5 - Soviet Russia and Genoa

Summary

The decision to invite the Soviet government to Genoa, essentially a personal one by Lloyd George, rested upon the assumption that the Soviet government would be willing not simply to attend but also to make substantial concessions in return for western economic assistance. The adoption of the New Economic Policy in March 1921, as we have seen, had led substantial sections of western public and governmental opinion to conclude that the Bolsheviks' early revolutionary enthusiasm was subsiding and that a more moderate and acceptable form of politics would gradually emerge in its place. The attempt to establish an economic system on a basis completely different from any that had previously existed was widely believed to be more than a temporary aberration from economic laws which were implacable in their operation and as applicable to Soviet Russia as anywhere else. The example of the French revolution also suggested, at least to Lloyd George, that revolutions were periodic but essentially transient convulsions in the course of history; once the peasantry had secured the land, as in France, they would support the new government which guaranteed their possession, stability would return and normal relations with the outside world would gradually be restored. In any case, it was believed, the Bolsheviks, in the difficult economic situation in which they found themselves, had no alternative but to turn to the West for assistance, in the absence of which the economy would collapse and with it their own regime.