If the Russian armies now under the command of the people’s commissaires commence and seriously conduct hostilities against the forces of Germany and her allies, I will recommend to my Government the formal recognition of the de facto government of the people’s commissaires.59
Because of their lack of interest in the subject, the Allies possessed very inadequate information on the internal conditions in Bolshevik Russia. They were not particularly well served by their diplomatic missions there. George Buchanan, the British Ambassador, was a competent but conventional foreign service officer, while Francis, a St. Louis banker, was, in the words of a British diplomat, “a charming old gentleman” but presumably no more than that. Neither seems to have been aware of the historic importance of the events in the midst of which they found themselves. The French envoy, Joseph Noulens, an ex-Minister of War and a socialist, was intellectually better prepared for his job, but his dislike of Russians and his brusque, authoritarian manner reduced his effectiveness. To make matters worse, in March 1918, the Allied missions lost direct contact with the Bolshevik leaders because they would not follow them to Moscow: from Petrograd they moved first to Vologda, and from there, in July, to Archangel.* This obliged them to rely on secondhand reports provided by their agents in Moscow.
The latter were young men who threw themselves body and soul into the Russian drama. Bruce Lockhart, a onetime British Consul in Moscow, served as a link between London and the Sovnarkom; Raymond Robins, head of the U.S. Red Cross mission to Russia, did the same for Washington; and Captain Jacques Sadoul, for Paris. The Bolsheviks did not take these intermediaries terribly seriously, but they realized their utility: they cultivated and flattered them, and treated them as confidants. In this manner they managed to persuade Lockhart, Robins, and Sadoul that if their countries offered Russia military and economic aid, the Bolsheviks would break with the Germans and perhaps even return to the war. Unaware that they were being used, the three agents adopted these views as their own and championed them vigorously with their governments.
Sadoul, a socialist, whose mother had taken part in the Paris Commune, felt the strongest ideological attraction for the Bolsheviks: in August 1918 he would defect to them, for which he would be condemned to death in absentia as a deserter and traitor.†
Robins was a devious individual who in his communications with Lenin and Trotsky expressed enthusiasm for their cause but on returning to the United States pretended to oppose Bolshevism. An affluent social worker and labor organizer with socialist leanings, the self-styled colonel, on the eve of his departure from Russia, sent Lenin a farewell note in which he wrote:
Your prophetic insight and genius of leadership have enabled the Soviet Power to become consolidated throughout Russia and I am confident that this new creative organ of the democratic life of mankind will inspire and advance the cause of liberty throughout the world.*
He further promised, on his return, to “continue efforts” in interpreting “the new democracy” to the American people. However, testifying soon afterward before a Senate committee on conditions in Soviet Russia, Robins urged economic assistance to Moscow on the disingenuous grounds that it was a way of “disorganizing Bolshevik power.”†
Lockhart was ideologically the least committed of the three, but he, too, allowed himself to be turned into an instrument of Bolshevik policy.‡
