Customer Reviews

The Decision to Intervene: Soviet-American Relations, 1917-1920, Vol. 2

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The Decision to Intervene by George F. Kennan is Volume II of his History of Soviet-American Relations, 1917-1920. (See my review of Volume I, Russia Leaves the War.)

The Decision to Intervene picks up in early 1918. The Bolsheviks had overthrown the democratically-oriented Provisional Government of Russia which came to power in February 1917 and had negotiated a separate truce with the Germans, taking Russia out of WWI. The details of a formal Russian-German peace treaty were undergoing tortuous negotiations at Brest-Litovsk. In the course of the war, Russia's allies, Britain, France, Italy, and, later, the US and Japan, had supplied significant quantities of strategic raw materials, arms, and munitions to Russia. Large stockpiles were still present at Vladivostok in the Far East and Archangel in the far northwest. Fearing that these strategic materials might be seized by or transferred to the Germans, the French, British and Italians favored landing allied troops to safeguard them. The Japanese supported this position, provided that they could unilaterally land their troops in Vladivostok, with American blessing, to create a bridgehead into Manchuria and Siberia.

At this time there was also allied great concern that large numbers of German troops would be transferred from the eastern to the western front for a major offensive. By introducing some allied troops into Russia, the allies hoped to tie down an even larger number of German forces who might otherwise be sent west.

For roughly the first half of 1918, President Wilson opposed intervention, and this opposition was sufficient to deter the allies. Around May of 1918, Raymond Robins, whom we met in Volume I as head of the American Red Cross mission to Russia and our informal point of contact with the Bolsheviks, was withdrawn from Russia. His self-appointed role as advocate of recognition of and aid to the Bolsheviks had come to naught, though he did not realize it for some months to come.

At almost the same time as Robins departure, the Czechoslovak Legion in Russia was attacked by Red Guards. Czechoslovakia was then part of the Austrian Empire but its population dreamed of independence. The Czech Legion, about 30,000 well trained troops, fought against the Germans and Austrians alongside the Russian Army until Russia left the war. The Czechs had no intention of making peace with the Germans and Austrians but could not continue fighting on Russian territory. Consequently, they attempted to make their way east to Vladivostok from which point they hoped the allies would provide sea transport to the western front. The Bolsheviks, perhaps in response to German pressure, demanded that the Czechs surrender most of their arms and repeatedly delayed their passage along the Trans-Siberian Railway. When the Czechs refused to disarm, Red Guards ambushed them at Irkutsk. The Czechs fought back quite effectively, eventually captured the Trans-Siberian Railway all the way from Vladivostok to the Urals, and were joined by various anti-communist Russian forces. This was the start of the Russian Civil War.

By this time, the Bolsheviks had acceded to all German conditions and signed the Brest-Litovsk Treaty, permanently taking Russia out of the war. Also, the British had landed a few troops in Archangel and Murmansk in the north and the Japanese had landed a major force in Vladivostok. Finally, the Bolsheviks had murdered the Tsar and all his family.

These combined events prompted the other allies to again approach President Wilson with another request for support for intervention. This time Wilson acceded, partly out of emotional support for the Czechs and partly because he feared he had refused the allies' requests too many times already. However, his decision was not coordinated with the allies or anyone else, including the rest of the US Government. His orders to US troops sent to Russia were incredibly contradictory. For example: (1) Support the Czechs but do not get involved in internal Russian conflicts. (How do you do that when the Czechs are fighting the Bolsheviks?) (2) Proceed to Murmansk and report to the senior British officer who is to command all allied forces there. However, do not leave the port area for the interior. (How do you respond when the British commander says "Go!"?)

During the entire period from the February 1917 Revolution through the intervention, Wilson never consulted with his ambassador in Russia. He ran a one-man foreign policy. Worse, his decisions were half-hearted, more often indecisions than decisions. Kennan summarizes Wilson's role in the intervention eloquently: "By failing, in this way, to follow through on the implementation of his own decision, the President contrived to get the worst of all possible worlds: he irritated the British and French with his obiter dicta and drew onto himself, ultimately, the blame for the failure of the entire venture (on the grounds that the United States contribution had been too little and too late); he did not prevent the US units from being used for precisely the purposes for which he said they should not be used; nor did he withdraw them, as he said he would, when they were thus used; yet he did prevent them from having any proper understanding of the purposes for which they were being used; finally, he rendered the US vulnerable to the charge, which Soviet propagandists have never ceased to exploit, of interfering by armed force in Soviet domestic affairs." (page 421)

That's some condemnation. The antidote for this type of disaster is the (Colin) Powell Doctrine: Don't enter into armed conflict unless you do so with an overwhelmingly superior force and the determination to see the conflict through to a successful conclusion.

Since I am intensely interested in the subject of the American involvement in the intervention of North Russia just after the First World War (where the U.S. 339th Infantry fought against the 6th Red Army), I have a good many books on the subject, from "Fighting the Bolsheviki" to the more recent "Stillborn Crusade," and I have notes I made while researching original documents at the U.S. Library of Congress. But when I want to think in broader terms, I always pull out my copy of "The Decision to Intervene." It allows me to review the general situation at the time, including the activities of the Red Cross (who put the "Red" in the "Red Cross" Ha! Ha!), the U.S. troops in Siberia, and the Czechslovak situation at the time. I would be lost without this book. I highly recommend it!

Since I am intensely interested in the subject of the American involvement in the intervention of North Russia just after the First World War (where the U.S. 339th Infantry fought against the 6th Red Army), I have a good many books on the subject, from "Fighting the Bolsheviki" to the more recent "Stillborn Crusade," and I have notes I made while researching original documents at the U.S. Library of Congress. But when I want to think in broader terms, I always pull out my copy of "The Decision to Intervene." It allows me to review the general situation at the time, including the activities of the Red Cross (who put the "Red" in the "Red Cross" Ha! Ha!), the U.S. troops in Siberia, and the Czechslovak situation at the time. I would be lost without this book. I highly recommend it!

I originally bought this book as a Norton paperback when I was going out to my second posting in the Soviet Union (Leningrad 1985-1987). It seemed like an ideal book to take with me at the time, and although I always intended to read it, it always seemed to wind up on the shelf, and then in my sea freight, as I lugged it from one post to another throughout my diplomatic career.

Recently retired, I finally got around to picking up the book and reading it, and, of course, now I wish I had read it much earlier. It is a masterwork, and should be required reading, along with Kennan's first volume (Russia Leaves the War), for any serious student of U.S.-Soviet relations. I won't go into the intricacies of Kennan's narrative, which are covered quite well by Leonard J. Wilson's review, but I would like to make a few somewhat scattershot comments.

First, don't buy the Norton paperback version. After carrying it around all these years, I discovered that, through a printing error, pages 21-50 were missing, requiring me to buy a used hardback copy of the book to read the missing text.

Second, when reading Kennan's two-volume history, don't expect it to cover the advertised period (1917-1920). Actually volume two ends its story in November 1918, a fact which has prompted me recently to start reading three paperbacks that I bought even earlier than the Kennan set, E.H. Carr's three-volume history of the Bolshevik Revolution. My thought is that maybe Kennan was intending to write another couple of volumes, but got sidetracked for some reason. I guess we may never know for sure.

My third and last comment is that Kennan's history is the best argument I've seen for the thesis that sometimes diplomats really are on their own and end up making policy by necessity. To call the Wilson Administration's policy toward Russia as feeble and self-contradictory would be stating matters kindly. Delusional would be more like it, with a President who chose to make his own policy decisions virtually alone, without reference to the realities of the situation, and who quite often failed to notify his allies and his own diplomats until the fat was in the fire. I am also filled with admiration for two of our diplomats in Russia at that time, to whom Kennan dedicates his history: Maddin Summers, our Consul General in Moscow, who literally worked himself to death in the middle of the Bolshevik Revolution, and his successor, Dewitt Clinton Poole, who risked his life, against instructions, to save the lives of others.

All in all, "The Decision to Intervene" is well worth reading, with Kennan's eloquent prose style on full display. Only, don't do as I did. Don't wait 25 years -- read it now!