Paris Peace Conference 861.48/48: Telegram
The Representative at Copenhagen of the American Relief Administration (Swenson) to the Commission to Negotiate Peace
[Received in Paris May 15, 10 a.m.]
Crab 104. For Hoover.
Following telegram85 was received by wireless through Swedish station to Mr. Fridtjof Nansen:
“Sir: Your very kind message of April 17th86 containing your exchange of letters with the Council of Four reached us only on May [Page 112] the 4th by wav of the Nas Wireless Station and was at once given to the People’s Commissariat of Social Welfare for thorough examination. Wish in the name of the Russian Soviet Government to convey to you our heartiest thanks for the warm interest you manifest in the well-being of the Russian people. Great are indeed the suffering and privations inflicted upon the Russian people by the inhuman blockade of the Associated and so-called Neutral Powers and by the incessant wars forced upon it against its will. If left in peace and allowed free development Soviet Russia would soon be able to restore her national production, to regain her economic strength, to provide for her own needs and to be helpful to other countries. But in the present situation in which she has been put by the implacable policy of the Associated Powers help in foodstuffs from abroad would be most welcome to Russia, and the Russian Soviet Government appreciates most thankfully your humane and heartfelt response to her sufferings, and considering the universal respect surrounding your person will be especially glad to enter into communication with you for the realization of your schemes of help which you emphasize as being purely humanitarian. On this basis of humanitarian work or help to suffering people we would be disposed to do everything in [our] power to further the realization of your project. Unfortunately your benevolent intentions which you indicate yourself as being based upon purely humanitarian grounds and which according to your letter must be realized by a commission of fully non-political character have been mixed up by others with political purposes. In the letter addressed to you by the four powers your scheme is represented as involving cessation of hostilities and of transfer of troops and war material. We regret very much that your original intentions have thus been fundamentally disfigured by the government[s] of the Associated Powers. We need not explain to you that military operations which obviously have in view to change external or internal conditions of the involved countries belong wholly to the domain of politics and that likewise cessation of hostilities which means preventing the belligerent who has every reason to expect successes from the obtaining them is also a purely political act. Thus your sincerely charitable intentions have been misused by others in order to cover such purposes which are obviously political with the semblance of as [an] action originally humanitarian only. Being ready to lend every assistance to your scheme so far as it bears the character you have ascribed to it in your letter we at the same time do not wish to be the objects of foul play, and knowing that you like ourselves mean business and wish really to attain the proposed, we would like to ask whether this incantation [intermixture?] of heterogeneous purposes has been finally adopted by yourself. We expect that we will be able to make it clear to you that in order to realize your intentions this interpretation must be carefully avoided. You are no doubt aware that the cessation of the wars upon the Russian people is likewise the object of our most warm desires and it must be known to you that we have many times proposed to the Associated Governments to enter into negotiations in order to put an end to the present bloodshed and that we have even agreed to take part at the Conference at Prinkipo notwithstanding the extremely unfavorable conditions proposed to us [Page 113] and also that we were the only party to accept it. [We] responded in the same peace-loving sense to overtures made by one of the Great Powers. The Prinkipo Conference was frustrated not by us but by our adversaries, the protégés of the Associated Powers, the counter-revolutionary governments of Koltchak, Denikin and the others. These are the tools with the help of which the Entente Governments are making war upon us and are endeavoring to obtain our destruction and wherever they are victorious their victory means the triumph of the most extreme barbarity and bestiality, streams of blood and untold sufferings for the laboring masses, domination of the wildest reaction. Koltchak from the east, Denikin from the south, the Roumanian Feudris [feudals], the Polish and Finnish most reactionary militarists, the German Barons and Esthonian White Guards from the west and Russian White Guard bands from the north, these are the enemies whom the Entente Governments mob [move] against Soviet Russia and against whom as against Entente troops we are carrying on a desperate struggle with ever growing success. The so-called governments of Koltchak and Denikin are purely monarchical, all power belongs there to the wildest adherents of Tzarism, extreme Tzarist papers are in every way imported [supported?] by them. Tzarist hymns are constantly sung [at] their ceremonies. The so-called constitution of Koltchak as [is] in reality monarchical; among their soldiers they distribute only Tzarist literature; under the domination of Denikin the adherents of constitutional government of the people are persecuted and under the domination of Koltchak the adherents of the Constituent Assembly are imprisoned or shot. Program [Pogrom-] making literature is being widely distributed by these so-called governments and whenever Jews come under their domination they are the object of the most horrible bestialities. In the west the Polish legionaries and the troops of the Ukrainian counter-revolutionary Petliura who are both supported and even directed by Entente officers have perpetrated such massacres of Jews which by far surpass the most horrible misdeeds of the Black Hundred of old Tzarism. As the Russian Red Cross in its appeal to the International Red Cross on April the 28 states whole villages, whole towns were turned the Russian [to ruins]. Neither sex nor age was spared and in numerous places the whole Jewish population was literally wiped out by these troops headed by Entente generals and officers. In realm of Koltchak and Denikin everything that was gained by the peasants through the revolution is being taken back from them. Koltchak declares solemn manifestoes that peasants must not have possession land taken by force from the nobility. He orders in his decrees that the seizure of the land of the gentry by the peasants should be prosecuted as a serious crime and crushes the resistance of the peasants by wholesale massacres during which [in] some parts of Siberia many thousands of peasants were killed en masse. For the workers this domination means every possible persecution, oppression, wholesale arrests, and [in] many cases wholesale shootings, so that in some towns the workers were simply wiped out by the enraged ex-Tzarist officers who are the hear [at the head] of Koltchak’s troops. The horrors perpetrated by these Koltchak officers defy description [Page 114] and their victims are innumerable including all that is progressive, all that is free-thinking in Siberia. Inebriated officers are torturing, flogging, tormenting in every way the unfortunate laboring population under their domination and to be a worker is to be predestined to be the object of their brutalities. These are the adversaries owing to [against] whom we are engaged in desperate struggle and whom the Associated Governments are in every way supporting, providing them with war material, foodstuffs, financial help, military commanders, and political advisers and on the north and east fronts sending their own troops to help them. In the hands of these barbarous bandits Entente rifles and Entente cannons are sending death to the Russian workers and peasants struggling for their life and liberty. The same Entente Governments are the real source of the military supplies with the help of which our Polish, Roumanian, Finnish, and other adversaries from the west are uninterrupted by [uninterruptedly?] attacking us and it was officially declared in the French Chamber of Deputies and in the British House of Commons that the policy of the Entente is now to send against Soviet Russia the armies of these nationalities. An American radio of May 6th sent from Lyons says most emphatically that the Entente encourages the movement of the troops raised by the Russian counter-revolutionary General Youdenitch which presumably threatens Petrograd, that the Entente expects that the Bolsheviki will be forced to withdraw to Moscow and that the Associated Governments intend [in] connection herewith to bind [abandon] your plan of revictualling Russia. While declaring they have abandoned the idea of intervention the Associated Governments are in reality carrying on the most reckless intervention policy and even the American Government, despite all the statements to the contrary published in the American press, seems at present to be wholly dominated by implacable hostility of the Clemenceau Ministry against Soviet Russia. This being the case we are [in a] position to discuss cessation of hostilities only if we discuss the whole problem of our relations to our adversaries, that is, in the first place, to the Associated Governments. That means to discuss peace and to open real negotiations bearing upon the true reasons of the war waged upon us and upon those conditions that can bring us lasting peace. We were always ready to enter into peace negotiations and we are ready to do it now an [as] before and we will be glad to begin discussing these questions, but of course directly with the other belligerents, that is with the Associated Governments or else with the persons empowered by the latter. But it is of course impossible for us to make any concessions referring to these fundamental problems of our existence under the disguise of a presumably humanitarian work. This latter must remain purely humanitarian an[d] non-political and we will welcome every proposal from your side made to us in the spirit of your letter sent by you to the Council of Four on April 3rd.87 [To] these wholly nonpolitical proposals we respond most gladly. We thank you most heartily for your good intentions. We are ready to give you every possibility of controlling the realization such humanitarian scheme, we will of course cover all the expenses of this work and the cost of the foodstuffs and we can pay if [Page 115] you desire by Russian goods. But seeing that your original plan has been so unfortunately disfigured and considering that the most complete and difficult questions that have been created must first be thoroughly elucidated, we would suggest that you take the necessary steps to enable delegates of our government to meet you and your collaborators abroad and to discuss these questions and we ask you kindly to indicate the time and the place for this conference between our delegates and the leaders of your commission and what guarantees can be obtained for the free passage of our delegates through countries influenced by the Entente. Signed, Peoples Commissary for Foreign Affairs, Tchitcherin.[”]
Nansen adds, “Please tell Hoover that I intend to meet Lenin’s delegates perhaps Stockholm but shall be glad hear Hoover’s opinion soon as possible.”