Russia Leaves The War, Kennan - B

                                         "Peace, Land and Bread" was what the Bolsheviks offered the Russian people, but unilateral peace was anathema to the allies of the Entente.  While I was reading the Hardy Boys in 1958, apparently adult America had a taste for nuanced and extremely detailed diplomatic history, as this extraordinary book won the Pulitzer, Francis Parkman, Bancroft and National Book Awards.  It is actually Vol. I of a work called 'Soviet -American Relations 1917-1920'.

                                           Kennan was a superb writer, and here he tells the tale of the US response to the November Revolution, and specifically to the decision to withdraw from the capitalists war.  What is striking is each side's complete lack of understanding of the others' history and culture.  Lenin and Trotsky honestly believed that the workers of the world would throw off their shackles and their governments because they offered the world a chance to end the war.  The Wilson administration (and all the Allies) found it incomprehensible that Russia would not honor its treaty obligations, and kept thinking they could appeal to the Russian people's sense of honor and love of democracy.  The legendary 'Fourteen Points' were a partial response to the Russian Revolution and an attempt to go over the head of the Soviets and speak directly to the Russian people. Kennan summed it up succinctly and critically:"Both Wilson and Lenin had made the mistake of attempting to project their respective ideological images onto the world at large and to seek an international validity for principles that were a product of their own specific environmental and educational backgrounds."          

                                          In early February, at Brest-Litovsk, while delaying so the workers of the world could unite, Trotsky played his famous "no war, no peace" negotiating ploy on the Germans.  It totally backfired as the Germans advanced toward Petrograd, which led to the permanent removal of the government to Moscow and the Allie's embassies decamping to Vologda.  Preposterously, the Allies seriously considered intervening in Vladivostok, nearly 6000 miles away. Their stated concern was the fear that the supplies they had sent to Russia, which were on the piers and in the warehouses of Vladivostok because Czarist and Revolutionary Russia were incapable of moving them west, might fall into the hands of the Germans.   The British and French wanted the Japanese to intervene, to deny the enemy "the vast agricultural resources east of Lake Baikal".  You have to wonder if the decision makers had access to maps or were just delusional about transport capabilities. The US prevailed upon the Japanese to defer.  As the sequel is called 'The Decision To Intervene', I suspect we will read more about the attraction of boots on the ground in Siberia.  Back in the west, the Germans  prevailed and the Treaty was signed in  March.  While the Treaty was being considered by a Soviet assembly, Wilson again tried to speak directly to the Russian people.  Kennan acerbically closes the book with, "Once again, as is is so often the course of these rapidly moving events, Washington - troubled, hesitant, and ill-informed  - had spoken, reluctantly, into the past". Kudos to Greg Weiss for finding this challenging book and recommending it.