Paris Peace Conference 184.01602/11: Telegram
The Chief of the Mission to Southern Russia (Riggs) to the Commission to Negotiate Peace
12. For Churchill.7
I have been in Odessa since March 10th, and have had many talks with individuals and with committees of all shades of political opinion. It is exceedingly difficult to get anything definite out of Russia here in the shape of a workable plan. A typical Russian solution is as follows: “Allies to immediately occupy all Russia, establish a strong Russian Government and only then will anything begin to work”. It is invariably added that if the powers do not do this Bolshevism will be worked triumphantly.
However, if only from a humanitarian point of view, the world is interested in having Russia return to a state of order as soon as possible. This year there is real misery in Soviet Russia and all production is falling pitifully. In the Ukraine the sowing is only a fraction of what it should be.
Governmental. I am personally firmly convinced that there will be order in Russia only when the Russian peasant wants order badly enough. He is as yet undecided, being afraid of siding with the Allies and Cossacks who have not [now?] been driven back in the east and south; also he, as yet, distrusts the Volunteer Army whose reactionary tendencies he probably exaggerates. He has tried land grabbing and now he wants to have land made legally his by paying for it. He wants more land but wants to buy it. Therefore, the force of manner [sic], that is, the Allies must convince him of their intention to institute land reform in order to secure his wavering sympathy. They must make a bid for peasant vote so to speak. The bid must take the form of a proclamation on the land question. Certainly Russia [Certain Russians?] object that the land question is an economic one which can only be settled properly when there is order over the whole country. This is not exact; the land question is now a political and social question. Whether the [Page 756] peasant will be happier or richer with more land is not the question; the peasant wants land, and no government will have his support which does not realize this. The immediate redistribution of land in the provinces of eastern Russia or the south would, in my opinion, have an enormous moral effect on the peasants of central Russia. As an example, land reform has been voted and executed in the Don and Kuban, and although the laws are possibly faulty yet the land situation is settled and the owners are anti-Bolsheviki.
The Council of Ten might, therefore, make a solemn announcement that it was concerned with Russia and the Russian people, and that the Council guarantees full and adequate land reform in Russia. Admiral Kolchak and General Denikin should then be prevailed upon to overcome [sic] and make a proclamation guaranteeing immediate land reform; in this way can the confidence and support of the peasant be gained.
The next step must be to relieve the present misery by the other means of anti-Bolshevik propaganda, the exchange of goods on a fair basis. Speculation in southern Russia is going on in a shameless and extraordinary scale. In fact, any exchange under present conditions is in itself practically a speculation. The Council of Ten should send textile goods, agricultural machinery and implements, boots, thread and tea and also at first, coal, for there is not sufficient coal in the ports to exploit the coal available in the Donetz Basin, and should arrange for a proper system of distribution in the country on the principle that the greatest possible number of peasants are to receive certain necessities in the shortest possible time. In certain districts where exchange of goods is impracticable there should be arranged a system of loans to be covered by future harvests. This would alleviate economic conditions in southern Russia to a considerable extent, and would therefore do much to persuade the still unconvinced ones that for such an economic battle, however, to be of any value must be on a large scale. One of Mr. Hoover’s very best men must be chosen for the southern Russia situation. He must have wide power and be on such terms with the civil authorities as to be able to effectively fight speculation. He must have a large staff of men as inspectors.
To sum up. Russia cannot be occupied militarily by the Allies, and cannot be conquered by the Cossacks or the Siberians if the Russian peasant remains neutral. When the peasant is convinced that the administration of the Siberian Government for all the Southern Federation under the guarantee of the Allies is better than a precarious existence under the Soviet regime, then Bolsheviki on the rapid decline. The moral support of the peasant must be gained [Page 757] by guaranteeing him land. Kolchak and the Volunteers should understand this guarantee must be given in earnest, and then they should [apparent omission] a moral and material support. Give the Russians, in non-Soviet Russia, manufactured goods at smallest imaginable price; see that the intentions of the Allies are properly advertised, and that material aid reaches Russia promptly and efficiently.