Foreign Relations of the United States: Diplomatic Papers, 1945, Europe, Volume V

761.00/10–2345

The Ambassador in the Soviet Union (Harriman) to the Secretary of State ⁷⁸

No. 2215

Moscow, October 23, 1945.
[Received November 6.]

Sir: I have the honor to review below current trends of Soviet policy with respect to the Near and Middle East.

General

Soviet aims in this area are primarily strategic: security and aggrandizement. These aims are not defined in hard and fast terms. They are accommodated to time and circumstances. The endless, fluid pursuit of power is a habit of Russian statesmanship, ingrained not only in the traditions of the Russian State but also in the ideology of the Communist Party, which views all other advanced nations as Russia’s ultimate enemies and all backward nations as pawns in the struggle for power.

Particularly is this true in the kaleidoscopic Near and Middle East where a realistic policy must take into account not only national factors but also such extra-national forces as the Orthodox Church, the Armenian and Jewish communities, the Kurds and the Arab League.

Turkey

Turkey represents the principal westerly gap in the Soviet system of defense in depth along its borders. Until Turkey is under Soviet domination and the Black Sea a Soviet lake, the USSR will feel itself strategically vulnerable from the southwest. Furthermore, Turkey lies athwart any Soviet ambitions for expansion into the Mediterranean.

More for reasons of security than of expansion it may be assumed that the Soviet program for Turkey is a matter of relative urgency. Yet thus far, aside from an irritable press campaign against a Turkish editor, which has now subsided, and Mr. Molotov’s heavy handed overtures regarding cession of territory and bases,⁷⁹ the U.S.S.R. has remained remarkably inactive with regard to Turkey. The only recent manifestations of interest are the domestic intimations of Communist Party political agitators that certain issues with Turkey are to be joined and that this may lead to war.

But although the U.S.S.R. will probably use its full stock of political stratagems, it is scarcely likely to resort to outright military attack because of the far-reaching international repercussions that such action would have.

Through negotiation, the Soviet Union will presumably seek a favored position with regard to the Straits. But because the Straits are internationally the most explosive of Turkish issues and because the relative strategic importance of the Straits is greatly diminished in an age of airpower, the Soviet Union’s ambitions regarding the Straits may well, in final analysis, play a secondary role. The U.S.S.R. may approach a fundamental revision of the status of the Straits from the Turkish flanks rather than frontally.

The absence of any significant leftist opposition in Turkey means that the Soviet Union must rely principally on other discontented elements—real and artificially created. They are the Kurds and the Armenians. Both overlap national borders and so possess a wide utility. Although practically no Armenians remain in eastern Turkey, an Armenian irredenta movement based on Soviet Armenia has already made its implausible presence known. If vigorously developed, it may help to detach the eastern provinces from Turkey by various peaceful pressures or to provoke fatal Turkish exasperation.

While the principal impetus for Armenian separation must originate from outside Turkey, the Kurds are sufficiently strong within Turkey to constitute, if given direction and arms, a considerable disruptive force. This Embassy has seen nothing to indicate that the Kurds of Turkey are being organized and armed by the Soviet Union. But when the time comes, their natural potential utility is not likely to be overlooked by the U.S.S.R.

The Kurds

The utility of the Kurds as an extra-national force extends into Iraq and Iran. This means that if the Soviet Union wishes to exploit the Kurdish potential, there might be developed a regional separatism splitting off contiguous corners of three nations.

The Armenians

With the Armenian SSR constituting an Armenian homeland, the Soviet Union possesses a politically magnetic force tending to draw Armenian communities in the Levant and the western world in the direction of support of Soviet policy. Despite the anti-Soviet sentiments of some Armenian groups outside of the U.S.S.R., it may be assumed that a full-fledged crusade for Armenian SSR recovery of historical Armenian territory would draw popular Armenian support abroad.

Syria and the Lebanon

Soviet strategic objectives in Asia Minor logically extend from Turkey and Iraq to Syria and the Lebanon. Oil pipelines, access to the Mediterranean and propinquity to the Suez Canal are obvious long-range objectives in the Levant States.

The principal obstacle to the realization of these aims is French influence and continued British interest in this area. Soviet policy in the Levant States is therefore directed at the undermining of what remains of the French position in those states, both through local elements friendly to the U.S.S.R. and through French Communists. At the same time the U.S.S.R. is engaged in cautious exploration for and encouragement of indigenous groups amenable to Soviet guidance.

In opposing French influence in Syria and the Lebanon, Moscow is inhibited by the danger that it may inadvertently give aid to elements friendly to the British. For this reason, it must tread a particularly wary path. The U.S.S.R. appears, nevertheless, already to have assumed something of the role of protector of the rights of the Aleppo Armenians and the Orthodox Church, notwithstanding the stubborn attitude of the Patriarch of Antioch. Furthermore, Syrian grievances against Turkey over Alexandretta would seem to tempt Soviet exploitation.

The Orthodox Church

With communities in Turkey, Syria, the Lebanon, Palestine and Egypt, the Orthodox Church is an important extra-national force in the Near East.⁸¹ At present, it offers an opportunity for apparently innocent cultural penetration and propaganda, which opportunity the U.S.S.R. is assiduously cultivating. Having traditionally entertained a keen appreciation of temporal as well as spiritual powers, the Orthodox Church in the Levant does not view the courtship of the Soviet State with excessive distaste. Eventually the Church in the Near East may, despite factional jealousies, serve as a ponderable political force operating in response to Soviet direction.

The Jews and Zionism

In seeking to enlist Jewish support of Soviet policy in the Near and Middle East, Moscow is confronted with complicated and far-reaching issues. For the Jewish problem is not only an international phenomenon; it is also an important domestic issue in the U.S.S.R. A false Soviet step with regard to the Jews in the Near and Middle East would cause repercussions inside the U.S.S.R., as well as among world Jewry from Wall Street to the Dead Sea. Therefore Moscow is treading softly among Levantine Jews.

In seeking to assess Soviet tactics toward the Jews, it may first confidently be said that the U.S.S.R. does not encourage nationalist sentiments among the Jews as it does among the Armenians. As evidence of this, one need only point to the melancholy position of the Jewish Autonomous Province.⁸² Bounded by the Amur on one side, by Siberian desolation on the other, and far from Jewish population and historical centers, the Jewish Province can hardly serve either as a focus of world Jewry’s longing for a homeland or as a base for “Jewish national” expansion.

Secondly, it seems clear that the U.S.S.R. does not look with approval on Zionism. The reasons for this attitude are: Moscow does not wish to offend the Arabs, and the Zionist movement is not now amenable to Soviet direction. Soviet opposition to Zionism is, however, cautiously expressed. That is to say, it is revealed openly in certain Arab communities, and inferentially in the Soviet press. But it is not manifested so broadly as to provoke the united antagonism of Zionist sympathizers. The U.S.S.R. may be expected to continue this generally noncommittal course until such time as developing events bring Soviet policy into sharp open conflict with Zionism, or—what is far less likely—Moscow is able to capture the Zionist movement.

Having rejected nationalism as a basis for rallying Jewish support in the Levant, Moscow appears to be concentrating on class and ideological appeal. The Soviet program for Jews in the Near and Middle East seeks to enlist the support of laborers and intelligentsia.

Palestine

Soviet policy in Palestine is directed at the elimination of British influence and, however discouraging the task may now appear, the building up of pro-Soviet Arab and Jewish elements to a point where they can eventually be reconciled with each other and united in making a bid for power in that area. The Russians cannot now afford to take sides outright either with the Arabs or the Jews. Their aim is therefore to split both.

Accordingly, they oppose Jewish “reactionaries” in Palestine without opposing the Jews as a body. As has been noted, leftist Jewish intelligentsia labor groups serve Soviet purposes in this enterprise. With the Arabs the U.S.S.R. has been more careful, but the beginnings of a similar distinction are visible there. Landless Arabs and Arab members of the Orthodox Church are elements which the Soviet Union may turn to its use.

Meanwhile the Soviet Union is not averse to allowing the Arab world to draw from official Soviet reticence on the problem of Palestine the deduction that the U.S.S.R. alone, of all the great powers, has no interest in Jewish immigration into Palestine and is therefore the friend of the Arabs.

The Arab League

The Soviet Government made no reply to the official notification which was given to it of the establishment of the Arab League.⁸³ The Soviet press has subsequently criticized it somewhat obliquely on the general grounds that it was supported by the British. In so far as the League may outgrow British tutelage and support, it might look for favor in Moscow; and the possibility of such a development may have been one of the reasons for Soviet caution in openly opposing it. But the recent expression of the League’s opposition to a Soviet trusteeship in Tripolitania will not go unforgotten, and such merit as the Soviet Union may be able to acquire in Arab eyes by its relative reticence on the Palestine question will probably be exploited toward the disruption rather than the support of the present League leadership.

Egypt

Soviet interest in Egypt is presumably focussed in long range terms on the Suez Canal. That interest is less economic than strategic; less in shipping and other economic benefits which would flow from influence or control over the Canal than in the strategic advantage of being able to compromise or sever the vital British Empire communications line through Suez. Soviet attempts to acquire influence or control over the Canal must, because of extreme British sensitivity regarding Suez, proceed cautiously and slowly—probably through negotiations for financial participation in the Suez Company and through bids to outflank the Canal, as have already been made in the proposals for Soviet trusteeship over Eritrea and Tripolitania.

In the domestic Egyptian scene the Soviet Government is feeling its way. It is trying to build up Soviet prestige through cultural propaganda and a display of interest in Mohammedanism and at the same time is endeavoring to find internal elements sufficiently reliable to be used as effective vehicles of Soviet influence in Egyptian domestic politics. This last has apparently not been easy. The anti-British elements in Egypt are for the most part even more hostile to the U.S.S.R. than to Great Britain. The Soviet Union has a long way to go before it can hope to play an influential role in Egypt.

Iraq

Oil and access to the Persian Gulf and to the Arabian peninsula constitute motivations for Soviet expansion into Iraq.

The Russians are probably fairly well convinced by this time that they cannot do business with the Arab elements which are now in control in Iraq. They have only recently succeeded in establishing diplomatic relations with the Iraqi Government, and they are still hesitant about attacking it openly for fear of involving themselves in trouble with the Arab world in general. They are therefore treating the Iraqi Government with great caution.

This does not hinder them, however, from exploiting the deficiencies of the Iraqi minority policy with respect to the Kurds, who, it is important to note, are strongest in the vicinity of the northern oil fields. It must be expected that Kurdish grievances will be nurtured by Moscow and will some day be exploited by the Russians as a means of pressure on the Iraqi central government. For the moment Soviet policy is to aggravate to the utmost the conflict between the Kurds and the Arabs. At the same time a vigorous effort is being made to obtain influence in Baghdad among the Arab intelligentsia. It must be expected that if this effort is successful, a day will come when dissident pro-Soviet Arab elements will also begin to make trouble for the government and to bid, as in Iran, for political power.

Iran

Security, oil and access to the Persian Gulf are to the Soviet Union three incentives for encroachment on Iran. Domination of northwestern Iran is a minimum requirement for the security of the Caucasus area. Acquisition of control over northern Iranian oil is a goal for the near future. A bid for control over southern oil must wait because such a move at this time would provoke violent British reaction. Eventually, however, the U.S.S.R. may be expected to attempt to obtain control over southern Iranian Oil, not so much because of Soviet need for that oil, but more because the denial of it to the Anglo-Americans would be a strategic coup. Access to the Persian Gulf, the third incentive for Soviet encroachment on Iran, would open a corridor to Arabia and India and a direct trade route between the Ural industrial area and southeast Asian raw material sources.

In Iran the Soviet Union depends on four instruments for attaining its end. One is the Red Army in occupation. It obstructs the functioning of the Iranian Government and protects, if by no other way than through its presence, the native agents and agencies of the U.S.S.R. A second is the Tudeh Party. The U.S.S.R. seeks to utilize it for the discrediting, and eventually the overthrow, of the existing government and its replacement by a regime amenable to the Soviet Union. Thirdly, the Azerbaijan Party is the instrument by which the U.S.S.R. is attempting, as a preliminary move, to separate northwestern Iran from the rest of the country⁸⁴ and so insure early Soviet predominance in that particular region. Finally, under Soviet direction, the Kurds are likewise a fissionist force in northwestern Iran. There have been hints that the Kurdish “independence” movement is already fairly well developed—and that certain Iraqi Kurds have made contact with it.

Afghanistan

Security and a gateway to India constitute primary motives for the Soviet Union’s seeking dominant influence in Afghanistan. Security is a primary concern because of the close proximity of Afghanistan’s present border to the richest portion of Soviet Central Asia. And Afghanistan is the nearest gateway into India, in which the U.S.S.R. has always had a latent but strong interest.

Soviet policy toward Afghanistan is at present one of comparative quiescence. Although evidently now working quietly, as a preparatory measure, toward the penetration of certain border areas of Afghanistan, the U.S.S.R. is not yet ready to act in a big way. When the time comes, it will probably seek with characteristic flexibility to exploit the open issue of the Oxus boundary and to utilize fully tribal ties across the Afghan-Soviet border and tribal and dynastic conflicts within Afghanistan. Meanwhile it will of course oppose with determination any association of Afghanistan with other Moslem states in which the U.S.S.R. does not itself play the leading and controlling role.

Summary of Soviet Political Tactics in Near and Middle East

One of the outstanding characteristics of Soviet foreign policy is its flexible multiformity. Nowhere, perhaps, is this quality more clearly demonstrated than in the Near and Middle East. It may therefore be useful, in conclusion, to summarize the various lines of Soviet policy in that area.

Nationalism and irredentist sentiments are encouraged among the Armenians. Tribal revolt and autonomy is incited among the Kurds. The export brand of Stalinist ideology is sold to the Jews. The doctrine of Church unity under the patronage of the Soviet State is propagated in Orthodox communities.

In dealing with states, still other techniques are employed as instruments of policy. Tactics of cultural and religious ingratiation are used in Egypt. In contrast, against Turkey the U.S.S.R. has employed diplomatic negotiation, a war of nerves (including a whispering campaign regarding impending military action) and propaganda by foreign agencies (such as the demand of Armenians in the United States for the “return” of eastern Turkish provinces to the Armenian SSR). Finally, toward Iran the U.S.S.R. has resorted to active and passive military intervention and internal political intrigue.

Respectfully yours,

W. A. Harriman

78. This despatch was drafted by George F. Kennan, Counselor of Embassy, and John P. Davies, Jr., Second Secretary of Embassy at Moscow.
79. For documentation on the Straits question, see vol. viii , first section under Turkey.
81. For indication of the rise of Soviet political influence in the Near East through the church, see telegram 1800, May 30, from Moscow, p. 1127, and telegram 2455, July 7, from Moscow, p. 1129.
82. The Jewish Autonomous Oblast in the Khabarovsk Kray, on the Amur River in a corner jutting into Manchuria, was established in 1934 with its administrative center at Birobidzhan, after an original settlement of about 19,000 Jews in 1927. Conditions were so uncongenial that the project was not a success.
83. For documentation on formation of the Arab League, see vol. viii , section entitled “Attitude of the United States toward the question of Arab Unity.”
84. For documentation on the attitude of the United States toward fostering by the Soviet Union of dissident movements in northern Iran, see vol. viii , first section under Iran.