Book Review

Canada and the United States

In this careful study of U.S. policy making toward the Russian Revolution, Donald E. Davis and Eugene P. Trani argue that "President Woodrow Wilson's administration initiated a 'cold war' that lasted from 1917 to 1933" (p. xxi). Wilson's legacy in U.S.-Soviet relations, they further contend, provided the precedent for the Cold War from 1946 to 1991, thereby making the Wilsonians "the first cold warriors" (p. 206). The authors develop this thesis by focusing on the U.S. government's search for a policy to deal with revolutionary Russia from 1917 to 1920, but not on what was happening in Russia. They seek to explain U.S. policy making toward "the Russian problem" rather than to examine the problem itself. Although they give some attention to how European governments reacted to revolutionary Russia in the midst of World War I and at the Paris Peace Conference, the authors keep their focus on the United States.	1
Davis and Trani criticize Wilson for his failure to define a constructive policy. After the March 1917 Russian Revolution, the president sent the Republican elder statesman Elihu Root on a diplomatic mission to Russia, and the engineer John F. Stevens on a technical mission to assist with the operation of the Trans-Siberian railway. These missions and some credits, relief, and propaganda, the authors conclude, were the only "efforts that constituted Wilson's foreign policy toward Russia during the months of the Provisional Government. The Wilson administration was increasingly aware of the worsening situation, but it failed to act" (p. 55). This was "Wilson's lost opportunity of gargantuan proportions and consequences" (pp. 56–57). Davis and Trani do not, however, address the fundamental question as to whether anything Wilson might have done at this time could have kept the Provisional Government in power and prevented the Bolshevik Revolution in November 1917. In other words, by focusing narrowly on U.S. policy making they neglect the broader question as to whether revolutionary Russia was beyond the control of the United States and the Allies. Wilson's handling of the Russian problem might well deserve criticism, but the authors' conclusion that he was responsible for a "lost opportunity" depends on their unexamined assumption that a viable alternative was available.	2
The Soviet seizure of power, according to Davis and Trani, still did not elicit an adequate response in Washington. Wilson and his secretary of state, Robert Lansing, struggled to find a policy. They did not recognize V. I. Lenin's new regime, but neither did they attempt to overthrow it by intervention. "One can only conclude," the authors judge, "that there was no policy except that of doing nothing—watching and waiting—in the hope that Lenin's government would be overthrown" (p. 73). While seeking victory over imperial Germany on the western front, the president adopted the essentially negative approach of nonrecognition and nonintervention in dealing with the Russian problem on the eastern front. He was, the authors observe, "doing nothing with the Bolsheviks in the hope that democratic forces would soon emerge to overthrow Lenin and carry on the struggle with Germany" (p. 79).	3
Officially, the Wilson administration supported neither engagement with Lenin's radical government nor counterrevolution against it, although some Americans in Russia advocated and even pursued both alternatives. With the approval of U.S. ambassador David R. Francis, General William V. Judson, chief of the U.S. military mission in Russia, and Colonel Raymond Robins, an American Red Cross official, initiated tentative contacts with the new Soviet regime, notably with its foreign minister Leon Trotsky. Even when Germany resumed war on the eastern front in February 1918, these overtures did not lead to a new U.S.-Soviet relationship. As Davis and Trani note, "Lansing and Wilson closed the door to the Judson-Robins alternative" (p. 89). The authors think this alternative might have prevented Soviet Russia from concluding the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with Germany in March 1918. "If Robins had succeeded with Washington," they suggest, "then Trotsky's 'no peace, no war' formula might also have succeeded" (p. 115). The Soviets might not have signed the treaty ending the war on the eastern front, the authors conclude, but they offered no evidence to support this speculation.	. . .