Southern Conference on Slavic Studies
Washington, D. C., 3 March 2001
By Michael Jabara Carley©
There is no doubt that Maksim M. Litvinov is a most interesting and sympathetic figure in Soviet international affairs in the pre-1945 period. It's true though that not everyone feels this way. For the late, distinguished Adam Ulam, Litvinov "was simply a tool" of Stalin. D. Cameron Watt considers him to have been a blind communist ideologue, not less guilty than his other colleagues of "doctrinaire stupidity". And Stephen Schuker has referred to Litvinov as the smiling whorehouse piano player, playing the tunes called by the master of the house, Stalin, leering, brooding, unseen from the second floor.
Well, I am reluctant to challenge such eminent and well-known historians, but let me dare to disagree with the help of the evidence provided by Professors Hugh Ragsdale, Albert Resis, and Geoffrey Roberts. Litvinov was anything but stupid, doctrinaire, and he was certainly no tool of Stalin. In the 1920s Litvinov and his nominal superior, G. V. Chicherin, often went to Stalin for support for their pragmatic policies of trade and business-like relations with France, Britain, and the United States. In the archives of the Russian foreign ministry, one can find numerous memoranda by Litvinov and Chicherin, as early as 1922-1923, seeking to gain Stalin's support for one policy or another, and for reigning in Comintern revolutionaries, making trouble for Narkomindel policy toward the west.
Apparently, Stalin was interested and involved in foreign policy, much sooner that most of us have heretofore believed. I have heard it said that Litvinov was something of Stalinist, but it may be that at the beginning it was the other way 'round: Stalin was a Litvinovets. Either way, they appeared to pursue similar foreign policy objectives in the 1920s and 1930s. What a contrast between Stalin and Litvinov, the red tsar, the purger, the gulag master; and the agreeable, urbane, pragmatic diplomat. In some ways however Litvinov was no less tough than "the boss". During the inter-war period he was relentless in pursuing two main objectives: trade and trade credits for economic reconstruction and security for the Soviet Union.
In the 1930s, of course, security overshadowed trade because of the rising menace of Nazism. But Litvinov always considered trade a valuable tool of diplomacy in improving political relations. This was something the British and French governments forgot in 1939.
It is Litvinov's activities during the late 1930s and during the war, which are the present topic of discussion. Professor Ragsdale focuses on the Czech crisis in 1938 and on the side issue of the Butenko scandal in February 1938. Fedor Butenko was the Soviet first secretary in Bucarest, who in February 1938 disappeared only to reappear soon thereafter in fascist Italy. This is an interesting story which illustrates to what state Soviet diplomacy had fallen because of the purges. While Litvinov fought for collective security, Stalin had his best diplomats, soldiers, and commissars shot. Stalin, supposedly so security conscious, probably did more than Nazi diplomacy in the 1930s to undermine Soviet security. Now there is a sad irony. I always remember Roy Medvedev's image of Stalin, "the helmsman of the ship of state, clutching its steel wheel with a grip of death. Dozens of times he steered it onto reefs and shoals and far off course." We can wonder now how he did not manage to sink the Soviet state, though really in the long term he did. Contemporary observers concluded that the Soviet Union was either being run by lunatics killing off their most talented generals and officials, or it was a country riddled with traitors.
Poor Litvinov had to work in this atmosphere of fear and death at home and horrified confusion or agreeable self-satisfaction abroad. Litvinov tried to make foreign policy without noticing the purges, but it was not easy, quite apart from what commentators in the west thought. In February 1939 he let his exasperation show in a conversation with the French ambassador: how can I make foreign policy, he said, with the Lubianka across the street? And he gestured out his window to the Lubianka prison where Stalin's cops did their work. Butenko walked away from his embassy in Bucarest to escape the purges, and Litvinov had to invent a story to explain it away. The story must have tasted bitter in his mouth. Professor Resis tells of a Litvinov memo to Stalin in early 1939, reporting on the many vacant diplomatic posts abroad, emptied by the purges, and how the vacancies inhibited Soviet diplomacy.
Professor Ragsdale also addresses Litvinov's policies during the Czech crisis. Always cautious, Litvinov had to rein in his polpred in Prague, Sergei Aleksandrovskii, from encouraging too much Czech resistance to Nazi demands for the Sudetenland. We will not go one step ahead of France, he warned. Remember that Soviet foreign policy during the late 1930s had to walk a fine line: if the Soviet Union was too aggressive, western anti-communists would accuse it of being a warmonger bent upon war and the spread of communism in Europe. If Soviet policy was too weak, the critics would say that Litvinov was bluffing and not serious about collective security. So it turns out that Soviet policy was cautious, prudent during the Czech crisis. Professor Ragsdale says Litvinov's "most important objective was not to incite a war that Moscow could stay out of; it was rather how to avoid war altogether". In Litvinov's mind, collective security meant building up a grand alliance to contain or deter Nazi aggression. But deterrence ran the risk of war. And this is what Litvinov sometimes said to his western interlocutors.
"Draw the bayonet and Hitler will back down," Litvinov told Robert Coulondre, the French ambassador in Moscow in July 1938.
"But calling Hitler's bluff might lead to war," Coulondre replied.
It's possible, Litvinov said, but we need to face the crisis in Czechoslovakia with a united front and brave hearts. I would therefore add only this qualification to Professor Ragsdale's comments: Litvinov did indeed want to preserve European peace by deterring Nazi Germany, but he appears to have been ready for war if deterrence failed.
To this the critic will reply: "Ah but what about the master of the whore house, Stalin? He really wanted war and communist revolution." Who knows what Stalin thought in the deepest recesses of his mind, but the preponderance of evidence shows Soviet government policy to have been one of prudent resolve and deep, justified mistrust of France and Britain.
Professor Resis also talks about Litvinov's policies in the mid- and later 1930s. He suggests that Litvinov "lost his grip" in early 1939 and temporarily gave up on collective security. I think that Litvinov did lose his grip a little in 1939; he was rattled and discouraged. Many people were. His comments to the French ambassador are evidence of this, as are his cynical briefing notes for Stalin during this period. Instead of offering policy recommendations, he sometimes asked for directives from the boss. A good minister always tries to lead and not be led. Of course, this was dangerous work with Stalin, but Litvinov had guts. He could take the lead, and did in April 1939.
Professor Resis says Stalin took the lead in making the April proposals for a tripartite alliance with France and Britain. But reading the same materials, I would say that Litvinov took the initiative in developing Soviet proposals for a political and military alliance, with well-defined military obligations, and guarantees for all the eastern European states bordering the Soviet Union. Remember that the Soviet government had sought staff talks with France for three years and was repeatedly rebuffed (1935-1938). This was longstanding Soviet policy. In other words, the Soviet April 1939 proposal for a tripartite alliance was consistent with previous Soviet policies for which Litvinov was the main proponent.
I agree with Professor Resis, however, that Stalin may have decided to sack Litvinov for being too soft on the French and British. In early May Litvinov proposed further concessions regarding security guarantees for Holland, Belgium, and Switzerland (as a quid pro quo for the eastern guarantees) without getting anything back or anything much from his Anglo-French interlocutors. Stalin may well have concluded that enough was enough. Someone tougher was needed to deal with the French and British governments.
Geoffrey Roberts picks up Litvinov's story in 1941 when Litvinov went to Washington as Soviet ambassador but more particularly when he returned to Moscow in 1943 to participate in Soviet post-war planning.As Professor Roberts notes, many observers have concluded that Litvinov ceased to influence Soviet policy after he was sacked in 1939. In this assumption we stand to be corrected. I noticed a good deal of continuity in Litvinov's views before and after 1939. He favoured "close cooperation… for an integrated… grand alliance". With the necessary changes he also favoured such a policy before 1939 to deter Nazi Germany. Indeed, he said in 1942--quite correctly I think--that if such cooperation had been achieved before the war, things might have turned out rather better than they had done. Litvinov's view of the post-war world also envisaged continued cooperation between the Soviet Union and the other great powers. Perhaps his main miscalculation was that there were no great powers after the war, apart from the United States. So there were no other states capable of balancing the ever expansive power of the United States. Litvinov's other miscalculation, as Professor Roberts notes, was to put too much importance on the British role after the war. Britain was too weak and battered to provide any counter-balance to American power.
Litvinov urged post-war cooperation in order to prevent the re-sumption of hostility between the Soviet Union and the west, and in particular the United States. But as Professor Roberts observes, Litvinov was no patsy of the west in proposing these ideas. Litvinov was never a patsy of the west and knew how to drive a hard bargain. The great problem of the post-war period was that in the one-on-one Soviet-American relationship, there was little room for cooperation, but a great deal of room for conflict.
Professor Roberts notes that at the end Litvinov complained about the intrusion of ideology into Soviet policy-making, in contrast to Litvinov's focus on power, interests, and diplomacy. And this ideological worldview replaced Litvinov's realpolitik. But Soviet foreign policy-making may not have changed so much in the post-1945 period. Prior to 1939 Litvinov had to defend Soviet interests from a position of weakness, and this required compromise, finesse, and a softer approach. After 1945 the Soviet Union was no longer a weak, isolated state. It was a major power, which had crushed Hitler's armies, and, so it seemed, no longer needed to go hat in hand to the west. It had interests to protect and the power to protect them whether the United States liked it or not. Soviet calculations may have been dominated by an ideological worldview in the post-1945 period, as Professor Roberts suggests, or it may be that the Soviet government calculated that it had the power to dispense with Litvinov's more conciliatory approach.
What is consistent throughout Litvinov's career as a Soviet diplomat, spanning nearly thirty years, was his calculation that Soviet security was best served by good or correct relations with the west. What we need to understand is why these policies so consistently failed without always blaming the dark figure in the whorehouse calling the tunes of the smiling piano player on the first floor. Professors Ragsdale, Resis, and Roberts are taking us some way down the road to a more enlightened understanding of Soviet policy and early Soviet-western relations.