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5.0 out of 5 stars
As exciting as a spy novel, February 18, 2002
By A Customer
This review is from: Standing on a Volcano: The Life and Times of David Rowland Francis (Paperback)
Journalist Harper Barnes' biography of David Rowland Francis,
American politician and diplomat whose career ranged from St. Louis in
America's heartland to the depths of Russia during the Bolshevik
revolution (1917-19), is full of surprises. As the youngest mayor of
St. Louis and governor of Missouri at the turn of the 20th century, he
lead progressive Democrats and fathered the St. Louis World's Fair in
1903-04. Appointed ambassador to Russia by President Woodrow Wilson, he
endured terrible hardships during its revolutionary period, aided by his
articulate and loyal friend and valet, African-American Philip Jordan.
Much of the Russian story reads like an exciting spy novel. Wonderfully
researched and well written, it is a compelling account that enriches
both United States' and international history. It captivates the reader
and offers heretofore unknown insights into not only a remarkable
American but United States foreign policy at a pivotal time in world
history.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
Petrograd, Potatoes and Ambassador David Francis, September 7, 2010
Harper Barnes's detailed and highly readable biography of David Rowland Francis is a welcome revision to the conventional wisdom on America's last Ambassador to Tsarist Russia. Francis, a self-made millionaire, the "Boy Mayor of St. Louis," Governor of Missouri, President Cleveland's Secretary of Interior, and perhaps most importantly, the organizer of the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition and America's first Olympic Games, is a revered figure in Missouri history. His international reputation has been tarnished, however, by his tenure, late in life, as President Woodrow Wilson's Ambassador to Russia.
Francis served in Petrograd during one of the most confusing and critical periods in Russian history. As an outsider from America with quaint ideas about the virtues of democracy, Francis came in for almost universal criticism from his diplomatic contemporaries and was trashed in succeeding years by many historians of the period. He was typically described as out of his depth, too old and infirm for the job, and clueless about the revolutionary currents that were swirling around him.
Most accounts of Francis's Ambassadorship were derived initially from the memoirs of R.H. Bruce Lockhart, Britain's unofficial envoy to the Bolsheviks. Lockhart, who first met Francis in Petrograd, noted with typical British sarcasm, "Old Francis does not know a Left Social Revolutionary from a potato." This label stuck, and for years afterward, historians would characterize Francis as "not too wide-awake" (Herman Hagedorn), "one of the accidents of Missouri politics" (David Loth) and "Babbitry personified" (Robert Warth). One Red Cross contemporary was perhaps the most scathing in his criticism, describing Francis as "a stuffed shirt, a dumb head who never found out what the whole thing was about. He leaned on everybody, keenly enjoying his authority, while spies slipped in and out under his nose and diplomats made a monkey of him."
This perception of Francis persisted into the 1980's, despite the very balanced portrayal given by George Kennan in his masterful history of the period, "Russia Leaves the War," published in 1956. With the end of the Cold War, however, and the end of the Soviet Union itself, a fresh look was taken at the historical record, and Francis's reputation gradually improved. This culminated in Harper Barnes's biography, "Standing on a Volcano."
Sifting exhaustively through the documents of the period, Barnes has reconstructed an entirely different picture of Francis's Ambassadorship. Francis was assuredly out of his depth at first. But even though he was in his sixties (not his eighties, as Lockhart thought) he was an extraordinarily energetic leader and a quick study. His voluminous reporting during the period of the revolution shows that he was actually quite well informed about the political currents prevailing in Petrograd. In addition, he took physical risks to get this information that would likely impress our current crop of "Warrior Ambassadors."
The Wilson Administration wanted to promote democracy in Russia, viewing this as a way of keeping a prostrate ally in the war against Germany. Francis faithfully represented this policy as effectively as anyone could, although it became increasingly clear that Russia would neither embrace democracy nor return to the field of battle. At first, Francis shared many of the Wilson Administration's illusions about Russia, but later he was ahead of most diplomats in Petrograd, and his own betters in Washington, in arguing for significant policy changes. During the period of revolutionary ferment in 1917, he argued early on in favor of engagement with the Bolsheviks, in order to influence their behavior and gauge their intentions. Following the October Revolution, and self-imposed diplomatic exile in Vologda, he argued, perhaps quixotically, for a much more muscular intervention by the Allies in order to overthrow the Bolsheviks. Francis's policy recommendations were initially resisted by Wilson and his advisors, but when they were eventually acted on, it was usually in a distracted and half-hearted manner. For America, Russia was of peripheral concern. In particular, the political will never existed for a "Russian adventure" that might have strangled the Bolshevik Revolution in its crib.
Francis's poor reputation among historians and diplomatic colleagues stemmed from several factors. A political appointee, he did not know Russian, and initially, lacked an understanding of the political situation. Self-assured and typically Midwestern, Francis did not possess the courtly manners viewed as necessary by the glitterati in Petrograd, who tended to look down on him. An exponent of democracy, his relations with the Tsar were neutral at best (he viewed the Tsar as fundamentally unaware of the situation in Russia, noting in his memoirs that Nicholas was a "complacent monarch" who had "no idea that he was standing on a volcano"). Francis also used poor judgment in establishing a too-close relationship with his French tutor, a certain Madame de Cramm, who was suspected, but never proven to be, a German agent. In his last year in Russia, when in exile in Vologda, he also suffered from many debilitating illnesses that sapped his energy and prevented him from conducting himself as actively as before.
Francis also found himself in a nest of vipers. His diplomatic colleagues in Petrograd viewed him as a hick from St. Louis, even though he proved to be more in the loop than most of his contemporaries. Perhaps most importantly, Francis's authority as Ambassador was continually usurped by a whole series of special envoys. These included William Boyce Thompson and Raymond Robins of the Red Cross, Arthur Bullard, Edgar Sisson and George Creel of the Committee on Public Information, and numerous representatives of the Elihu Root and the Stevens Railway missions. Even his own Military Attaché, Brigadier General William Judson, operated outside of his control, for although the General was theoretically subordinate to Francis, he was at the same time the head of the fully independent American Military Mission. All of these envoys pursued their own foreign policy agendas, mostly without reference to Francis, and many were his bitter opponents. The failure of the Wilson Administration to forge a unified foreign policy towards Russia, and its toleration -- even encouragement -- of these disparate foreign policy elements is a familiar theme that students of modern diplomacy will find all too familiar.
After the October Revolution, Francis was also maligned by the growing gaggle of fellow travelers and homegrown communist sympathizers, most notably John Reed, the author of "Ten Days that Shook the World." Reed was an unabashed admirer of Lenin and an unashamed and eloquent agitator against his own country's interests, so much so that People's Commissar of Foreign Affairs Georgiy Chicherin even suggested that Reed be appointed as Soviet Consul in New York. Francis viewed Reed as an American Bolshevik, and Reed viewed Francis in an equally negative light. They were not friends, to put it mildly.
Finally, Francis did not help his own cause when, in 1921, he published his own memoir of the period, "Russia from the American Embassy." Although it was favorably reviewed by the New York Times shortly after publication, it has not impressed most readers, including me. It is more a collection of letters and dispatches than a coherent narrative, and suffers in comparison to many other literary efforts describing the period, especially the starry-eyed ramblings of John Reed.
Arriving with little knowledge of the political situation, surrounded by detractors, and undermined at every turn by his own government, David Francis did as well as anyone could have in his position, and certainly better than most of his Petrograd colleagues. His mission was not successful, but this was due more to the impossibility of the situation than to his own personal failings. Harper Barnes's biography of Ambassador David Rowland Francis is a welcome addition to the history of the period, and a welcome rehabilitation of one of America's most maligned Ambassadors.
Note: This review appeared in slightly different form in the September 6, 2010 edition of the online publication "American Diplomacy."
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