Overture to Moscow

Since the Russian Embassy in Washington was vacated by the last Imperial envoy, 16 years have passed. In 1919 a favorable report on Bolshevik Russia by a young diplomat named William Christian Bullitt was rejected by Woodrow Wilson in Paris; no one believed Bullitt when he insisted that the Bolsheviks would remain in power. A roly-poly Russian named Maxim Maximovich Litvinov was refused a visa when Lenin appointed him Soviet Ambassador to the U. S.

Nonrecognition of Russia was almost the only Wilson policy to survive the Harding landslide. It deviated sharply from the diplomatic custom of recognizing de facto any stable Government which accepts the usual international conventions.* President Roosevelt's overture to Moscow last week was regarded in Europe as a triumph for Russia: recognition at last. For President Roosevelt it was two or three triumphs: 1) Never before had the Soviets agreed to discuss differences with a sovereign power before their own sovereignty was recognized. 2 ) Upon excited Europe and the Far East (though Japan loudly professed to see in it nothing admonitory) the drawing together of Russia and the U. S. must have a quieting effect. 3) The quieting effect upon U. S.-domestic excitements was instant and undisputed. For William Bullitt, now special assistant to the Secretary of State, it was also a triumph: weeks of quiet negotiation by him and by John Van Antwerp MacMurray, who is apparently slated to turn in his Latvia-Estonia-Lithuania portfolio and become Ambassador to Moscow, led up to last weeks exchange of letters.

To roly-poly Maxim Litvinov, now People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs (see p. 14), it meant changing his plan to visit Turkey this month, for that Republic's tenth birthday party, and going in style to the great U. S. as a welcome stranger. When he arrives, he and the State Department and President Roosevelt will have three main topics of conversation: 1) Settlement of U. S. claims, including U. S. loans of $192,000,000 to the Kerensky Government, with $135,000,000 accrued interest, and $441,000,000 in private claims for confiscated properties and repudiated bonds. Against these Russia advances counter-claims for damage caused by U. S. troops in the Allied-White Russian invasion of Siberia in 1918-20. Probable Stalin formula: no payments on the old debts except in the guise of high rates for new trade credits. 2) Communist Propaganda in the U. S. Dictator Stalin gladly, and cynically, exchanges mutual pledges against propaganda with capitalist countries. The Third International, vehicle of the Communist "world revolution," has lately been ignored by him. 3) Trade. Negotiation of a commercial treaty will be the chief object of the conversations. The first eight months of 1933, for probably the first time in the history of U. S.-Russian trade, gave Russia the favorable balance. The 1910-14 trade balance with Imperial Russia amounted to $4,000,000 in favor of the U. S. By 1931 it had increased to $92,000,000 but slumped badly thereafter. Commissar Litvinov has often proclaimed that Russia, given favorable terms, is willing to spend $1,000,000,000 in foreign markets. Last July the U. S. reached out for its first slice when the R. F. C. extended a $4,000,000 one-year credit with which Russia purchased surplus U. S. cot ton. Last week Colonel Hugh Cooper, engineer of the huge new Dnieprostroy Dam and president of the U. S.-Russian Chamber of Commerce, foresaw "a great trade opportunity for the United States," and Iowa's onetime Senator Brookhart boldly predicted orders up to $500,000,000 in railroad materials, construction metals, electric and other machinery, if President Roosevelt's overture to Moscow leads into a symphony of Recognition.

* The infant U. S. Republic was not recognized by Imperial Russia for 33 years. Outraged by its extravagant ideas about Liberty and Equality, Catherine the Great steadfastly refused to receive a U. S. Minister. Her successors, Paul I and Alexander I, shared her attitude. But after Napoleon induced him to sign the Treaty of Tilsit, Alexander thought the U. S. might be useful in the event of war, appointed a diplomatic representative in 1809.

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