We are talking about the American diplomat and writer William Bullitt. Based on Alexander Etkind’s book “Roads Not Taken. An Intellectual Biography of William Bullitt” (Etkind, Alexander, “Roads Not Taken. An Intellectual Biography of William C. Bullitt”, 2017).
I don’t know how many people have heard of this man, but he is a person who knew how the world works and how it changes. At various times he expressed opinions and took steps that, in retrospect, proved to be the right ones. Unfortunately, only when it was too late… He was once on the right side of history, but often fell on deaf ears. The book’s author notes that although he has been compared to Henry Kissinger, it was Bullitt, not Kissinger, who carried forward the era’s vision of Pax Americana, or American peace, into the 20th century.
Mostly forgotten, but once with a huge network of acquaintances. Bullitt met Lenin, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Chiang Kai-shek, Charles De Gaulle, Sigmund Freud and Mikhail Bulgakov. They spoke often with President Woodrow Wilson, and Bullitt was also a Wilson-type liberal in the beginning.
He obtained conditions from Lenin which, if accepted by the West, would have prevented the birth of the Soviet Union. He had predicted the absorption of Austria four months in advance and the Munich match ten months in advance. After World War II he offered massive economic aid to Chiang Kai-shek’s regime to prevent a communist takeover. And much more, which unfortunately was not heard.
At the beginning of the 20th century Bullitt was quite left-wing and supported the development of socialist movements, realizing that the old regimes in Europe were collapsing. When he was recruited as a diplomat in 1918, he was immediately appointed to the U.S. delegation to the Paris peace talks. In the same year he prepared two memoranda, one on the Bolshevik movement in Europe and the other on conditions in Germany.
Bullitt predicted a Bolshevik takeover of the Baltics, Poland and Ukraine as soon as the Germans withdrew. He missed him greatly, but his assessment that a revolutionary situation was developing in Europe was correct. According to Bullitt, the struggle between capitalism and socialism had become a struggle between moderate social democrats and Bolsheviks. He saw the Social Democrats as inevitable in Europe and believed that the United States should support them as a moderate force to keep the Bolsheviks at bay.
He also formulated the strategy of support for non-communist left-wing forces, which decades later became a key element of the US administration’s European policy.
After the Paris Peace Conference, he and the psychoanalyst Freud saw this forum as laying the groundwork for disaster and predicted another war.
“History would have been different if US President Wilson had been able to defend his views.”
Following the Treaty of Versailles, Bullitt saw the radicalization of Germany, and he was right. History would have been different if American President Wilson had been able to defend his views. This is what Bullitt and Freud write in their joint book, which, however, due to differences between the authors, saw the light only before Bullitt’s death in 1966.
In 1919, Bullitt was sent to Russia with a British representative to present Western conditions for the Bolsheviks to remain in power. He met Foreign Minister Georgy Chicherin and also Lenin. He managed to give the latter the impression that he was an official representative of the United States, and this was the first time Bullitt used his bluffing skills. In any case, Lenin and his commissars accepted the offer.
By accepting an official document, Bullitt was able to recognize the jurisdiction of Alexander Kolchak, Nikolai Yudenich, Anton Denikin and other white leaders in the areas under their control. National governments were accepted in almost all former colonies of the Russian Empire, from the Baltics to the Caucasus and Central Asia.
Allied occupation forces in Arkhangelsk, Murmansk and Vladivostok were also accepted. The Bolsheviks would be left with a limited area around Moscow and St. Petersburg. The reason was the weakness of the Red Army at that time. However, the Bolsheviks hoped to begin expansion again after consolidating power in their core area.
Lenin wanted an answer from the Paris Peace Conference. If the West had gone along with this plan, perhaps history would have been different. Bullitt drafted the Western Declaration in response, but Wilson fell ill and the Americans were reluctant to pass it on to the Allies. Wilson had no power to require it. A few days later, the Germans received the Treaty of Versailles to sign.
The policy towards Russia was not changed, because the Allies feared the spread of the red threat to Europe and overestimated it, underestimating the capabilities and opportunities of the reds in Russia. Outraged, Bullitt predicted the radicalization of Germany and another war following the Treaty of Versailles and resigned.
Furthermore, Bullitt also considered the established League of Nations incapable of preventing new wars and was convinced that Americans should participate in these wars. After the German-Soviet Treaty of Rapallo, he was one of the few to immediately say that the treaty was the prelude to their military alliance. We’ll be back at ten…
When diplomatic relations were established with the Soviet Union in 1933, Bullitt was the first United States ambassador to Moscow. While working at the embassy, he recruited, among others, the young but talented George Kennan.
At the time, many Western diplomats, including Americans, were fascinated by Marxism. On the other hand, Bullitt transformed from a former left-wing liberal to a staunch anti-Soviet when he experienced the reality of life in the Soviet Union. While later in the war the State Department was purged of too many anti-Soviet diplomats, most of them had served in Moscow during the Bullitt period.
When things got complicated in Moscow after the assassination of Sergei Kirov, Bullitt launched a huge balloon at the embassy, with Mikhail Bulgakov among the guests. The satanic dance depicted in Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita may have been inspired by this event, while Woland’s character is based on Bullitt and Woland’s entourage is based on embassy staff.
By the time he left Moscow, Bullitt compared Bolshevik Russia to Nazi Germany, and was at least a decade ahead of Kennan’s The Long Telegram and Hannah Arendt’s The Milk of Totalitarianism. But what was written in Bullitt’s exit report became American political logic during the Cold War. During the war he offered US help on the condition that Stalin secure the eastern border of Europe where he was in August 1939. Again he was not listened to.
Finally, I would like to underline Bullitt’s belief that Europe must unite. Untold are his stories of World War II, in which he served as a major in the French army, having previously been the last pre-war American ambassador to Paris, refusing to leave when the Germans arrived. But Bullitt acted like Bullitt and that’s worth remembering.
2024-01-04 12:14:00
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