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Argonauts of Peace: The Soviet Delegation to Western Europe in the Summer of 1917

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Rex A. Wade
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Extract

“We are Argonauts of peace.” Under this self-description a delegation of Russian socialists sailed to western Europe in the summer of 1917 to rally popular support for a great conference of world socialism to meet at Stockholm for the purpose of reuniting the International and ending the war. Of all the peace flurries of the war none other roused such hopes and fears as the “Stockholm Conference.” Its proposal caused sharp crises in the governments and in the socialist parties of all the belligerent powers. That it never met contributed mightily to the outcome of the Russian Revolution and the Bolsheviks' coming to power.

The Stockholm Conference was the child of the Russian Revolution. There had been several abortive efforts during the war to reconvene the International, and now the Russian Revolution encouraged some neutral socialists to form a Dutch-Scandinavian Committee to make another effort. It met with a rebuff from the socialist parties of the belligerent powers. The intervention of the Petrograd Soviet of Workers and Soldiers Deputies, however, drastically changed the situation. The Soviet took its first, tentative step into international affairs with the issuance on March 14/27 of a general appeal to the peoples of all countries to unite for peace. Soviet backing for an international socialist conference took more concrete form when the “Siberian Zimmerwaldists,” led by Irakli Tsereteli, returned to Petrograd in late March and asserted their control over the Soviet.

Type
Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 26 , Issue 3 , September 1967 , pp. 453 - 467
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1967

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References

1 L'Humanitd, July 29, 1917.

2 The Stockholm Conference has received sporadic attention over the years and its importance for the outcome of the Russian Revolution, for the evolution of European socialism, and for the whole international situation after the war has been often recognized, atleast vaguely. Nevertheless, verylittle has been done on the conference and virtually no use made of the existing Russian sources, which are critical in view of the Russian primacy in the attempt to convoke it. As a result, the Russian role in the conference has beenleftlargely untouched and the whole conference badly out of focus. Notable among works on European socialist movements during the war which treat the Stockholm Conference within that context are Merle, Fainsod, International Socialism and the World War (Cambridge, Mass., 1935), pp. 124–64Google Scholar, and Gankin, Olga and Fisher, H. H., eds., The Bolsheviks and the World War : The Origin of the Third International (Stanford, 1940), pp. 582–683 Google Scholar. Robert, Warth, The Allies and the Russian Revolution : From the Fall of the Monarchy to the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (Durham, N.C., 1954), pp. 66–88 Google Scholar, discusses it from the point of view of Allied policy toward the revolution. The attempt to convene the Conference is viewed as an important element in the changing patterns of international political relations in Arno Mayer's stimulating Political Origins of the New Diplomacy, 191J-1918 (New Haven, 1959), pp. 190-237. Of recent histories of Western socialist andlabor movements Robert, Wohl, French Communism in the Making, 1914-1918 (Stanford, 1966), pp. 83–95 Google Scholar, summarizes the French socialist reaction to the Russian Revolution briefly but well and notes the importance of the failure of the Conference for the rise of communism. He haslittle to say about the conference itself. Similarly, Stephan, Graubard, British Labour and the Russian Revolution, 1917-1924 (Cambridge, Mass., 1956)Google Scholar, summarizes Britishlabor attitudes toward the March Revolution and gives an account of the crisis Stockholm caused in government and Labour Party circles but does not really treat the Stockholm Conference and Russian efforts to convene it. The only work on the conference specifically is Hildamarie, Meynell, “The Stockholm Conference of 1917,” International Review of Social History, V (1960), 1–25, 202-25.Google Scholar

3 The appeal is in Golder, Frank A., Documents of Russian History, 1914-1917 (New York, 1927), pp. 325-29.Google Scholar The New Style calendar has been used in dating throughout this paper except that when events inside Russia are referred to, as in this instance, both dates are given.

4 This was not the view of the Siberian Zimmerwaldists alone, of course, but they formulated the most influential version—the one that triumphed in Russia in 1917. The process by which they gained the ascendancy in the Soviet and then in the government is outlined in Rex A., Wade, “The Triumph of Siberian Zimmerwaldism (March-May, 1917).” Canadian Slavic Studies, I, No. 2 (1967), 253–70.Google Scholar

5 Given in Golder, pp. 340-43.

6 Izvestiia, May 21, 1917. On the work of the committee see A., Shliapnikov, ed., “Fevral'skaia revoliutsiia i evropeiskie sotsialisty,” Krasnyi Arkhiv, XV (1926), 79–80 Google Scholar; Pokrovskii, M. N. and Iakovlev, la. A., eds., IQIJ god v dokumentakh i materialakh (Moscow, 1925-39), I Google Scholar : Petrogradskii Sovet Rabochikh i Soldatskikh Deputatov : Protokoly zasedanii hpolnitel'nogo Komiteta i biuro IX., 139 (hereafter cited as Protokoly).

7 On the missions of the Allied socialists to Russia see the newspaper accounts scattered through Izvestiia and other papers, and memoirs such as Irakli, Tsereteli, Vospominaniia o fevral'skoi revoliutsii (Paris, 1963), I, 161–82Google Scholar; Sukhanov, N. N., Zapiski o revoliutsii (Berlin, St. Petersburg, and Moscow : Izdatel'stvo Z. I. Grzhebina, 1922), III, 184–88Google Scholar; Maurice, Paleologue, La Russie des Tsars pendantla Grande Guerre, III (Paris, 1922), 299–336 Google Scholar, passim; George, Buchanan, My Mission to Russia and Other Diplomatic Memories (London, 1923), II, 119.Google Scholar

8 Protokoly, p. 268; Tsereteli, p. 301; N. S. Rusanov, “Argonavty mira” (manuscript in the Nicolaevsky Papers, Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace, Stanford, California), pp. 4-5. This memoir was written in thelatter half of the 1930s at the suggestion of Mr. Boris I. Nicolaevsky. The author wishes to thank the Hoover Institution for making the manuscript available and for information about its composition

9 Rusanov, p. 29. Western papers of the time used erratic spelling of the names of the delegates : Rusanov was usually spelled Rousanoff or Rousanov, and Rozanov was transformed into Rosanoff or Rosanov. Because the two names were made so similar (Rousanoff- Rosanoff), some confusion has resulted in Western-language references, both in 1917 and since.

10 On the Zimmerwald movements see Gankin and Fisher, passim; Fainsod, passim.

11 Rusanov, p. 57; Tsereteli, 1, 302-5.

12 On the meetings with the ISC and its attitudes toward Stockholm the best account is found in the commentary and documents in Gankin and Fisher, pp. 620-47. Meynell, pp. 21-25, summarizes the talks competently but makes the rather astounding assertion that the ultimate failure of the Stockholm Conference “was substantially due to the growing influence of Bolshevik opposition to the whole idea of Stockholm.” Both accounts use the confusing Rosanoff-Rousanoff spelling.

13 Rusanov, pp. 24-28; and the report of the Soviet delegation published in Izvestiia, July 1 (July 14), 1917. The telegram, sent by Rozanov, is reprinted in Gankin and Fisher, pp. 637-40 (“Report of the Foreign Delegation of the All-Russian Congress of Soviets“), including the slight differences in the version printed in Shliapnikov, ed., “Fevral'skaia revoliutsiia i evropeiskie sotsialisty,” Krasnyi Arkhiv, XVI (1926), 27-29.

14 Tsereteli, I, 307-12; Bulletin du Departement des Relations Internationales du Comite des Ouvriers et Soldats de Petrograd (Stockholm), July 5, 1917.

15 Tsereteli, I, 307.

16 Rusanov, pp. 30-35.

17 The Soviet delegates themselves came to recognize, and even publicly refer to, the difficulty the events of July caused their mission, as in the press release to socialist papers issued in London on August 30 and printed in Izvestiia, Aug. 30 (Sept. 12).

18 Rusanov, pp. 39-40.

19 Ibid., pp. 46-47.

20 Ibid., pp. 47-50.

21 Ibid., pp. 55-58; Izvestiia, July 16/29, 1917.

28 Rusanov, pp. 52, 58-60; Labour Leader, Aug. 2, 1917.

23 Rusanov, p. 52.

24 L'Humanite” , July 20, 1917; Mary A. Hamilton, Arthur Henderson (London, 1938), p. 136.

25 Report of Erlikh to the Bureau of the Central Executive Committee of the All-Russian Congress of Soviets on return to Russia, Izvestiia, Sept. 10/23, 1917.

26 Rusanov, pp. 71-73.

27 L'Humaniti, July 29, 1917; Rusanov, pp. 73-74. Rusanov said this was a breakfast meeting, but the contemporary French paper specified 12 : 30 (“a midi et demi“). 28 L'Humaniti, July 29, 1917.

29 Rusanov, p. 80; Izvestiia, July 21 (Aug. 3), 1917.

30 Rusanov, p. 75.

31 L'Humaniti, July 29, 1917; Izvestiia, July 21 (Aug. 3), 1917. 32 Report of Erlikh, Izvestiia, Sept. 10/23, 1917.

33 Ibid.; and telegram from the delegation to Sovietleaders sent via the Russian Embassy, in Shliapnikov, ed., “Fevral'skaia revoliutsiia i evropeiskie sotsialisty,” Krasnyi Arkhiv, XVI, 36-37.

34 Some of the French socialists took the position that they could not openly oppose Stockholm for fear of antagonizing the Russians but that they could effectively counter it by raising issues such as this, which would either prevent it from meeting or destroy it immediately if it did convene.

35 The course of the meeting can be pieced together from scattered accounts : L'Humanite, July 30 and 31, 1917; Tsereteli, I, 319-21; report of Erlikh, Izvestiia, Sept. 10/23, 1917; Hamilton, Arthur Henderson, pp. 137-38. Rusanov gives only a very brief account of the meeting with the French socialists, on pp. 78-79.

36 L'Humaniti, July 30—Aug. 4, 1917; Rusanov, pp. 78-97.

37 Rusanov, pp. 99-108; Alberto, Malatesta, socialists italiani durantela guerra (Milan, 1926), pp. 152–54 Google Scholar; statement of Goldenberg on August 16 on return from Italy, in L'Humanite', Aug. 17, 1917; Tsereteli, I, 322-23.

38 Rusanov, pp. 109-10; Izvestiia, July 27 (Aug. 9), 1917; Tsereteli, I, 324. Tsereteli dates the telegram August 8, but the dispatch from Rome carried in Izvestiia was dated August 7 (July 25) and states that the telegram arrived that morning and that Rusanov and Erlikhleft that evening. There may have been a second telegram from Henderson informing them of the attitude of the War Cabinet.

39 Interview with Goldenberg in L'Humaniti, Aug. 17, and press reports ibid., Aug. 12, !9»7-

40 This unsavory affair has never been satisfactorily cleared up. The Provisional Government was becomingless favorably inclined toward Stockholm, and this changed attitude was presented as outright opposition to the conference. Meynell, pp. 209-16, gives a good description and analysis of the affair, even though relying entirely on Western sources and not using those available only in Russian, which do add some bits of information.

41 MacDonald and the Frenchleaders had made this clear to them as early as the talks in Paris inlate July; see report of Erlikh, Izvestiia, Sept. 10/23, 1917.

42 Rusanov, pp. 119-20; Labour Leader, Aug. 30 and Sept. 6, 1917; Report of the Seventeenth Annual Conference of the Labour Party (London, 1918), pp. 8-11; L'Humanite” , Sept. 4, 1917; Pendantla Guerre : Le Parti Socialiste, la guerre etla paix (Toutesles resolutions et tousles documents du Parti Socialiste de juillet 1914 a fin 1917) (Paris : Librairie de L'Humanite” , 1918), pp. 183-89. The meeting was closed to the public, and an account must be pieced together from various sources.

43 Imestiia, Aug. 24 (Sept. 6), 1917.

44 Rusanov, pp. 120-22.

45 Report of the Seventeenth Annual Conference of the Labour Party, p. 11.

46 Rusanov, p. 129.

47 Ibid., pp. 131-34.

48 Comit6 Organisateur dela Conference Socialiste Internationale de Stockholm, Stockholm (Stockholm : Tidens Forlag, 1918), pp. 487-90.

49 Among other signs of dying interest, inlate August the Provisional Government had ordered its embassies in the Allied countries not to forward telegrams from the delegation through diplomatic channels; see A. V. Ignat'ev, Russko-Angliiskie Otnosheniia nakanune Oktiabr'skoi revoliutsii (Moscow, 1966), pp. 285-86.

50 Erlikh's report was given a page and a half spread in Izvestiia, Sept. 10/23, J917F although there is no indication of how complete this printed version is. Smirnov's report is not mentioned except in the calendar of activities of the Bureau on Sept. 9/22.

51 Quoted in Tsereteli, I, 318.