Volume XXII — Number 2
Kimberley A. Heim
Abstract: At the close of the First World War, the recently victorious allies faced a unique challenge. As France, Britain, and the US considered peace settlements, Russia was conspicuously absent from the negotiating table. The third body of the triple entente was in the throes of communist revolution. Bolshevik forces, disaffected with the Russian imperial system that had demanded inordinate sacrifice on the eastern front, had mobilized against the tsar and succeeded in pushing White armies out of key cities. Russian unrest put its former allies in an uncertain position. Allied diplomats were split between acknowledging Soviet influence at the risk of emboldening communist sympathizers or inviting the clearly unpopular tsarist representatives to talks. To compound this confusion, the allies were entirely unaware of almost every significant development inside Russia’s borders. In 1919, the allies determined that a fact-finding mission to Russia would give allied powers the necessary insight to determine the true state of Russian politics and economic development. The US chose the young American diplomat William Christian Bullitt to lead the mission, and assigned journalist and communist sympathizer Lincoln Steffens to act as Bullitt’s secretary and liasion to the Soviet government. The extent of Bullitt’s mandate was deliberately unclear. France was opposed to any inclusion of the Soviets in negotiations, and therefore would have certainly opposed the British- and US-backed Bullitt Mission had they known about it. Additionally, Bullitt was not officially authorized to negotiate with the Soviet government, although British and US leaders had given him a list of considerations they wanted Bullitt to discuss with Soviet diplomats. It was in this ambiguous situation that Bullitt’s party left for Russia in 1919 and met with the Soviets in Petrograd. In the months after their arrival, Bullitt and the Soviets agreed to a series of stipulations. According to the agreement, in exchange for a cessation of violence against White Russians and the assumption of the Russian Empire’s war debts on the part of the Bolsheviks, the US and the British Empire would recognize Soviet territorial integrity, would allow Soviets free use of all Russian ports and railways, and would stop any aid to anti-Soviet parties within Russia. When Bullitt brought the text of the agreement back to the Western powers, however, he was roundly ignored. The Treaty of Versailles ignored any of the points discussed by Bullitt and his Soviet counterparts, as the British and the US had been unable to convince France of the mission’s merit. Disgusted and frustrated, Bullitt resigned from the US mission. For their part, the Bolsheviks felt betrayed and slighted. It can only be speculated how the West’s relationship with the Soviets would have been different had it not begun with the failed Bullitt Mission.
Keywords: Russian Empire, Soviet Union, World War 1, William Christian Bullitt
