Silent Conflict: A Hidden History of Early Soviet-Western Relations

by Michael Jabara Carley

This deeply informed book traces the dramatic history of early Soviet-western relations after World War I. Michael Jabara Carley provides a lively exploration of the formative years of Soviet foreign policy making after the Bolshevik Revolution, especially focusing on Soviet relations with the West during the 1920s. Carley demonstrates beyond doubt that this seminal period—termed the “silent conflict” by one Soviet diplomat—launched the Cold War. He shows that Soviet-western relations, at best grudging and mistrustful, were almost always hostile. Concentrating on the major western powers—Germany, France, Great Britain, and the United States—the author also examines the ongoing political upheaval in China that began with the May Fourth Movement in 1919 as a critical influence on western-Soviet relations. Carley draws on twenty-five years of research in recently declassified Soviet and western archives to present an authoritative history of the foreign policy of the Soviet state. From the earliest days of the Bolshevik Revolution, deeply anti-communist western powers attempted to overthrow the newly formed Soviet government. As the weaker party, Soviet Russia waged war when it had to, but it preferred negotiations and agreements with the West rather than armed confrontation. Equally embattled by internal struggles for power after the death of V. I. Lenin, the Soviet government was torn between its revolutionary ideals and the pragmatic need to come to terms with its capitalist adversaries. The West too had its ideologues and pragmatists. This illuminating window into the overt and covert struggle and ultimate standoff between the USSR and the West during the 1920s will be invaluable for all readers interested in the formative years of the Cold War.

Genres: History, Soviet History

479 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2014

Reviews

[Hatuxka · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is not without usefulness. But Carley is a one-trick pony. He catalogues exchanges between early Soviet diplomats and their British, French and German counterparts by comparing the reports of both sides. Two books by him are based on this approach. The raging fear of being destablized by mere words, and precious little money, in support of communism and communist movements from the USSR in the respective countries is a thread running throughout the recorded thoughts of myopic, incompetent, unprincipled diplomatic apparatuses of Britain, France and Germany, the culprits of WW1 and WW2. There is precious little analysis that is novel or insightful, with the aforementioned chronicling interspersed with conventional, orthodox western tropes about this period, thoroughly discredited but still widely employed, such as that Stalin brooked no dissent within the Soviet government about his policies and/or dealt with any disagreement brutally. It is a thread running throughout the course of Soviet--WWI combatant (Germany, France and Great Britain)-diplomacy of the utter fear of these countries of Soviet "propaganda" (revolutionary ideas) and any support at all for the communist parties in their countries. Carley also, inadvertently perhaps, shows how uncontrollable the Soviet press was and how controllable the western press was. The Comintern was feared greatly because it was so adept at targeting the weaknesses and/or moral bankruptcy of the capitalist systems largely based on colonialism. This drove the thinking of these imperial powers in rejecting the obvious benefits of trading with the Soviet Union or coming to substantive diplomatic agreement on anything. Carley is dispassionate about the instances where Soviet anticolonialism caused friction between the USSR and Britain (concerning British struggles to maintain domination over China after the Sun Yatsen revolution), but spirited and categorical in his criticisms of how Stalin led the Soviet Union or how well-applied the anti-colonialist strategies of the USSR were. This is telling. His understanding of Soviet domestic politics of the time is orthodox, i.e., fits the anti-communist, anti-Stalin paradigm, despite ample evidence that has emerged in the last 20-30 years has made no real headway in Carley’s thinking. I must conclude that Carley gets published because he provides ample detail about things that are academic to the western powers while hewing to the line that matters to them: that Stalin and the Soviet system, ran the country poorly and bordered on a chaotic, destructive evil empire, despite all evidence to the contrary (such as saving civilization by doing most of the fighting against Nazi Germany and being a presence that ended colonialism). His previous book, showing how the this same pair of countries betrayed every nation, especially the USSR, they dealt with that was trying to devise workable alliances to counter the threat of Nazi Germany and paved the way for WW2, was so lacking in any requisite condemnation of the actions of Britain and France, that he had to publish a separate journal article that actually took a position on this criminally negligent course of action (that the USSR was blameless in attempting to prevent Nazi aggression through seeking alliances with France and Britain and in not being supported by these two when they were repeatedly rejected by Poland in soliciting a mutual defense agreement against Hitler).

[Roger A · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent work shedding light on the history that still affects the present

Very thorough, and also very readable, a significant achievement. A nuanced and balanced history of the Soviet Union from the revolution to 1930.

[Richard Harding · Rating 3 out of 5]

Jabara Carley does a decent job of describing the issues between the Soviet and Western governments during the period covered. He's not too bad regarding internal divisions either. This being said, the recounting of the fighting over settling Tsarist debts, issuance of trade credits, who-said-what in the papers, gets a bit repetitive. The author also tends to reduce the very real ideological, and deadly, differences between the sides to noise and trouble-making by the likes of 'Die-Hard' Conservatives, such as those in Britain, and Comintern personalities, such as Zinoviev and Bukharin among the Soviets.

The best part of the book is the chapter on China, but here too Jabara Carley tends to reduce things to the 'pot calling the kettle' black. I suppose it's the obligation of the historian to appear neutral, but seemingly equating the Soviet support for the Chinese revolutionary and anti-colonial struggle, however ham-fisted at times, with what western powers, especially Britain, were doing, was a bit much. It was the writing on China that did, however, make me give a third star to what is otherwise a pretty standard western text -with pretty standard western biases and cynicism- on the subject of relations with the Soviets and Russians.

To his credit, Jarbara Carley avoids the venom which one is generally assured to encounter from western writers dealing with anything Soviet/Russian (and it's not getting any better).

It's worth a read as long as the reader doesn't go into it looking for anything new except perhaps more detail on the personalities of the diplomatic corps of both sides.

Read Losurdo's "War and Revolution" if you're looking for what the (no so) "silent conflict" was (and in some ways, still is) all about.