Spies and Commissars

article was reproduced in Soviet pamphlets.³¹ Trotsky feared that Hoover’s philanthropic mission might be the first manoeuvre in a campaign of Western military intervention.³² On a visit to Odessa he declared:

But here it must be remembered that we are not Hungary. We are not a young Soviet republic. We have been tempered in the struggle against counter-revolution. We have our own special organs, we have the Cheka. The Cheka isn’t loved, but we don’t love counter-revolution. And we say to Hoover: ‘There is risk in your enterprise.’³³

Trotsky advised vigilance against Americans bearing gifts. Lenin agreed and wrote to Molotov, the Party Central Committee Secretary, that the American Relief Administration was not to be trusted. He recommended that Trotsky, Kamenev and Molotov should monitor the Administration’s activities on a daily basis. Indeed, he went further and wanted Hoover ‘punished’. In his opinion, Hoover and his subordinates were ‘scoundrels and liars’ who should be instantly deported or arrested if ever they meddled in Soviet internal affairs.³⁴

Hoover cursed Gregory whenever his name came up in conversation.³⁵ He also issued an order for the strict avoidance of all interference in Russian politics.³⁶ But this came too late to prevent embarrassment for him in America. Walter W. Liggett of Russian Famine Relief — a pro-Soviet organization — made play with what Gregory had written. Officials in the American Relief Administration had to defend themselves in the press; and George Barr Baker, who directed the operations in Russia, pointed out that Liggett’s political accusations brought no succour to the starving people who would die without food shipments from the US.³⁷

This had the desired effect and the Soviet leadership anyway soon came round to understanding what a wonderful offer was being made to them. Hoover was proposing to bring food and medicine for free, only asking Sovnarkom to pay for seedcorn.³⁸ Trotsky told Louise Bryant:

The ARA organization which has rendered incalculable aid to the hungry masses of Russia was at the same time most naturally a highly skilful feeler projected by the ruling elements of America into the very depths of Russia. More than any other European country [sic] America has seen us as we really are; it remains for us to wait till the public opinion of the propertied classes of America will digest the collected data and will draw from it appropriate deductions.³⁹

This was hardly an unconditional endorsement; and it indicated that the Politburo had reasons other than humanitarian ones for accepting American assistance. The Politburo in fact failed to prioritize efforts of its own to alleviate the famine. Revenues from exports were being earmarked for industrial investment rather than grain purchases. The Soviet leaders talked as if they cared about the peasantry but the reality was that the Politburo was more interested in restoring Russian industrial and military power. If thousands of peasants died of starvation, so be it.

As the Soviet regime consolidated its rule, efforts by Russians to bring down the Bolsheviks were weakening. The Cheka efficiently liquidated several anti-communist groups it discovered in Petrograd and Moscow. The indefatigable Boris Savinkov had tried to link up with them; he had also tried to raise finance from the industrialist Alexei Putilov. This caused little bother to the Chekists, who imprisoned or executed the activists in Russia.⁴⁰ On 13 June 1921 Savinkov as self-styled Chairman of the Russian Evacuation Committee liaised with Sidney Reilly in organizing an Anti-Bolshevik Congress in Warsaw — the meeting was small enough to be held in a private apartment on Marszalkowski Street. The discussion touched on the general international situation as well as the fate of the White movement, the position of the emigres and the attitude of the Western Allies.⁴¹ But in October Savinkov was expelled from Warsaw by the Polish authorities under pressure from Moscow after the treaty of Riga. In this way the last great enthusiast for a crusade against Soviet Russia with active Russian participation was compelled to leave for western Europe.⁴² The Cheka prided itself on having eliminated all counter-revolutionary organizations from Soviet territory. The Kremlin’s reach now seemed to extend well beyond that territory.

In capital cities across Europe, Russian political emigrants gathered. In Paris there was a National Unification congress led by the conservative Petr Struve, the liberal Konstantin Nabokov and the ex-Bolshevik Grigori Alexinski.⁴³ Paul Dukes continued his public campaigning against the Bolsheviks and went off on an American lecture tour in February 1921. In November, on his return, he picked up his links with Sidney Reilly and Boris Savinkov; he also met up with Harold Williams.⁴⁴ But all their efforts were the triumph of hope over realism. No government in Europe or North America any longer had the stomach for an anti-Bolshevik military operation.

As the Allied governments stood back, the international race to make profits in Soviet Russia began in earnest. Since French official policy rendered this next to impossible, the Association Financiere, Industrielle et Commerciale Russe turned its eyes to New York for help, the idea being to engage with individuals close to ‘the outstanding public figure of the United States, Mr Hoover’. It was believed that the American Relief Administration might somehow offer cover for Russia’s old economic elite to find their way back into trade with new Russia.⁴⁵ Sidney Reilly had been among the first to notice the Association’s ambitions. With an eye for the main course he was determined to gain a slice of the profits seemingly on offer and was actively engaged in buying up products in Europe on behalf of the British government. Wrangel’s intelligence officers noticed that he had some kind of ‘link with the Bolshevik delegation in London’. His financial dishonesty in pre-war Russia was common knowledge by then. Even without access to information about the British Secret Service Bureau’s enquiry about him, the White officers commented that Reilly was almost certainly an assumed name; and London’s Russian political circles gave him a wide berth despite the opportunity offered by his connections with the British establishment.⁴⁶

For a while at least, the Soviet leadership resigned themselves to ‘peaceful cohabitation’ with capitalist countries. Lenin used this term in an interview with the Christian Science Monitor. In Soviet Russia itself it was Adolf Ioffe who popularized it and called for ‘co-operation’ with ‘bourgeois republics’.⁴⁷ But Ioffe laid down a qualification, insisting that this policy would make sense only if it were guaranteed that no military threat would be directed at Moscow. The Red Army would show good faith by pulling back from its stations on Russian borders. Capitalists would trade with Russia not out of altruism or even mere greed but because the world economy could not now recover without access to the huge natural resources that lay between Smolensk and Vladivostok. Communists could therefore wait on events. The struggle between Labour and Capital would not cease around the globe, and ‘world proletarian revolution’ remained the party’s objective. But every Bolshevik leader had learned that compromises had to be made if Bolshevik rule was to be sustained.⁴⁸

Soviet rule, as every Russian knew and foreign visitors soon discovered, was chaotic at its lower levels. Official policy was one thing and the reality was frequently very different. Corruption was pervasive. Even transport was never better than uncertain; and when William J. Kelley of the American Relief Administration tried to make his way from Riga to Moscow at the end of 1921, he had to bribe the train driver to give him logs to keep himself warm at the lengthy unscheduled stops on the journey.⁴⁹ What is more, Bolsheviks often baulked at the party’s official encouragement of the purchase of concessions by foreigners. William H. Johnston, president of the International Association of Machinists, was held up in Latvia and could not even get a visa for his trip to Moscow.⁵⁰ None of these difficulties caused surprise in the American administration, which had warned its country’s entrepreneurs about the dangers of doing business in Russia. They had only themselves to blame if they found that Soviet conditions offered a less than congenial experience. Official US opposition to a trade treaty remained in place; Herbert Hoover was implacable — and he ensured that no American concession, including Vanderlip’s well-known Kamchatka venture, could be operated on a grand scale in Siberia unless and until the Washington authorities gave their blessing.⁵¹

There was still a lot for the Soviet leadership to do if economic recovery was to continue, and the growing rivalry between Lenin and Trotsky had the potential to open up yet another damaging controversy. They disagreed about the pace and orientation of industrial growth. Trotsky wanted to prioritize investment in heavy industry and introduce mechanisms for central state economic planning. Lenin feared that this would disrupt the reconciliation with the peasantry; his own preference was to grant freedom for private workshops to produce for the rural requirements.⁵² For the moment, at least, Lenin had the greater support in the Politburo and Central Committee — and the political situation settled down. The October Revolution survived the first full year of