stipulated that Americans would be assured the same rights in Russia as Russians, but Russia took this to mean that American Jews could only have the same restricted rights as Russian Jews. The Russian effort to alleviate the problem by denying entry visas to American Jews on grounds of religion only aggravated the situation. After considerable debate, the U.S. Senate formally abrogated the treaty in 1912, but this had practically no effect on commerce between the two countries.
In World War I (1914-1918), the United States and Russia were intimately involved and eventually on the same side. As one of the initial participants, Russia suffered a series of defeats. With the cutting off of regular trade routes through the Black and Baltic Seas and overland across Europe, Russia faced severe economic shortages and a breakdown of transportation. Its relations with the United States also intensified as Washington agreed under terms of the Geneva Convention to supervise German, Austro-Hungarian, and Ottoman prisoners of war in Russia, resulting in a considerable number of additional Americans traveling through the country to inspect the Russian camps. Russia also depended upon supplies of munitions and transportation equipment, unfortunately delayed by America’s own needs and a higher priority for the Western Front.
The February 1917 Revolution that brought an end to the Russian autocracy facilitated American entry into the war “to make the world safe for democracy.” Large American loans delivered vital goods to the Russian ports of Vladivostok, Archangel, and Murmansk. Unfortunately, the steadily deteriorating state of rail transport left most of the deliveries piled up at the ports. American delegations came to advise and bolster Russia’s continuation of the war. One delegation, led by elder statesman Elihu Root, sought to strengthen the Provisional
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Government, first headed by Paul Milyukov and then by Alexander Kerensky, with a symbolic show of American support. Railroad, American Red Cross, and other missions followed, but little could be done while the Allies placed higher priority on the Western Front. The radical left wing of the revolution seized power in October, thus dashing American expectations that Russia was headed down the path toward representative democracy.
After considering aid to the new Bolshevik-dominated Soviet government, a policy urged by American Red Cross mission director Raymond Robins, the American embassy essentially broke off direct relations by moving to Vologda at the end of February 1918, when the Soviet government moved to Moscow. When the Soviets departed from the war by signing the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with Germany in March, the Allies, hardened by a sense of Russian betrayal, opted for armed intervention to prevent the vast arsenal of supplies at ports from falling into German hands and to assist a considerable anti-Bolshevik resistance in Russia. Reluctant to participate in intervention, but mindful of Communist-inspired disruptions (the “Red Scare” of 1919), the United States created a massive relief program (1921-1923) but stipulated that the aid be administered directly by the American Relief Administration.
The American offer and Soviet acceptance were grounded in humanitarian concerns, but both Russian and American interests were disappointed that it did not result in full diplomatic relations. The United States withheld recognition during the 1920s because of the general American isolationism after the war (and disillusionment with the peace), concerns about violations of religious rights, Bolshevik renunciation of imperial debt, and, more vaguely, a belief that the Soviet Union did not deserve recognition because of its abuse of human rights and the Soviet- sponsored Communist International’s support of the American Communist Party. However, some Americans argued that Communism could be tempered by contacts, that much good business could be done, and that new international developments of the 1930s (the rise of an aggressive Japan and Germany) required accommodations. This led to formal diplomatic recognition (1933) and eventually to the “grand alliance” of World War II. The success of the Big Three (Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin) and their countries in forging victory in Europe and the Pacific was a major accomplishment of the twentieth century.
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY
That achievement was soon diminished by postwar conflict. The Red Army’s occupation of a large part of Central Europe, and the agreements (Yalta and Potsdam) granting Soviet control of much of the area, resulted in a line across Europe, designated by Winston Churchill as the “Iron Curtain.” Instability across Europe and in the former colonial regions aggravated the divisions and produced a series of political and military conflicts: the Berlin blockade (1948-1949), Communist seizures of power in Czechoslovakia and Hungary, and the Korean War (1950- 1953). Western Europe, fortunately, was stabilized by the Marshall Plan (1948) and the establishment of NATO (1949). The postwar period was still dominated by a risky and unpredictable arms race escalating into enormous productions of nuclear, biological, and other weapons of mass destruction. Fortunately, saner heads prevailed on both sides and resulted in the post-Stalin “spirit of Camp David” (Khrushchev and Eisenhower summit meetings). One important result of Khrushchev’s “peaceful coexistence” was the inauguration of cultural exchanges between the United States and the Soviet Union in the 1950s that would continue without interruption and expand.
Unfortunately, additional frictions-the U-2 spy plane incident (1960), building of the Berlin wall (1961), the Cuban missile crisis (1962), Soviet suppression of the Czechoslovak “socialism with a human face” (1968), repression of internal dissent, the Vietnam War, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (1979), and the Korean Airliner incident (1983)-kept the Cold War alive into the 1980s. The Brezhnev-era d?tente, however, had produced a number of softer, more realistic policies that led to expanded exchanges, arms limitations talks, additional Soviet-American summit meetings, and limited emigration of Jews and other voices of Soviet dissent.
Throughout the Cold War, mutual respect prevailed in regard to cultural and scientific achievements, creating pressure in both countries for more communication and efforts at understanding. This culminated in the Gorbachev-era relaxations of the once officially closed society. The rewriting of distorted history, the opening of archives, the liberation of Eastern Europe, the unification of Germany, and, finally, the breakup of the Soviet Union and the collapse of Communism seemed to herald the end of the Cold War and the beginning of a new era in Soviet-American relations. This conclusion, however, is clouded by an unfinished and indistinct search for new identity and purpose in both countries.
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY
See also: ALASKA; ALLIED INTERVENTION; ARMS CONTROL; COLD WAR; CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS; D? TENTE; GRAND ALLIANCE; JEWS; U-2 SPY PLANE INCIDENT; WORLD WAR I; WORLD WAR II
Allen, Robert V. (1988). Russia Looks to America: The View to 1917. Washington, DC: Library of Congress. Bohlen, Charles E. (1973). Witness to History, 1929-1969. New York: Norton. Bolkhovitinov, Nikolai. (1975). The Beginnings of Russian-American Relations, 1775-1815, tr. Elena Levin. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Dukes, Paul. (2000). The Superpowers: A Short History. London: Routledge. Foglesong, David S. (1995). America’s Secret War Against Bolshevism: U. S. Intervention in the Russian Civil War, 1917-1920. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Gaddis, John Lewis. (1978). Russia, the Soviet Union and the United States: An Interpretive History. New York: John Wiley and Sons. Gaddis, John Lewis. (1997). We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History. New York: Oxford University Press. Hoff Wilson, Joan. (1974). Ideology and Economics: U S. Relations with the Soviet Union, 1918-1933. Columbia: University of Missouri Press. Kennan, George F. (1956, 1958). Soviet-American Relations, 1917-1920. 2 vols. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Kennan, George F. (1961). Russia and the West under Lenin and Stalin. Boston: Little, Brown. LaFeber, Walter. (1997). America, Russia, and the Cold War, 1945-1996. New York: McGraw-Hill. Laserson, Max M. (1962). The American Impact on Russia, 1784-1917: Diplomatic and Ideological. New York: Collier. Saul, Norman E. (1991). Distant Friends: The United States and Russia, 1763-1867. Lawrence: University of Press Kansas. Saul, Norman E. (1996). Concord and Conflict: The United States and Russia, 1867-1914. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas. Williams, Robert C. (1980). Russian Art and American Money, 1900-1940. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Williams, William Appleman. (1952). American-Russian Relations, 1781-1947. New York: Rinehart.
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