Paris Peace Conference 861.00/786
The Director General of Relief, Supreme Economic Council (Hoover), to President Wilson
Dear Mr. President: Before the present Joint Councils of the Heads of States dissolve by your departure, I wish to lay before you earnestly what appears to me (after Peace) the greatest outstanding situation in the world insistent for solution, and that is Russia. Nor do I wish to approach it from any point of view other than purely its economic phases.
Sooner or later the Bolshevik Government will fall of its own weight or it will have swung sufficiently right to be absorbed in a properly representative government. Already about one-half of the area of the old Russian Empire is under non-Bolshevik influences. [Page 118] No government of any character can stand in this country without an economic reorganization. Such reorganization primarily revolves on two positive factors, first, currency, and second, transportation. Even the governments of Koltchak and Denikin are both likely to fail at any moment, due to the practical break-down in the distribution of commodities. There is in both of these areas not only ample foodstuffs for their populations but an actual surplus and yet there is here actual starvation.
I attach one single telegram90 out of a host as indicating the character of the situation, and in this special case of the Donetz Basin there is ample wheat not 500 miles distant if there were some form of currency in which the population could have confidence, and transportation with which to expect exchange of coal for wheat. This is only typical of many other instances.
By and large, there can be no hope of any form of stable government unless these two primary things can be solved. It is already the defeat of Bolshevism and will be the defeat of any government that takes its place. The re-establishment of currency, transportation, the stimulation of production, and the normal flow of distribution, is sheerly a matter of some sort of economic dictatorship, backed by sufficiently large financial and moral support of the Allied Governments. These appropriations would need to be expended fundamentally in commodities and railway rolling stock for import into Russia and for the establishment of a currency. I do not believe that the sum involved is extraordinarily large if such an economic dictatorship could have command of the resources already in Russia.
Furthermore, it appears to me that some such an economic commission, if placed upon an economic and not a political basis, could if conducted with wisdom, keep itself free from conflicting political currents and allow a rational development of self-government in Russia. I have no idea that such self-government can develop over night in a nation totally inexperienced and without tradition, but there can be no foundation on which such government can emerge so long as populations are mad from starvation and unemployment and the lack of the very necessities of life.
This matter becomes of immediate importance if America is to have any hand in the matter, as the resources and organization at our disposal come to an end either upon the signing of Peace with Germany, or, alternatively, on the first of July with the expiration of the Acts with which you are familiar.
I wish to add one suggestion to you in organization of such a commission. It is utterly impossible that it could be organized on [Page 119] the basis of any Inter-Allied Commission with all the conflicting financial and trade interest that lies therein. It is necessary to set up one government as the economic mandatory, with the support of the other governments, and to set up some one man as the head of such a commission, who should choose his own staff for the great administration that will be involved. Such a staff could with judgment be composed of representatives of each nationality, but they must be definitely responsible to the head of such a commission and not independently responsible to different governments.
Faithfully yours,
- Not printed.↩