Paris 1919 - Margaret Macmillan [53]
Yet the Bolsheviks also struck conciliatory notes. Maxim Litvinov, Chicherin’s deputy, was smooth and agreeable. He had lived in London for several years, eking out a living as a clerk and marrying a novelist, Ivy Low, from the fringes of Bloomsbury. On Christmas Eve 1918, he sent Wilson a telegram from Stockholm. It spoke of peace on earth, of justice and humanity. The Russian people, Litvinov went on, shared Wilson’s great principles. They had been the first to cry out for self-determination and open diplomacy. All they wanted now was peace to build a better society. They were anxious to negotiate, but Allied intervention and the Allied blockade were causing terrible misery. The Bolsheviks found themselves obliged to use terror to keep the country afloat. Would not Wilson help them?
Wilson was deeply impressed. So, when he saw the telegram, was Lloyd George. An American diplomat, William Buckler, was dispatched to talk to Litvinov. Buckler’s report, which Wilson brought to the Supreme Council on January 21, was encouraging. The Soviet government, as it was now calling itself, was ready to do much for the sake of peace, whether that meant paying at least part of the repudiated foreign debts or granting new concessions to foreign enterprises. It would drop its calls for worldwide revolution; it had only been forced to use such propaganda as a way of defending itself first against Germany and more recently the Allies.31
Wilson and Lloyd George had some reason, then, to expect that the Bolsheviks would welcome the invitation to Prinkipo. The two statesmen chose their delegates: a liberal journalist and a defrocked clergyman for the United States, and for Britain a delighted Borden—“a great honour to Canada.” (He did not know that Lloyd George was having trouble finding someone to go.) They all waited. The Soviet government’s reply arrived on February 4. Not for the last time the Bolsheviks misjudged the West. They craftily, but transparently, avoided agreeing to a cease-fire, one of the preconditions laid down by the Supreme Council. They did not bother to comment on the appeal to high principles in the invitation. Clearly thinking that capitalists understood only one thing, they offered significant material concessions, such as raw materials or territory. After all, it had worked with the Germans at Brest-Litovsk. Wilson was taken aback: “This answer was not only uncalled for, but might be thought insulting.” Lloyd George agreed. “We are not after their money or their concessions or their territory.”32
At the same time the other invitees, with quiet support from the French and from friends such as Churchill, were digging in their heels. The news of the Prinkipo proposal had deeply shocked the White Russians. In Paris, the exile community turned out in a huge demonstration; far away in Archangel, pictures of Wilson were hurriedly taken down. Sazonov, the former foreign minister, asked a British diplomat how the Allies could expect him to meet the people who had murdered his family.33
If the British and the Americans had put pressure on them, the White Russians would probably have caved in, but neither Wilson nor Lloyd George was prepared to do so. Prinkipo was becoming a political problem for both men. The press and some of their own colleagues were increasingly critical. Lloyd George, who depended on Conservative support for his coalition government, had already been warned by Bonar Law, the Conservative leader, and his deputy that the government might well break up over the issue. By February 8, Clemenceau, in a rare