Michael Hughes: Inside the Enigma. British Officials in Russia 1900-1939. London and Rio Grande: Hambledon Press, 1997. 336 pp.
This book could have been written to appeal to fans of Robin Bruce Lockhart’s Reilly: Ace of Spies, or his Memoirs of a British Agent. To keep such readers from disappointment, though, I should point out right away that Michael Hughes neglects to focus on Lockhart or Reilly in any extended fashion. He has had access to official documents that throw light on their murky exploits, but fails to push this approach, preferring instead to remain hostage to the narrow confines of traditional diplomatic history. In his determination to avoid any hint of sensationalism, he achieves little more than colorless respectability.
For the odd thing about this book is that the author has apparently conceived of it as nothing more than a contribution to the history of diplomacy. James Wood’s bon mot about “a genre not exactly jammed with greatness” was made in reference to the historical novel, but it fits even better for this field. Despite having Harold Nicolson as a contributor, it has never seemed particularly vibrant, at least for non-specialists, among whom I include myself.
One of the chief drawbacks of the genre appears to be that it has often focused on process – the art of negotiation, the diplomat’s craft – rather than on the diplomats themselves. By proposing to shift the focus to them, Hughes has opened up much more rewarding topics, at least potentially. He could concentrate, for example, on the question of how the personal views of British diplomats, their education and background, helped shape relations between the UK and Russia in the first four decades of the 20th century. The curious thing is that Hughes thinks it necessary to apologize for such an approach, when to an outsider it seems obvious.
Another odd thing is that after implying a biographical angle, he does not really follow up on it. His starting and ending point is the rich trove of diplomatic cables sent to London from Russia and later the USSR. This is a veritable gold mine of information, from which he selects, alas, only a few nuggets such as this sketch of Maxim Litvinov: “a strange individual… extraordinarily shy and nervous. He is to be met at odd times in the disgusting staircases of the Commissariat for Foreign Affairs, wandering about with a telegram or looking for a bit of blotting paper – too shy to send for the office boy or the Soviet substitute for one. He has no idea of time or space – is quite likely to promise to come and dine and change his mind on your doorstep and go home again.” (pg. 190)
Hughes set himself the task of acquiring “a new perspective on the ability of the men who represented Britain abroad during a critical period in European history.” (pg. 11) So the focus is really on their competence, and his conclusion seems to be that under difficult circumstances they did their best. One wonders whether their Russian/Soviet counterparts would agree with this assessment. But Hughes only rarely supplements his information with independent reports from Moscow’s perspective. (For a work on a similar topic that includes both Eastern and Western perspectives, see Aleksander Nekrich’s Pariahs, Partners, Predators: German-Soviet Relations, 1922-1941, published the same year as Hughes’ opus.)
When it comes to Stolypin, he may have been a reactionary but he was the one man who might have guided Russia from autocracy to some form of constitutional monarchy. He represented Russia’s best chance of averting the greatest catastrophe of the 20th century, which was not so much the collapse of the Soviet Union as its creation. And this is true whatever his flaws, or even his crimes. As Vladimir Putin said in 2012, “A true patriot and a revolutionary, he [Stolypin] saw both that all kinds of radical sentiment, procrastination, and the refusal to launch necessary reform were a danger to the nation, and that only a strong and effective government relying on business and the civic initiative of millions could ensure progressive development and guarantee tranquility and stability in a large multinational country.”
Within his self-imposed limits, the author does a very competent job of presenting the hardships and vicissitudes the British diplomats faced. Even before the revolution, they often had to do the sort of digging that normally would have been done by foreign correspondents. This may help explain why, until 1917, the Bolsheviks were not on their radar – the ambassador was unfamiliar with Lenin even by name. Later on, the head of mission expressed concern during Lenin’s last months because he considered him “a force for moderation within the government.” (pg. 203) By this he meant that Lenin was restraining the hot-heads who allegedly wanted to launch a war of revolution on Western Europe. After Lenin’s death, the embassy held a similar view of Stalin as a pragmatist, and regarded their much more critical superiors in London as being “die hard.” (pg. 210)
It is certainly true that British diplomats and military advisors (who were not always on the same page) had little sympathy for the Bolsheviks, but once it became clear that they had effectively seized power and were not going to lose it, the British were willing to deal with them. That is, they were willing as long as it seemed possible to persuade them to join the fight against Imperial Germany, the overriding goal. Bruce Lockhart recommended winning the trust of the new powers-that-be, saying that “ideological scruples about cooperation with the Moscow government should under the circumstances be put aside.” (pg. 131) True, some of the more senior officials regarded him as either a fool or a traitor, but the point is there was a variety of opinion – “many other civilian officials in Russia expressed similar ideas [as Bruce Lockhart].” (pg. 130) Even General Poole favored recognizing the Bolshevik government until his departure for London in spring 1918. This supports Hughes’ point that British policy was not determined by ideology or class; rather, “the whole question of the war” came first, followed by the personal views of the individuals involved. (pg. 131)
The possibility for cooperation lasted through the period of Trotsky’s “neither war nor peace” policy and only came to an end when that proved unsustainable and Russian emissaries finally had to sign the treaty of Brest-Litovsk. At that point, things changed radically, as Bruce Lockhart – who had enjoyed personal access to Trotsky – swung 180 degrees after finally realizing he had been played. From that time on, the British tried to undermine the Bolsheviks for the same reason that the Germans had underwritten them – their unwavering opposition to the war. Some in the embassy sincerely believed that the Bolsheviks were paid German agents (years later, Stalin would claim to believe much the same about many of his old comrades).
So to explain British policy by referring to knee-jerk “class hatred” (as a reviewer of this book at Amazon has done) seriously distorts the evidence presented by Hughes. He shows that their animus was by no means instinctive; rather, it developed only after the experience of dealing with the Bolsheviks in power, and the distaste was not confined to the upper-class officers and diplomats – it was shared by average soldiers as well.
In any event, after Brest-Litovsk British policy was in effect to provide some support for Admiral Kolchak and General Denikin and other Whites, but penny-pinching ensured that it would never be enough to be decisive – anything like sufficient funding would have put too great a strain on the budget.
The pages that focus on Ukraine (pg. 168 ff.) are of particular interest. Back then, opposition to the Bolsheviks led to an uneasy alliance between the Don Cossacks, who welcomed German support in their quest for independent statehood, and Denikin’s Volunteer Army, made up of British-backed Whites who were committed to the territorial integrity of the old Russian Empire. At that time, London had no interest in supporting anyone’s territorial integrity; their only concern was that any land lost by Russia not come under German influence. This led to tension with Deniken. As for the Bolsheviks, they favored territorial integrity, as long as they controlled the territory. A complicating factor was the anti-Semitism of some of the players – especially the Whites, who assumed that all Jews were Bolsheviks, at least potentially. Some of the same impulses, figuring under different names and forming different alliances, are present now as then.
Once the Civil War was over and the period of collectivization had begun, the embassy and consulates began receiving unsolicited letters from rural areas describing conditions of famine and even cannibalism. The anonymous letter-writers then went on to blame the catastrophic situation on “Soviet-Jewish machinations.” (pg. 244) By the time of the show trials in the ‘30s, British diplomats no longer believed that ideology explained much about Soviet society. They had reached the conclusion that it was all about the desire on the part of Stalin and his henchmen for unlimited power.
In sum: great material, insufficiently exploited.
Of Related Interest:
See also my review of John Reed, The War In Eastern Europe, elsewhere at this site.
© Hamilton Beck
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