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In the Wake of Empire: Anti-Bolshevik Russia in International Affairs, 1917–1920 by Anatol Shmelev

2022; Maney Publishing; Volume: 100; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/see.2022.0092

2222-4327

Martin Dewhirst,

Intelligence, Security, War Strategy

Reviewed by: In the Wake of Empire: Anti-Bolshevik Russia in International Affairs, 1917–1920 by Anatol Shmelev Martin Dewhirst Shmelev, Anatol. In the Wake of Empire: Anti-Bolshevik Russia in International Affairs, 1917–1920. Hoover Institution Press, Stanford, CA, 2021. xiii + 555 pp. Illustrations. Appendix. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $49.95; $11.99 (e-book). Probably most non-Russians know more about the role of Russia in World War One (some 3 million Russians, out of about 15 million in all the participant countries, were killed) and about what happened in Russia in 1917 than they do about the events in that country shortly after the enforced closure of the Constituent Assembly in January 1918 (the most important date of all, in my opinion). This probably distorts our understanding of the Soviet period of Russian history. As Antony Beevor wrote recently (Russia: Revolution and Civil War 1917–1921, p. 502), the latter 'led to the deaths of up to 12 million people, the utter impoverishment of the whole country and suffering on an unimaginable scale'. Other easily available online sources suggest that between 10 million and about 15 million people lost their lives in the Russian Civil War, a period for many rossiyane of the first really Great Terror in their country, perhaps of even greater terror than those who survived experienced during the second half of the 1930s. Unlike many works on the Russian Civil War, Anatol Shmelev's well written monograph concentrates not on the fighting but on the work of the Russian and, especially, non-Russian negotiators, politicians, statesmen and diplomats who were discussing how best to bring the war to a satisfactory conclusion as soon as possible. Did the non-Russians understand their Soviet 'partners' any better than their Western equivalents a little over a century later? The author probably did not realize how 'relevant' his work would become after 23 February 2022, but it should be read by all the experts who maintained (most still do) that the Cold War ended in about 1987 and that Russia has long been 'post-Soviet', rather than neo-Soviet, if only because it was now 'building capitalism'. This book helps its readers to compare the pathetic attempts of intelligent and well-meaning non-Russians to understand their Soviet interlocutors in 1918–20 with many of the formers' counterparts today. Shmelev, the author of Vneshniaia politika pravitel´stva admirala Kolchaka (St Petersburg, 2017), seems to have read just about everything relevant to his subject, whether published or archived. As the subtitle suggests, he concentrates his attention on non-Russians and 'White' Russians, not on 'Red' Russians, so he does not discuss directly whether the 'Reds' understood both the 'Whites' and the West better than the latter understood the former. Many of the key 'Reds' and many of the key 'Whites', for very different reasons, knew one or more Western languages and had spent a good deal of time in the West, but [End Page 770] very few of the Western participants in the discussions and negotiations knew any Russian or had spent much, if any, time in Russia. Moreover, both the 'Reds' and the 'Whites' wanted, again for very different reasons, to ensure that Russia remained as large as possible. In a way, the 'Red' negotiators who just managed to agree to the 'filthy' Treaty of Brest-Litovsk were more flexible than the Whites, who also wanted to keep their country as large as they possibly could, with the exception of Finland (p. 194). On this, see also pp. 316–22, 370, 417 and 421. And of course, by remaining in control of Moscow and Petrograd, the 'Reds' were in a much stronger position than the widely scattered 'Whites' at a time when communications were still extremely slow and complicated (see, for instance, p. 257). There is no space here to discuss the six sections of this volume in detail. I suggest that readers watch out for every mention of the Constituent (sometimes 'National') Assembly (especially on pp. 304 and 478), of regionalism (especially pp. 72–82), nonpredetermination (pp. 183–84, 198), samostoiatel´nost´ as contrasted with nezavisimost´ (pp. 133–35, 239, 287, 327–28, 339–40, 407...