861.00/5798: Telegram
The Secretary of State to the Ambassador in Japan (Morris)
Harris informs me that he has repeated to you his 490, December 1, 6 p.m.94 concerning the attitude of the new Siberian Cabinet towards the United States and Japan respectively.
Pursuant to the last paragraph of my November 19, 3 p.m.95 I shall leave it to you to inform Harris of the attitude of this Government. I think that he should know first, that in contrast with what appeared to be a disposition on the part of the Japanese to encourage the elimination of Kolchak, our attitude has been favorable to Kolchak, in the sense of the telegram just cited; and, second, that definite measures of economic assistance to Russia are in preparation, although the recommendations mentioned in the next to last paragraph of the message of November 19th have not yet come to the President’s attention and cannot be more than hinted at in any conversations which you may have with the Japanese or Harris with the Russians.
In view of the foregoing it is obvious that the Kolchak Government will make a very serious mistake, from the point of view solely of its own interests, if it should adopt toward the United States a disgruntled or unfriendly attitude.
The Japanese Ambassador has not yet spoken to me concerning the situation in Siberia. If he does so I shall speak to him along the lines laid down in my November 19, 3 p.m. to you, and I may also emphasize one or two points respecting future policy in Russia which I have incorporated in a report to the President.
The following excerpts from that report are repeated to you for your information:
“The issue of the struggle cannot be foretold but I am confident that the cynical and unmoral opportunism of Lenin and his followers will not in the end prevail. It may fall before military successes of [Page 452] organized anti-Bolshevik movements operating openly in the field, or it may fall before less obvious forces working within the territory which the Bolsheviki now control and among those who have heretofore willingly or unwillingly accepted their domination. Events must take their course; but it lies within the right and interest, if not within the duty, of the United States and the other enlightened nations of the earth, to encourage by all available means the creation of a situation favorable to the rapid movement of events through the natural channels marked out for them by the interplay of purely Russian factors toward the establishment of a Russian government resting on the collective will of the Russian people and concerning itself with Russian affairs.
In considering the more precise nature of our future course, a clear distinction must be made between the Bolsheviki and what has come to be known by somewhat fortuitous association of events as Bolshevism. The Bolsheviki in the proper sense of the term are one wing of the Russian Social Democratic party. In 1903 differences arose in this party on the question of tactics. The other wing, known as the Mensheviki, have supported the view that they should arrive at the fulfilment of their party program by the accepted means of convincing the majority. They have advocated in this respect the principles of democracy. The Bolsheviki, led by Lenin, have stood, on the contrary, for a small, centralized and highly disciplined group of active workers who should bring about a minority revolution and establish thereby ‘the dictatorship of the proletariat’, or forceful control of the state by a small, militant section of the unpropertied elements of the population. Such has been the history of the Bolshevik revolution in Russia. In practical application of this doctrine the Bolshevik government has developed into a military dictatorship controlled by the small group immediately surrounding Lenin. Although two years have elapsed since this group came into power, there has been no important change, except by death, in its personnel. With the aid of their immediate and devoted followers they have built up the Red Army, the man-power for which is chiefly supplied by the conscription of peasants, and the military leadership in part by the enrollment of officers of the old régime, whose families are held as hostages for their loyal behavior. Against this machine it may be that only force will prevail.
What is commonly known as Bolshevism, on the other hand, is a popular state of mind growing out of the war and past abuses. It is compounded of demoralization and protest. It furnishes many misguided recruits to the ranks of the Bolsheviki and imparts to their movement the recurrent flushes of popular vitality which help to sustain it against the military attacks of its enemies. Bolshevism, thus conceived, is obviously not to be conquered by force. It is preeminently an economic and moral phenomenon against which economic and moral remedies alone will prevail. While recognizing the practical necessity, in certain contingencies, of supporting with military supplies the forces which seek to oust the Bolsheviki from the seat of government, I desire to emphasize above all the vital need for relieving as soon as possible the economic distress which foments and perpetuates the popular state of mind called Bolshevism.”
[Page 453]It is felt that the foregoing is especially applicable to the situation in Siberia where the apparent discomfiture of the Japanese military has been due chiefly it seems to a failure on their part to grasp the true nature of Bolshevism, as apart from the activities of the group at Moscow, and the need for combating it by pacific rather than by military means.