Linda Killen - The Russian Bureau: A Case Study in Wilsonian Diplomacy

THE
RUSSIAN
BUREAU

A Case Study in
Wilsonian Diplomacy

LINDA KILLEN

Copyright 1983 by Linda Killen

The University Press of Kentucky
Scholarly publisher for the Commonwealth,
serving Bellarmine College, Berea College, Centre
College of Kentucky, Eastern Kentucky University,
The Filson Club, Georgetown College, Kentucky
Historical Society, Kentucky State University,
Morehead State University, Murray State University,
Northern Kentucky University, Transylvania University,
University of Kentucky, University of Louisville,
and Western Kentucky University.

Editorial and Sales Offices: Lexington, Kentucky 40506-0024

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Killen, Linda, 1945

The Russian Bureau.

Bibliography: p.

Includes index.

1. United StatesForeign relationsSoviet Union. 2. Soviet UnionForeign relationsUnited States. 3. United StatesForeign relations19131921 4. Wilson, Woodrow, 18561924. 5. United States. Russian Bureau. 6. Soviet UnionHistoryRevolution, 19171921Economic aspects. 7. United StatesForeign economic relationsSoviet Union. 8. Soviet UnionForeign economic relationsUnited States. 9. United StatesForeign relations administration. I. Title.

ISBN 978-0-8131-5288-2

Woodrow Wilsons diplomacy, and especially his response to revolutionary Russia, has been and will continue to be the focus of an impressive amount of historical research. Both the man and the era make this almost inevitable. The man was complex; the era, one of historys turning points.

In recent decades, historians have taken a variety of approaches to Wilson, Russia, and the era. Lloyd Gardner, N. Gordon Levin, Arthur Link, Arno Mayer, and John Thompson have all written or edited books discussing Wilsons response to revolutionary change in a world he would much more comfortably have seen move forward progressively but nonviolently. The Bolshevik revolution provides one of the primary case references and, as a consequence, Wilsons response to the Bolsheviks has been well, if not definitively, documented.

Another series of studies has explored the economic underpinnings of Americas foreign policy (or as some would say, the diplomatic underpinnings of Americas economic policy). Joan Hoff Wilson and N. Gordon Levin come to mind, as does Burton Kaufmans book on the Wilson administrations organizational support of foreign trade expansion. More generally, scholars such as Michael Hogan have begun to examine the informal efforts at coordination between public policy and private sector implementation, examples of which can be found in Wilsons diplomacy and most particularly in this study of the Russian Bureau.

Students of Woodrow Wilson have explored the mind, motives, and methods of a man who seems to have seen himself in much the manner portrayed by Arthur Walworth over twenty years agoi.e., world prophet, willing and able to teach the world how best to behave. Self-righteousness being almost by definition a negative quality in this day and age, Wilson has come in for criticism even among those who applaud his goals.

Courtesy in part of the Vietnam heritage, in part of post-World War II fascination with all things Russian, and in part of the subjects inherent interest, Americas participation in the Allied intervention in Russia has received much attention. Much of this material deals with the ongoing debate over why Wilson decided to intervene; less ideologically debatable are those studies or portions of larger studies which discuss the actual course of American military intervention.

There are still areas of Wilsons policy toward Russia which need exploration. In my dissertation, I argued that Wilson, like most Americans at that time, believed that the Bolsheviks were, however irritating while they lasted, only a passing aberration. Consequently, his response to them did not reflect his true Russian policy. Rather, while on one hand trying to deal with the radicals as necessity demanded, on the other he continued to assume that a revolutionaryas in the March revolutionRussia was shortly to reemerge. And he formulated much of his Russian policy accordingly. Note, for example, his consistent stand against Russias territorial dismemberment. This non-Bolshevik Russian policy needs more scholarly attention if we are to understand the peculiarities of Americas reaction to the twentieth centurys first major revolution (and, one might argue, most of its later revolutions). One such peculiarity is a Wilsonian tendency to treat various geographic regions in Russia differently. Consciously or unconsciously, most Americans seem to have drawn a line down the Ural mountains, dealing with events in the east and events in the west as virtually unrelated. The reader will find Russian Bureau relief efforts in Siberia very different from Herbert Hoovers relief efforts in the west. And finally, there is still a shortage of documentation on American presence in Russia during 1917-1921, especially nonmilitary and especially in comparison with the nonmilitary presence of other Allied personnel, public and private. Donald Davis and Eugene Tranis work in the YMCA operations in Russia is potentially much more useful in this regard than are the more frequent references to the few Red Cross personnel caught up in the politics of Bolshevik Russia.

The present book is, first and foremost, a study of the War Trade Board of the U.S. Russian Bureau, Incorporated, an agency totally ignored in previous analyses of Wilson and his Russian policy. The bureaus history provides material to help clarify and elaborate existing work on Wilson, on policy toward revolutionary Russia, on public-private cooperation, on economic motivation, and on American activity in occupied Russia.

The War Trade Board of the U.S. Russian Bureau, Incorporated, filled a page in one chapter of Wilsons policy toward Russia, 1918-1920. The Russian Bureau was a wartime agency specifically established to provide economic assistance to the Russia of the March, not Bolshevik, revolution. Its creators assumed that, with a little help from her friends, Russia would be able to reestablish economic stability which in turn would lead to political respectability. The help would come in the form of increased trade with the United States; respectability was defined as a non-Bolshevik government ready and able to assume its legitimate international responsibilities.

The story of the Russian Bureau is important in that it adds a new dimension to Wilsonian diplomacy. Untainted by the meanderings and moralities of Wilsons recognition policies, and only proximately associated with military intervention, the bureau was Wilsons primary attempt to let the Russian people help bring about their own political-cumeconomic salvation and stability. It is also significant in that it points up so clearly both the flaws in Wilsons world view and the complexities of the world which Wilson tried so hard to mold to his own image.