Encyclopedia of Russian History

by James Millar

  During the Gorbachev era the USSR sought better relations with the West and became more cooperative at the United Nations. The first major test of this new policy occurred when Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, and Gorbachev brought Soviet policy into line with that of the Western powers. Since that time, Russia has attempted to maintain cordial relations with the United Nations. See also: COLD WAR; LEAGUE OF NATIONS; UNITED STATES, RELATIONS WITH

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  United States. (1945). United States Statutes at Large (79th Congress, 1st Session, 1945), 59(2):1033-1064, 1125-1156. United States. Department of State. (1944). Department of State Bulletin, vol. 11. Washington, DC: Office of Public Communication, Bureau of Public Affairs. United States. Department of State. (1945). Conferences at Malta and Yalta, 1945 (Foreign Relations of the

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  United States diplomatic papers 6), 969-984. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office. United States. Department of State. (1945). Department of State Bulletin, vol. 13. Washington, DC: Office of Public Communication, Bureau of Public Affairs.

  HAROLD J. GOLDBERG

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Carr, E. H., and Davies, R. W. (1971). Foundations of a Planned Economy, 1926-1929. 2 vols. New York: Macmillan. Deutscher, Isaac. (1963). The Prophet Unarmed: Trotsky, 1921-1929. London: Oxford University Press.

  KATE TRANSCHEL

  UNITED OPPOSITION

  Formed in April 1926, the United Opposition was an alliance between Leon Trotsky, Lev Kamenev, and Grigory Zinoviev. These former foes headed a loose association of several thousand anti-Stalinists, including remnants of other opposition groups, as well as Vladimir Lenin’s widow, Nadezhda Krup-skaya. The United Opposition’s main goal was to offset support for Josef Stalin among rank-and-file party members.

  In July 1926, United Oppositionists openly clashed with Stalin at a Central Committee plenum. Chief among their many complaints was the failure of state industry to keep pace with economic development, thus perpetuating a shortage of goods. They advocated a program of intensified industrial production and the collectivization of agriculture, the same program that Stalin would adopt two years later. The Central Committee responded by charging Zinoviev with violating the Party’s ban on factions and removed him from the Politburo.

  Thus blocked in the Central Committee, the United Opposition took its case directly to the factories by staging public demonstrations in late September. Within a month, under fire from Stalin’s supporters, Trotsky, Kamenev, and Zinoviev capitulated and publicly recanted. Trotsky was removed from the Politburo, and Kamenev lost his standing as a candidate member. Further machinations and conflicts resulted in the expulsion of the trio from the Central Committee in October 1927. The following month Trotsky and Zinoviev were purged from the party altogether, followed by Kamenev’s removal from the party in December 1927. The defeat of the United Opposition set the stage for Stalin to move against what he labeled the Right Opposition, thereby consolidating his power. See also: KAMENEV, LEV BORISOVICH; LEFT OPPOSITION; STALIN, JOSEF VISSARIONOVICH; TROTSKY, LEON DAVIDOVICH; ZINOVIEV, GRIGORY YERSEYEVICH

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  The history of the interactions between the two great powers of the last half of the twentieth century ranged from a close and mutually beneficial understanding to intense hostility, yet they never fought directly against each other. For long periods, in fact, their experience was one of similar goals, of respect, and even of adulation, tempered by periods of fear-the American fear of a threat to its free and democratic way of life from an “evil empire,” whether Russian or Communist, and the Russian fear of encirclement by a superior power taking advantage of its transitional weaknesses and vulnerability. The relations of Russia-as an empire, a Soviet socialist state, or as a fledgling democracy- with the United States have had a profound impact upon the history of both countries and on the whole world. Already in the seventeenth century, Russian expansion overland through Siberia had reached the Pacific coast and contact with Asian powers such as China. Peter the Great, endowed with great energy and curiosity, commissioned Vitus Bering to explore the waters and determine whether Asia (Russia’s Siberia) was connected by land to North America. This drew political and economic attention to the region, especially for the valuable sea otter skins (for exchange with China for tea), and Russian hunting camps soon appeared on the Aleutian Islands and along the Alaskan coast and would result in direct relations with American colonies settled by Europeans from across the North Atlantic.

  A mutually advantageous and friendly distant friendship between Russia and the American colonies began in the 1760s and was based on Russian hostility toward British supremacy. At the time, Britain dominated oceanic trade and a huge empire that included India near the Russian southern borderland, Britain’s American colonies, and most of the world’s open water. Both Russia and the colonies were deeply involved economically in an Atlantic trade system that brought cargoes of rice,

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  tobacco, sugar, and other products to Russia from the Americas in exchange for iron products (anchors, chains, and nails), coarse linen (sailcloth), and processed hemp (rope). This direct trade benefited the growing American economy considerably, especially since it avoided the restrictions of the British Navigation Acts. Inspired by Catherine the Great, Russia continued to explore the waters of the North Pacific, through the voyages of Vitus Bering and Ivan Chirikov, to discover not only that America and Asia were separated by water, but that there existed a large continental land mass just east of the Russian Empire. Moreover, Russia was rich in fur-bearing animals that would advance Russia’s lucrative Siberian fur industry. The British-Spanish imperial rivalry along the western North American coast (the Nootka Sound controversy of 1788) instigated a more clearly defined Russian presence in what would become known as Russian America, later Alaska. General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev and President Ronald Reagan greet the White House press corps. WHITE HOUSE PHOTOS/ ARCHIVE PHOTOS.

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  During the American Revolutionary War, Russia intervened against Britain with Catherine the Great’s declaration of Armed Neutrality (1780), a treaty signed by several European countries that attempted to protect neutral shipping from Britain’s high-handed policies at sea, to the benefit of those North Americans seeking independence. Moreover, several Russians, most notably Fyodor Karzhavin, directly assisted the American cause and inspired an American effort to consolidate a diplomatic union with Russia with the mission of Francis Dana (1781). Though nothing came of this, the notion of a community of interests remained, both politically and commercially. Direct commerce steadily increased in the aftermath of the Revolutionary War, reaching a zenith during the Napoleonic period of continental blockade and embargo between Britain and France (1807-1812). During this time full diplomatic relations were established, with John Quincy Adams serving as the first American minister in St. Petersburg. This period of diplomatic relations also provided a precedent for a quasi-alliance between Russia and the United States that would prevail until late in the nineteenth century. The alliance was confirmed by a Treaty of Commerce in 1832 that assured each country of reciprocity in economic and political relations, and indicated the importance that each country attached to their mutual interests.

  In 1797 the Russian government chartered the Russian America Company, under the capable management of Alexander Baranov, to oversee and develop its barely occupied territories in North America from headquarters first at Kodiak, then at Sitka. The main goal was economic: to preserve access to the rich sea otter fur sources along the coast as far south as California. Russia’s fur trade depended especially on New England ship captains, such as John D’Wolfe of Bristol, Rhode Island, but it also involved intense, and often hostile, relationships with Native Americans and the establishment of a costly, distant supply base in Northern Ca
lifornia (Fort Ross) from 1812 to 1841. Russians and Americans thus very soon became the dominant on the West Coast of North America; this led Russians and Americans to refer to “their manifest destinies”-one eastern, the other western.

  Mutual economic and political interests continued through the Crimean War (1854-1856) with large shipments of cotton, sugar, rice, weapons, and other American products to Russia. The American import of Russian products slackened, however, as new sources replaced Russian rope and iron, and cotton canvas replaced linen sailcloth. Nevertheless, trade between the United States and Russia in the Pacific expanded through the middle of the nineteenth century, with American shippers providing essential services for the distant Russian

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  bases in Alaska. During the Russian conflict with France and Britain, the United States provided valuable military and other supplies, and more than thirty Americans served as physicians to the Russian Army, thus reducing the isolation of Russia and augmenting the sense of a common interest.

  The coincidence of a liberal, reformist government in Russia under Alexander II (1856-1881) and the U.S. Civil War formed an even closer bond, resulting in Russian naval squadrons visiting New York and San Francisco in 1863 to demonstrate support for the North. Their presence may have been influential in restraining France and Britain from more overt support of the Confederacy, thus ensuring Union victory. The aftermath witnessed several much-publicized exchange visits that included that of Assistant Secretary of the Navy Gus-tavus Fox to Russia in 1866 and Grand Duke Alexis hunting buffalo in Nebraska and Colorado with George Armstrong Custer and William (Buffalo Bill) Cody in early 1872. These visits may have marked the peak of the unlikely friendship of autocratic Russia with republican America.

  In the cultural arena there were at first relatively few direct contacts, despite a Russian fascination with the works of James Fenimore Cooper, Washington Irving, and Harriet Beecher Stowe. Later in the century, Americans reciprocated with an appreciation of Ivan Turgenev, Fyodor Dos-toyevsky, and especially Leo Tolstoy, whose works produced in America a veritable craze for things Russian. This was accompanied by renewed Russian interest in American life as portrayed in stories of Mark Twain and the art of Frederic Remington, among others. Russia’s amerikanizm (obsession with American models for society and technological advance) was demonstrated especially by the adoption of Hiram Berdan’s rifle design for the Russian army and the considerable Russian presence at the Chicago World’s Fair (Columbian Exposition) in 1893.

  American companies, primarily Singer and International Harvester, served the Russian quest for modernization in exchange for monopolistic rights and independent factories. By 1914 they numbered among the very largest private concerns in Russia, employing more than thirty thousand each. New York Life Insurance Company, dominating that sector in Russia, was reported to be the largest holder of Russian stocks. Westinghouse and the Crane (plumbing) businesses partnered to produce air brakes for the Trans-Siberian Railroad, launched in 1892. A result was that the manager of the RussENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

  Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev confer during a walkabout in Red Square, near St. Basil’s Cathedral, May 31,

  1998. ASSOCIATED PRESS. REPRODUCED BY PERMISSION.

  ian enterprise, Charles R. Crane, became devoted to Russian culture and religion and promoted its appreciation in America by sponsoring lectures by the liberal historian Pavel Milyukov, endowing a chair at the University of Chicago, and financing tours of Russian choirs and other artistic groups through the United States. His advocacy of preserving the true Russian culture would continue through the Russian Revolution, civil war, and purges.

  By the 1880s two major issues clouded the earlier harmony in relations. One was the Russian arrest and prosecution of political dissenters after the assassination of Alexander II in 1881 and the resulting Siberian exile system that George Kennan so eloquently depicted in a series of articles for American Mercury in the 1880s. This elicited considerable American sympathy for those Russians

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  who were challenging the autocratic regime for their democratic and socialist causes and suffering at the hand of a police state. The other was Russian policy toward its Jewish population, which required the Jews to abide by strict limitations on activities, to emigrate, or to convert to another, more acceptable religion. Encouraged by American immigrant Jewish aid societies, many Russian Jews departed for the United States in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. These factors not only produced a generally negative opinion of religious and political rights in Russia, but also resulted in the abrogation of the Commercial Treaty of 1832. The agreement had 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 isolationis
m 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.

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  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.