Europe Since 1918

by Herbert Adams Gibbons

The British, admirable realists in international politics, were first to grasp the cutting-off-the-nose-to-spite-the-face danger of keeping Russia in Coventry. British trade was suffering, and the Russians were in a position, which was daily growing stronger, to stir things up unpleasantly against the British in India and Mesopotamia. A Soviet delegation was received in London, and as soon as the British saw that Kolchak had followed the fate of Yudenitch and Denikin they signed a trade agreement and brought into court a test case to convince the Bolshevists that what they exported would not be confiscated for claims against the former Government. The British began to trade with Russia, and British and Russians mutually promised to abstain from propaganda against one another.

Italy and smaller countries soon followed suit. France made the mistake of backing Baron Wrangel, still one more will-o’-the-wisp, and the question of the enormous debt of the Czarist régime, most of it widely distributed among French peasants, made it impossible for the French Government to renew relations with Russia. On the other hand, France’s persistence in backing counter-revolutionary movements, her support of Poland, her effort to control the Little Entente, her commercial treaty with Finland, her rôle at the Genoa Conference, and her treatment of Germany combined to increase the bitterness between the closely allied nations of pre-war days. In the summer of 1922 France began to make overtures to Moscow; but these did not go far. The invasion of the Ruhr, following upon the Lausanne Conference, widened the breach.

The first of the post-war conferences to which Russia was invited was that of Genoa in the spring of 1922. At the very beginning of the conference, however, France insisted that Russia, as the price of political recognition, accept conditions that no delegates, having the interest either of their country or political party at heart, could have accepted. The opening sessions of the Genoa Conference were so arranged as to give the Russian delegates the suspicion that the conference was intending to discredit them. They resented the effort to make them appear, as the Germans had been made to appear at Versailles, as criminals and debtors. The financial proposals of the Entente Powers they believed would reduce Russia to economic servitude, and they refused to accept them.

The Russians at Genoa were confronted with the same unilateral application of a principle as had confronted the Germans at Versailles. They were told that the return of Russia into the family of nations was dependent upon the recognition of the pre-war debt of Russia, upon repayment of the sums borrowed by the Russian Government from the Allies during the war, and upon the settlement of claims of foreigners for property nationalized by the Soviet. The Russians answered that they would be willing to do this if the Entente Powers would recognize Russia’s equal right to participate in all the pecuniary and other advantages of their victory, which these sums had been spent to obtain. As for the claims of foreigners against the Soviet, Russia would pay these if the Allies would pay for the confiscation of money and the damages done by the anti-Soviet generals, Kolchak, Denikin, and Wrangel, who had been armed by the Allies against Russia. The Russian claims for damages were far greater than those presented by the Entente Powers.

Soviet counter-claims were indignantly rejected. The Entente Powers had no idea of admitting reciprocity, and insisted that Russia would have to pay. Her claims against the Entente Powers were thrown out of court.

For several months Russia had been negotiating a treaty with Germany, with whom there were claims on both sides to be adjusted. Since Germany had been compelled by the Treaty of Versailles to renounce the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, there had been no new document to take its place. Before Russians and Germans arrived at Genoa, the treaty had not taken final form. But when the representatives of the two nations saw that the Entente Powers intended to settle their affairs for them by decisions secretly taken in pre-conference meetings from which they were excluded, they withdrew to Rapallo, where the treaty was signed. This disturbing news for the Entente Powers was announced on Easter Sunday. The Russo-German treaty provided for mutual waiving of war claims, with the stipulation that Russia should make no agreement with a third power except on similar terms, and for the resumption of full diplomatic relations.

The Entente statesmen protested vigorously against the conclusion of a direct agreement of this character both to Dr. Rathenau and M. Tchitcherin, asserting that it anticipated and prejudiced the general principle of settlement with Russia, in which Germany’s interests were the same as those of the other nations. The Germans were accused of bad faith and the Russians of duplicity. Loudest in denunciation were Mr. Lloyd George and M. Barthou. When Germans and Russians both answered that the negotiations had begun long before the Genoa Conference, but that anyway, even if they had not, the two delegations, excluded from the secret conferences of the preceding fortnight, had only followed the example given them by the British and French delegations, there was a wrathful outburst.

The assumption was that Great Britain and France had the right to do what they denied to Germany and Russia. Germany was a defeated nation. Russia was an outlaw nation. They should not forget their complete dependence upon the Entente Powers. There was truth in this contention in so far as Germany was concerned. Germany was at the mercy of the Entente Powers for the time being. But Russia was not at their mercy, and the Russian delegates did not see why any such illusion should be entertained by the Entente statesmen. When they demanded reciprocity in adjusting claims for damages and obligations contracted during the war, it did not occur to them that they were “insolent,” as Mr. Lloyd George put it, or “impudent,” as M. Barthou said. The only positive result of the Genoa conference was the Russo-German treaty. Tchitcherin and his colleagues rejected the conditions of the Entente Powers and left Genoa, declaring that they would never sign any agreement except on the basis of reciprocity in the fullest sense of the word. They did not intend to barter Russia’s economic independence for political recognition.

The year following the Genoa Conference was one of rebuffs and disillusion for Russia in her attempt to secure recognition from the Entente Powers and the United States. Up to the Genoa Conference it had seemed as if the Moscow Soviet was going to win out in the fight for re-entrance into the family and councils of the great powers. Great Britain and Italy had modified their original attitude; and after the conference France appeared to be considering the negotiation of a trade agreement. The French were greatly exercised over the Russo-German treaty, and the French press began to warn the Government that it would be foolish to allow Germany and Great Britain to secure a favored commercial position in the country that had been so long and so intimately connected with France. From the very fact of the large French investments, was the policy followed at Genoa a wise one? And could France afford to stand by and make no effort while Berlin established intimate relations with Moscow? M. Herriot, senator and former mayor of Lyons, made a visit to Moscow, which was not unfavorably commented upon in newspapers that had been most bitterly anti-Bolshevist. Those Frenchmen who were interested in the Near East kept insisting that France could not afford to let Soviet Russia become too powerful at Angora any more than at Berlin.

The olive branch was withdrawn, however, soon after the opening of the Lausanne Conference. French statesmen felt that Tchitcherin was a potent factor for mischief with the Turkish delegation, and should at no costs be allowed to have any say in the conference. The encouragement given by Russia to Germany in the passive resistance in the Ruhr demonstrated the futility of the hope entertained for a few months that a rapprochement with Russia might prove politically and commercially advantageous to France.