2 - Approaching the Russian problem

Summary

The more remote origins of the Genoa Conference, it has been suggested, lie in the increasing realisation that urgent steps had to be taken to reconstitute the post-war European economy, combined with an increasing awareness that some form of relations would have to be established with the new Soviet government in Moscow. The Soviet government, it had become clear, was likely to survive for at least the foreseeable future, and no realistic alternative appeared to remain but to attempt to establish a political and economic relationship between the new regime and the rest of Europe, a task as great as any that European statesmen had experienced since the end of the French revolutionary wars. The more immediate origins of the conference lie in a number of further circumstances. It had become clear, first of all, that the two problems, that of European reconstruction and that of the establishment of some sort of relations with the Soviet government, were closely interconnected; and secondly, it had become apparent that the position of the Soviet government, although difficult, was not such as to allow the western powers to dictate their own terms to it. Thirdly, and perhaps most important, the Soviet government's own actions, as well as the declarations of its representatives in their dealings with foreign powers, suggested that the new regime might for its own part be interested in establishing a closer relationship with its western neighbours, in order, above all, to revive its own economy, and that it might not be inflexible in regard to the issues that the western powers regarded as most important in this connection, such as propaganda and debts.