Europe Since 1918

by Herbert Adams Gibbons

In the good old days, when the alliance with Russia was regarded as the salvation of France, Romanoffs frequently radiated from Deauville to other Norman watering-places. The honor of a visit from a Russian royal personage was commemorated in the favorite French fashion by municipalities where Socialists did not predominate. So at Houlgate, my summer home, the street leading to the Grand Hôtel used to be the Rue Marie Feodorovna. In the summer of 1917 we found that the name had been changed to Rue Prince Lvoff. Before the end of the summer it became Rue Kerensky in honor of the investigator of Brusiloff’s last offensive. That name, of course, was no longer possible in 1918. In the first summer of the victory, after the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, events dictated Rue de l’Amiral Kolchak. It was replaced by Rue Wrangel, and then the street was taken away from Russia altogether!

I am not telling this as a funny story, but because it illustrates the tragedy of France torn from her moorings, aware of her inability to ride the storm alone on the high seas of recharted Europe, not knowing which way to turn, and instinctively cherishing the hope that the bond with Russia would not be definitely broken. Great Britain and the United States do not need alliances with other powers as the essential condition of national existence. Italy sees the door wide open to return to the Germanic alliance. But the Russian revolution confronted France with a problem that victory over Germany could not solve. Only with this fact constantly in mind can we discuss intelligently the internal evolution and foreign policy of Russia under the Soviets. For all that has happened in Russia since the overthrow of the Czarist Government is inextricably bound up with the attitude of the victors in the World War toward Russia. In the great volume of books and articles on the experiment with Communism one finds an almost universal failure to recognize this fact. Partisans pro and contra have given us pictures of Soviet Russia that are accurate enough impressions of confusion and anarchy, but that are lacking when the attempt is made to explain how and why these things have happened.

The Russian revolution, occurring at any other time than in the midst of a war affecting the interests of all nations, would have been regarded sympathetically, and its excesses would have been deemed inevitable. We should have awaited patiently the outcome, and it is doubtful whether any country would have shown active hostility to it or have been tempted to intervene. But, coming when it did, in western Europe and America the sole thought was to prevent the revolution from playing into the hands of Germany. Russia’s continued military coöperation was believed to be essential to victory; and, except for Germany’s stupidity in provoking the United States, the Entente Powers could not have won the war without Russia. Consequently, Entente diplomacy had only one thought, to keep the Russians in the fighting-line. It was natural, then, that the logical internal evolution of the movement was greeted with dismay. Public opinion in Allied countries read into the events of 1917 and 1918 a deliberate betrayal of the common cause, cleverly engineered by a common enemy, with the result that the Russians very soon came to be considered and treated as enemies.

Forgetting the sacrifices the Russians had made, the Allied and Associated Powers, without declaration of war, blockaded Russia, invaded Russia, supported counter-revolutionary movements, used against Russia the poison gas of propaganda, yielded to the temptation of taking advantage of Russia’s temporary helplessness to advance their own economic and political interests, and ignored Russia in all the treaties and agreements their victory gave them the power to make.

Of the leaders of the revolution, in its incipiency, we demanded the impossible. We insisted that they force upon the Russian people the continuance of the policies of the Czarist Government, policies which it had been the purpose of the revolution to discredit and destroy! None can study the relations of Russia with the Entente Powers during 1917, and not come to the conclusion that the Lvoff and Kerensky Governments were discredited and overthrown because they tried to keep Russia in the war without having secured from Russia’s allies a restatement of war aims. The revolution was anti-imperialist, and those who led it could keep the confidence of the people only by assuring them that the enemies of Germany were fighting for the destruction of imperialism, for which Germany stood. Germany was the enemy of civilization because she worshiped brute force as her god and was waging an unholy war to dominate the world and to force other peoples into subjection to her people, so that they might be exploited for the benefit of German industry. Czarist Russia, as had been proved by the secret treaties, had led the Russian people into a war, under false pretenses, for the same object as those that Germany hoped to attain.

Revolutionary Russia renounced all the loot of the secret treaties. She no longer wanted Constantinople and other portions of the Ottoman Empire. She was willing to withdraw from Persia and consent to the emancipation of Poland. Let Great Britain and France and Italy give the Russian people solemn assurances that they also renounce their shares of the hoped-for loot, and promise that they would apply the principle of self-determination to peoples subject to them, and the war would be continued. This proposal was refused. The refusal gave the Bolshevists their chance to get control of the revolutionary Government.

The Soviet régime would probably have followed the lot of all extremist groups and been drowned in its own bloodshed had it not been for the support given by the Entente Powers to various counter-revolutionary movements and to the invasion of Russia at various points by Entente armies. The Russians came to believe that the rest of the world was conspiring to destroy them. They rallied around Lenin and Trotzky, moved by the instinct of every people to repel the invader. French, British, Italians, Greeks, Americans, Japanese thus voluntarily took their place with Germans as enemies of Russians. Hundreds of thousands in every part of the country would have welcomed the counter-revolutionary movements and have stuck by them until the Bolshevists were overthrown had they not become convinced that outside nations were supporting the counter-revolutionists, not for Russia’s sake, but to feather their own nests. All that happened in 1918, 1919, and 1920 tended to confirm this impression. We accuse the Russians of having deserted the common cause during the war. The Russians accuse us of having involved them in a war, in which their losses were greater than those of any other belligerent, by territorial bribes to the old Czarist Government, and then, when regenerated Russia spoke for an idealistic peace, of having turned against them.

In dealing with the internal evolution and foreign policy of Russia during the years following the World War, we must get away from the belief that Boshevism and Russia are synonymous and from the comfortable feeling that Russia’s ills and the international troubles those ills have created for us, are due to the attempt of the Communists to set up in Russia a Soviet form of government and to impose their doctrines upon the rest of the world. This is only one factor, and not the most important, in the great problem of Russia’s internal and international relations. The difficulties arose before the Communists got control of the Government. They continued during the period of the Communists’ attempt to demonstrate the practicability of their doctrines. They remain, now that Communism has proved a failure in a country where it had a better chance of success than in any other great nation.[8]

It is fruitless to maintain, as some zealots do, that Communism was not given a fair chance and that its failure is due to the hostility of the world. The complete disintegration of society in Russia, when the incentive of reward for production was removed, demonstrates the visionary character of the experiment. By successive modifications of some of their ideas and the abandonment of others, the leaders of the movement themselves have confessed that they were unable to make a go of their communistic theories. Honest foreign investigators, no matter how prejudiced they were when they went, did not need much time to be convinced that the theories did not work out in practice. After six years, the Russian people, from Lenin down to the humblest peasant, know that the Government does not function when private and personal ownership of the machinery of production is not acknowledged and safeguarded. Brains and arms alike are used only when their possessors know that their efforts bring them some tangible reward. There will be no surplus over the day’s needs unless there is an assured title to that surplus. And this means that no usufruct, for an individual or a community, is ever created unless definite and inviolate ownership has induced the creation.

Soviet theories temporarily destroyed capital or drove it to cover. But as soon as it was seen that capital was essential to keep the country going, the laws passed in the first enthusiasm were not enforced, and were modified and repealed as quickly as could be done without losing face. Trading was resumed, and the Government began to give the necessary assurances to its own people first, and then to nationals of foreign countries, that the right to amass and transfer possessions would no longer be denied.