Between Washington and Wilson
Relations between the Russian Empire and the United States have been friendly since the days of George Washington. During the Revolutionary War, Russia passively supported American rebels and the Union (Northerners) during the Civil War. Territorial disputes in the Bering Strait and Alaska were resolved peacefully, and in 1867 American possessions in Russia were sold for $7.2 million. The partnership was largely explained by the presence of a common enemy – Great Britain, as well as the absence of direct conflict of vital interests. Towards the end of the 19th century, the Tsarist government began to seem authoritarian and despotic to Americans, but neither this nor the conflicts of interest in the Far East could seriously sour relations. During World War I, Americans supported the Allied Powers (and with it Russia), but the October Revolution changed everything.
From then on the relationship got weird. On the one hand, the RSFSR was a complete enemy of the USA: the Bolsheviks denied faith in God, were enemies of the market economy and capitalism, and proclaimed the class struggle and the dictatorship of the proletariat. US President Woodrow Wilson and almost the entire American elite, who were deeply Christian, viewed the market and capitalism as the only working economic models and preached the unity of people of all classes and their ability to compete in free elections on equal terms. The ultimate goal of the Bolsheviks was a world revolution that would destroy the old order, including the liberal democracies. Therefore, it is not surprising that the United States does not recognize the new Russian government.
On the other hand, Americans could not help but sympathize with the anti-monarchist revolution. In the news of the execution of the royal family, leading American newspapers condemned the atrocities of the Bolsheviks, but often treated it with a philosophical understanding, as an element of the natural course of history. The English of Charles I or XVI. Parallels were drawn with executions carried out by Louis’ French. Both executions were accompanied by bloody revolutions, a period of chaos and the dominance of violent extremist ideologies, but the countries eventually became stable democracies. In such a future it was believed and Wilson, and therefore even offered to invite the red delegation to the Paris Peace Conference, where the victors decided the fate of the world after the First World War.
At that time it was not possible to reach an agreement with the Bolsheviks, and there were no diplomatic relations between the countries. US Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes had made this point clearly in the early 1920s: “The rulers of Moscow have not abandoned their original object of destroying existing governments wherever they can throughout the world” and therefore recognition of such an attack by the Regime was out of the question Douglas Little, “Anti-Bolshevism and American Foreign Policy, 1919-1939”.
How far have capitalists gone for profit?
Despite all the ideological and political contradictions, there was one factor that brought the USSR and the USA closer together: Money. In the late 1920s, a new wave of industrialization began in Russia, and American companies could not ignore such a source of income. The Soviet Union needed American technology and ready-made equipment. In 1929, Henry Ford agreed to help build the Gorky Automobile Plant, which soon began producing two models: the GAZ-A passenger car and the GAZ-AA truck (“truck”), licensed copies of the Model A and AA, respectively. The “Truck” became the Red Army’s most popular truck and played a major role in industrialization, earning Ford tens of millions of dollars.
It was under pressure from business and business circles that the US government decided to recognize the USSR. This was particularly driven by the Great Depression, as businesses needed new markets to overcome this. Newly elected President Franklin Roosevelt thought the deal with the Communists was a good price for economic recovery, but he approached the issue cautiously. He conducted a survey among newspaper editors (similar to modern opinion polls): 63 percent were in favor of recognition of the USSR, 27 percent were against it. The president then met with Catholic leaders and tried to overcome their objections to the Bolshevik repression of believers and the mass destruction of churches.
Only after that, in November 1933, the People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs Maxim Litvinov was invited to Washington. There he laid out the conditions for recognition of America: the USSR must guarantee the religious freedom of Americans working in the country, cease carrying out subversive work against the US government, and refuse to interfere in its internal affairs. The issue of payment of the tsar’s debts, which the Bolsheviks had given up on, was postponed indefinitely.
On November 16, Litvinov and Roosevelt exchanged notes on establishing diplomatic relations. The first Soviet ambassador to America was Alexander Troyanovsky, and the American ambassador to the USSR was William Bullitt. It is interesting that he came to Russia with great enthusiasm and desire to connect and left in 1936 as an ardent anti-communist and opponent of totalitarianism.
Nothing now stood in the way of full-scale economic cooperation, but, as it turned out, trade with the USSR did not bring such fabulous profits as American business had dreamed of. many in the USA Disappointed in this agreement. It is believed that there was also disappointment on the Soviet side, but this was because a large influx of equipment and technology managed to enter the country through the Soviet organization Amtorg even before relations were established.
Turnkey factories
Industrial architect Albert Kahn and his firm Albert Kahn Inc. played a special role in Soviet industrialization. In the USA, Kahn became famous as the creator of industrial reinforced concrete structures, in which it was convenient to build large production areas. He also designed city buildings and earned the nickname “Detroit’s architect”: notably, he designed the Art Deco Fisher Building and the neoclassical Cadillac Place.
But his contribution to Soviet industry was much greater than that of American art. In 1930, the Supreme Council of National Economy of the USSR and the Kahn company agreed to create Gosproektstroy, which had an office in Moscow. It was a consulting agency in the modern sense, but with active direct involvement in design. It was run by George Scrimgeour, one of Kahn’s employees. As a result, several dozen American consultants trained more than 4 thousand Soviet engineers and took part in the design of more than 500 enterprises.
American firms helped not only in the design but also in the construction of the factories; Among them, almost all were the pride of the first “five-year plans”. Among them, AZLK and the above-mentioned GAZ (the USSR was especially interested in Ford’s car conveyor production technology), the Chelyabinsk Tractor Plant, the Stalingrad Tractor Plant built in the USA were dismantled and delivered almost by ship. on a turnkey basis, DneproGES (70% of American equipment, mostly General Electric), UralMash and many other heavy industrial enterprises. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil of New York helped establish oil production and refining in the Baku region, and the Radio Corporation of America participated in the development of radio equipment production.
However, in the second half of the 1930s, when the Americans trained a sufficient number of engineers (according to the Soviets), they began to be expelled from the country. Gosproektstroy was closed even earlier, and soon Soviet propaganda began in every possible way to erase foreign experts from the history of industrialization. Especially in the magazine “Architecture of the USSR” appeared The article “Khlestakov’s Revelations of Albert Kahn”, which tries to refute parts of an article written by an engineer about work in the USSR – its title speaks for itself.
According to the official version of the Stalinist government, Soviet industrialization was carried out on its own, “without plundering the colonies” and falling into the captivity of foreign capital. It is not entirely clear why they insist on this thesis: after all, buying advanced factories for reasonable money is a profitable and correct investment in any case.