Spies and Commissars: The Bolshevik Revolution and the West Read Free

in March 1918, but they never moved out from the periphery of the old empire and were anyway much too small to overthrow Lenin and Trotsky. The battles on the western front constrained what could be done until the end of the war in November that year. Subsequently, none of the Allies was willing to organize an invasion of Russia. Both economic and political considerations held them back. Even Winston Churchill, the arch-advocate of the White cause, had no idea how to do more in Russia than the Allied powers actually did. Yet Russia continued to attract attention. Attempts were made to restore the links of international trade outside the Soviet-occupied zones. The French had their plans for southern Ukraine. American entrepreneurs, especially those on the west coast, were eager to do business in Siberia. British intelligence agent Sidney Reilly characteristically planned to pull off big commercial deals in post-communist Russia, and others in Britain wanted to do the same. Food supplies to Russia were another instrument which the American government contemplated using against the communists. In 1919 initiatives were taken both to offer grain to Lenin onpolitical conditions and to send it to feed the regions of Russia that came into White hands.
    Lenin and Trotsky after the Russian Civil War successfully tempted several foreign countries into trading with Russia. But the conventional idea that this marked the end, for a while, to Soviet expansionist schemes is utterly wrong. Comintern, on orders from Moscow, tried in March 1921 to overthrow the German government. The communist action in Germany was undertaken despite the knowledge that this would bring British and French armies on to German soil to restore their continental dominance. Although the Party Politburo spoke the rhetoric of peace for Europe, its members had mentally prepared themselves for another European war.
    Yet there was no German communist revolution in the inter-war period despite Comintern’s intensive efforts. The Soviet leadership underestimated the resilience of anti-communist groups and feelings across Germany – just as they had overlooked Polish nationalism when marching on Warsaw in 1920. No matter how good the information that was available to politicians, it was only as useful as they allowed it to be. Lenin and Trotsky had already fixed their view on the world and its future. They were convinced that Europe was on the threshold of communist revolution and that it needed only a slight nudge from them to make all this happen. The ‘masses’ in the communist imagination would break off their chains and rise in revolt. Bolshevik leaders filtered the contents of reports they received from the West. Their informants themselves, being communists, pre-filtered a lot of it before sending material on to Russia. Political ideology was involved, but Lenin and Trotsky anyhow had little time for basic reflection. And although they adjusted policy to changing circumstances, they still did this within the setting of their general preconceptions. They led a party which objected whenever they abandoned established doctrine. They themselves were ardent believers in the communist cause. They had given their lives to it and, despite being agile in their political manoeuvres, kept any practical compromises to a minimum.
    The Allied leaders too had their own prior assumptions. Wilson, Clemenceau and Lloyd George were in receipt of plentiful information from diplomats, reporters and agents – far more informants operated for them in Russia than the Soviet leaders could yet deploy in the West; but it was one thing for governments to obtain reports and an entirely different one to know what to do next. While beinggrateful for the fast flow of material, every Western leader had to contend with witnesses contradicting each other. Understandably, leaders who were already dealing with horrendous difficulties in their own countries and throughout central Europe worked as much