Workers World Vol. 19, No. 17
April 25 – Soon the Soviet Union will be 60 years old. Preparations for the celebration of the 60th anniversary of the October Revolution are already underway in the USSR. This month also marks, in a sense, the real beginning of the 60-year-old history of the relations between the U.S. and what was soon to become the Soviet Union.
The relations between the two countries are to a large extent the axis of contemporary world politics. These, properly speaking, have their beginning in the 20th century with the Russian Revolution. That is when relations between the U.S. and Russia began to take on real international significance.
Of course, the U.S. began its diplomatic relations with Russia a long time ago, when John Quincy Adams became the first ambassador to Russia. It should also be remembered that the Czarist autocracy, which was by no means the champion of the freedom and independence of oppressed peoples, was not unsympathetic to the American Revolution, in the same sense that the French monarchy found it to its great advantage to be of help to the American independence struggle in order to undermine its rival, Britain.
But American-Russian relations remained of a peripheral character both to Russia and to the United States. It was the February Revolution of 1917 in Russia which, like a magnet, drew American finance capital closer to the center of European and world affairs than any other single event of the past century. It is important to understand the reaction of the U.S. ruling class to the February Revolution and later to the October Revolution in order to put into perspective the contemporary relations between the two countries. This is all the more important because the relations between the U.S. and the USSR are now undergoing their severest strain since the Second World War.
Sixty years is a long time; judging by 20th century standards, it is a very, very long time. No period in the modern era, which began with the Industrial Revolution, has been so full of vast and gigantic changes as the period ushered in by the First World War. The very foundations of industry, science, and technology have since undergone the profoundest revolutionary changes.
In the field of politics the series of imperialist wars and colonial subjections have brought about the most stupendous social and political upheavals. The bulk of humanity which inhabits the under-developed countries has been brought to center-stage, giving rise to revolutionary struggles and the resultant surge of the national liberation movements throughout the world. Above all, this period has witnessed the monumental victory of the Chinese Revolution.
The world has witnessed the impact of the great Cuban Revolution and the world historic victories of the Koreans, Vietnamese, Kampucheans, and Laotians. Most recently have come the great revolutionary struggles in Africa, with victories in Angola, Mozambique, and Guinea-Bissau. It can truly be said that since the October Revolution the face of the planet has been changed. And sadly enough, despite these tremendous revolutionary victories, the very existence of the planet itself, as a habitable place for humanity, is at times put in question.
The greatest and most lasting social transformation, the one exercising the greatest worldwide influence, is that wrought by the October Revolution. Without question the Soviet Union itself has undergone a multitude of significant changes in its revolution since the great socialist October. Not even the most passionate and conformist adherents of Soviet policy will claim that all the changes have been for the better. There have been both progress and decay in the Soviet Union.
It nevertheless remains the bulwark and stronghold of the world working class in the struggle against imperialism. Even if it is not the beacon light of revolutionary fervor that it was in days bygone, it is nonetheless by the very nature of its progressive social system the most formidable achievement on a world scale of the proletarian class struggle.
This is not to underrate the significance of the Chinese Revolution but merely to put into focus the existence of the Soviet Union as the central fact today which world imperialism and world reaction have to deal with.
As we said, 60 years is a long time. It is virtually impossible to appraise the current relations between the U.S. and the USSR unless one views those relations in historical sequence. It is for that reason that it is so important to understand the period of U.S.-Russian relations which was ushered in by the February Revolution.
Even more is it necessary to closely scrutinize the reaction of the U.S. ruling class to the February Revolution and later to the October Revolution. Its divergent attitudes to the two different revolutions offer a key to a clear understanding of the nature of the present conflict.
In the eyes of many bourgeois liberals on this side of the Atlantic (and also in Europe), the period of the February Revolution presented the U.S. with a great opportunity to play a truly world historic role as the champion of freedom, liberty, and democracy. To a large extent, that’s the way it was at the beginning of the February Revolution. It was an exultant period, outwardly a period of great friendship between the two countries following the overthrow of the Czarist autocracy. It was a joyous and exuberant period for the people in the United States as well as in Russia.
There was a great surge of genuine sympathy on the part of the progressive and working-class masses in American as the oppressive, absolutist monarchy of the Czar bit the dust. No one can doubt this spirt of overwhelming jubilation, particularly among the large numbers who had only recently emigrated to the U.S. from either Russia or Eastern Europe, and had ties with, as well as deep feeling for, the Russian popular masses.
And in certain small circles of those close to the U.S. ruling class, there was also a feeling that at last there would be a great opportunity for friendship between the two countries because the two would now be tied by the common bond of Western “democratic ideals and institutions,” as had been the case in Western Europe. They pointed to the liberal tradition personified in the last century by the famous abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison and by Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain), to be followed later by organizations like the Friends of Russian Freedom.
The case for a new chapter in U.S.-Russian relations following immediately upon the heels of the overthrown of the Czarist autocracy was dramatically illustrated by the speed with which the then-Ambassador to Russia, David R. Francis, rushed to the Foreign Ministry of the new Provisional Government to make sure that the U.S. was ahead of France, Britain, and other European allies in recognizing the new regime. A headline in the New York Herald of March 23, 1917 (later to merge with the Tribune), proudly proclaimed, “America first to recognize freed Russia.”
Considering that the U.S. was a non-European power, why was Ambassador Francis in such a great hurry to beat to the punch French Ambassador Joseph Noulens and British Ambassador Sir George Buchanan? Under ordinary circumstances this would be considered a breach of the elegant and delicate diplomacy between the “great allies.” In fact, this would all be utterly inexplicable unless one takes into account the central fact dominating all of European and American politics at the time – the raging imperialist war in Europe and the anxiety of the Wilson administration to speed up the process for the eventual entry of the U.S. into the war.
The Wilson administration and the capitalist press at the time were feverishly building up public opinion and preparing it for U.S. entry on the side of the Allies. But before an actual declaration of war could be made persuasive enough for Congress to pass quickly and easily, it was necessary to find those well-worn, deceptive clichés and shibboleths of imperialist demagogy which would make America’s intervention in the war more palatable to the broad masses.
The February Revolution came just in the nick of time, and came moreover when all of the European imperialist belligerents were virtually exhausted. Revolution, on an almost universal scale in Europe, was on the horizon. The masses were sick and tired of the war. Millions of lives had been lost on an unheard of and unprecedented scale.
The beginning of fraternization on all fronts was haunting the General Staffs of both sides of the imperialist barricades. And when the February Revolution struck, the fear of the Allies was that Russia would pull out of the war. More than ever, it was necessary for the U.S. to put its public relations into high gear and set the stage for entering the war on the side of the Allies.
It should not be forgotten that working class struggle in the United States was on the rise, and socialist class consciousness had reached an all-time high. The election returns of 1912 had showed that.
The anti-war spirit among the socialists manifested itself a bare two days after the U.S. war declaration when the St. Louis convention of the Socialist Party passed an historic resolution condemning the capitalist war and U.S. entry into it and urging a struggle against it. Unfortunately, the right-wing socialists sabotaged its implementation.
The overthrow of the Czarist autocracy and the emergence of the new Provisional Government was just what was needed in Washington to put over the Presidential message to Congress declaring war. It was Secretary of State Robert Lansing who more than anybody was keenly aware of the significance of the triumph of the February Revolution and its great psychological and propagandistic value at home. It was he who advised Wilson on how to utilize the new revolutionary development in Russia for the purpose of making the war more acceptable to the American masses, and how to quickly enlarge the U.S. role in its dealings with the Provisional Government.
When Wilson finally drew up his message to Congress calling for a declaration of war, he made full use of Lansing’s advice, putting heavy emphasis on the theme that the war was now really a war between democracy and autocracy precisely because of the fall of the Czarist monarchy. It is instructive today to read the relevant portion of the war declaration.
“Does not every American feel that assurance has been added to our hope for the future peace of the world by the wonderful and heartening things that have been happening within the last few weeks in Russia? Russia was known by those who knew it best to have been always in fact democratic at heart, in all the vital habits of her thought, in all the intimate relationships of her people that spoke their natural instinct, their habitual attitude towards life. The autocracy that crowned the summit of her political structure, long as it had stood and terrible as was the reality of its power, was not in fact Russian in origin, character, or purpose; and now it has been shaken off and the great, generous Russian people have been added in all their naïve majesty and might to the forces that are fighting for freedom in the world, for justice, and for peace. Here is a fit partner for a league of honour.”
Rarely has imperialist demagogy had such a field day.
But why was the Wilson administration so confident about its new partner, the “fit partner for a league of honour”? His sights and the sights of the capitalist establishment were set not on the Soviet of Workers and Peasants, which had arisen as though from the bowels of the earth, but on the makeup of the bourgeois Provisional Government.
John Reed, the youthful American journalist who was to write a celebrate account of the Russian Revolution in his “Ten Days that Shook the World,” described the character of the Provisional Government.
“Its prime movers and dominating figures are liberal-minded provincial nobles, businessmen, professors, editors and army officers. Its purpose first of all is to unite Russia against Germany. ... Look for a moment at the Ministry: Prince George Lvov, Premier and Minister of the Interior, is an idealist of royal blood, with an income of 5,000 rubles a year, and president of the Union of Zemstvos. ... Michael V. Rodzianko, president of the Duma, is a rich landlord. M. Terrestchenko, Minister of Finance, is a millionaire of the type of Lvov. Paul N. Miliukov and M. Manuilov ... are both professors in the University of Moscow and are now both editors of newspaper. A.J. Guchkov ... is a wealthy merchant of Moscow,” etc., etc. “In short,” says Reed, “the Provisional Government wants to put Russia’s government on a par with that of Western Europe. As an official of the National City Bank said in an interview: ‘It was apparent that the influences back of it were the solidly respectable and conservative element in the community.’”
A superb summary, indeed!
Reed wrote this for the New York Tribune as early as March 25, 1917, about a week after the Czar’s overthrow (new calendar). This is what made Wilson, Lansing, and Francis, as well as the ruling summits of U.S. finance capital, intoxicated with the prospects for the U.S. role and the role of the Provisional Government in Russia.
But Wilson’s war message to Congress was not without a note of apprehension regarding the colossal revolutionary class struggle which the workers and peasants had opened up in Russia. It was not the above-mentioned characters who overthrew the monarchy, but workers, peasants, soldiers, students, young and old, who had arisen in a truly popular and spontaneous revolt and toppled the gendarme of European reaction.
“Russia,” Wilson admonished her, “owes a duty to humanity and the necessity for preserving internal harmony in order that as a united and patriotic nation it may overcome the autocratic power [Germany] which by force and intrigue menaces the democracy which the Russian people have proclaimed.”
Indeed, to “preserve internal harmony,” that is, to stifle the raging class struggle in Russia, was the second fundamental aim of the Wilson administration. The first and most urgent one was to see to it that Russia stayed in the imperialist war. On this they came up against not only the anti-war sentiment of the masses, but the inflexible will and determination of Lenin and the Bolsheviks. On that critical issue the U.S. and its imperialist allies, in unison with world reaction, were to be frustrated. In the course of its determined and devious effort the Provisional Government was to break its neck.
Wilson had to proceed cautiously with due regard for the conditions at home as well as abroad. The first thing was to dispatch an American delegation to Russia quickly, assess the situation, and enlarge the U.S. role in Russia. In the meantime Wilson had set the whole government and especially the press going to the full length of demagoguery in calling U.S. intervention a “war for democracy” and giving as one of the principal reasons for entering the war the existence of the new flourishing democracy in Russia. The war was now a war for “freedom and democracy” against the autocratic rule of the Hohenzollerns. It was to be the “last” war, the “war to end all wars,” and the use of the February Revolution to embellish the character of U.S. imperialist intervention went to all lengths.
On the sixth of April, the U.S. took the plunge and declared war on Germany.
There were many in the bourgeois liberal establishment, as we said, who regarded the new friendship between the U.S. and the Provisional Government of Russia as the foundation of a lasting, friendly relationship based on the sharing of so-called basic democratic institutions and political ideals. There are perhaps many who still believe that that was the beginning of a relationship based on a common interest in “democratic institutions.” They conveniently forget that Germany itself was one of the most enlightened bourgeois democracies of the time, where the Social Democrats had received a tremendous popular vote.
Unfortunately for the bourgeois liberals, democracy was not at all what was involved. To believe so it so take a very superficial view of historical and social development in general. These same liberals later also thought that a somewhat parallel situation existed during the Second World War between the U.S. and the USSR. They thought then, and some do even now, that understanding on the basis of common interests would solidify a long-term U.S.-Soviet relationship. Some look back nostalgically to those days of the Second World War when presumably such a friendly relationship existed between the two governments.
It is true, of course, that friendship on a very large and very wide and wholly progressive scaled existed between the people of the USSR and the U.S. during the Second World War, as it was true at the time of the February Revolution. But the friendship of the people of the two countries was not at all based on the same conceptions as those held by the administrations of Woodrow Wilson or Franklin Delano Roosevelt. (We need scarcely mention the later U.S. administrations.)
But time and again, writers, historians, and publicists of all kinds come back to the theme of the periods where friendship presumably existed. They hope to find a thread which continues to this day, offering the grounds for lasting collaboration and minimizing the antagonisms which are, in their view, accidental factors. The antagonisms, they claim, are the result of unfortunate tactics and lack of understanding by the administration of Woodrow Wilson and the Cold Warriors following Roosevelt. They blame ignorance of facts, the emergence of certain personalities unfitted to deal with such new and complex situations as existed between Russia and the U.S., and so on and so forth.
Indeed, after 60 years of relations it can scarcely be doubted that errors in tactics and accidental or fortuitous circumstances, some of significant proportion, unquestionably took place on both sides. From the U.S. point of view, this or that personality was either too anti-Soviet or lacking in vision; on the Soviet side, they were too conciliatory and did not recognize the true situation.
But after 60 years the errors tend to cancel each other out and in themselves become the raw material in the formation of an historic process. It is the process itself, emerging after such a long period, that must be examined.
By analogy, there was no lack of accidents on Washington’s part during the American Revolution. And the errors of the British under George III were not so overwhelming that one could, after such a long period, attribute the triumph of the American Revolution to either the strategy or tactics of the British government. Everyone knows now that the Revolution was inevitable and that the strategic and political outlook of the adversaries on both sides was in the long run secondary to objective factors in the social and political evolution of the 13 colonies into a mighty imperialist power.
We must therefore go back to the real reasons, the reasons that have been obscured by historians, for the objective basis of Wilson’s friendship with the new democracy in Russia.
In the first place Lansing’s rush ahead of the European allies to grant immediate diplomatic recognition to the Provisional Government was motivated by an imperialist desire to squeeze out both the French and the British and to a large extent supplant them. It’s to be remembered that both the French and the British, but especially the French, had enormous investments and loans in Czarist Russia. It may well be said that the Czarist regime already had become dependent on Anglo-French imperialist finance capital. As powerful and imperialist as the Czarist autocracy was, it was nevertheless something in the nature of a vassal, economically and financially, to Anglo-French imperialism.
The U.S. was not unconcerned with this and its entry into the imperialist war, especially in relation to Russia, was meant to edge the European Allies out and increase the role of the U.S. Already at that time when the relationship between the U.S. and Russia was in its earliest infancy, the designs of American finance capital were there in broad outline.
Already, the U.S. had huge investments in Russia. Some of the biggest firms at the time – Singer Sewing Machine, International Harvester, and a multitude of banks and insurance companies – were busy strengthening the position of U.S. finance capital in Russia. The delegations which Wilson chose showed that he had given enormous attention to this aspect of the matter. This was particularly true of the Root Mission. In addition to Elihu Root, who had himself been an international corporation lawyer, Wilson chose Cyrus McCormick, the well-known industrialist, and Samuel Bertron, a very wealthy banker with intimate connections to the entire banking and financial community, especially in New York.
These two were buttressed by the retired chief of staff of the Army, General Hugh L. Scott, who shared the views of the latter two. Wilson took pains to also name a vice-president of the American Federation of Labor, James Duncan, and topped off the delegation with a coating of what passed in those days for bourgeois socialism by naming Charles E. Russell, an author and journalist. Naming the latter two was in the nature of the same tactic that President Carter used just recently when he picked former UAW President Woodcock to head a delegation to Vietnam.
The overall political purpose of the Root Mission was to make sure the Provisional Government would stay in the war and continue to fight in the imperialist slaughter. That, above everything else, loomed largest in the minds of the Wilson administration. To see that that new “democracy” in conjunction with the other “democracies” would continue the unprecedented, inhuman slaughter that was turning Europe into a grave for millions of workers – that was the purpose of the Root Mission and other delegations which were to swarm into St. Petersburg and Moscow. That was the “democratic” motivation of the Wilson administration. That was the basis for the jubilation in U.S. and Allied ruling class circles at the triumph of the February Revolution. Those were the real calculations.
To bolster them, the Root delegation to Russia was instructed (as so many U.S. delegations to foreign countries are instructed today) to make an offer of an immediate loan to bolster up the new regime and enable it to fight to the death. The byword in the U.S. diplomatic corps in Russia was, “No fight, no loan.”
The U.S. was sending financial and military aid which, true enough, made no difference in the long run because of the October Revolution, but the sordid, predatory interests of American finance capital were shown up immediately in the contrast between the flowery, exultant rhetoric greeting the triumph of the February Revolution and the “no fight, no loan” ultimatum delivered in private.
That was no accident at all. It was entirely in accord with the historical evolution of American finance capital.
The U.S. entered the war on April 6. Those were the April Days in revolutionary Russia. In the annals of the Russian Revolution, the greatest attention is always paid to the October period, the period of the preparation of the uprising, the intense activity of the masses of workers, peasants, and soldiers, and the overwhelming enthusiasm and anxiety as the day of the insurrection approached. And then, of course, the glorious day when finally the victorious insurrection made it possible to declare that the Congress of Soviets of Workers, Peasants, and Soldiers had become the legal and only legitimate government of the Russian people.
Of course, the July Days, when the counter-revolution reared its ugly head, are no less instructive from the point of view of the preparation of the masses for the final assault.
But it is the period of the April Days that must be examined in relation to the emergence of the U.S. in the Russian and European theater. That was when Lenin and all the revolutionary leaders finally arrived in Russia. At first there was ideological confusion; then Lenin began the rearming of the party, putting it on a sure and certain footing which would prepare the vanguard of the proletariat and in turn the workers and peasants to seize and hold power.
The April Days are the days of intense political and ideological rearmament. Wilson’s entry on the Russian scene and the orientation of American finance capital to force the Provisional Government to continue the war, chronologically preceded Lenin’s famous April Theses. These celebrated theses laid bare the class nature of the Provisional Government as a capitalist government, no better than the other capitalist governments of Britain, France, Germany, or the U.S., all of which were engaged in an imperialist war against which Lenin had agitated since August 1914.
Lenin’s theses set out a course in Russia toward ending the imperialist slaughter and steering the mass of the workers and peasants toward a struggle for proletarian revolution and the seizure of power.
The Wilson administration’s strategy for keeping Russia in the war took no account whatever of the tremendous anti-war sentiment of the Russian workers and peasants. Above all it took no account of the vanguard of the proletariat, those class-conscious workers and cadres who had been trained in Lenin’s school during the long and bitter years of the imperialist war.
Antiwar sentiment was by this time widespread throughout Europe and in all the belligerent countries. But only in Russia was there now a steeled proletarian vanguard and a working class which was not merely anti-war but profoundly anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist. The Russian proletariat had become susceptible to the boldest conclusions of Marxist and Leninist revolutionary thought.
Not only were the masses, and particularly the advanced guard, opposed to the slaughter as an imperialist war, but they had already been fighting chauvinism and social-chauvinism practically since the beginning of the war. This is not a retrospective evaluation of the stature of the Russian proletariat and its tremendous revolutionary energy and perseverance.
Scarcely more than two months after the outbreak of the war, the Bolshevik fraction of the Duma, that is the grouping of Bolsheviks in the so-called Parliament of the Czar, had been arrested and sent away for life at hard labor as a result of their opposition to the war. They had earned the wrath of the Czarist autocracy by virtue of their anti-war position and had exposed the Mensheviks who had become infected with social patriotism and chauvinism.
Half of Lenin’s April Theses was already written into the consciousness of the Russian proletariat – the thesis that the character of the European war was imperialist in its nature, and that the urgent need of the workers everywhere was to turn the guns against the imperialist government. The need was for a truly democratic peace, a peace without indemnities, without annexations, and for the right of nations to self-determination.
All of this had been part and parcel of the ideological preparation of the masses by the Bolsheviks as a result of Lenin’s teachings during the entire war period, long before he arrived at Petrograd’s Finland Station in April 1917.
So that when the Bolshevik faction of the Duma was arrested, Lenin, despite his criticisms of some aspects of their defense, was proud to quote the charges of the Czarist indictment (which were taken from a conference document of the Bolshevik party):
“It is necessary to direct the armies not against our brothers, the wage slaves of other countries, but against the reaction of the bourgeois governments and parties of all countries.”
Therefore, the calculations of the imperialist allies and in retrospect the machinations of American imperialism to inveigle the Russian masses into continuing the imperialist war were doomed to failure from the beginning. The freedom and democracy which were the common ground between the Provisional Government and the Wilson administration were based on a resumption of the bloody predatory war, the war of which the masses had become sick and tired, the war which was a war of plunder, the war which was not for democracy but for the plutocracy of finance capital.
The joyous reception which the February Revolution received from the American people was one thing. But the mouthings of the Wilson-Lansing administration were something else. They could not succeed in revolutionary Russia.
The reason for this was plain to Lenin, but a secret sealed by seven seals to Wilson and his cohorts. “The class-conscious workers of Russia,” wrote Lenin after the Bolsheviks in the Duma were arrested, “have created a Party and have placed at the front a vanguard which, when the World War is raging and international opportunism is bankrupt the world over, has proved most capable of fulfilling the duty of international revolutionary Social-Democrats.” That’s what the Wilsonian lackeys did not understand.
Our road has been tested by the greatest of all crises [the war], and has proved over and over again the only correct road. We shall follow it still more determinedly and more firmly, we shall push to the front new advance-guards, we shall make them not only do the same work but complete it more correctly,” Lenin wrote of the Bolshevik faction that had been arrested by the Czarist police. “Let war, prison, Siberia, hard labor break five times more or ten times more,” said Lenin about the “Pravdist” workers, those who were following the Leninist line, those who had brought about “the unity of four-fifths of the class-conscious workers of Russia.”
“This section of the workers cannot be annihilated. It is alive. It is permeated with revolutionary spirit, it is anti-chauvinist. It alone stands among the masses of the people, and deeply rooted in their midst as a protagonist of the internationalism of the toiling, the exploited, the oppressed. It alone has kept its ground in the general debacle. It alone leads the semi-proletarian elements away from social chauvinism. ...” (From the article, “What Has the Trial of the Russian Social-Democratic Workers Fraction Proved?”)
Therein lies the reason why it was impossible for the Provisional Government to continue the war, why it broke its neck in trying to do so.
Therein also lies the basic reason why the façade of friendship for the Russian masses was to be torn off the Wilson administration. In the next few months it was to be seen how the Wilson administration would treat the workers’ democracy – so different from its attitude toward the bourgeois democracy of the Miliukovs and Kerenskys of the Provisional Government, which dealt out repression to the masses, more hunger, more sacrifice on behalf of the landlords and capitalists, more bloodletting of the millions of peasants and workers and soldiers in the interests of the bankers and industrialists.
In October a new democracy was established, a real democracy, a democracy of workers, of peasants, and of soldiers, which promised peace and made peace. It promised the land to the peasants and it gave land to the peasants. It promised bread to all and the factories began to hum. It was a real democracy.
It was a period when human rights, for the first time in written history, were put above property rights, above the rights of landlords, bankers, and industrialists. It was to this genuine, popular democracy that the Wilson administration not only completely turned its back, but also its guns. Moreover, it immediately began in concert with the other imperialist powers, the “democratic allies,” to swiftly intervene militarily to try to crush it.
Not until a mutiny of American troops on the north Russian front took place did the Wilson administration begin to think in terms of withdrawing from the intervention. But it did not do so. The mutiny that took place on April 11, 1919, was by a company of infantry who refused to obey the orders of their officers to prepare for movement to the front lines. The brave soldiers who took part in this were an American Army contingent composed largely of Michigan and Wisconsin troops. (See “Revolution in Russia” by Edward W. Pearlstein, p. 254.) Similar mutinies, particularly by the French and others, were what stopped the intervention and caused the imperialist allies to withdraw.
The divergent lines of the Wilson administration in its approach to the February and October revolutions clearly reveal the nature of the imperialist politics which still dominate Washington and Wall Street today. They illustrate that there can be periods of peace as an interlude between imperialist wars, but that the capitalist establishment cannot reconcile itself to a social system based on a new mode of production, superior to capitalism, in which the means of production are publicly owned and the economy is planned.
The current grave turn in U.S.-Soviet relations, most recently illustrated by Carter’s appointment of an ambassador who is unwelcome in the USSR because of his hard line, must be understood, as we have shown, in the light of the entire historical period which opened with the February Revolution.
Last updated: 11 May 2026