The Ambassadors and America's Soviet Policy

364 Pages·1995·4.46 MB·English

by  David Mayers

The Ambassadors and America's Soviet Policy
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The
Ambassadors
and America's
Soviet Policy
David Mayers
New York Oxford
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
1995
Oxford University Press
Oxford New York
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Copyright © 1995 by Oxford University Press, Inc.
Published by Oxford University Press, Inc.,
200 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016
Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,
without the prior permission of Oxford University Press.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in -Publication Data
Mayers, David Allan
The ambassadors and America's Soviet policy/David Mayers.
p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-19-506802-5
1. United States—Foreign relations—Soviet Union.
2. Soviet Union—Foreign relations—United States.
3. Ambassadors—United States—History—20th century.
4. Ambassadors—Soviet Union—History—20th century.
I. Title. E183.8.S65M373 1995
327.73047-~<lc20 94-30032
135798642
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
To my son, Peter
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PREFACE
Whether or no he had a grand idea of the lucid, he held that nothing ever
was in fact . . . explained. One went through the vain motions, but it was
mostly a waste of life.
Henry James, The Ambassadors
This book occupies a point of intersection for several analytical concerns. First
and rather narrowly, this study belongs to the category of bureaucratic history. As
such, it tells the story of those U.S officials most intimately involved with the
Soviet Union: ambassadors in Moscow. Their appointments, place in the foreign
policy hierarchy, and reporting are scrutinized here. Second, this book is con-
cerned with the American response to life in the USSR as it evolved during seven
and a half decades. Literature on this subject has emphasized the impact of the
Soviet Union on the imagination and experience of disaffected Americans drawn
to the promise of socialist justice. Comparatively little, however, has been written
on the reaction of U.S. envoys during successive stages of Soviet history from
Lenin and Stalin to Gorbachev. Finally and most important, the book examines
Soviet-U.S. relations and Cold War diplomacy from an angle that has received
insubstantial scholarly attention—the embassy in Moscow.
Each of the book's sections is assembled in a distinctive way that indicates
something about its objectives and comprehensiveness. The first part, dealing with
pre-1933, amounts to an extended introduction and depends largely on materials
of a secondary nature: memoir literature, other scholars' research, published gov-
ernment documents such as the estimable Foreign Relations of the United States
series, and a moderate number of primary documents. The second part, corres-
ponding with Stalin in power, constitutes the core of the book. It depends on the
same type of materials mentioned, but the proportions of mix are changed in favor
of primary sources from such repositories as the Library of Congress, National
Archives, Hoover Institution, and presidential libraries. The third section, on the
post-Stalin era, is handicapped by problems familiar to writers of contemporary
history: a lack of perspective and inadequate access to major collections. The
vagaries of the federal government's declassification procedure are surpassed only
by that confusion reigning in many archives of the former Soviet Union. The third
viii PREFACE
part necessarily hinges on sources of an uneven and elusive type: memoir litera-
ture, newspaper and journal articles, oral histories, and interviews.
Not everyone whom I approached for an interview granted one. I say this
without rancor but to emphasize my gratitude to those people who let me impose
upon their time and patience. These men and women are named in the interview
and correspondence section of the bibliography.
Three institutions generously supported me in the course of writing. Fellow-
ships enabling me to take academic leaves and to travel to archival collections
came from Boston University, Hoover Institution at Stanford University, and the
John M. Olin Foundation. My stay as a visiting scholar at Hoover was exception-
ally pleasant.
Professional associations allowed me to make presentations of my work in
progress. I gladly acknowledge the help I received from Brown University's Wat-
son Institute for International Studies, the European International Studies Confer-
ence in Heidelberg, Harvard University's Russian Research Center, the Society for
Historians of American Foreign Relations (SHAFR), the University of Southern
California's Center for International Studies, and the U.S. Naval War College.
Portions of chapters were originally published in slightly different form. Much of
Chapter 4 appeared as "Preparing for Moscow: Training U.S. Diplomats and the
Dilemmas of Recognition," Brown Foreign Affairs Journal (Winter 1992); part
of Chapter 5 as "Ambassador Joseph Davies Reconsidered," SHAFR Newsletter
(September 1992); Chapter 8 as "After Stalin: The Ambassadors and America's
Soviet Policy, 1953-1962," Diplomacy and Statecraft (July 1994).
Again, it was a pleasure to work with the editorial staff at Oxford University
Press. I want to thank Valerie Aubry and David Roll, in particular, for their
courtesy and encouragement.
I do not want to implicate any of the following people in this book's shortcom-
ings, either interpretative or factual. Still, the criticism and advice of these friends
and colleagues were crucial: George Baer, Philip Bayer, Vladimir Brovkin, Walter
Clemens, Stephanie Fawcett, Irene Gendzier, Norman Graebner, William Green,
Wendy Hazard, Stephen Jones, William Key lor, Murray Levin, Igor Lukes, Ste-
ven Lyne, Richard Melanson, Charles Neu, Arnold Offner, Lucian Pye, Christine
Rossell, Mauki Satzger, Robert Schulzinger, the late Paul Seabury, Mark Silver-
stein, Michael Joseph Smith. Special thanks to Walter Connor and Hermann Eilts.
While on a memorable faculty exchange in St. Petersburg (then Leningrad)
and Moscow, I conceived the idea of writing this book in conversations with Peter
Kenez. Since then, he has read every chapter, saved me from egregious errors,
and urged me to reflect on views that he found untenable.
Once more, despite demands from her professional career, my wife, Elizabeth,
has provided invaluable assistance as editor par excellence.
Our son, Peter, did not contribute directly to this took. But he added joy to
the years of its writing.
Newton, Mass. D. M.
April 1994
CONTENTS
United States Chiefs of Mission in St. Petersburg and Moscow, xi
Introduction, 3
I Before Moscow
1. St. Petersburg and the U.S. Diplomatic Tradition, 11
2. From Comity to Estrangement, 35
3. War and Revolution, 67
II In Stalin's Time
4. Preparing for Moscow, 93
5. Purges and the Failure of Collective Security, 108
6. Fragile Coalition, 136
7. Neither War Nor Peace, 164
III Great Power Rivalry
8. After Stalin, 191
9. Controlled Rivalry, 212
10. Collapse and the Art of Diplomacy, 239
Notes, 261
Bibliography, 307
Index, 323