- "Silent Conflict: A Hidden History of Early Soviet-Western Relations" interview with the author Archived Message
Posted by Tomski
on December 29, 2019, 4:03 pm
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https://sputniknews.com/interviews/201912201077678182-first-gen-ussr-diplomats-skilful-people-who-managed-to-forge-remarkable-ties-with-west---historian/ Canadian historian and the author of the book, Michael Jabara Carley, has shed light on early Soviet diplomacy and the reasons for his interest in this subject. Sputnik: Why did you choose this particular period of Soviet diplomacy for your research? Was it just a scientific interest or something personal? Michael Jabara Carley: This is complicated question. The first book that I wrote, the first monograph was on the French intervention, military, political, economic intervention in Russia after the Bolshevik Revolution in November of 1917. And after I finished with that subject, I just got interested in the 1920s. I wanted to continue going forward in time and basically that's how it started. I formed a partnership with another colleague in Canada, Richard K. Debo, he was interested in Soviet foreign policy and we decided to write a book together on the 1920s. We applied for a research grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. And we got our grants. And I went to Paris, London, Washington, Moscow. He went to London, Bonn and Potsdam. And we gathered a lot of research. Unfortunately, he fell seriously ill and fell out of the project and I went ahead with it by myself. Sputnik: Michael, you've started the research in Paris in 1987. Did you manage to talk to diplomats who worked at the time? Michael Jabara Carley: You mean who? Who were still alive for the period? Sputnik: Yeah. Michael Jabara Carley: No, I didn't. I think they were all dead by the time. Sputnik: And how did you get access to exclusive archives, what facts impressed you the most? Michael Jabara Carley: Well, which archives are we talking about? French, British, American, Russian? Sputnik: Well, all of them. Michael Jabara Carley: Well, some archives are easier to get access to than others. The French archives, once they were open, anybody who was judged qualified could go in and consult inventories and request files. It was same in Great Britain and in the United States, the only place where it's difficult to, let's say more difficult to function, is here in Moscow at the foreign ministry archives. It's a little bit more difficult to have access there. Sputnik: You've also used Western archives for your research, and how was the Soviet foreign policy represented in these sources? Michael Jabara Carley: Very negatively. What can I say, the foreign intervention? After the Bolshevik seizure of power in 1917, all the Western powers could think about was destroying the Bolsheviks and hanging them all from light posts between Moscow and Piter. They sent military forces to various places in Soviet Russia and they tried to crush the Soviet government. Only they didn't succeed. So their attitude was exceedingly hostile and continued to be so even after the defeat of the foreign interventionist by the Red Army, which was led, as you might know, by Trotsky. Sputnik: And why were they so concerned about the Bolshevik government? I mean, was it the human rights concerns or what? Michael Jabara Carley: What happened after the Bolsheviks seized power was that they nationalized private property. They nationalized banks and industries and they canceled the tsarist state debt. And this in France alone represented the enormous sum of 11 billion gold francs. So if you're a member of the French bourgeoisie, the middle class, and you bought tsarist bonds on which to retire, on the interest of those bonds. And suddenly they're not there, you wouldn't be too happy. And you put pressure on the government to do something about it. Do something, please. And, of course, the French government in principle was outraged that they said to them, they said, who the hell are these people? How dare they nationalize banks? How dare they? They abolished the tsar’s state debt. They're violating all our capitalist principles. We can't tolerate this. Imagine if you were a bank manager and somebody buys a mortgage from you and then doesn't pay. That's basically what the attitude was. Sputnik: What facts impressed you the most? Michael Jabara Carley: How about if I answer your question this way, OK? What's most interesting to me is comparing various perspectives represented in these archives, particularly I'll speak of U.S. and British and French archives as the Western archives and then compare them with the outlook represented in the Soviet archives. And the differences are sometimes quite remarkable. Most people won't know this, but Soviet diplomats of the first generation were really very good at their job. They were well educated. They weren't uneducated workers. They were doctors, engineers, lawyers, schoolteachers, historians. They were polyglot, multilingual. Speaking German, English, French, perhaps other languages. They were highly sophisticated people. And they were very pragmatic. And, you know, at the end of the intervention period Soviet Russia was ruined. After eight years of war, civil war and foreign intervention, the country was functioning at about 15 percent of industrial capacity in 1914. Etc, |
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