Rothstein has lived many years in London, his home is there, his family and his wife. No doubt it would have been very pleasant for him to have been appointed Ambassador to England. But logically, and through peculiar circumstances, that office seemed to be about to be bestowed upon Mr. Krassin. Thus Rothstein set about to remove Krassin from his path.
Both Litvinov and Rothstein had cause for deep annoyance against the British Government. Rothstein was “allowed” to accompany Litvinov to Moscow when Litvinov was “returned” to his government; he was refused permission to go back. Feeling himself tricked, he pointed a suspicious finger at Krassin who came and went so freely. He managed to play upon Litvinov’s wounded personal vanity. Between them they almost ruined Krassin’s work.
Litvinov was sent out of England with all the indignity of a man being kicked down stairs. No one could blame him for a perfectly human desire to go back some day and sit at a conference table facing the very men who were once so unjust to him. This desire has probably been entirely appeased at Genoa.
The world is full of tantalizing prejudices, which direct events more than we realize. Krassin and Litvinov are both charter members of the Communist party, but Litvinov just happens to be England’s idea of a Bolshevik while Krassin does not.
Because Krassin came from the same class that Lord Curzon did, England does not feel so much panic in dealing with him. Krassin is obviously a gentleman and official England can never quite ignore a gentleman. Krassin is as polished and as coldly polite and as well dressed as if he were in the House of Lords. He is tall, middle aged, fine featured and has great personal charm.
All this would not mean much in America, but in England to establish one’s social equality with the home office is an especially strong point for any visiting diplomat. This acknowledgment of caste is true all over Europe. Tchicherin, the aristocrat, had a much better chance at Genoa because of his background.
If such conferences are ever held in America, Litvinov might prove the most popular of the group. Any country which is satisfied with the familiar type of our middle western Congressmen will not reject an intelligent proletarian like Litvinov. Some of our rough-and-ready Senators will surely feel much more at home with his bluntness than with Krassin’s smooth, impenetrable Old Worldliness.
Litvinov reminds one of a successful mining man from Alaska or a lumber king from the West. Krassin is more like those quiet, powerful, coldly intelligent men who manage railroads, Wall Street and the world’s finance.
Krassin, who once managed the great Putilov factory and was considered one of the most able engineers in Russia, is now pretty generally conceded the strongest man next to Lenin. As a force for stability and reconstruction he is immensely valuable to the Soviets. He has maintained a mental equilibrium which many of the other Commissars have lost. Contact with men of different political opinions is a great dissolver of mental cobwebs. Krassin’s continual coming and going has probably helped him to maintain his perspective. When one remains too long in Russia, the outside world often appears incomprehensible just as Russia appears incomprehensible to the outside world.
I remember a conversation I had with him during the blockade. “Whenever Russia,” he said, “ceases to be a country visited only by ‘brave’ and ‘adventuresome’ and ‘occasional’ travelers, the Russian people and the Russian government will be no more interesting and no more evil than the governments and the people of the rest of the world; it will no longer be necessary for writers to exaggerate about us.”