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A Frustrated Partnership: Russia's Relations with Great Britain, France, and the United States During World War I

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A Frustrated Partnership: Russia's Relations with Great Britain, France, and the United States During World War I A FRUSTRATED PARTNERSHIP: RUSSIA'S RELATIONS WITH GREAT BRITAIN, FRANCE, AND THE UNITED STATES DURING WORLD WAR I by ROBERT EDWARD BARNETT, B.A., M.A. A DISSERTATION IN HISTORY Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of Texas Tech University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY August, 1990 AC T3 Ho. ;?'4 ACKMOWLE DGMENT S I wish to thank Dr. Idris Rhea Traylor, Jr., the chairman of my graduate committee, under whose tireless work, encouragement, unstinting effort and unlimited help, this study was brought to completion. Thanks, too, are due to Drs. Brian Blakeley, James Brink, Dan Flores, and Dahlia Terrell, members of my committee, and to Drs. James Harper and Lowell Blaisdell. The generous sharing of their knowledge and professionalism has been a source of inspiration throughout my career. My appreciation also goes to the faculty of Texas Tech University, especially Drs. Alwyn Barr and Jacquelin Collins, who have helped me perceive the universe in a context beyond my small world. I owe a special debt to the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace, Stanford University, the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, and the Library of Congress and their staffs who so willingly aided in the location and use of special documents and materials used in the study. My thanks also go to Ms. Joan Weldon for countless suggestions offered as she was typing the dissertation. 11 To my parents. Dr. Glenn E. and Evadale Barnett, a thank you could never convey my appreciation for their support throughout my life. They have set admirable standards and values which have been of great benefit throughout the years. To my children, Christine, Brooke, Andrew, and Jordan, thank you for your love and patience. To Brenda, my wife, without whose love, understanding, faith and kindness this could not have been possible. Ill TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ii CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION 1 II. WAR AND THE DOWNFALL OF AUTOCRACY: THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION AND THE FIRST MONTHS OF THE PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT 23 III. POLITICAL TURMOIL: MILIUKOV, KERENSKY, AND THE CRISIS IN FOREIGN POLICY 80 IV. TO KEEP THE EASTERN FRONT: HENDERSON, STEVENS, AND ROOT IN RUSSIA 140 V. PARTICIPATION WANES: KERENSKY AND THE JULY OFFENSIVE 221 VI. THE FINAL FRUSTRATION: THE BOLSHEVIK UPRISING 278 BIBLIOGRAPHY 316 IV CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION Major historical events, their causative factors, and the persons involved in them are subject to continual research. New materials are utilized and fresh meanings developed as errors of fact are discovered and interpretations which have influenced earlier studies are examined. Diplomacy during the First World War, a complex and frequently frustrating subject for those who study it, has received such attention. The specific focus here is the Russian revolutions of 1917 which caused sweeping changes in this diplomacy. Beyond doubt one of the most significant series of events of modern history, the uprisings inextricably associated with Russia's involvement in the war threatened to make impossible the attainment of the wartime goals Russia and her allies had established. As a consequence of the Revolutions, Allied diplomatic efforts regarding Russia's participation in World War I assumed greater urgency and interrelations became more difficult as Russia's internal problems increasingly jeopardized her military performance. These latter efforts grew in complexity because of factors which were frustrating to representatives of the Allied nations as they sought to pursue the goal of the continued participation of Russia in the war. These factors included: the failure or, in some cases the complete absence, of Allied national policies as they related specifically to Russia; the influence of personal attitudes, abilities, experience, and ambitions of the representatives in Russia; and the influence on Allied relations with Petrograd, of special groups, for example the international Jewish community and commercial interests. Prior to 1914, the widely shared expectation of a European war had led nations to scramble for allies and to stockpile weapons. The development of these diplomatic arrangements has attracted the attention of scholars such as Luigi Albertini, William Langer, and George Kennan whose examinations of European diplomacy and the origins of war are widely respected. In The Franco-Russian Alliance, 1890-1894, Langer suggests that the expectation of conflict and the corresponding alliances that accompanied it were sufficient to plunge European nations into a war over issues in which they had little direct concern.^ Kennan shares the belief and, in The Fateful Alliance: France, Russia and the Coming of the First World War, argues that the belief in the certainty of a European conflagration was 3 a causative factor in its outbreak.2 Albertini's assessment is even sharper. He writes in his detailed account of the origins of the war that the mutual obligation to mobilize which was undertaken by St. Petersburg and Paris in the Franco-Russian Alliance was itself inflamatory in nature.3 Statesmen believed the resulting diplomatic arrangements were necessary because of the diplomatic and political climate of the period. The war, moreover, presented an opportunity to pursue many goals beyond that of simple victory. The possibility of acquiring territory, expanding commercial activities, and furthering political ideology proved attractive inducements for continuing the conflict. Events in Russia in 1917, however, seriously jeopardized Allied efforts toward pursuit of victory. The Tsarist Government was replaced in March by a new regime whose aims became increasingly incongruous with those of Russia's partners. Additionally, the rapidity of change within the country, combined with the ever widening divergence between foreign and domestic objectives, created an insurmountable undertaking for those Allied representatives charged with keeping Russia actively engaged in the war.^ The majority of these representatives, elderly men who were also unfamiliar with the Russian language, were not only products of an earlier age but were also unaccustomed to the pressures forced on them by the chaotic and revolutionary situation within Russia. Perhaps, never before had diplomats been confronted by such extraordinary demands. Increasingly hindered by a deteriorating communications system, their reports often required a month to reach their capitals. Meanwhile, developments within Russia demanded instantaneous responses from the Allied governments, which, in turn, were hampered not only by a lack of current information but also an overabundance of bureaucracy. .. In the absence of concise and immediate direction from their governments. Allied ambassadors, who shared few common goals, proceeded to formulate their own responses as conditions changed. Consequently, the Allied policies regarding Russia assumed a character too frequently steeped in misconceptions, personal convictions and animosity. The result was an atmosphere of suspicion and mistrust which could lead only to diplomatic failure. Robert D. Warth, John Lewis Gaddis, Thomas A. Bailey, C. Jay Smith, and W. Bruce Lincoln have offered harsh criticisms of Allied diplomats in Russia during the turbulent months of the Revolution. In his new book. Red Victory, Lincoln writes that most were "singularly ill suited" for the chaotic conditions which followed the uprising.5 bir George Buchanan, British Ambassador, generally fares better than do his colleagues, among whom was French Ambassador Maurice Pal^ologue, an ardent monarchist who is described by Warth and C. Jay Smith as a snobbish Frenchman who did little to endear himself to the Provisional regime.^ Lincoln, in the later book, however, claims that Pal^ologue's "sage judgment" and insights into the Russian situation surpassed those of any other European diplomat.^ There is little argument over the abilities of the United States Ambassador, David Francis. "The Governor," as Francis was called, has been the target of vehement attacks by historians. In Russia, the Soviet Union and the United States, An Interpretive History, Gaddis writes that the representative was "ill-equipped" to interpret developments in Russia.^ Warth and Robert Bruce Lockhart, a British diplomat and contemporary of Francis, are similarly critical. Lockhart, whose insights are particularly interesting, suggests that the Ambassador was so ignorant that "he would not have known a Left Social Revolutionary from a potato."^ This view is echoed by Max Laserson who wrote in The American Impact on Russia that Francis had little understanding of Russia and did not know who was fighting whom during the March-November period.^^ Implicit in these negative critiques is the suggestion that Allied diplomacy with Russia during the Revolutionary period failed because of the ineffectiveness and ignorance of those who were sent to implement policy. In the study. The Allies and the Russian Collapse, March 1917-March 1918, Michael Kettle devotes an entire chapter to the thesis that Allied diplomacy did fail and offers Russian abandonment of the war through the Treaty of Berst-Litovsk of March 1918 as evidence of the diplomatic debacle. ^-^ Such an assessment is, however, erroneous. Allied diplomacy, at least during months of the Provisional Government, did, in fact, succeed in the primary goal—that of keeping active the Eastern Front and, in so doing, occupying large numbers of German troops who might otherwise have been deployed in the West. While such success did not
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