15,697
edits
Changes
no edit summary
[[File:William_C._Bullitt_cph.3b11701.jpg|thumbnail|left|300px|William Christian Bulliet in 1937 after he finished as the first US Ambassorsh Ambassador to the Soviet Union (1933-36]]__NOTOC__
In March of 1919, William Christian Bullitt, an attaché to the U.S. delegation to the Paris Peace Conference and later the first Ambassador to the Soviet Union from 1933-1936, visited Soviet Russia on a clandestine mission. Although Secretary of State Robert Lansing only authorized him to report on political and economic conditions, Bullitt’s actual objective was far more ambitious: to broker an agreement between the Allies and Russia’s Bolshevik government that would end the Russian Civil War, lift the Allied blockade of that country, and allow the Allies to withdraw the troops dispatched to Russia in 1918.
Following the withdrawal of Allied diplomats from Petrograd and Moscow in 1918, the Allied leaders – U.S. President Woodrow Wilson, British Prime Minister David Lloyd George, French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau, and Italian Prime Minister Vittorio Emmanuele Orlando – grappled with the question of how to address the Russian Civil War that erupted between the Bolsheviks and White Russian forces following the Russian Revolution.
After the signing of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk on March 3, 1918, Japanese and Allied forces, including U.S. troops, occupied parts of Northern Russia, Ukraine, and Siberia to protect vital areas from falling into the hands of the Germans, as well as to provide assistance to the White Russians. When the First World War ended, however, Allied leaders found it difficult to justify leaving tens of thousands of war-weary troops in Russia. By this time the [[Why did the Russian Romanov Dynasty collapse in 1917?|Romanov dynasty had completely collapsed]] and various groups were still fighting to control Russia.
====Why didn't the Allies negotiate with Soviet Russia?====
====Why Wilson did send a clandestine mission to Russia led by William Christian Bullitt?====
[[File:Maxim Litvinov 1932.jpg|thumbnail|left|250px|Maxim Litvinov in 1932]]In March 6, 1919, the Bullitt Mission (comprised of Bullitt, journalist Lincoln Steffens, and a U.S. Army intelligence officer) crossed the Russian border. Following a meeting with Deputy Soviet Foreign Minister Maxim Litvinov in Petrograd, Bullitt and Steffens left for Moscow, where they met with Bolshevik leader [[How did Vladimir Lenin Rise To Power?|Vladimir Lenin ]] and his Foreign Minister, Georgi Chicherin. Although there was opposition to negotiations with the United States within the Bolshevik leadership, on March 14, Bullitt received a Russian proposal that demanded that the Allies call for a ceasefire within the former Russian Empire and agree to a peace conference in a neutral nation.
The proposed terms for discussion at the conference included allowing all de facto governments within the borders of Russia to retain the territory they held prior to the armistice, the lifting of the Allied blockade, the withdrawal of Allied troops from Russia, disarmament of the warring Russian factions, and a commitment by the Bolshevik government to honor Russia’s financial obligations to the Allies.
