The West has had a long and complicated relationship with Russia since 1900. From Britain, France, and America being allies with Russia and the USSR during the world wars to deep distrust in the Cold War, Stephen Prout explains how the relationship has evolved to the present day.
Stalin, Roosevelt, and Churchill at the 1943 Tehran Conference.
Throughout the last century and certainly in current times the impression of Russia from a western perspective has been of a menacing spectre. Previous decades have seen imperial rivalry with Britain over the Far and the Middle East, the threat of communist expansion resulting in the Cold War, the tyranny of Stalin during the great purges, the arms race with all its hostile rhetoric, and threats of nuclear escalations. In recent times we have evidence of accusations of meddling in US elections, assassinations in the UK of Russian dissidents and alleged cyber-attacks on Western governmental and commercial organisations. In fact, it is hard not to pick any decade where Russia has been regarded in a favourable light.
Winston Churchill once quoted of Russia “I cannot forecast you the action of Russia. It is a riddle wrapped inside a mystery inside an enigma, but there is a key. That key is Russian national interest.” This summed up well the feelings of the time concerning the Soviet Union and this quote continues to be relevant in modern times. To try and understand this we must track Russia’s journey from the beginning of the twentieth century to the present day. What events have created this hostility, mistrust even paranoia?
A New Century and the First World War
At the beginning of the twentieth century the Russian Empire amongst all the main European powers was the most reviled in Europe. It was less than half a century since when Britain and France had clashed with Russia in the Crimea.
Despite the relationships and direct family connections of Britain and Russia’s royal families, Britain had been wary of Russia and had been making endeavors to contain Russia’s influence in the Middle East and Afghanistan.
By 1904 Russia had embarked on a short and disastrous war with Japan and the result was defeat and international humiliation that highlighted military weakness. More humiliation ensued as her ally France reneged from treaty obligations with Russia to avoid antagonizing Great Britain. The world it seemed did not trust Russia and the feeling would be reciprocal - and as time went on irreconcilable. All this would shortly be put aside when the three powers formed the triple entente in the face of German militarism. Unity against a common enemy did not necessarily mean they would be lasting allies though.
Russia had ambitions for a sphere of influence in the Middle East. This time Britain and France found it expedient to offer such a prospect at the expense of the Ottomans as an incentive to her contributing to an alliance against Germany. None of this would come to fruition as the events of World War One unfolded and the promises to Russia were not honored.
Like the war with Japan the war went in an adverse direction. The Russian forces were partially capable of containing the Austrians, but no match for the Germans who rolled her forces back through Belorussia and Ukraine. The combined effects of economic devastation, hatred of the Tsar and the war itself drove the discontent that created the Russian Revolution. That would be the first foothold of communism and would unsettle the world. Russia would find herself friendless, ostracized, bitter, and mistrustful at the war’s end.
The Russians needed peace and time to augment their new regime and make good on the revolution's promises to its people. This stability came in the form of the Brest-Litovsk peace settlement and it came at an extremely high price. Russia lost large chunks of European land and her many coal mines. It was a loss that for the time being she would have to bear but opportunity would later come to reclaim it.
At this time, her former allies occupied various ports in Russia and supported the anti-revolutionary movements much to the new government’s chagrin. The west it seemed was no more to be trusted than the very nations she fought against so in 1922 Russia signed the Treaty of Rapallo with Germany, another outcast. This treaty had secret clauses that allowed Germany to develop her military machine out of sight of Western eyes, a violation of the Versailles Treaty. Had Western actions and meddling created a future unnecessary hostile force?
The Interwar Years and World War Two
As the first world war was ending the newly established USSR was at war with Poland. Poland was formerly incorporated into former Imperial Russia, but the post war settlement created a new Polish state that would not be satisfied with the boundaries established by Lord Curzon as they took large expanses of Ukraine and Belorussia. The Soviets lost even more territory and received little support.
However, the USSR did little to improve the perception of themselves in their formative years to reassure the West. The USSR was finally recognized by the international community and admitted to the League in 1934. The remaining interwar years were overshadowed with the ruthless actions of its leader, Stalin. A totalitarian shadow had been cast over Russia and the world feared it would expand as the USSR intervened in the Spanish Civil War. Internally, very public trials during the purges and long incarcerations in the labor camps gave a glimpse of what Soviet rule would bring.
Despite this the USSR had its external supporters. The socialists in Britain, enamored with Soviet achievements, overlooked or condoned any controversy that slipped out of the USSR. Major industrial corporations from the US and Britain such as Rolls Royce and Ford clamored to do business with a vibrant economy.
For the unemployed, desperate, and needy, the Soviet Union was seen as a utopia as the capitalist nations such Britain and the USA struggled in the Great Depression. The USSR boasted of full employment, affordable housing and free education and health services so much so that thousands from the USA emigrated, something that these people would later regret when they found themselves abandoned. There were reports of desperate messages reaching the US embassies from US expatriates, but political expediency allowed such things to be conveniently ignored. It did not mean that the West fully trusted the USSR and they were given good reason as the Second World War loomed.
By 1939 the USSR had signed two pacts, one with Germany and one with Japan. That meant the three main militaristic powers were aligned in a state of co-operation and were threatening British, US and other interests around the world. The USSR in two treaties had derailed any collective security and in turn allowed the full might of Japan and Germany to be unleashed on the rest of the world.
The pacts at face value were very strange and politically incongruous considering the ideological differences. In 1936 Germany and Japan had signed The Anti-Comintern Pact aimed specifically at the USSR and the advance of communism. Hitler’s speeches left no room for doubt how he felt about the USSR even in his early writings in Mein Kampf. As the democracies were in retreat, Germany and the USSR invaded and divided up Poland. The USSR added Baltic states and ten percent of Finland’s territory to her spoils.
Following Operation Barbarossa Russia joined the allies to defeat Nazi Germany but would leave the outcome of Europe and future international relations in an equally parlous state. As the war ended so the question of Soviet reliability raised its head again. Once again, a unity against a common enemy did not necessarily mean a long-term friendship.
The Cold War to Glasnost and Perestroika
The war ended with Eastern Europe remaining under a new totalitarian rule. Poland had found itself liberated from one dictator only to be ruled by a no less brutal Soviet version along with East Germany, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, and the former Czechoslovakia.
The uneasy wartime alliance had dissolved by the end of the war. Hostile actions by the USSR with the Berlin Blockade and the establishment of the “Iron Curtain” led to NATO’s formation in 1949 as communism now appeared to be the new enemy. In 1955 the USSR, viewing NATO as a threat, formed their own defensive alliance with its satellite states. Security was the underlying motive certainly in Europe, but the following decades would have the USSR supporting various insurrectionist organisations and proxy wars against the west.
From the point of view of the USSR they had without debate experienced the most savagery in the war. Allied actions did little to give assurances such as the delays to opening a second front in 1943. The USSR it seemed was left to bear the full force of the Wehrmacht alone. Too many times had she been betrayed so the future security and the buffer states of Eastern Europe provided a bulwark against future aggression they perceived would come again from the West. However, the USSR’s perspectives are veiled by secrecy, their intentions will never fully be clear, and this makes it difficult to offer any counterarguments. We are left with her actions that seem to speak louder than anything else.
The next four decades saw the Soviet military machine brutally suppressed its own satellites in Hungary 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968. The Soviets were keeping their vassal states under a tight reign. In 1979 the world watched a Soviet invasion of Afghanistan to shore up a failing communist government. Her presence behind the scenes of revolutionary regimes in Palestine, Libya, Syria, and Iraq would have their own limited but destructive impacts.
For a short while there appeared to be optimism after the fall in Communism in 1989, the unification of Germany and the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact - but this was to be short lived as history moved into the twenty first century. As the USSR broke up into separate autonomous nations it created an unstable base for peace and security for the future.
Russia – back to a New Cold War?
There is a quote from a source Putin’s People, “The Soviet Empire might have been lost…for them, the end of the communist empire did not mean an end of hostilities, but an opportunity to eventually continue them under new auspices.” The events of the twenty first century support this.
The twenty first century saw the East-West rapprochement disintegrate. In eight months in 2014 Russia conducted thirty-nine violations into NATO airspace. In that same year, the world saw her annexation of the Crimea from Ukraine. Russian dissidents were poisoned allegedly by Russian agents on British soil in the infamous Salisbury incidents. There followed allegations of tampering in US elections and in 2022 Russia began an invasion of Ukraine after false reassurances of military exercises.
In March 2014, US President Barack Obama, in a speaking engagement at the Nuclear Security Summit in the Hague, stated that Russia was a regional power as opposed to a superpower, which is what she believed. In the speech he implied that NATO would support non-member countries with non-military means to counter Russia but at the same time stating that Russia was not the principle geographical threat. It was a slap in the face.
Russian pride was hurting, and they needed to reinstate their status as a world power on the same level as the USA who it seemed could cherry pick the international rules by which they could play. Already in 2008 Russia had taken military action in a breakaway region of Georgia to international disdain and the rest Ukraine was soon to follow.
Putin authored an essay in 2020 titled On the Historical Unity of Russia and Ukraine. In that essay he references Ukraine and reveals a motive. It quotes “modern Ukraine was entirely invented by Russia” and goes on “Ukraine is not just a neighbouring country for us” but “an inalienable part of our own culture and space.” Was Russia lamenting its lost territories from the collapse of the USSR? Is Ukraine an omen that these are losses they will not be prepared to let go and will bring back into a new unified Russia?
It appears history repeats with a new cold war and Russia is now internationally isolated again, with few allies and harsh economic sanctions. Nevertheless, there is no acceptable defence for her current actions in Ukraine or any displays of her aggression. The argument of Russia entering her own backyard is reminiscent of the one used to condone Nazi actions in the Rhineland occupation. It is as legitimate as say Britain or France seizing her former colonial possessions by force. The excuse of needing security is risible and although NATO has without doubt expanded easterly it has not threatened Russian or attempted any sovereign violations. Those new nations joined out of fear of Russia and the conditions they endured as former satellites.
There is a pattern of deep mistrust, secrecy and paranoia that has always been and always will be firmly rooted in Russia and this is also projected inward as well as externally as leaders fear lost privilege, power and sometimes safety. No matter the leader, no matter when the decade and no matter the type of regime. It is true to say that the more things change, the more they stay the same.
What do you think of Western relations with Russia since 1900? Let us know below.
Now, read about Britain’s relations with the Soviet Union and France in World War 2 here.
Bibliography
Who Lost Russia? – Peter Conradi – One World Publications - 2017
Armageddon – Max Hastings – Pan Macmillan 2004
Putin’s People – Catherine Belton – William Collins - 2020
Creeds of the Devil Churchill Between the Two Totalitarianisms 1917-45 – Antoine Capet Universite De Rouen
We Need to Talk about Putin- How the West Gets him Wrong – Mark Galeolli – Ebury Digital - 2019
The Forsaken: From the Great Depression to the Gulags: Hope and Betrayal in Stalin's Russia - Tim Tzouliadus – Abacus 2011
Mein Kampf – Adolf Hitler – Kindle edition
BBC Archives – reference Obama quote
