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The Making of a Bolshevik: Georgii Chicherin in England 1914–1918

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Richard K. Debo
Richard K. Debo*
Affiliation:
Simon Fraser University
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Extract

Georgii V. Chicherin's conversion from Menshevism to Bolshevism exemplifies the intense political and ideological stress placed on Russian Social Democrats by World War I. The war split all of Europe's socialist parties, but none so deeply as the already faction-ridden Russian Social Democratic Workers Party. Even after the initial shock had passed and most Russian Social Democrats found their way to one or another of the party's factions, not all members joined a recognizable group. For some the shock was too great, and much time and wandering were needed before they found their bearings. One of these wanderers was Lenin's future Foreign Commissar.

Type
Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 25 , Issue 4 , December 1966 , pp. 651 - 662
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1966

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References

1 A more detailed examination of Chicherin's early life can be found in the first chapter of my unpublished doctoral dissertation, “George Chicherin: Soviet Russia's Second Foreign Commissar,” University of Nebraska, 1964.

2 B. Dvinov, “Pervaia mirovaia voina i rossiiskaia sotsialdemokratiia” (mimeographed; New York: Inter-University Project on the History of the Menshevik Movement, 1962), presents a detailed and well documented, if contentious, study of the several RSDWP factions during World War I.

3 Entsiklopedicheskii slovar’ Russkogo bibliograficheskogo instituta Granat (7th ed.; Moscow, 1933), XLI, Part 3, 227.

4 Ibid., p. 228.

5 Although Trotsky later stated that Chicherin's early contributions to Nashe slovo were written in a “vaguely social-patriotic spirit,” his memory definitely seems to have failed him. Perhaps in the first year of the war, when Chicherin indeed had adopted such a “spirit,” he did submit such manuscripts or letters; they did not appear in print. By late 1915, when his first articles appeared in Nashe slovo, he had passed this stage. See Isaac, Deutscher, The Prophet Armed: Trotsky, 1879-1921 (New York, 1954), pp. 222–23 Google Scholar. 6 Nashe slovo, Nov. 1915—Jan. 1916, passim. In these and all other articles appearing in the Parisian internationalist press, Chicherin used his party name of Ornatskii.

7 Ibid., Jan. 28 and 30,1916.

8 Ibid., March 1, 1916.

9 Leninskii sbornik, XVII, 331.

10 Ivan Maisky, Journey into the Past (London, 1963), p. 75.

11 Nashe slovo, Nov. 7, 1915; Labour Leader (London), Nov. 11, 1915; Cotton Factory Times (Manchester), Jan. 7,1916.

12 Cotton Factory Times, Jan. 7, 1916; Nashe slovo, Feb. 12 and 22, and May 20, 1916; and Maisky, p. 76.

13 Nashe slovo, July 7 and 14, and Aug. 31, 1916; and The Call (London), Sept. 7, 1916.

14 Nachalo, Nov. 25, 1916; and Cotton Factory Times, Oct. 6, 1916.

15 Cotton Factory Times, March 9 and 23, 1917; and The Call, March 15, 1916.

16 The Call, Jan. 4,1917.

17 Nachalo, Nov. 25, 1916; and Cotton Factory Times, Oct. 6, 1916.

18 Cotton Factory Times, March 9 and 23, 1917; and The Call, March 15, 1916.

19 The Call, Jan. 4,1917.

20 Nabokov, p. 110.

21 Ibid., pp. 97-104. See also Pravda, Nov. 23, 1917.

22 The Workers Dreadnought, Sept. 1,1917.

23 Nabokov, p. 106.

24 The Call, Aug. 30, 1917; and Cotton Factory Times, Aug. 24, 1917. It is at present impossible to prove or disprove Chicherin's accusations; the file on his arrest is officially closed the year 2017. It seems likely, however, that Chicherin did receive such a commission to conduct the investigation he mentioned. An agent of the Provisional Government was in western Europe at this time investigating the conduct of the former tsarist embassies. His report, however, does not mention this incident; see Sbornik sekretnykh dokumentov iz Arkhiva byvshago ministerstva inostrannykh del (Petrograd, 1917), Doc. 62.

25 The Call, Aug. 23, 1917; and Cotton Factory Times, Sept. 21, 1917. Chicherin's main complaint seems to have been the jailer's insistence that he rise at six in the morning, an hour he considered more appropriate for bedtime. He had already adopted those habits of turning night into day which would later be the despair of the Moscow diplomatic corps. See The Weekly Dispatch (London), Jan. 6, 1918.

26 Sir George Buchanan, My Mission to Russia (New York, 1923), II, 266.

27 War Cabinet Memorandum, “Policy of the War Cabinet Relative to Revolutionary Government at Petrograd,” Viscount Milner Papers, New College, Oxford, MSS Box B, Doc.

28 Zalkind, “N.K.I.D. v semnadtsatom godu,” Mezhdunarodnaia zhizn', No. 10, 1927, p. 18.

29 Buchanan, II, 227-28.

30 The Call, Nov. 29, and Dec. 6, 1917; and Hansard (London), C, 574 (Dec. 6, 1917).

31 David Lloyd George, War Memoirs (London, 1933-37), V, 2575-76.

32 “Policy of the War Cabinet Relative to Revolutionary Government at Petrograd.“

33 Cotton Factory Times, Jan. u; 1918; Labour Leader, Jan. 10 and 17, 1918; and Louis Fischer, The Soviets in World Affairs (2d ed.; Princeton, 1951), 1,51. 34 Maisky, p. 77.