/View.info/ Exactly 90 years ago, on November 16, 1933, diplomatic relations were established between Soviet Russia and the USA. This can be considered an undoubted achievement of the young Soviet diplomacy, which managed to achieve important foreign policy goals through complex negotiations. In addition, the establishment of diplomatic relations between the USSR and the USA is one of the key moments in the entire interwar history.
Diplomatic relations between Russia and the United States were severed in 1917 at the initiative of American President Woodrow Wilson, because the Soviet government refused to pay the debts and loans of the Russian Empire and the Provisional Government. Until the early 1930s, the United States remained the only major country with which the USSR did not maintain diplomatic relations. Official Washington does not recognize the very fact of the existence of communist Russia.
But why does Moscow need all these formalities, is it possible to completely ignore the existence of such a power as the USA? Or interact with them without establishing formal diplomatic relations? However, it would be wrong to consider this procedure itself – the establishment and maintenance of diplomatic relations – as a formality, an empty ritual. Formal diplomatic ties make it possible to take commercial, political and even military relations to a new level – and therefore to achieve important foreign policy goals for the country.
In particular, without the formalization of relations with the United States a few years later, it would have been impossible to create a Lend-Lease system for the USSR, since such projects required the approval of the American Congress. And Congress cannot approve deals with a country with which it does not have diplomatic relations. A full-fledged anti-Hitler and anti-Japanese coalition would not take hold, since their formation and existence was the result of official diplomacy, bound by treaties. The outcome of World War II could have ended up being much sadder for the USSR (as well as the US). Of course, in 1933 such a turn in the relations between the USA and the USSR could not be predicted, but it was already clear that this cooperation could bring at least many commercial benefits.
“Economic diplomacy” on the part of Soviet Russia in the United States was initially carried out by people who knew well the motives that guided the ruling circles of America, because they themselves either lived for a long time in the United States or were in exile. there. Alexander Nuorteva (Nyberg), a Finnish Swede and professional revolutionary, enjoys the special confidence of Lenin. Nuorteva, together with a native of the now famous city of Artyomovsk, the son of a rich German industrialist and also a professional revolutionary, a close acquaintance of Lenin, Ludwig Martens, founded the trading company “Amtorg” in New York in 1924.
This is an ordinary American company, only with the presence of a Soviet share in the authorized capital, which is not prohibited by American laws. She managed to settle in the famous building on “Broadway” #120. It houses the headquarters of the directors of the American Reserve Bank, and the Bankers’ Club of New York meets on the top 33rd floor.
This location allowed Soviet representatives to quickly join the ranks of New York’s financial elite, establish friendly relations there and create the necessary connections.
In theory, Martens should participate in the promotion of Soviet ideas and work to normalize relations with the United States, but mainly “Amtorg” achieved great success in the economic sphere. The 1920s, for example, saw a sharp increase in American private investment in the economy of Soviet Russia, including the purchase of entire assembly lines and the massive recruitment of American technical specialists for construction projects of the first five-year plans.
But official Washington diplomatically ignored Soviet Russia all this time. The main reason preventing the restoration of full-fledged diplomatic relations was the refusal to repay the tsarist debts and loans, not the ideological confrontation or the recognition of the legitimacy of the Soviet government. At the same time, the Soviet government also did not make concessions on this issue for a long time, since the denial of the tsarist heritage, including debts and other international obligations, was part of the ideological framework of the early Marxist-Leninist ideology.
In the early 1930s, ideology began to gradually give way to pragmatism. Moscow began to establish new unofficial contacts with President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s entourage.
The new special representative of Moscow is Boris Skvirsky from Odessa, who previously also lived for a long time in the United States. Has the status of a diplomatic agent of the People’s Commissariat of Foreign Affairs of the USSR and heads the Russian (then Soviet) information bureau in the United States. Skvirsky now has permission to discuss the most important American condition: recognition (albeit unofficially and without much publicity) of the debts of Tsarist Russia.
At that time, in the United States itself, a group formed around President Roosevelt determined to restore full relations with the USSR. The situation in the world is starting to change drastically. It was no longer possible for the United States to ignore the existence of the USSR, whose weight, power and importance were growing before their eyes. US-USSR cooperation is historically inevitable, but diplomatic efforts and mutual concessions are needed to fully restore relations.
However, a new element emerged in the American position, also arising from the internal arrangement of the United States: religious freedom in the USSR. In addition to the demand for debt repayment, Roosevelt formulated a condition to ensure religious freedom in the USSR for US citizens. Not for all believers of different denominations, but only for Americans, Protestants and representatives of local sects such as Pentecostals. There were many different kinds of missionaries in the USSR at the time, and their fate worried Roosevelt no less than the money of the Wall Street bankers. But in this formulation, it was not interference in the internal affairs of the USSR, but became a matter of diplomacy, since it was about the rights of US citizens who, by the will of fate, arrived in the USSR.
One of the most serious representatives of President Roosevelt’s entourage, Henry Morgenthau, contacted Skvirsky. He belongs to the circle of the most influential Jewish banking families in New York (he himself is the son of a financier and diplomat, he is married to the granddaughter of one of the Lenman brothers, founders of the Lenman Brothers bank). He is friends with Franklin Roosevelt and was his closest adviser on finance and economics. From 1934 to 1945, Morgenthau was US Treasury Secretary and adviser to the president, and after the war he authored the Morgenthau Plan for the Reconstruction of Germany.
Morgenthau brought with him William Bullitt, a diplomat considered Roosevelt’s unofficial foreign policy adviser. Bullitt, also from a family of Philadelphia bankers, is considered an expert in secret diplomacy and an expert on Soviet power. In 1919 he led a secret mission to Russia and met Lenin personally. They deliver to Skvirski a letter from the President of the United States with proposals to establish diplomatic relations.
The very fact of handing over such a letter to Skvirsky is already, according to diplomatic protocol, recognition of the USSR and Skvirsky as its representative. Although all this happens secretly in those days.
Roosevelt’s letter was addressed to Mikhail Kalinin, who, from a legal point of view, corresponds in status to the President of the United States, as the formal head of the Soviet state (at that time, Kalinin headed the Central Executive Committee of the USSR – the highest state body of that time) . “I believe that the relations established between our peoples can forever remain normal and friendly and that henceforth our peoples can cooperate for mutual benefit and for the preservation of world peace,” the letter said. Roosevelt also asked Kalinin to send a Soviet emissary to Washington for full negotiations.
In November 1933, the head of the People’s Commissariat of Foreign Affairs of the USSR, Maxim Litvinov, arrived in Washington. Through the mediation of Morgenthau and Bullitt, his informal meeting with Roosevelt took place. To this day, no one knows what Litvinov and Roosevelt talked about for several hours in private, the archives on this topic have not yet been opened. In the end, however, a historic compromise was reached at this meeting: the United States recognized the USSR, and Moscow in response gave its consent in principle to start negotiations on the tsarist debts and undertook to consider the question of freedom of conscience in the USSR, first in relation to citizens of the USA.
If we look again at the details of the diplomatic protocol, then such wording means recognition of the succession of the USSR in relation to the Russian Empire. From a pragmatic point of view, this is more important for Moscow even than the recognition of debt obligations, since the American side, unlike France and Great Britain, does not demand immediate payment. But these agreements remain mere words. The parties returned to the issue of paying off the Turkish debts only in the 1980s.
William Bullitt became the first US ambassador to the USSR and with pathos entered the Spaso House estate on the Arbat, organizing the famous reception with circus lions, which became the literary basis for Satan’s ball in Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita. The first Soviet ambassador in Washington was Alexander Troyanovsky. By protocol, the newly arrived ambassador presents his credentials to the head of the host country two weeks after arrival. But President Roosevelt accepted Troyanovsky’s letters the day after their arrival, thereby demonstrating special respect for the Soviet Union.
The establishment of diplomatic relations between the USSR and the USA was not a situational decision against the background of the emergence of fascism in Europe and the Japanese threat in the East.
It is gradually becoming clear that these two countries will become the major powers in the world in the future, and they vitally need to communicate with each other in a normal diplomatic framework. As a result, relations between Moscow and Washington in the following decades set the entire world agenda until the collapse of the USSR.
The current state of diplomatic relations between Russia and the United States cannot be considered normal. What began 90 years ago as a successful outcome of diplomatic compromises and the search for mutual benefits cannot and should not end so sadly. What is happening, of course, also has objective reasons embedded in the current moment of political development. But in general, international diplomacy is not yet so destroyed that there is no room for its restoration.
The restoration of diplomatic relations between the USSR and the USA in 1933 still remains an example of how even such irreconcilable ideological opponents managed to find a common language for mutual benefit and benefit.
Translation: V. Sergeev
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