Soviet account of the Kronstadt mutiny, pinning responsibility on Colonel Edward W. Ryan of the American Red Cross for having fomented trouble among the sailors.23

  One American entrepreneur who followed Vanderlip’s example and interested himself in busines
s in Russia was Dr Armand Hammer of the Allied Drug and Chemical Corporation. In November 1921, Hammer signed a deal for an asbestos concession in the Urals. The terms involved him handing over 10 per cent of all output to the Soviet government.24 The US press quickly published its suspicions. Also involved in the business was Hammer’s father Julius, who by then was serving a sentence in New York State’s Sing Sing prison for carrying out an abortion. Julius Hammer was also known to have belonged to the Russian Soviet Information Bureau run by Martens and Nuorteva. Then it came out that other directors of Hammer’s corporation had no knowledge of any deal with the Soviet government and that the business had no interest in producing asbestos.25 Armand Hammer was a wily individual and his liaison with the Soviet leadership was to bring him riches in the years ahead. Nor did he confine himself to commerce, carrying out secret political errands for the Kremlin and virtually becoming its intelligence agent. His success in conducting private business in Russia under Bolshevik rule also convinced others that it was safe to sign contracts despite Herbert Hoover’s warnings.26

  Even Leslie Urquhart dropped his campaign against Sovnarkom. When he saw that he might never get his Russian property back under Soviet rule, he approached his old adversary Krasin in June 1921 to examine what kind of deal he too might be able to negotiate.27 In July he spoke to the annual general meeting of his Russo-Asiatic Consolidated Co. and recommended a change of heart:

  My discussions with Mr Krassin [sic] have been of a practical, helpful, and very friendly nature. (Cheers.) I mention this because in ordinary circumstances it would have been very difficult for the representatives of two such antagonistic systems as those of Capitalism and Communism as applied to economics to find a basis of understanding. Capitalism stands for the right of property and economic freedom, while Communism is the absolute negation of both these principles.28

  Lenin and Krasin hoped that such positive endorsements would have a gold-rush effect on the minds of Western entrepreneurs. The Urquhart question was discussed repeatedly in the Politburo for over a year. Soviet leaders understood that if they could agree an appropriate arrangement with the Scottish mining magnate they could use it as the model for other concessions.29

  Herbert Hoover did not give up on Russia either. In summer 1921 he responded warmly to an appeal from the Russian novelist Maxim Gorki for famine relief in Russia and Ukraine. The American Relief Administration was closing its offices in Europe. Gorki asked Hoover to divert its activities eastwards rather than back across the Atlantic. Hoover said that he still needed basic assurances from Sovnarkom. American prisoners in Russia had to be released. The relief administrators from America had to be able to travel freely, organize the local committees and have control of the food brought on to Soviet soil.30

  The fly in the ointment was an allegation that the American Relief Administration had acted dishonestly in its earlier work in Europe. Captain T. C. C. Gregory, one of Hoover’s officials in 1919, claimed in the New York magazine World’s Wealth that the Administration had tried to subvert Béla Kun’s government in Hungary. Sovnarkom’s sympathizers in the US informed Moscow of the controversy, and Gregory’s article was reproduced in Soviet pamphlets.31 Trotsky feared that Hoover’s philanthropic mission might be the first manoeuvre in a campaign of Western military intervention.32 On a visit to Odessa he declared:

  But here it must be remembered that we are not Hungary. We are not a young Soviet republic. We have been tempered in the struggle against counter-revolution. We have our own special organs, we have the Cheka. The Cheka isn’t loved, but we don’t love counter-revolution. And we say to Hoover: ‘There is risk in your enterprise.’33

  Trotsky advised vigilance against Americans bearing gifts. Lenin agreed and wrote to Molotov, the Party Central Committee Secretary, that the American Relief Administration was not to be trusted. He recommended that Trotsky, Kamenev and Molotov should monitor the Administration’s activities on a daily basis. Indeed, he went further and wanted Hoover ‘punished’. In his opinion, Hoover and his subordinates were ‘scoundrels and liars’ who should be instantly deported or arrested if ever they meddled in Soviet internal affairs.34

  Hoover cursed Gregory whenever his name came up in conversation.35 He also issued an order for the strict avoidance of all interference in Russian politics.36 But this came too late to prevent embarrassment for him in America. Walter W. Liggett of Russian Famine Relief — a pro-Soviet organization — made play with what Gregory had written. Officials in the American Relief Administration had to defend themselves in the press; and George Barr Baker, who directed the operations in Russia, pointed out that Liggett’s political accusations brought no succour to the starving people who would die without food shipments from the US.37

  This had the desired effect and the Soviet leadership anyway soon came round to understanding what a wonderful offer was being made to them. Hoover was proposing to bring food and medicine for free, only asking Sovnarkom to pay for seedcorn.38 Trotsky told Louise Bryant:

  The ARA organization which has rendered incalculable aid to the hungry masses of Russia was at the same time most naturally a highly skilful feeler projected by the ruling elements of America into the very depths of Russia. More than any other European country [sic] America has seen us as we really are; it remains for us to wait till the public opinion of the propertied classes of America will digest the collected data and will draw from it appropriate deductions.39

  This was hardly an unconditional endorsement; and it indicated that the Politburo had reasons other than humanitarian ones for accepting American assistance. The Politburo in fact failed to prioritize efforts of its own to alleviate the famine. Revenues from exports were being earmarked for industrial investment rather than grain purchases. The Soviet leaders talked as if they cared about the peasantry but the reality was that the Politburo was more interested in restoring Russian industrial and military power. If thousands of peasants died of starvation, so be it.

  As the Soviet regime consolidated its rule, efforts by Russians to bring down the Bolsheviks were weakening. The Cheka efficiently liquidated several anti-communist groups it discovered in Petrograd and Moscow. The indefatigable Boris Savinkov had tried to link up with them; he had also tried to raise finance from the industrialist Alexei Putilov. This caused little bother to the Chekists, who imprisoned or executed the activists in Russia.40 On 13 June 1921 Savinkov as self-styled Chairman of the Russian Evacuation Committee liaised with Sidney Reilly in organizing an Anti-Bolshevik Congress in Warsaw — the meeting was small enough to be held in a private apartment on Marszalkowski Street. The discussion touched on the general international situation as well as the fate of the White movement, the position of the émigrés and the attitude of the Western Allies.41 But in October Savinkov was expelled from Warsaw by the Polish authorities under pressure from Moscow after the treaty of Riga. In this way the last great enthusiast for a crusade against Soviet Russia with active Russian participation was compelled to leave for western Europe.42 The Cheka prided itself on having eliminated all counter-revolutionary organizations from Soviet territory. The Kremlin’s reach now seemed to extend well beyond that territory.

  In capital cities across Europe, Russian political emigrants gathered. In Paris there was a National Unification congress led by the conservative Pëtr Struve, the liberal Konstantin Nabokov and the ex-Bolshevik Grigori Alexinski.43 Paul Dukes continued his public campaigning against the Bolsheviks and went off on an American lecture tour in February 1921. In November, on his return, he picked up his links with Sidney Reilly and Boris Savinkov; he also met up with Harold Williams.44 But all their efforts were the triumph of hope over realism. No government in Europe or North America any longer had the stomach for an anti-Bolshevik military operation.

  As the Allied governments stood back, the international race to make profits in Soviet Russia began in earnest. Since French official policy rendered this next to impossible, the Association Financière, Industrielle et Commerciale Russ
e turned its eyes to New York for help, the idea being to engage with individuals close to ‘the outstanding public figure of the United States, Mr Hoover’. It was believed that the American Relief Administration might somehow offer cover for Russia’s old economic elite to find their way back into trade with new Russia.45 Sidney Reilly had been among the first to notice the Association’s ambitions. With an eye for the main course he was determined to gain a slice of the profits seemingly on offer and was actively engaged in buying up products in Europe on behalf of the British government. Wrangel’s intelligence officers noticed that he had some kind of ‘link with the Bolshevik delegation in London’. His financial dishonesty in pre-war Russia was common knowledge by then. Even without access to information about the British Secret Service Bureau’s enquiry about him, the White officers commented that Reilly was almost certainly an assumed name; and London’s Russian political circles gave him a wide berth despite the opportunity offered by his connections with the British establishment.46

  For a while at least, the Soviet leadership resigned themselves to ‘peaceful cohabitation’ with capitalist countries. Lenin used this term in an interview with the Christian Science Monitor. In Soviet Russia itself it was Adolf Ioffe who popularized it and called for ‘co-operation’ with ‘bourgeois republics’.47 But Ioffe laid down a qualification, insisting that this policy would make sense only if it were guaranteed that no military threat would be directed at Moscow. The Red Army would show good faith by pulling back from its stations on Russian borders. Capitalists would trade with Russia not out of altruism or even mere greed but because the world economy could not now recover without access to the huge natural resources that lay between Smolensk and Vladivostok. Communists could therefore wait on events. The struggle between Labour and Capital would not cease around the globe, and ‘world proletarian revolution’ remained the party’s objective. But every Bolshevik leader had learned that compromises had to be made if Bolshevik rule was to be sustained.48