In the Wake of Empire: Anti-Bolshevik Russia in International Affairs, 1917–1920

By Anatol Shmelev

Even as a country ceases to be a great power, the concept of it as a great power can continue to influence decision making and policy formulation. This book explores how such a process took place in Russia from 1917 through 1920, when the Bolshevik coup of November 1917 led to the creation of two regimes: the Bolshevik "Reds" and the anti-Bolshevik "Whites." As Reds consolidated their one-party dictatorship and nursed global ambitions, Whites struggled to achieve a different vision for the future of Russia. Anatol Shmelev illuminates the White campaign with fresh purpose and through information from the Hoover Institution Archives, exploring how diverse White factions overcame internal tensions to lobby for recognition on the world stage, only to fail—in part because of the West's desire to leave "the Russian question" to Russians alone. In the Wake of Empire examines the personalities, institutions, political culture, and geostrategic concerns that shaped the foreign policy of the anti-Bolshevik governments and attempts to define the White movement through them. Additionally, Shmelev provides a fascinating psychological study of the factors that ultimately doomed the White effort: an irrational and ill-placed faith in the desire of the Allies to help them, and wishful thinking with regard to their own prospects that obscured the reality around them.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Independent Publishers Group
• Release date: Jan 1, 2021
• ISBN: 9780817924263

Book preview

ADVANCE PRAISE FOR IN THE WAKE OF EMPIRE

Anatol Shmelev has succeeded in making an important contribution to the study of the Russian Revolution and the Civil War. On the basis of extraordinarily thorough research and the wide use of primary sources, he is the first to discuss the foreign policies of the White Movement. He demonstrates that although the diplomats who served the White cause had a weak hand to play, nevertheless they remained faithful to the cause of a united, powerful Russia, ready to play a significant part in European diplomacy.

—PETER KENEZ, professor emeritus, University of California–Santa Cruz

Based on exhaustive archival research and engagingly presented, Shmelev’s study is a tour de force that unravels the complex and tragic story of the Russian diplomats stranded abroad by the Bolshevik revolution. This account traces their failed attempt to defend age-old Russian interests at the post–Great War peace conferences, in the face of fracture and civil war in Russia on one hand, and their erstwhile allies’ deep suspicions and skepticism of the re-creation of a ‘great’ Russia which no longer existed.

—DAVID MCDONALD, Alice D. Mortenson-Petrovich Distinguished Chair in Russian History, University of Wisconsin–Madison

"Many have told the story about how Russians fought their civil war on the battlefield, but their momentous struggles at the Paris peace talks of 1919 have long been unjustly ignored. Engagingly written, erudite, and encyclopedic in scope, In the Wake of Empire will likely prove to be the definitive study in any language of the ‘other Russia’s’ ultimately doomed attempt to retain great power status. Shmelev’s archival research is nothing short of herculean."

—DAVID SCHIMMELPENNINCK VAN DER OYE, professor of Russian history, Brock University

"Through exhaustive multiarchival research, impeccable scholarship, and compelling analysis, Anatol Shmelev has written the authoritative account of anti-Bolshevik Russia’s foreign policies during three tumultuous years of revolution, civil war, and foreign intervention. By illuminating a neglected aspect of a doomed cause, In the Wake of Empire invites the thought that victors may write history, but losers have more interesting things to say."

—JOHN J. STEPHAN, emeritus professor of history, University of Hawaii

In the Wake of Empire

In the Wake of Empire

Anti-Bolshevik Russia in International Affairs, 1917–1920

Anatol Shmelev

HOOVER INSTITUTION PRESS

STANFORD UNIVERSITY      STANFORD, CALIFORNIA

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With its eminent scholars and world-renowned library and archives, the Hoover Institution seeks to improve the human condition by advancing ideas that promote economic opportunity and prosperity, while securing and safeguarding peace for America and all mankind. The views expressed in its publications are entirely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the staff, officers, or Board of Overseers of the Hoover Institution.

Hoover Institution Press Publication No. 716

Hoover Institution at Leland Stanford Junior University, Stanford, California 94305-6003

Copyright © 2021 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University

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Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available from the Library of Congress.

ISBN 978-0-8179-2424-9 (cloth)

ISBN 978-0-8179-2426-3 (epub)

ISBN 978-0-8179-2427-0 (mobi)

ISBN 978-0-8179-2428-7 (PDF)

Dedicated to the memory of my father, Vsevolod Nikolaevich Shmelev

Contents

List of Illustrations

Foreword by Robert Service

Introduction

1. Diplomats in Search of a Government: November 1917–September 1918

The Russian Revolution and Russian Officials Abroad

Diplomatic Activity Abroad, January–May 1918: Intervention and Retention of Russian Rights

The Search for a Government, Spring–Summer 1918

Foreign Policy Objectives of the Anti-Bolshevik Governments in the East, May–July 1918

2. Government in Search of a Policy: October–December 1918

The Directory

The Directory’s Foreign Ministry and Its Program

The Primacy of Recognition

The Omsk Coup and the Issue of Government Stability

Russia and Transcaucasia: Emergence of Newly Independent States

Foreign Policy and Military Assistance from Abroad

3. Around the Paris Peace Conference

The Creation of the Russian Political Conference in Paris

The Prinkipo Invitation and Its Consequences

Nationality Questions as International Problems

Problems of Intervention

4. Recognition? March–July 1919

Recognition of Finland

Behind the Scenes at the Paris Peace Conference: Unofficial Consultations with Russian Representatives

The Exchange of Notes and Its Consequences

Can an Unrecognized Russia Recognize Finland?

Balkan Brothers: Serbia and Bulgaria

5. Immobility and Defeat: After Versailles

White Resurgence in the Baltic, Autumn 1919

Defending Russian Territorial Integrity

Relations with Western Neighbors: Romania

Relations with Western Neighbors: Poland

The End in the East

6. General Vrangel’: From Recognition to Evacuation

Sazonov’s Departure

The Allies (France and Britain)

Near and Far Abroad

Poland, Friend or Foe?

Evacuation

Conclusion

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

Appendix: Select List of Russian Representatives Abroad, 1917–20

Bibliography

About the Author

Index

Illustrations

PHOTOGRAPHS

Personnel of the Russian Embassy in Paris, 1919

Vasilii Alekseevich Maklakov, last Russian ambassador to France (undated)

Boris Bakhmeteff, last Russian ambassador to the United States, at his retirement in 1922

Ambassador Vasilii Nikolaevich Krupenskii, 1917

Mikhail Girs, last Russian ambassador to Italy, 1930

Elim Pavlovich Demidov, Prince of San Donato, last Russian ambassador to Greece (undated)

Konstantin Gul’kevich, last Russian ambassador to Sweden (undated)

Admiral Aleksandr Kolchak, General Mikhail Pleshkov, and Consul-General Georgii Popoff in Harbin, 1918

General Dmitrii Khorvat, chief of the Extraterritorial Zone of the Chinese Eastern Railway (undated)

Cossack ataman Grigorii Semenov (undated)

Personnel of the Russian Embassy in Tokyo, ca. 1915

Supreme Ruler of Russia, Admiral Aleksandr Kolchak, 1919

George Guins, administrative secretary, Omsk government Council of Ministers (undated)

General Mikhail Alekseev, 1917

General Anton Denikin in Novorossisk, Russia, 1920

Foreign Minister Sergei Sazonov, 1916

General Nikolai Golovin, ca. 1930s

General Boris Heroys (Gerua) (undated)

General Baron Petr Vrangel’ (undated)

Petr Struve, foreign minister of the South Russian government in 1920 (undated)

Nikolai Bazili (Nicolas de Basily), counselor of the Russian embassy in Paris (undated)

Vladimir Rafal’skii, Russian representative in Czechoslovakia (undated)

Evgenii Sablin, chargé d’affaires of the Russian embassy in Great Britain (undated)

MAPS

Siberia and the Far East

Schematic map of the fronts of the Russian Civil War, March 1919

Georgian territorial claims at the Paris Peace Conference

Baltic basin, ca. 1917

The Romanian claim on Bessarabia

Polish territorial claims

Foreword

Robert Service

Victory for the Western Allies over Imperial Germany in the Great War did not bring instant peace. International conflicts and civil wars ensued across eastern and east-central Europe as well as in the former Ottoman Empire. In Russia there had already been conflict upon conflict. The fall of the Romanov dynasty in March 1917 led to the disintegration of statehood and the economy, and the October Revolution was accompanied by German pressure on the new Communist government to withdraw from the Great War and sign the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk in March 1918. Civil war raged across the former Russian Empire as rival governments arose and were overthrown in every region. The triumphant powers on the western front were angered by Lenin’s decision to abrogate Russia’s alliance with them, and they considered how best to confront communist power before it could expand into the rest of Europe. Russian anti-Communist forces appealed for assistance to overthrow the Soviet administration.

Meanwhile the Peace Conference, assembled in Paris under the guidance of Woodrow Wilson, David Lloyd George, and Georges Clemenceau, discussed what to do about the political debris of the fighting. New states were carved from the carcasses of the defeated empires of Germany and Austria-Hungary. But what to do about Bolshevik Russia, which had surrendered to German demands in the treaty of Brest-Litovsk in March? So long as there was civil war in the Russian territories, the Reds could do little damage in Europe even if their propaganda—and indeed the example of their very existence—worried conservatives, liberals, priests, and property owners. Fitful efforts were made by the United Kingdom, France, and even the United States to join in the fighting, but their rulers ultimately jibbed at involving their countries in a full-out war when many of their own citizens were hostile to military intervention.

The West’s engagement with the Russian foes of Bolshevism has often been described. British, French, Japanese, and—more slowly—American forces were dispatched to the former Russian Empire. The United Kingdom sent an expeditionary contingent to Archangel while the French navy landed at Odessa. US armed units, after earlier Japanese incursions, were directed to eastern Siberia. Intelligence agencies sought out real and potential organizations in Russia that might prove capable of confronting the Soviets. From the end of 1918 it was clear that the main threat to Bolshevism lay with the White Armies that operated beyond the margins of central Russia. Admiral Aleksandr Kolchak in the Urals, General Anton Denikin in the Russian south, and General Nikolai Iudenich in newly independent Estonia amassed forces for campaigns against the Red Army. The Whites pleaded for Western diplomatic support and military equipment. This was granted, more or less grudgingly (and with enthusiasm by secretary of state for war Winston Churchill), in 1919.

It was never a comfortable relationship, because the White commanders were aware that each Western power had interests of its own and that none of them wanted Russia to emerge from the Great War in a condition to cause them trouble. Businessmen in Britain, France, and America strove to secure the promise of privileged access to Russian markets and natural resources. Many politicians in the West were thought likely to aim at breaking up the old Russian Empire. The Whites, while desperate for Western aid, had no intention of reducing the size of Russia’s imperial domains, regardless of what the governments in London, Paris, or Washington might propose.

Anatol Shmelev picks up this story with fresh purpose and information from the invaluable Hoover Institution Archives. He floods the Paris Peace Conference with new light, showing how the Russian anti-Bolsheviks lobbied to achieve acceptance of their vision of Russia One and Indivisible. These Russians were a diverse grouping. Some had been officials in the embassies of Nicholas II; others were political figures, such as former terrorist Boris Savinkov, or ex-premier Alexander Kerensky, who had briefly exercised power in Russia in 1917. All were determined to bring down the regime of Lenin and Trotsky and, for the most part, overcame their internal tensions in pursuit of the greater cause. Jealousies and bickering, however, hindered progress. Problems were also caused by difficulties of communication between Paris and the shifting military headquarters on the civil war fronts. Nor did it help the Whites that Western governments were frequently under pressure from public opinion to leave the Russian question to the Russians alone.

Shmelev’s account brings these factors together in a seamless web, showing that the year 1919 was a pivot on which the fate of revolutionary Russia turned. Denikin’s Moscow Offensive in late 1919 came close to succeeding, but the Reds ultimately exploited their superiority in manpower, munitions, supplies, and control of the railways. The Communists consolidated their one-party dictatorship and nursed their ambition to spread their power and ideology to the rest of Europe and the whole world. This book displays a mastery of White archival sources and demonstrates that the Whites and their supporters abroad put up a stubborn struggle in the international arena to prevent this outcome. They failed, but they did so in circumstances not of their choosing. By the end of 1919 the United Kingdom, France, and the United States had decided to abandon their military intervention in the Civil War, and the Reds continued their campaigns to claw most of the former Russian Empire back into their grasp.

The Soviet order was more fragile than it appeared. Peasant revolts, industrial strikes, and a naval mutiny came close to crushing it in 1921. But the Communists survived by the skin of their teeth and proceeded to tighten the dictatorial screws. The defeated White commanders, politicians, and diplomats—if they escaped being killed or captured—spent the following decades in Western exile, observing with bitterness the fate that befell the country they had had to abandon.

Introduction

The twentieth century saw the demise of a number of empires, but no other was so complete, decisive, and laden with consequences as the fall of the Russian Empire in 1917 and of the Soviet Union in 1991. Events of this nature present the core nation of the collapsing empire and all the new states that spring from it with the problem of defining their relations with formerly integral regions, as well as the wider world, in a post-imperial context.

Yet drastic changes in the reality of a situation rarely produce equally drastic changes in people’s perception of that reality, so that previous mentalities and forms of discourse often continue to function in traditional modes, even though the set of problems they deal with has become radically different. Thus, even as a country ceases to be a great power, the concept of it as a great power can continue to influence decision making and policy formulation.

This book is a study of how such a process took place in Russia from 1917 through 1920. The Bolshevik coup of November 1917 led to the creation of, roughly speaking, two regimes in Russia: the Bolshevik Reds and the anti-Bolshevik Whites.* Each pursued a policy toward the outside world based on an entirely different set of principles, with only the Whites wishing to be seen as continuing previous policies and practices. The primary purpose of this work is to examine the personalities, institutions, political culture, and geostrategic concerns that shaped the foreign policy of the anti-Bolshevik governments and to attempt to define the White movement through them.

The question of continuity of Imperial Russian and Soviet foreign policies has been a contentious issue for historians for many decades.¹ The emergence of a post-Soviet foreign policy has added fuel to the debate and once more brought into focus the need to view the development of foreign policy in a historical context in order to understand its sources and background. In a recent serious contribution to the debate, Alastair Kocho-Williams comes to the conclusion that there were both continuities and changes.² This unsurprising synthesis sees the continuities emerging from unchanged principles of international diplomatic practice to which the Soviet regime was ultimately forced to adjust. Yet there was another element to this continuity, and that was the fact that the Bolsheviks, whatever their desires for political change, could not change geography: the Russian Federation and the Soviet Union inhabited roughly the same spot on the globe as Russia had before 1917, and all diplomacy and strategy, regardless of political ideology, had to be based on this simple fact, which made a degree of continuity unavoidable. In the debate over continuity, the anti-Bolsheviks have received little consideration.³

Much has been written on the origins of Soviet foreign policy and Soviet-Western relations in which the Whites have been assigned a role of at best episodic character, as objects, rather than subjects, of foreign affairs. This study aims intentionally to place the emphasis on the enemies of the Bolsheviks—not because the Bolsheviks are unimportant, but because Bolshevik policies and the policies of foreign governments toward them have already been examined in such detail that there is no need to address them again here.

The reasoning behind the lack of interest in the Whites is based on the questionable nature of their influence and legacy—the two factors that motivate most historical investigation. While the issue of their influence is one of the subjects of this book and will be addressed in its place, a few observations on the legacy of the White movement should be made here. After the last White troops evacuated Vladivostok in October 1922, Bolshevism triumphant eclipsed all other factors and alternatives, both within the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and abroad. Although this left room for debate as to the nature of continuity between the prerevolutionary Russian and Soviet systems, the Whites—the final dream of the old world, in Russian poet Marina Tsvetaeva’s poignant description—never formed a part of this debate.

And yet there is serious reason to see in the foreign policy of the White governments a link in the chain of continuity of Russian foreign affairs and, indeed, of general international affairs. It is no accident that the concept of a great and united Russia, at the root of White ideology in 1917−22, was resurrected and supported by highly divergent post-Soviet groups, from nationalists to communists. In fact, the concept had never died, and in one form or another has existed at least as long as the nationalism of which it was born. All that has changed are the conditions under which it is promulgated, and the question of whether it is a primary or secondary factor in policy formulation at any given time.

It has often been said—and the Whites themselves contributed to this view—that the White armies were outside politics, interested only in defeating Bolshevism by military means, and that therefore they developed no comprehensive political program. Yet inasmuch as there was a positive program, it was embodied in the slogan Russia—Great, United, and Indivisible. This meant, in effect, the restoration of the Russian state within the borders of 1914 (with the exception of Poland) with local autonomy for the national minorities. This was more than the main goal of the movement. It was also a means of self-identification for the Whites: the slogan defined their movement and therefore could not be compromised. General Anton Denikin said as much in his five-volume memoir-cum-study of the Russian Revolution and Civil War, Ocherki russkoi smuty:

The unity of Russia. . . . Only that unity—wavering, debatable, perhaps even illusory—allowed me to impress upon others respect for the Russian name, to receive enormous assistance and to guard against external encroachments; to shield against the fate that awaits all small, unfriendly, bickering borderlands, ultimately swallowed up by foreigners.

This policy is described as intolerance. But can our great country survive without the Baltic and Black Seas? Can it allow its borderlands to become part of an enemy camp, though so much Russian, and especially Cossack, blood has been shed and so much Russian labor and property has been invested? . . .

This is not intolerance, but rather the observance of the higher interests of the Russian state.⁴

Of course, the concept of Russia—Great, United, and Indivisible was and is primarily associated with foreign, rather than domestic, policy. In this respect, what follows is a story of Primat der Aussenpolitik (the primacy of foreign affairs) taken to its extreme: of an attempt to pursue a foreign policy largely formulated under prerevolutionary conditions in an entirely different environment. The international pretensions that followed from such a program severely complicated relations not only with the newly established border states of the old empire but with all Russia’s neighbors, allies, and enemies, whose help and cooperation—or at least benevolent neutrality—were necessary to prosecute the struggle against Bolshevism.

This is particularly apparent in the Whites’ view of the German threat on their western frontier and in the way this view influenced their relations with the border states and the other European powers. Other problems—such as the question of concessions, treaty rights, and the maintenance of territorial integrity and spheres of influence in the Balkans and across the length of the southern border—also put the Whites into conflict with the demands and hopes of Russia’s neighbors near and far.

Nationalism was a key theme of the White movement: the fact that the Whites often called their cause the National Movement indicates the emphasis they placed on it. But nationalism was not the only determinant of White foreign policy. Besides this ideological factor, there were geopolitical, strategic, and economic considerations. There were also what might be called psychological factors: an irrational and ill-placed faith in the desire of the Allies to help them, and wishful thinking with regard to their own prospects that obscured the reality around them.

All these factors worked, in unison or separately, to give White foreign policy an unbending rigor in questions where a pragmatic flexibility may have achieved better results. The possibility of pursuing a different course has, however, been vastly overrated by historians and contemporaries alike. The course that was in fact taken was shaped by extreme pressures, both internal and external. Domestic political considerations, information received as to the aims and actions of foreign governments, and theoretical views as to the nature of the Russian geostrategic situation were all formative elements in determining the course of White foreign policy.

People and institutions also played a role. The choices of Mstislav Golovachev, Iurii Kliuchnikov, and Ivan Sukin to head the central apparatus of the Foreign Ministry at Omsk (at different times), or of Sergei Sazonov, Vasilii Maklakov, Boris Bakhmeteff, and others to represent the Whites abroad, had an important influence on the shape this policy was to take. Institutional rivalry—mainly among the army, navy, finance, and diplomatic departments—also affected the decision-making process and made unity of action difficult, if not impossible.

Nor was there machinery in place to properly formulate and implement a policy. Communications—the gathering and dissemination of information—were always a problem. The importance of communications should not be understated. A telegram from General Nikolai Iudenich in Northwestern Russia could take two weeks to reach Admiral Aleksandr Kolchak at Omsk, and the answer could take another two weeks to return. In the course of a month, the situation would change enough to negate both the original request and the answer. In part, this was an issue of funding, but it underlines how the organization as a whole was inadequate to deal with the questions the Whites faced. The lack of an efficient governmental machine, the appearance and retention of inexperienced and even chance figures in key positions, and the inability to respond quickly to a fluid situation made the conduct of foreign policy in a traditional mode all but impossible.

Unable to pursue their goals through the traditional channels of old diplomacy due to the lack of a sufficiently powerful state, army, and navy, the Whites also proved largely incapable of adapting to the forms of the new diplomacy, with its emphasis on propaganda and public opinion. None of this should be taken to mean that the Whites were totally ineffective or that they existed in a vacuum, only that the ways in which their foreign policy goals were formulated and expressed bear consideration independent of the goals themselves.

During the five years (1917−22) when the Whites controlled portions of Russian territory, the tenuous nature of their control did not allow them to develop the institutions of state and government necessary for the smooth and organized conduct of domestic or foreign policy. This condition alone is not sufficient to discount the study of the White movement. Indeed, the best students of this period have tried to give the Whites if not equal standing with the Reds, at least brief mention with regard to their role in international affairs.⁵ Certainly, the lack of access to key collections from Soviet archives, only opened to research in the 1990s, was a factor in the underdevelopment of this topic. But in greater measure this was a consequence of different historiographical concerns.

Two directions of research have reached mutually exclusive conclusions with regard to the role of the Whites in international affairs. One direction, focusing on the emergence of independent states from the ruins of the Russian Empire (Finland, Poland, the Baltic and Transcaucasian states, and Ukraine), emphasizes the enormous—and baleful—role the Whites played in delaying or blocking Western aid to, and recognition of, the newly independent states.⁶ The other direction, seeking the genesis of the Cold War in the early years of Soviet-Western relations or examining the ideology behind Soviet foreign policy and the origins of Soviet imperialism, with few exceptions relegates the Whites to the role of cardboard characters. It should be noted, however, that this study of ideology has gone in extremely diverse directions. At the one end were Soviet scholars, who saw in the Whites no more than puppets of the imperialist West; at the other end, the Whites play the role of frightful but otherwise insignificant bogeymen, brought into a study for narrative purposes rather than critical investigation.

As the civil war raged in Russia, its outcome hung in the balance at least until November 1919, when the failure of offensives by General Iudenich and General Anton Ivanovich Denikin became apparent. Throughout this period, the Great Powers (defined as Great Britain, the United States, France, Italy, and Japan) were unable to define a coherent policy toward Russia. Given the distaste with which Western leaders viewed the Bolsheviks, it should have been natural for them to support their enemies. Yet this was only partly the case. Western policy toward Russia was, in Winston Churchill’s words, partial, disjointed, halfhearted, inconsistent, and sometimes actually contradictory.⁷ The key to all the policy dilemmas born of this period lies as much with the Whites as with the Reds and the Western nations’ internal political considerations.

Ultimately, the Whites’ vision of where a future Russia would stand in the family of nations was so much at odds with the new world order being drafted at Paris by the victorious allies following World War I that there was very little place for it within this order. Only with reference to White goals and ambitions is it possible to come to a more complete understanding of the complexities of the Russian question that the world was forced to grapple with during the Paris Peace Conference. In all its major features, White foreign policy was an epilogue to Imperial Russian foreign policy—expressing the same concerns and dealing with them in the same manner. Certain actions and courses pursued by the imperial government to better the position of the Russian state in the world arena—such as the annexation of Constantinople and the Turkish Straits or the support of Slavic unity (if not unification)—were continued by the White governments insofar as circumstances would allow. Could the restoration of a Russian Empire, thus presumed, looming over Europe and Asia, be viewed benevolently by the Great Powers?

The Whites’ goal of a Great Russia was, of course, a construct of the classes, parties, and interest groups that formed the base of the movement, a fact which certainly did not make this goal seem any less absolute to those pursuing it. The Kadets (members of the Constitutional Democratic Party), one of the leading politico-ideological forces behind the White movement, had few differences with parties to the right or with the military when it came to Russia’s status as a great power. While there were disagreements within the White movement as to particular steps or means to achieve this goal, the goal itself was never questioned. The differences, however, point to problems of institutional and political rivalry, which affected the way in which decisions were reached and implemented.

Russia’s political situation at the time was one of shifting factions and philosophies, with frequent examples of political contortion. Some background at this point seems in order.

After the revolution of 1905, Russia had a multiparty political system, with numerous groups, blocs, parties, and factions of parties appearing and disappearing over the years leading up to 1917. Monarchists, Nationalists, Octobrists, Kadets, Progressivists, Popular Socialists, Socialist-Revolutionaries, and Social Democrats (Mensheviks and Bolsheviks) were just a few of the best-known collective actors on the political stage. The three political parties that played the most prominent roles in the civil war were the Bolsheviks, the Kadets, and the Socialist-Revolutionaries. The Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin, stood on one side, supported to one degree or another by renegades from Menshevism and other Social-Democratic and Socialist-Revolutionary groups. Their opponents, the Whites, were largely monarchists or adherents of the liberal parties: Kadets (Constitutional Democrats), Popular Socialists, and former Octobrists (who welcomed the tsar’s October Manifesto of 1905, but who, as monarchists, lost direction following the abdication of Nicholas II in 1917). Socialist-Revolutionaries were split: their left wing tended toward compromise with Bolshevism, while their right wing was at first actively anti-Bolshevik, and was deeply involved in the creation of the All-Russian Directory at the political conference held in Ufa in 1918. However, they opposed the political direction taken by the anti-Bolshevik movement after the downfall of the Directory, leading to a position that was characterized by the slogan neither Lenin nor Kolchak.

In terms of party platforms, the monarchists (though never forming an actual party) advocated the re-creation of a unitary state under the rule of a tsar, most likely from the Romanoff dynasty, and also by and large conforming to the restrictions of the October 1905 manifesto, though many favored a more strictly constitutional monarchy along British lines. The Constitutional Democratic platform united a broad range of liberals, from those favoring a constitutional monarchy to strict republicans. Their major concern was the sanctity of personal, property, and political rights within the framework of traditional nineteenth-century European liberal thought. Popular Socialists were very moderate in their political programs, being evolutionary in nature and oriented toward peasant socialism and egalitarianism rather than complete and forcible deprivation of property and curtailment of rights. Socialist-Revolutionaries, as their name implies, were more radical in their approach and goals, willing to achieve socialism by use of force and emphasizing its more expansive and definitive definition, encompassing all economic and political activity. The 1917 revolution and the civil war blurred many party lines and allegiances, so that Nikolai Chaikovskii, the founder of the Popular Socialist Party, and Boris Savinkov, one of Russia’s most dangerous terrorists and the head of the Socialist-Revolutionary Combat Organization for many years, suddenly found themselves in the same camp as the monarchists and took part in the workings of the Russian Political Conference in Paris alongside imperial foreign minister Sergei Sazonov, Kadet leader Vasilii Maklakov, and the liberal Prince Georgii Evgen’evich L’vov.

In speaking of the effect of nationalism on the development of Russian imperialism, historian Dietrich Geyer posited three "traditional desires with the capacity to make Russian hearts beat faster: the sight of the Patriarchal cross on St. Sophia [in Constantinople]; the destruction of the German Drang nach Osten [expansionism toward the east]; and the vision of Russia’s Slavic brothers grouped around her in wide-eyed admiration."⁸ Despite the inability to see these desires through to fruition and the more pressing immediacies of the struggle against the Bolsheviks, the Whites in their foreign policy were motivated to a striking extent by these same objectives.

Yet if the goals remained similar to those of prerevolutionary Russia, the process by which the Whites expected to reach these goals was starkly different. The lack of qualified personnel, the existence of competing governments and factions within governments, problems of communication between a head of state at Omsk and his foreign minister in Paris, the concentration of most of the political and diplomatic elite in European Russia or Europe, and regional authorities conducting independent foreign policy in their areas of influence—all of these precluded successful coordination.

Even so, as in prewar Russia, where (in historian D. C. B. Lieven’s words), Emperor, government and society . . . shared common instincts about Russia’s honour, prestige and history together with a common interpretation of how her interests were affected by international developments,⁹ there was a similar unity within the White movement with regard to basic interests. However, as we shall see, the condition of civil war introduced new aspects to those interpretations.

In the first decade of the century, Prime Minister Petr Arkad’evich Stolypin and opposition politician Petr Berngardovich Struve attached different meanings to their shared concept of a Great Russia.¹⁰ But even where tactics differed, Kadets, Octobrists, nationalists, and the government continued to pursue the same goal, and it should be no surprise that the concept therefore outlived the imperial government. Indeed, it fell to Struve, as foreign minister of General Petr Nikolaevich Vrangel’s government in the Crimea in 1920, to redefine it once again in the context of the most difficult period of the White struggle. But a Great Russia was really only one side of the coin held over from the prerevolutionary past. On the other side were two important psychological elements: fear and insecurity.¹¹ The fear of more technologically and economically advanced foreign powers encroaching on Russian territory, taking over its financial system, commerce, and economic development, pervaded strategic and foreign policy formulation not only throughout this period, but over much of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Russian history. In this atmosphere, the debate on various orientations Russia could or should follow, while similar to the international philias and phobias expressed in prewar Russia, had a special urgency in the atmosphere of 1918 and 1919.

Considering themselves protectors of the interests of the Russian state, the Whites were faced with the fact that the state as such did not exist. Thus their weak domestic and international position forced them to solve two ancillary problems before dealing with the central problem of foreign policy. These ancillary problems were international recognition and foreign aid in the struggle against Bolshevism.

In practice, these three directions—defending Russian territorial integrity, gaining international recognition, and securing foreign aid—became contradictory, which led to White foreign policy as a whole becoming unsustainable and the movement itself redundant in the international arena. Dependence on foreign powers for aid and recognition could not be reconciled with the pursuit of a great-power foreign policy that by its nature was at odds with the goals of these same foreign powers. In some respects, this was no different from the position of the other countries involved in the postwar settlement—all had to bring their appetites in line with what other powers were inclined to grant them. One recalls the Italian demand to take over the autonomous city of Fiume, French calls for the punishment of Germany, Japanese insistence on racial equality, the Chinese position on Shantung province, and many other complex issues raised at the Paris Peace Conference. The Russian question was different in that Russia was in a state of chaos and civil war, with competing governments proposing radically different programs. The result was that its voice remained largely unheard, leaving its interests to be interpreted and defined by other members of the international community.

Another difficulty faced by the White governments in formulating and implementing their foreign policy goals was a failure to reconcile some fundamental differences in their world view with corresponding views in the West. One of the chief issues of this nature was the origins of the revolution and civil war in Russia: Western leaders saw the root cause as fundamental flaws in the Russian system, while the Whites laid the blame at the feet of Germany and insisted that the Germans stood behind the Bolsheviks. Combining the two into Germano-Bolshevism led the Whites to ignore certain features of the domestic conflict and emphasize aspects of international affairs that had lost their significance with the conclusion of the First World War. For their part, Western leaders often unjustly tarred the Whites with a Germanophilic brush, implying secret negotiations or attempts at compromise with Germany, which only served to deepen mistrust of the Whites and their goals.

Those among the Whites who were responsible for the formulation and implementation of Russian foreign policy remained oblivious to the fundamental contradiction of their international position. True, as we shall see, time and events forced many to reassess the situation. But for the most part, the basic foreign policy constructs of the Whites remained in place even in the face of the collapse of the movement. The reasons for this were numerous and complex, but the key was in their worldview. It is of course easy to criticize the Whites in retrospect for a refusal to adapt, but that is to ignore the enormous pressures that kept certain possibilities, such as the recognition of the border states, from being realized. Problems of national security and geopolitical considerations (as the Whites understood them) ultimately outweighed the exigencies of the struggle against the Bolsheviks. Indeed, this study aims to argue that the fight for a Russia—Great, United, and Indivisible not only eclipsed the fight against Bolshevism, but made the latter struggle untenable.

Notes

*A few words of explanation are appropriate with regard to the term White. It has often been used interchangeably with the term anti-Bolshevik, but it should be borne in mind that not all anti-Bolsheviks were Whites. The latter term should be understood to refer primarily to the anti-Bolshevik people, institutions, and armed forces affiliated with Admiral Kolchak; generals Alekseev, Denikin, Vrangel’, Iudenich, and Miller; many of the Cossack atamans; and an assortment of other minor governments or military forces self-defined as White. It should not include, for example, the Komuch (Constituent Assembly) government based in Samara, which, though anti-Bolshevik, did not choose to define itself as a White government. For the Komuch, White was associated with the idea of a military dictatorship, whereas the Komuch saw itself as representing what one of its members called democratic counter-revolution. However, it lies beyond the purpose of this study to seek a precise definition for what has often improperly been used as a blanket term, and because anti-Bolshevik or counterrevolutionary is too bulky, the term White will be used as described above. At the same time, it should be noted that not all White or anti-Bolshevik governments will be treated equally in this study. Many were strictly regional governments whose purview was limited to local affairs. Only the governments of South Russia (Alekseev-Denikin-Vrangel’) and Siberia (Kolchak and his predecessors) laid claim to a wider circle of responsibilities and conducted an actual foreign policy as expressed in the formulation and implementation of courses of action, retention of agents abroad, and negotiations with foreign governments. While other regional governments sometimes fulfilled one or more of these criteria, they never achieved the level of activity or authority that the Siberian and South Russian governments had. Moreover, their relations with the outside world were restricted to the concerns of their regions, whereas the Siberian and South Russian governments claimed to speak for all of Russia. Therefore, the regional governments will be examined only insofar as their activities fall into the wider picture of the White movement as a whole.

1. See, e.g., Waldemar Gurian, ed., Soviet Imperialism: Its Origins and Tactics, A Symposium (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1953); Ivo J. Lederer, ed., Russian Foreign Policy: Essays in Historical Perspective (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1962); Teddy J. Uldricks, Diplomacy and Ideology (London: Sage Publications, 1979); Hugh Ragsdale, ed., Imperial Russian Foreign Policy (Washington, DC, and Cambridge: Woodrow Wilson Center Press and Cambridge University Press, 1993); and Gabriel Gorodetsky, Soviet Foreign Policy, 1917−1991: A Retrospective (London: Frank Cass, 1994). For an interesting perspective from the Russian Federation that illustrates the emotional charge the discussion carries, see N. A. Narochnitskaia, Istoricheskaia Rossiia i SSSR v mirovoi politike XX v., Novaia i noveishaia istoriia 1 (1998): 120−47.

2. Alastair Kocho-Williams, Russian and Soviet Diplomacy, 1900−39 (Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 148.

3. More generally, as Peter Kenez (one of the leading historians of the White movement) notes, Western historiography has tended to ignore the Whites altogether. Peter Kenez, Western Historiography of the Russian Civil War, in Essays in Russian and East European History: Festschrift in Honor of Edward G. Thaden, ed. Leo Schelbert and Nick Ceh (Boulder, CO: East European Monographs, 1995), 203.

4. A. I. Denikin, Ocherki russkoi smuty (Berlin: Mednyi vsadnik, 1925), 5:301.

5. Four works stand out among the rest. Louis Fischer’s two-volume The Soviets in World Affairs: A History of Relations between the Soviet Union and the Rest of the World (New York: Jonathan Cape, 1930) was among the first to concentrate attention on White documents. See also the excellent and standard works of John M. Thompson, Russia, Bolshevism, and the Versailles Peace (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1966); Arno J. Mayer, Politics and Diplomacy of Peace Making (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1967); and Richard Ullman, Anglo-Soviet Relations, 1917−1921, 3 vols. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1961−68). More recently, historians of American intervention in Russia and early US-Soviet relations have focused some attention on the role of Ambassador B. A. Bakhmeteff in these issues: David Foglesong, America’s Secret War against Bolshevism (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995); Linda Killen, The Russian Bureau: A Case Study in Wilsonian Diplomacy (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1983); David W. McFadden, Alternative Paths: Soviets and Americans, 1917−1920 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993); and Carl J. Richard, When the United States Invaded Russia: Woodrow Wilson’s Siberian Disaster (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2013).

6. See M. K. Dziewanowski, Joseph Pilsudski, a European Federalist, 1918–1922 (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 1969); and Olavi Hovi, The Baltic Area in British Foreign Policy, 1918−1921 (Helsinki: Finnish Historical Society, 1980). Hovi indeed refers to Dziewanowski as having shown that the White Russian Political Conference had considerable influence on the decision-making in Paris (160). However, Dziewanowski’s claim (Joseph Pilsudski, 88) cannot be taken as showing a causal link between White wishes and French policy. Piotr Wandycz also called the Russian Political Conference in Paris highly influential, a very questionable assumption. Piotr S. Wandycz, France and Her Eastern Allies, 1919–1925: French-Czechoslovak-Polish Relations from the Paris Peace Conference to Locarno (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1962), 116. In reality, delegates of most Russian border regions, including Belorussia and the North Caucasus, met with Clemenceau and other Allied high officials even as Allied leaders declined to meet with Sazonov. Charlotte Alston, Antonius Piip, Zigfrīds Meierovics and Augustinas Voldemaras: The Baltic States (London: Haus Publishing Ltd., 2010), 67.

7. Winston Churchill, The World Crisis (London: Thornton Butterworth Limited, 1929), 5:255.

8. Dietrich Geyer, Russian Imperialism (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1987), 345–46.

9. D. C. B. Lieven, Russia and the Origins of the First World War (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1983), 57; see also V. M. Khevrolina, Vneshnepoliticheskie kontseptsii rossiiskogo liberalizma v kontse XIX veka, Voprosy istorii, no. 10 (1997): 34–50, for a conclusion that the liberals supported Petersburg’s foreign affairs strategy in the 1880s and ’90s (50). On the foreign policy programs of the Octobrists and Kadets, together with a discussion of their agreements and disagreements with the government, see J. F. Hutchinson, The Octobrists and the Future of Russia as a Great Power, Slavonic and East European Review 50, no. 119 (April 1972): 220–37; and S. Galai, The Kadets and Russia’s Foreign Policy, Sbornik of the Study Group on the Russian Revolution 12 (1986): 2–24.

10. On the development and use of this concept before the First World War, see, e.g., Lieven, Russia and the Origins, 126–27 (and the appropriate citations); V. P. Riabushinskii, ed., Velikaia Rossiia: sbornik statei po voennym i obshchestvennym voprosam, 2 vols. (St. Petersburg, 1909–11); and P. B. Struve, Velikaia Rossiia: iz razmyshlenii o probleme russkogo mogushchestva, Russkaia mysl’ 29, no. 1 (1908): 143–57, where he fills the concept with a revolutionary meaning.

11. For brief but compelling indications of the significance of these factors, see William C. Fuller Jr., Strategy and Power in Russia, 1600−1914 (New York: Free Press, 1992), xv, xix–xx; Geyer, Russian Imperialism, 345; and Lieven, Russia and the Origins, 100.

CHAPTER 1

Diplomats in Search of a Government

November 1917–September 1918

The Russian Revolution and Russian Officials Abroad

The last time the chief of the Russian mission in Mexico, Vladimir Vendgauzen, received his trimesterly advance from the Russian Foreign Ministry was in September 1914. For five years, as he complained to the Foreign Ministry at Omsk in September 1919, he had been forced to rely on his savings. Now that they were exhausted, he asked for instructions as to how to close the mission and where to secure its archive and other government property.¹

As Vendgauzen’s experience suggests, the year 1917 did not in itself mark the beginning of a crisis for Russian diplomacy. The collapse of the Russian Provisional Government and the civil war that followed were the continuation and deepening of a crisis that, it might be said, had begun in July 1914, grown arithmetically over 1915 and 1916, and geometrically from 1917 on, reaching its peak in the period from the Bolshevik seizure of power in November 1917 to the evacuation of General Vrangel’s Russian army from the Crimea in November 1920. This crisis was marked by the steady erosion of Russian influence and even sovereignty during the First World War, along with the perceptible narrowing of its diplomatic interests to exclude everything not directly connected with the war effort. In 1917, however, the external cause of the crisis, the war with the Central Powers, combined with an internal development, the revolution, to produce an altogether unprecedented situation.

The central government had collapsed, leaving its representatives abroad—ambassadors, ministers, consuls, and a large number of other official agents—in a state of limbo. This situation had, of course, a precedent in the February Revolution (March in the Gregorian calendar), but then the problem had been resolved by the swift recognition of the Provisional Government. In November 1917 no such resolution would be forthcoming. Russian representatives abroad would be forced to rely on their own initiative in weathering the storm.

When Vasilii Alekseevich Maklakov presented himself at the Quai d’Orsay on November 7, 1917,² as Russia’s new ambassador to France, he was met with the news that the government that had appointed him was no more. Unable to present his diplomatic credentials on that day, he arranged with the French foreign minister, Jean-Louis Barthou, to return after the Bolshevik disturbance in Petrograd had been quelled and the Provisional Government restored to power.³ This return visit was never to take place.

Despite the fact that Maklakov could not be officially recognized as Russian ambassador, he was able to reach a modus vivendi with Barthou’s successor, Stephen Pichon, to be the unofficial chief representative of Russia in France, with the embassy nominally headed by the chargé d’affaires ad interim, Matvei Markovich Sevastopoulo. While in French diplomatic lists the post of Russian ambassador was left blank, Maklakov corresponded and met with French and other foreign officials and continued to perform his duties as ambassador de facto until French recognition of the Soviet government in 1924.⁴

In this manner, Maklakov’s position, though visibly weak, was solidified through the French government’s original assumption of the temporary nature of Bolshevik rule. The positions of Russian representatives in other countries occupied the entire spectrum of variations on the same theme. Among the strongest was that of Boris Aleksandrovich Bakhmeteff in Washington, DC. Appointed in the summer of 1917 by the Provisional Government, he immediately created a favorable impression in the United States, particularly in comparison to his predecessor and political antithesis, Georgii P. Bakhmet’ev.⁵

Bakhmeteff was, like Maklakov, a Constitutional Democrat. But unlike Maklakov, he had held a position in the Provisional Government as deputy minister of trade and industry. In his youth as a Menshevik, he never let politics get in the way of the more practical concern of education; prior to the First World War, he achieved international recognition as a professor of hydraulic engineering at the Institute of Transportation and St. Petersburg Polytechnic. When the First World War began, therefore, he seemed a natural choice to head the Central Military-Industrial Committee’s purchasing operations in the United States. Coupled with a good command of the English language and previous trips to America as an exchange student and scholar, his experience in this capacity led the government to appoint him to head a Russian mission to America in reply to the Root Mission to Russia in 1917.⁶ A strong advocate of closer Russo-American ties, Bakhmeteff found himself in an advantageous position when he arrived in the United States on June 15, 1917—Georgii P. Bakhmet’ev, a monarchist unwilling to serve the Provisional Government, had resigned in April and Russia found itself without an ambassador in Washington. The choice of Bakhmeteff to replace him was most fortunate, for Bakhmeteff’s liberal sentiments appealed as much to the American people at large, whom he addressed in a cross-country speaking tour, as they did specifically to one of President Wilson’s closest advisers, Colonel Edward M. House, and thus to the president himself.⁷

Personnel of the Russian Embassy in Paris, 1919. Hoover Institution Archives, Nikolai Bazili papers, box 30, envelope F.

Vasilii Alekseevich Maklakov, last Russian ambassador to France (undated). Hoover Institution Archives, Boris Nicolaevsky collection, box 813, envelope F.

Boris Bakhmeteff, last Russian ambassador to the United States, at his retirement in 1922. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, LC-F8–19164 [P&P], National Photo Company Collection, https://www.loc.gov/item/2016832942/.

America’s twenty-eighth president, Woodrow Wilson, had been a professor of political science and later president of Princeton University, but this experience prepared him little for the realm of international politics the United States entered with its declaration of war against Germany in April 1917. America entered the war at a critical time, as the February 1917 revolution in Russia had resulted in a weakening of military discipline and decreased Russia’s contribution to the war effort. Wilson himself had little clue about Russia—a state that was only peripheral to US interests until 1917—until he was forced to deal with the consequences of the revolution there and the implications for Europe, the war effort, and the broader stability of Western civilization posed by Bolshevism. In 1918, prior to deciding on intervention, he met with two unofficial representatives who beseeched him to take action: Maria Bochkareva, of simple peasant origin and commander of Russia’s first Women’s Battalion of Death, and Prince L’vov, a bastion of Russia’s politically liberal, yet essentially conservative, aristocracy. Ultimately, Wilson fell back on his own experience and set of strictly American political views that were of little use in understanding, let alone dealing with, the situation in Russia. Wilson’s role in setting goals and methods for US intervention in the Russian Civil War has been hotly contested by historians, but whatever his purposes for intervening, the subsequent involvement of American troops did little to bring any measure of resolution to the conflict.

Edward Mandell House was President Wilson’s closest adviser on European affairs, although the Texas businessman’s actual European experience was very limited, confined to a brief period of education in England in his youth. Nevertheless, House stood behind many of Wilson’s most significant foreign policy initiatives, such as his Fourteen Points peace proposal and later the plan for the League of Nations. Like Wilson, he espoused liberal views on international affairs; in particular, he was inclined to favor recognition of new nation-states. The true extent of his influence on Wilson in Russian affairs is difficult to judge. Like the president, he was confused by the Russian situation and came to it inclined to apply American liberal and democratic ideals and methods, but these were scarcely tenable in the context of a civil war fueled by ideology. At the same time, House had a deeply ingrained fear of Russian domination of Europe. This concern was great enough that he consistently supported a strong Germany as necessary to the economic stability of Europe and the welfare of the world.⁸ This fear appears to have informed much of his advice to Wilson with regard to Russian and European issues.

When the Bolsheviks took power, Bakhmeteff had not only official status and moral authority to fall back on, but also a degree of control over significant financial and material resources, in the form of military supplies and the credits the United States government had advanced to Russia for their purchase. Both the supplies and the credits were later to become the stuff of legend, as well as a source of rumors and conflict for the various groups and individuals seeking to control them.

Equally firm, if not as financially independent and influential, were the positions of Mikhail Nikolaevich Girs and Vasilii Nikolaevich Krupenskii, the ambassadors to Italy and Japan, respectively. Capable and seasoned diplomats both, they were holdovers from the tsarist regime who were quite competent in the international and domestic politics of their geographic regions. Krupenskii, moreover, was the doyen of the diplomatic corps of Tokyo, which meant that up to 1920 all the newly appointed representatives to Japan had to present themselves to him.⁹

With respect to the major powers, only in Great Britain was the diplomatic situation more ambiguous than in France. Deprived of an ambassador since the death of Count Alexander Benckendorff in January 1917, the Russian embassy had felt its authority in Britain wane even more quickly than the authority of the government it represented. The lengthy delay in appointing an ambassador, which involved several botched attempts throughout the year, drained the prestige of the embassy, headed by its counselor, Konstantin Dmitrievich Nabokov, as chargé d’affaires.

Ambassador Vasilii Nikolaevich Krupenskii, 1917. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, LC-B2–4285-10 [P&P], Bain News Service Photograph Collection, https://www.loc.gov/item/2014705195/.

Mikhail Girs, last Russian ambassador to Italy, 1930. Bakhmeteff Archive, Columbia University, Vasilii Nikitin papers, box 1, folder: Girs, M.N. photograph.

Nabokov, born in 1871, was an uncle of the famous author Vladimir Nabokov. He had begun his civil service in the Ministry of Justice in 1894, but two years later transferred to the Foreign Ministry, where his early career was confined to the chancellery. But after participating in the peace negotiations at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, in 1905 that concluded the Russo-Japanese War, he began to receive postings abroad: Brussels, Washington, DC, and Calcutta. In 1916, he was appointed counselor to the Russian Embassy in London. Following Benckendorff’s death in 1917, Nabokov became chargé d’affaires.

While Nabokov was not himself without influence (particularly as the brother of the well-known Kadet politician Vladimir Nabokov), the authority of a junior diplomat could extend only so far, especially in the difficult days and years that followed the Bolshevik rise to power. He was a liberal himself, though not a Kadet, and a man of broad views, who could find points in common with former socialist Russian prime minister Alexander Kerensky (the last recognized leader of Russia) and conservative political thinker and academic Petr Struve, and his excellent command of English and experience with the British from 1912 in many respects made up for his junior capacity (particularly for such a key post). Yet the fact that there was no accredited ambassador put the embassy in a more vulnerable position than it might other wise have been. This became most apparent in the course of 1918, when Nabokov, who was already under suspicion from the right wing of London’s large Russian colony for his sympathy to the February Revolution, came under attack from the Left, in the person of Maxim Litvinov, who demanded the transfer of the embassy and its property to the Soviet government. It was only with great difficulty that Nabokov was able to keep the British government from excluding him from the diplomatic list.¹⁰

The position of Russian representatives in other countries was generally similar. The Russian ministers in Greece (Elim Pavlovich Demidov, Prince of San Donato), Romania (Stanislav Al’fonsovich Poklevskii-Kozell), and Sweden (Konstantin Nikolaevich Gul’kevich) were all able and experienced diplomats who, with the exception of Gul’kevich (appointed in June 1917 to replace Anatolii Vasil’evich Nekliudov), had been left untouched in the course of the Provisional Government’s juggling of diplomatic posts. Gul’kevich, in particular, who was to play a significant role in 1919, was described by the embassy’s commercial attaché as a richly gifted, delicate and complex ‘diplomat by the grace of God,’ with a steel will [and] a firm sense of duty, demanding of himself and his subordinates.¹¹

Elim Pavlovich Demidov, Prince of San Donato, last Russian ambassador to Greece (undated). Hoover Institution Archives, Russia. Missiia (Greece) records, Photofile 33008, envelope A.

Konstantin Gul’kevich, last Russian ambassador to Sweden (undated). Bakhmeteff Archive, Columbia University, Konstantin Gul’kevich papers, box 2, folder: photographs.

As far as the other European capitals were concerned, Copenhagen was leaderless, having never received Sevastopoulo, who had been held up in Paris as chargé d’affaires. The Hague’s A. N. Svechin was ill and left affairs in the hands of his second secretary, P. K. Pustoshkin. The legation in Oslo was also headed by a chargé, Count D. F. Kotsebue Pilar von Pilkhau. Ambassador Dmitrii Nelidov and his staff only returned to Brussels at the end of November 1918, at the conclusion of the war and, with it, of German occupation of the Belgian capital. They were greeted well by the Belgians, who still seemed to consider Russia among the Allies and deserving of respect.¹² The position of all these representatives was largely irrelevant with regard to the larger issues of international politics in 1917 and 1918, but in 1919 they did play a role in solving questions directly related to the needs of the White governments.

In Asia, the situation of the Russian minister in China, Prince N. A. Kudashev, was the most stable, despite its complexity. The Chinese, long interested in a reexamination of the unequal treaties imposed on China by a dominant Russia, at first felt that the collapse of governmental authority in Russia was a good opportunity to see this through. Other powers, however, who had been parties to some of these treaties or had concluded similar ones independently, felt obligated to prevent the setting of a precedent allowing for unilateral Chinese abrogation of its treaties with Russia. The resulting status quo enforced by third parties allowed Kudashev to retain his status. A career diplomat, Kudashev was well fitted to deal with those third parties. He had begun his career in the Russian Embassy in Japan (1902), proceeded to Constantinople as first secretary of the Russian Embassy between 1906 and 1910, and then served in the United States between 1910 and 1913. For the first two years of World War I, he was the Foreign Ministry’s representative at General Headquarters, but in 1916 was appointed ambassador to China.

Russian representatives in Central and South America faced the most difficult situation. We have already seen the problems of the consul-general in Mexico, Vladimir Vendgauzen. Similarly, all the Russian missions in South America were headed by chargés—sometimes at the level of vice-consul (Chile)—with the last minister, A. I. Shcherbatskoi at Rio de Janeiro, having abandoned his post early in 1918 for Paris.¹³

While these distant outposts were largely irrelevant not only to White but even Imperial Russian foreign policy, they illustrate the atrophy and collapse of the organization of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Beginning as early as 1914, those regions in which Russia did not have a direct and immediate interest were largely abandoned.¹⁴ Appointment to one of these posts was always considered a form of honorable exile, but with the onset of the war the ministry was forced to concentrate its resources entirely on pressing needs within a geographically more constrained area. The February Revolution brought with it swift changes not only at the top level of the ministry, but in the assignment of diplomatic posts as well. An attempt was made to fill many key