From 1917 to 1920, the United States officially denied being at war with Russia. Historical records show otherwise: the Wilson administration waged a long undeclared war against the Bolshevik government. Most Americans know only that U.S. troops were sent to Arkhangelsk and Vladivostok. Few grasp the full scope of America’s role in the Russian Civil War. Soviet leaders, by contrast, understood it far better — and the first cracks in U.S.-Soviet relations were set there.
Secret support, public denial
Wilson and his aides insisted the United States was not at war with Russia. Yet the government refused to tell Congress or the American public the truth about its support for anti-Bolshevik forces or the real purpose of its military expeditions. That secrecy imposed strict limits on aid to the White armies and fueled growing pressure to bring U.S. troops home. At moments in 1918 and 1919, this limited and covert support seemed enough to help topple the Soviet government. In the end, Wilson’s method of secret war failed to destroy the Bolshevik regime. It alienated the idealistic liberals and socialists who had backed Wilson, angered the Bolsheviks, and left the anti-Bolshevik forces who received inadequate aid embittered.
What Moscow knew
The Soviet government built a fairly complete picture of America’s secret war. It gathered intelligence through Western sympathizers, arrested agents working for U.S. intelligence, and intercepted letters from anti-Bolshevik diplomats. Ludwig Martens, the unrecognized Soviet representative in New York, publicly accused the U.S. government of having “invaded Russian territory with its armed forces and made war on the Russian people; its agents engaged in plots and intrigues on Russian soil against the Russian Soviet government; it maintained a … blockade that caused enormous suffering to the Russian people; and it gave material encouragement and assistance to various counterrevolutionary bands rising against the Russian government.”
Despite this knowledge, Soviet leaders tried to distinguish the United States from other capitalist powers. They believed American democracy and free enterprise made it the most likely to break through the wall of foreign hostility. So they appealed to the liberal ideals of American leaders, encouraged Americans to press for diplomatic relations, restrained punishment of Americans accused of espionage, tried to spur domestic protest against intervention, offered to assume responsibility for Russian debts, and dangled commercial privileges and investment opportunities before American manufacturers and financiers. Some of these tactics sometimes seemed to work. But Wilson’s brief interest in early 1919 in negotiating with Soviet leaders did not produce the reconciliation they sought. Soviet officials ultimately had to confront the hardening position of the Wilson administration: firmly contain the Bolshevik threat while waiting for it to collapse.
A memory that never converged
Through the long Cold War, American and Soviet leaders often talked past each other when they invoked the early years of their relationship. In September 1959, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev visited Hollywood and declared that American “armed intervention was the most unpleasant thing that ever happened in the history of relations between our two countries … Our troops never set foot on American soil, but your troops set foot on Soviet soil.” The remark laid bare two sharply different memories and narratives of the same history.
The undeclared war did not change the outcome of the Russian Civil War. It did set the tone for decades of mutual distrust between Washington and Moscow. When covert action and public denial coexist, the foundation of diplomacy is already damaged — and the echoes last far longer than the decision-makers of the time imagined.
Source: Zhihu https://zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/2100140329764648241?utm_medium=openapi_platform&utm_source=b38f6831b176
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