Britain and the Soviet Union, 1917–89

417 Pages·1990·41.777 MB·English

by  Sir Curtis Keeble (auth.)

BRITAIN AND THE SOVIET UNION, 1917-89
Also by Sir Curtis Keeble
THE SOVIET STATE: The Domestic Roots of Soviet Foreign Policy (editor)
Britain and the Soviet
Union, 1917-89
Sir Curtis Keeble
H.M. Ambassador to the Soviet Union, 1978-82
Palgrave Macmillan
ISBN 978-1-349-20645-2 ISBN 978-1-349-20643-8 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-20643-8
© Sir Curtis Keeble, 1990
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1990 978-0-333-43919-7
All rights reserved. For information, write:
Scholarly and Reference Division,
St. Martin's Press, Inc., 175 Fifth Avenue,
New York, N.Y. 10010
First published in the United States of America in 1990
ISBN 978-0-312-03616-4
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Keeble, Curtis.
Britain and the Soviet Union, 1917-89/Sir Curtis Keeble.
p. em.
ISBN 978-0-312-03616-4
1. Great Britain-Foreign relations-Soviet Union. 2. Soviet
Union-Foreign relations-Great Britain. I. Title.
DA47.65.K44 1990
327.41047---dc20 89--36456
CIP
To Margaret and all our colleagues in the Moscow
Embassy from 1978 to 1982
Contents
List of Maps viii
List of Illustrations ix
Preface X
Acknowledgements xiv
Introduction: Britain and Imperial Russia 1
1 Response to Revolution 12
2 Intervention 23
3 Facing the Facts 62
4 Working Relations 80
5 Relations Broken and Resumed 99
6 The Approach to War 117
7 Alliance 158
8 Post-War Confrontation 206
9 The Khrushchev Years 238
10 Between the Europeans and the Superpowers 267
11 A New Start 297
12 A Policy for the 1990s 325
Appendix 1: A Chronology of British-Soviet Relations 334
Appendix 2: The British and Soviet Leadership 1917-89 353
Appendix 3: British and Soviet Diplomatic Representatives 355
Notes 357
Index 375
vii
List of Maps
The Soviet Union and Neighbouring States Frontispiece
From Brest-Litovsk to Stalingrad 28
The Polish-Soviet Frontier 71
European Battlefronts January-May 1945 192
viii
List of Illustrations
1 British landing in Vladivostok, 1918
2 Propaganda leaflet, 1918-19
3 Chicherin and Litvinov at Genoa, 1922
4 A 1924 election poster warning John Bull not to let his
pockets be emptied by Labour's Bolshevik friends
5 Police raid on Soviet Commercial Offices in Moorgate,
22 May 1927
6 Departure of Soviet Charge, 1927
7 Eden leaves for Moscow, 1935
8 Stalin, Molotov and Ribbentrop celebrate signature of Non
aggression Treaty, August 1939
9 Stalin, Truman and Churchill at Potsdam, 1945
10 · A Russian girl sniper in London, 1942
11 Hurricanes at Murmansk, January 1942
12 A Ministry of Information wartime poster
13 Eden, Bidault and Dulles prepare for the 1954 Berlin
Conference
14 Eden with Bulganin and Khrushchev, signing the official
communique, 26 April1956
15 Soviet forces in Hungary, November 1956
16 Macmillan and Selwyn Lloyd with Khrushchev and
Gromyko in Moscow, 21 February 1959
17 The author presenting credentials in Moscow, March 1978
18 Farewell to Moscow
19 The author and wife in the Moscow Embassy
20 On tour in Uzbekistan
21 Mrs Thatcher and Sir Geoffrey Howe in Moscow, March
1987
22 The Gorbachevs stop at Brize Norton on the way to
Washington, 7 December 1987
23 A British built polyethylene plant in the Soviet Union
;~}Architect's
impressions of the new British Embassy in Moscow
26 Mrs Thatcher and Mikhail Gorbachev in St George's Hall in the
Kremlin
IX
Preface
In the conduct of British foreign policy, the relationship with the
Soviet Union has a unique quality and a unique potential for good
or ill. It raises issues which have plagued the statesmen of the Western
democracies for seven decades and which are still unresolved.
In the years between the two world wars, the new Russia was the
unknown factor. Lloyd George did his best to draw her into the
community of nations, but those who governed Britain throughout
most of the 1920s and 1930s preferred not to deal with the Soviet
Union. When, too late, they tried to deal, they found their prejudice
confirmed by experience. Among the British people, some of us
viewed her with hope, some with apprehension, some with detesta
tion, some with scorn, most with perplexity and many with the
sadness which comes at the sight of the corruption of brave ideals.
Some few chose treason. All had their reasons, for the Soviet Union
can show many faces. Might a more determined effort to establish a
sound relationship with the Soviet Union in those years have lessened
the suffering which Europe had to bear? The answer will never be
certain. It is hard to accept that the effort should not have been
made. It is harder to believe that it could have succeeded.
My first contact with the reality of Soviet power came as the war
time alliance was disintegrating into the post-war confrontation.
Experience in the repatriation of British and Soviet prisoners of war
revealed in stark clarity those qualities of the Russian character and
the Soviet system which have, in peace and in war, made the conduct
of relations such a frustrating task. I joined the Foreign Service in
1947, a year after Winston Churchill had made his 'iron curtain'
speech at Fulton. My experience of the cold war and the beginning
of detente was gained in West Berlin in the early 1950s and East
Berlin twenty years later. When, in 1978, I was appointed to Moscow,
it was possible to envisage in the aftermath of the Quadripartite
Agreement on Berlin and the Helsinki Final Act the development of
a better working relationship with the Soviet Union, and we had a
promising base in the agreements signed between Harold Wilson and
Leonid Brezhnev in 1975.
I was in fact to experience the full cycle of relations, as we moved
from the false dawn of detente into the first chill of the Shcharansky
and Orlov trials, the invasion of Afghanistan, the Western counter-
X