The Bolshevik Revolution, 1917-1923, Vol. 3

626 Pages·1985·15.58 MB·English

by  Edward Hallett Carr

THE BOLSHEVIK REVOLUTION
1917-1923
A HISTORY OF SOVIET RUSSIA
by Edward Hallett Carr
in Norton Paperback Editions
The Bolshevik Revolution, 1917-1923 (I)
The Bolshevik Revolution, 1917-1923 (II)
The Bolshevik Revolution, 1917-1923 (III)
A HISTORY OF SOVIET RUSSIA
THE BOLSHEVIK
REVOLUTION
1917-1923
BY
EDWARD HALLETT CARR
*
VOLUME THREE
W.W. NORTON & COMPANY
New York • London
©THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1953
© RENEWED 1981 BY EDWARD HALLETT CARR
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or
transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and
retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Publisher.
Printed in the United States of America
First published as a Norton paperback 1985
by arrangement with The Macmillan Company, New York
W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 500 Fifth Avenue,
New York, N.Y. 10110
W.W. Norton & Company Ltd., 37 Great Russell Street,
London WCIB 3NU
ISBN0-393-30199-0
234567890
PREFACE
THE publication of this volume completes the first instalment of my
study of the history of Soviet Russia. The three volumes together
purport to describe the essential elements of the Bolshevik revolution
down to the first consolidation of its power in the winter of 1922-1923.
By this time the first wave of economic recovery following the intro
duction of NEP in 1921 and the excellent harvest of 1922 had reached
its height ; new agrarian, labour and civil codes promised legal stab
ility; substantial progress had been made towards the establishment
of diplomatic and commercial relations with foreign countries ; and
the Communist International no longer occupied the centre of the
stage. The regime had come to stay. For the first time since 1917
a sense of security had begun to dawn. And it was at the moment
when the worst obstacles seemed to have been finally surmounted
that Lenin was laid low. His withdrawal from the scene marks an
appropriate, almost a dramatic, stopping-place. The hazards that lay
ahead belong to a fresh period.
The main difficulty of arrangement which I have encountered in
writing this third volume has been to keep simultaneously in view
the many-coloured but interconnected strands of Soviet Russia's
relations with the outside world. Neatness can be achieved by treat
ing Soviet relations with Europe and Soviet relations with Asia in
water-tight compartments, or by making a sharp division between the
activities of Narkomindel and of Comintern. But it is achieved at
the cost of sacrificing the complexity and confusion of the authentic
picture and at the risk of encouraging dogmatic opinions about the
primary importance of this or that aspect of Soviet policy. I have
therefore tried so far as possible to arrange my material in such a way
as to interweave the different strands and to make clear the inner
connexions between them. By way of exception to the general plan,
I have reserved Soviet relations with the Far East for the last two
chapters of the volume, since, owing to the civil war and the persistence
of Japanese military intervention in Siberia, the Far East entered into
the general stream of Soviet policy at a considerably later date than
Europe, or than the rest of Asia. As in the two previous volumes,
the exact point in time at which I have brought the narrative to a
close has varied according to the exigencies of the subject-matter.
Relations with European countries have, as a ruie, not been carried
v
vi PREFACE
beyond the end of 1922, since the French occupation of the Ruhr in
January 1923 started a new train of events throughout Europe. On
the other hand, the proceedings of the Lausanne conference have
been followed down to their conclusion in the summer of 1923; and
the natural terminus for the Far Eastern chapters was the end of the
Joffe mission and the arrival of Karakhan in August 1923.
The collection of the copious but scattered material for the volume
has been in itself a major task, and there are doubtless valuable sources
which I have overlooked or failed to find. The archives and libraries
of the Soviet Union being still virtually closed to independent research,
the richest store of available material for Soviet history is to be found
in the United States. In 1951 I paid a further visit to the United
States at the kind invitation of the Johns Hopkins University, Balti
more, where I delivered a series of lectures on German-Soviet relations
between 1919 and 1939. I was also able on this occasion to consult
Soviet material in the Library of Congress, in the New York Public
Library, and in the library of Columbia University. Unfortunately
time did not allow me to revisit the richest and most comprehensive
of all collections of Soviet material outside Soviet Russia - the Hoover
Institute and Library at Stanford ; I am, however, under a special
debt to Mrs. 0. H. Gankin of the Hoover Library for the unfailing
generosity and patience with which she has answered my numerous
enquiries, and for her mastery of the vast stores of material collected
there.
I have also particular obligations to a number of writers, scholars
and research workers in the United States, some of them personal
friends, others not known to me personally, who have most generously
given me access to material or information in their possession and
helped me to fill important gaps in my knowledge. Mr. Gustav Hilger,
for many years counsellor of the German Embassy in Moscow and
now resident in Washington, drew on his personal recollections for
many significant items in the history of German-Soviet relations ; his
memoirs, already announced for publication, will be an indispensable
source for future historians. Mr. G. W. F. Hallgarten allowed me to
read his notes of documents found in the captured German military
archives now in Washington. Professor Owen Lattimore of the Johns
Hopkins University put at my disposal published and unpublished
Mongolian material in English translation, and gave me the benefit
of his unique knowledge of Mongol affairs. Mr. Rodger Swearingen
and Mr. Paul Langer communicated to me a large amount of material
from Japanese sources on the history of Japanese communism which
may now be found in their book, Red Flag in Japan: International
Communism in Action, r9r9-r95r, published in the United States
PREFACE VII
since the present volume went to press. Mr. A. S. Whiting of North
western University showed me the manuscript of his thesis on Soviet
Chinese relations between 1917 and 1922 which will shortly be
published, and also drew my attention to the discrepancies in the
records of the second congress of Comintern noted on page 252 (notes
3 and 4). Mr. George Kahin of Cornell University gave me valuable
information drawn from local sources about the early development of
communism in Indone:;ia. A friend who wishes to remain anonymous
made available to me the unpublished German-Soviet diplomatic
correspondence quoted on pages 94 (note 4), 95 (note 1), and 325 (notes
1 and 3). Finally, Mr. William Appleman Williams of the University
of Oregon came to my aid at a late stage in my work by sending me
illuminating extracts from the unpublished papers of Raymond Robins
and Alex Gumberg, as well as notes taken by him from the National
Archives of the United States, together with a part of the manuscript
of his book American-Russian Relations r78r-r947, which has been
published in the United States during the present autumn. But for
the help so widely and so generously accorded, the volume would
have lacked even that imperfect degree of balance and comprehensive
ness to which it may now pretend. Many of those whose names I
have cited, and to whom I tender this inadequate expression of my
thanks, would differ widely from me and from one another in their
interpretation of the events under discussion ; that mutual aid is not
hampered by such divergences is an encouraging symptom of the
independence which true scholarship always seeks to preserve and
uphold.
I have once more received valuable assistance from nearly all those
in this country whose help was gratefully acknowledged in the prefaces
to the two previous volumes ; and to their names should be added
those of Professor V. Minorsky, who helped me with expert advice
on Central Asian matters in both the first and the third volumes ; of
Mr. V. Wolpert who kindly let me see the unfinished manuscript
of his study on the World Federation of Trade Unions, to be published
under the auspices of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, and
read the parts of my manuscript relating to the foundation of Profintern ;
and of Mr. F. L. Carsten, who lent me a number of rare pamphlets
and periodicals throwing light on the history of German communism.
Mr. Isaac Deutscher again read a substantial part of my manuscript
and made penetrating criticisms ; and Mrs. Jane Degras, who had
already placed me in her debt by her ready and expert help in my
constant search for material, undertook to read the whole text in proof
and thus saved me from many errors and misprints. I have once
more been under a heavy obligation to the devoted and efficient staffs
viii PREFACE
of the libraries of the London School of Economics and of the Royal
Institute of International Affairs. Mindful of my own difficulties in
running my sources to earth, I have endeavoured to increase the
practical utility of a necessarily incomplete and selective bibliography
by indicating where the volumes there listed can be found, if they
are not in the British Museum; Mr. J. C. W. Horne of the British
Museum was good enough to check the bibliography for me with the
Museum catalogue. Last (for obvious reasons), but by no means least,
Dr. Ilya Neustadt of University College, Leicester, has earned my very
warm thanks by undertaking the arduous task of compiling the index
for the three volumes.
The completion of The Bolshevik Revolution r9r7-r923 has natur
ally led me to survey the prospects of the larger work for which it is
intended to be the prelude. Though I am perhaps in a better position
than ever before to appreciate the strength of the now popular argu
ment in favour of collective enterprise in the writing of modern history,
I am not without hope, if I can count on the same support from so
many helpers as I have hitherto found, of being able to carry on my
independent task. I have already done much research, and some
writing, for the next instalment, and hope that I may complete a further
volume next year, though I have not yet reached a final conclusion
about its scope, arrangement and title.
E. H. CARR
October 20, 1952
CONTENTS
PART V
SOVIET RUSSIA AND THE WORLD
PAGB
Chapter 21. FROM OCTOBER TO BREST-LITOVSK 3
22. THE DUAL POLICY 59
23. THE YEAR OF ISOLATION
24. DIPLOMATIC FEELERS
25. REVOLUTION OVER EUROPE
26. REVOLUTION OVER ASIA
27. NEP IN FOREIGN POLICY
28. RUSSIA AND GERMANY
29. To GENOA AND RAPALLO
30. RETREAT IN COMINTERN
31. CONSOLIDATION IN EUROPE 426
32. THE EASTERN QUESTION 467
33· THE FAR EAST: I - ECLIPSE 490
34· THE FAR EAST: II - RE-EMERGENCE 519
Note E. THE MARXIST ATTITUDE TO WAR 549
F. THE PRE-HISTORY OF THE COMMUNIST INTERNATIONAL 567
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS 571
BIBLIOGRAPHY 573
INDEX 587
ix