Antony C. Sutton - WALL STREET AND THE BOLSHEVIK REVOLUTION-E
In 1918 the Soviets faced a bewildering array of internal and external problems. They occupied a mere fraction of Russia. To subdue the remainder, they needed foreign arms, imported food, outside financial support, diplomatic recognition, and — above all — foreign trade. To gain diplomatic recognition and foreign trade, the Soviets first needed representation abroad, and representation in turn required financing through gold or foreign currencies. As we have already seen, the first step was to establish the Soviet Bureau in New York under Ludwig Martens. At the same time, efforts were made to transfer funds to the United States and Europe for purchases of needed goods. Then influence was exerted in the U.S. to gain recognition or to obtain the export licenses needed to ship goods to Russia.
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So far our story has revolved around a single major financial house — Guaranty Trust Company, the largest trust company in the United States and controlled by the J.P. Morgan firm. Guaranty Trust used Olof Aschberg, the Bolshevik banker, as its intermediary in Russia before and after the revolution. Guaranty was a backer of Ludwig Martens and his Soviet Bureau, the first Soviet representatives in the United States. And in mid-1920 Guaranty was the Soviet fiscal agent in the U.S.; the first shipments of Soviet gold to the United States also traced back to Guaranty Trust.
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There is an extensive literature in English, French, and German reflecting the argument that the Bolshevik Revolution was the result of a "Jewish conspiracy"; more specifically, a conspiracy by Jewish world bankers. Generally, world control is seen as the ultimate objective; the Bolshevik Revolution was but one phase of a wider program that supposedly reflects an age-old religious struggle between Christianity and the "forces of darkness."
Chapter IV
GUARANTY TRUST GOES TO RUSSIA
Soviet Govemment desire Guarantee [sic] Trust Company to become fiscal agent in United States for all Soviet operations and contemplates American purchase Eestibank with a view to complete linking of Soviet fortunes with American financial interests.
William H. Coombs, reporting to the U.S. embassy in London, June 1, 1920 (U.S. State Dept. Decimal File, 861.51/752). ("Eestibank" was an Estonian bank)
In 1918 the Soviets faced a bewildering array of internal and external problems. They occupied a mere fraction of Russia. To subdue the remainder, they needed foreign arms, imported food, outside financial support, diplomatic recognition, and — above all — foreign trade. To gain diplomatic recognition and foreign trade, the Soviets first needed representation abroad, and representation in turn required financing through gold or foreign currencies. As we have already seen, the first step was to establish the Soviet Bureau in New York under Ludwig Martens. At the same time, efforts were made to transfer funds to the United States and Europe for purchases of needed goods. Then influence was exerted in the U.S. to gain recognition or to obtain the export licenses needed to ship goods to Russia.
New York bankers and lawyers provided significant — in some cases, critical — assistance for each of these tasks. When Professor George V. Lomonossoff, the Russian technical expert in the Soviet Bureau, needed to transfer funds from the chief Soviet agent in Scandinavia, a prominant Wall Street attorney came to his assistance — using official State Department channels and the acting secretary of state as an intermediary. When gold had to be transferred to the United States, it was American International Corporation, Kuhn, Loeb & Co., and Guaranty Trust that requested the facilities and used their influence in Washington to smooth the way. And when it came to recognition, we find American firms pleading .with Congress and with the public to endorse the Soviet regime.
Lest the reader should deduce — too hastily — from these assertions that Wall Street was indeed tinged with Red, or that Red flags were flying in the street (see frontispiece), we also in a later chapter present evidence that the J.P. Morgan firm financed Admiral Kolchak in Siberia. Aleksandr Kolchak was fighting the Bolsheviks, to install his own brand of authoritarian rule. The firm also contributed to the anti-Communist United Americans organization.
The case of Professor Lomonossoff is a detailed case history of Wall Street assistance to the early Soviet regime. In late 1918 George V. Lomonossoff, member of the Soviet Bureau in New York and later first Soviet commissar of railroads, found himself stranded in the United States without funds. At this time Bolshevik funds were denied entry into the United States; indeed, there was no official recognition of the regime at all. Lomonossoff was the subject of a letter of October 24, 1918, from the U.S. Department of Justice to the Department of State.1 The letter referred to Lomonossoff's Bolshevik attributes and pro-Bolshevik speeches. The investigator concluded, "Prof. Lomonossoff is not a Bolshevik although his speeches constitute unequivocal support for the Bolshevik cause." Yet Lomonossoff was able to pull strings at the highest levels of the administration to have $25,000 transferred from the Soviet Union through a Soviet espionage agent in Scandinavia (who was himself later to become confidential assistant to Reeve Schley, a vice president of Chase Bank). All this with the assistance of a member of a prominent Wall Street firm of attorneys!2
The evidence is presented in detail because the details themselves point up the close relationship between certain interests that up to now have been thought of as bitter enemies. The first indication of Lornonossoff's problem is a letter dated January 7, 1919, from Thomas L. Chadbourne of Chadbourne, Babbitt 8e Wall of 14 Wall Street (same Address as William Boyce Thompson's) to Frank Polk, acting secretary of state. Note the friendly salutation and casual reference to Michael Gruzenberg, alias Alexander Gumberg, chief Soviet agent in Scandinavia and later Lomonossoff's assistant:
Dear Frank: You were kind enough to say that if I could inform you of the status of the $25,000 item of personal funds belonging to Mr. & Mrs. Lomonossoff you would set in motion the machinery necessary to obtain it here for them.I have communicated with Mr. Lomonossoff with respect to it, and he tells me that Mr. Michael Gruzenberg, who went to Russia for Mr. Lomonossoff prior to the difficulties between Ambassador Bakhmeteff and Mr. Lomonossoff, transmitted the information to him respecting this money through three Russians who recently arrived from Sweden, and Mr. Lomonossoff believes that the money is held at the Russian embassy in Stockholm, Milmskilnad Gaten 37. If inquiry from the State Department should develop this to be not the place where the money is on deposit, then the Russian embassy in Stockholm can give the exact address of Mr. Gruzenberg, who can give the proper information respecting it. Mr. Lomonossoff does not receive letters from Mr. Gruzenberg, although he is informed that they have been written: nor have any of his letters to Mr. Gruzenberg been delivered, he is also informed. For this reason it is impossible to be more definite than I have been, but I hope something can be done to relieve his and his wife's embarrassment for lack of funds, and it only needs a little help to secure this money which belongs to them to aid them on this side of the water.Thanking you in advance for anything you can do, I beg to remain, as ever,Yours sincerely,
Thomas L. Chadbourne.
In 1919, at the time this letter was written, Chadbourne was a dollar-a-year man in Washington, counsel and director of the U.S. War Trade Board, and a director of the U.S. Russian Bureau Inc., an official front company of the U.S. government. Previously, in 1915, Chadbourne organized Midvale Steel and Ordnance to take advantage of war business. In 1916 he became chairman of the Democratic Finance Committee and later a director of Wright Aeronautical and o[ Mack Trucks.
The reason Lomonossoff was not receiving letters from Gruzenberg is that they were, in all probability, being intercepted by one of several governments taking a keen interest in the latter's activities.
On January 11, 1919, Frank Polk cabled the American legation in Stockholm:
Department is in receipt of information that $25,000, personal funds of .... Kindly inquire of the Russian Legation informally and personally if such funds are held thus. Ascertain, if not, address of Mr. Michael Gruzenberg, reported to be in possession of information on this subject. Department not concerned officially, merely undertaking inquiries on behalf of a former Russian official in this country.Polk, Acting
Polk appears in this letter to be unaware of Lomonossoff's Bolshevik connections, and refers to him as "a former Russian official in this country." Be that as it may, within three days Polk received a reply from Morris at the U.S. Legation in Stockholm:
January 14, 3 p.m. 3492. Your January 12, 3 p.m., No. 1443.Sum of $25,000 of former president of Russian commission of ways of communication in United States not known to Russian legation; neither can address of Mr. Michael Gruzenberg be obtained.Morris
Apparently Frank Polk then wrote to Chadbourne (the letter is not included in the source) and indicated that State could find neither Lomonossoff nor Michael Gruzenberg. Chadbourne replied on January 21, 1919:
Dear Frank: Many thanks for your letter of January 17. I understand that there are two Russian legations in Sweden, one being the soviet and the other the Kerensky, and I presume your inquiry was directed to the soviet legation as that was the address I gave you in my letter, namely, Milmskilnad Gaten 37, Stockholm.
Michael Gruzenberg's address is, Holmenkollen Sanitarium, Christiania, Norway, and I think the soviet legation could find out all about the funds through Gruzenberg if they will communicate with him.Thanking you for taking this trouble and assuring you of my deep appreciation, I remain,Sincerely yours,
Thomas L. Chadbourne
We should note that a Wall Street lawyer had the address of Gruzenberg, chief Bolshevik agent in Scandinavia, at a time when the acting secretary of state and the U.S. Stockholm legation had no record of the address; nor could the legation track it down. Chadbourne also presumed that the Soviets were the official government of Russia, although that government was not recognized by the United States, and Chadbourne's official government position on the War Trade Board would require him to know that.
Frank Polk then cabled the American legation at Christiania, Norway, with the address of Michael Gruzenberg. It is not known whether Polk knew he was passing on the address of an espionage agent, but his message was as follows:
To American Legation, Christiania. January 25, 1919. It is reported that Michael Gruzenberg is at Holmenkollen Sanitarium. Is it possible for you to locate him and inquire if he has any knowledge respecting disposition of $25,000 fund belonging to former president of Russian mission of ways of communication in the United States, Professor Lomonossoff.Polk, Acting
The U.S. representative (Schmedeman) at Christiania knew Gruzenberg well. Indeed, the name had figured in reports from Schmedeman to Washington concerning Gruzenberg's pro-Soviet activities in Norway. Schmedeman replied:
January 29, 8 p.m. 1543. Important. Your January 25, telegram No. 650.Before departing to-day for Russia, Michael Gruzenberg informed our naval attache that when in Russia some few months ago he had received, at Lomonossoff's request, $25,000 from the Russian Railway Experimental Institute, of which Prof. Lomonossoff was president. Gruzenberg claims that to-day he cabled attorney for Lomonossoff in New York, Morris Hillquitt [sic], that he, Gruzenberg, is in possession of the money, and before forwarding it is awaiting further instructions from the United States, requesting in the cablegram that Lomonossoff be furnished with living expenses for himself and family by Hillquitt pending the receipt of the money.3As Minister Morris was traveling to Stockholm on the same train as Gruzenberg, the latter stated that he would advise further with Morris in reference to this subject.Schmedeman
The U.S. minister traveled with Gruzenberg to Stockholm where he received the following cable from Polk:
It is reported by legation at Christiania that Michael Gruzenberg, has for Prof. G. Lomonossoff, the . . . sum of $25,000, received from Russian Railway Experimental Institute. If you can do so without being involved with Bolshevik authorities, department will be glad for you to facilitate transfer of this money to Prof. Lomonossoff in this country. Kindly reply.Polk, Acting
This cable produced results, for on February 5, 1919, Frank Polk wrote to Chadbourne about a "dangerous bolshevik agitator," Gruzenberg:
My Dear Tom: I have a telegram from Christiania indicating that Michael Gruzenberg has the $25,000 of Prof. Lomonossoff, and received it from the Russian Railway Experimental Institute, and that he had cabled Morris Hillquitt [sic], at New York, to furnish Prof. Lomonossoff money for living expenses until the fund in question can be transmitted to him. As Gruzenberg has just been deported from Norway as a dangerous bolshevik agitator, he may have had difficulties in telegraphing from that country. I understand he has now gone to Christiania, and while it is somewhat out of the department's line of action, I shall be glad, if you wish, to see if I can have Mr. Gruzenberg remit the money to Prof. Lomonossoff from Stockholm, and am telegraphing our minister there to find out if that can be done.Very sincerely, yours,
Frank L. Polk
The telegram from Christiania referred to in Polk's letter reads as follows:
February 3, 6 p.m., 3580. Important. Referring department's january 12, No. 1443, $10,000 has now been deposited in Stockholm to my order to be forwarded to Prof. Lomonossoff by Michael Gruzenberg, one of the former representatives of the bolsheviks in Norway. I informed him before accepting this money that I would communicate with you and inquire if it is your wish that this money be forwarded to Lomonossoff. Therefore I request instructions as to my course of action.Morris
Subsequently Morris, in Stockholm, requested disposal instructions for a $10,000 draft deposited in a Stockholm bank. His phrase "[this] has been my only connection with the affair" suggests that Morris was aware that the Soviets could, and probably would, claim this as an officially expedited monetary transfer, since this action implied approval by the U.S. of such monetary transfers. Up to this time the Soviets had been required to smuggle money into the U.S.
Four p.m. February 12, 3610, Routine.With reference to my February 3, 6 p.m., No. 3580, and your February 8, 7 p.m., No. 1501. It is not clear to me whether it is your wish for me to transfer through you the $10,000 referred to Prof. Lomonossoff. Being advised by Gruzenberg that he had deposited this money to the order of Lomonossoff in a Stockholm bank and has advised the bank that this draft could be sent to America through me, provided I so ordered, has been my only connection with the affair. Kindly wire instructions.Morris
Then follows a series of letters on the transfer of the $10,000 from A/B Nordisk Resebureau to Thomas L. Chadbourne at 520 Park Avenue, New York City, through the medium of the State Department. The first letter contains instructions from Polk, on the mechanics of the transfer; the second, from Morris to Polk, contains $10,000; the third, from Morris to A/B Nordisk Resebureau, requesting a draft; the fourth is a reply from the bank with a check; and the fifth is the acknowledgment.
Your February 12, 4 p.m., No. 3610.Money may be transmitted direct to Thomas L. Chadbourne, 520 Park Avenue, New York City,Polk, Acting
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Dispatch, No. 1600, March 6, 1919:The Honorable the Secretary of State, WashingtonSir: Referring to my telegram, No. 3610 of February 12, and to the department's reply, No. 1524 of February 19 in regard to the sum of $10,000 for Professor Lomonossoff, I have the honor herewith to inclose a copy of a letter which I addressed on February 25 to A. B. Nordisk Resebureau, the bankers with whom this money was deposited; a copy of the reply of A. B. Nordisk Resebureau, dated February 26; and a copy of my letter to the A. B. Nordisk Resebureau, dated February 27.It will be seen from this correspondence that the bank was desirous of having this money forwarded to Professor Lomonossoff. I explained to them, however, as will be seen from my letter of February 27, that I had received authorization to forward it directly to Mr. Thomas L. Chadbourne, 520 Park Avenue, New York City. I also inclose herewith an envelope addressed to Mr. Chadbourne, in which are inclosed a letter to him, together with a check on the National City Bank of New York for $10,000.I have the honor to be,
sir, Your obedient servant,
Ira N. Morris
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A. B. Nordisk Reserbureau,No. 4 Vestra Tradgardsgatan, Stockholm.Gentlemen: Upon receipt of your letter of January 30, stating that you had received $10,000 to be paid out to Prof. G. V. Lomonossoff, upon my request, I immediately telegraphed to my Government asking whether they wished this money forwarded to Prof. Lomonossoff. I am to-day in receipt of a reply authorizing me to forward the money direct to Mr. Thomas L. Chadbourne, payable to Prof. Lomonossoff. I shall be glad to forward it as instructed by my Government.I am, gentlemen,Very truly, yours,
Ira N. Morris
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Mr. I. N. Morris,American Minister, StockholmDeal Sir: We beg to acknowledge the receipt of your favor of yesterday regarding payment of dollars 10,000 — to Professor G. V. Lomonossoff, and we hereby have the pleasure to inclose a check for said amount to the order of Professor G. V. Lomonossoff, which we understand that you are kindly forwarding to this gentleman. We shall be glad to have your receipt for same, arid beg to remain,Yours, respectfully,
A. B. Nordisk Reserbureau
E. Molin
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A. B. Nordisk Resebureau.StockholmGentlemen: I beg to acknowledge receipt of your letter of February 26, inclosing a check for $10,000 payable to Professor G. V. Lomonossoff. As I advised you in my letter of February 25, I have been authorized to forward this check to Mr. Thomas L. Chadbourne, 520 Park Avenue, New York City, and I shall forward it to this gentleman within the next few days, unless you indicate a wish to the contrary.Very truly, yours,
Ira N. Morris
Then follow an internal State Department memorandum and Chadbourne's acknowledgment:
Mr. Phillips to Mr. Chadbourne, April 3, 1919.Sir: Referring to previous correspondence regarding a remittance of ten thousand dollars from A. B. Norsdisk Resebureau to Professor G. V. Lomonossoff, which you requested to be transmitted through the American Legation at Stockholm, the department informs you that it is in receipt of a dispatch from the American minister at Stockholm dated March 6, 1919, covering the enclosed letter addressed to you, together with a check for the amount referred to, drawn to the order to Professor Lomonossoff.I am, sir, your obedient servant
William Phillips,
Acting Secretary of State.Inclosure: Sealed letter addressed Mr. Thomas L. Chadbourne, inclosed with 1,600 from Sweden.
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Reply of Mr. Chadbourne, April 5, 1919.
Sir: I beg to acknowledge receipt of your letter of April 3, enclosing letter addressed to me, containing check for $10,000 drawn to the order of Professor Lomonossoff, which check I have to-day delivered.
I beg to remain, with great respect,
Very truly, yours,
Thomas L. Chadbourne
Subsequently the Stockholm legation enquired concerning Lomonossoff's address in the U.S. and was informed by the State Department that "as far as the department is aware Professor George V. Lomonossoff can be reached in care of Mr. Thomas L. Chadbourne, 520 Park Avenue, New York City."
It is evident that the State Department, for the reason either of personal friendship between Polk and Chadbourne or of political influence, felt it had to go along and act as bagman for a Bolshevik agent — just ejected from Norway. But why would a prestigious establishment law firm be so intimately interested in the health and welfare of a Bolshevik emissary? Perhaps a contemporary State Department report gives the clue:
Martens, the Bolshevik representative, and Professor Lomonossoff are banking on the fact that Bullitt and his party will make a favorable report to the Mission and the President regarding conditions in Soviet Russia and that on the basis of this report the Government of the United States will favor dealing with the Soviet Government as, proposed by Martens. March 29, 1919.4
It was commercial exploitation of Russia that excited Wall Street, and Wall Street had lost no time in preparing its program. On May 1, 1918 — an auspicious date for Red revolutionaries — the American League to Aid and Cooperate with Russia was established, and its program approved in a conference held in the Senate Office Building, Washington, D.C. The officers and executive committee of the league represented some superficially dissimilar factions. Its president was Dr. Frank J. Goodnow, president of Johns Hopkins University. Vice presidents were the ever active William Boyce Thompson, Oscar S. Straus, James Duncan, and Frederick C. Howe, who wrote Confessions of a Monopolist, the rule book by which monopolists could control society. The Treasurer was George P. Whalen, vice president of Vacuum Oil Company. Congress was represented by Senator William Edgar Borah and Senator John Sharp Williams, of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee; Senator William N. Calder; and Senator Robert L. Owen, chairman of the Banking and Currency Committee. House members were Henry R. Cooper and Henry D. Flood, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. American business was represented by Henry Ford; Charles A. Coffin, chairman of the board of General Electric Company; and M. A. Oudin, then foreign manager of General Electric. George P. Whalen represented Vacuum Oil Company, and Daniel Willard was president of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad. The more overtly revolutionary element was represented by Mrs. Raymond Robins, whose name was later found to be prominent in the Soviet Bureau files and in the Lusk Committee hearings; Henry L. Slobodin, described as a "prominent patriotic socialist"; and Lincoln Steffens, a domestic Communist of note.
In other words, this was a hybrid executive committee; it represented domestic revolutionary elements, the Congress of the United States, and financial interests prominently involved with Russian affairs.
Approved by the executive committee was a program that emphasized the establishment of an official Russian division in the U.S. government "directed by strong men." This division would enlist the aid of universities, scientific organizations, and other institutions to study the "Russian question," would coordinate and unite organizations within the United States "for the safeguarding of Russia," would arrange for a "special intelligence committee for the investigation of the Russian matter," and, generally, would itself study and investigate what was deemed to be the "Russian question." The executive committee then passed a resolution supporting President Woodrow Wilson's message to the Soviet congress in Moscow and the league affirmed its own support for the new Soviet Russia.
A few weeks later, on May 20, 1918, Frank J. Goodnow and Herbert A. Carpenter, representing the league, called upon Assistant Secretary of State William Phillips and impressed upon him the necessity for establishing an "official Russian Division of the Government to coordinate all Russian matters. They asked me [wrote Phillips] whether they should take this matter up with the President."5
Phillips reported this directly to the secretary of state and on the next day wrote Charles R. Crane in New York City requesting his views on the American League to Aid and Cooperate with Russia. Phillips besought Crane, "I really want your advice as to how we should treat the league .... We do not want to stir up trouble by refusing to cooperate with them. On the other hand it is a queer committee and I don't quite 'get it.'"6
In early June there arrived at the State Department a letter from William Franklin Sands of American International Corporation for Secretary of State Robert Lansing. Sands proposed that the United States appoint an administrator in Russia rather than a commission, and opined that "the suggestion of an allied military force in Russia at the present moment seems to me to be a very dangerous one."7 Sands emphasized the possibility of trade with Russia and that this possibility could be advanced "by a well chosen administrator enjoying the full confidence of the government"; he indicated that "Mr. Hoover" might fit the role.8 The letter was passed to Phillips by Basil Miles, a former associate of Sands, with the expression, "I think the Secretary would find it worthwhile to look through."
In early June the War Trade Board, subordinate to the State Department, passed a resolution, and a committee of the board comprising Thomas L. Chadbourne (Professor Lomonossoff's contact), Clarence M. Woolley, and John Foster Dulles submitted a memorandum to the Department of State, urging consideration of ways and means "to bring about closer and more friendly commercial relations between the United States and Russia." The board recommended a mission to Russia and reopened the question whether this should result from an invitation from the Soviet government.
Then on June 10, M. A. Oudin, foreign manager of General Electric Company, expressed his views on Russia and clearly favored a "constructive plan for the economic assistance" of Russia.9 In August 1918 Cyrus M. McCormick of International Harvester wrote to Basil Miles at the State Department and praised the President's program for Russia, which McCormick thought would be "a golden opportunity."10
Consequently, we find in mid-1918 a concerted effort by a segment of American business — obviously prepared to open up trade — to take advantage of its own preferred position regarding the Soviets.
In 1918 such assistance to the embryonic Bolshevik regime was justified on the grounds of defeating Germany and inhibiting German exploitation of Russia. This was the argument used by W. B. Thompson and Raymond Robins in sending Bolshevik revolutionaries and propaganda teams into Germany in 1918. The argument was also employed by Thompson in 1917 when conferring with Prime Minister Lloyd George about obtaining British support for the emerging Bolshevik regime. In June 1918 Ambassador Francis and his staff returned from Russia and urged President Wilson "to recognize and aid the Soviet government of Russia."11 These reports made by the embassy staff to the State Department were leaked to the press and widely printed. Above all, it was claimed that delay in recognizing the Soviet Union would aid Germany "and helps the German plan to foster reaction and counter-revolution."12 Exaggerated statistics were cited to support the proposal — for example, that the Soviet government represented ninety percent of the Russian people "and the other ten percent is the former propertied and governing class .... Naturally they are displeased."13 A former American official was quoted as saying, "If we do nothing — that is, if we just let things drift — we help weaken the Russian Soviet Government. And that plays Germany's game."14 So, it was recommended that "a commission armed with credit and good business advice could help much."
Meanwhile, inside Russia the economic situation had become critical and the inevitability of an embrace with capitalism dawned on the Communist Party and its planners. Lenin crystallized this awareness before the Tenth Congress of the Russian Communist Party:
Without the assistance of capital it will be impossible for us to retain proletarian power in an incredibly ruined country in which the peasantry, also ruined, constitutes the overwhelming majority — and, of course, for this assistance capital will squeeze hundreds per cent out of us. This is what we have to understand. Hence, either this type of economic relations or nothing ....15
Then Leon Trotsky was quoted as saying, "What we need here is an organizer like Bernard M. Baruch."16
Soviet awareness of its impending economic doom suggests that American and German business was attracted by the opportunity of exploiting the Russian market for needed goods; the Germans, in fact, made an early start in 1918. The first deals made by the Soviet Bureau in New York indicate that earlier American financial and moral support of the Bolsheviks was paying off in the form of contracts.
The largest order in 1919-20 was contracted to Morris & Co., Chicago meatpackers, for fifty million pounds of food products, valued at approximately $10 million. The Morris meatpacking family was related to the Swift family. Helen Swift, later connected with the Abraham Lincoln Center "Unity," was married to Edward Morris (of the meatpacking firm) and was also the brother of Harold H. Swift, a "major" in the 1917 Thompson Red Cross Mission to Russia.
Ludwig Martens was formerly vice president of Weinberg & Posner, located at 120 Broadway, New York City, and this firm was given a $3 million order.
Gold was the only practical means by which the Soviet Union could pay for its foreign purchases and the international bankers were quite willing to facilitate Soviet gold shipments. Russian gold exports, primarily imperial gold coins, started in early 1920, to Norway and Sweden. These were transshipped to Holland and Germany for other world destinations, including the United States.
In August 1920, a shipment of Russian gold coins was received at the Den Norske Handelsbank in Norway as a guarantee for payment of 3,000 tons of coal by Niels Juul and Company in the U.S. in behalf of the Soviet government. These coins were transferred to the Norges Bank for safekeeping. The coins were examined and weighed, were found to have been minted before the outbreak of war in 1914, and were therefore genuine imperial Russian coins.17
Shortly after this initial episode, the Robert Dollar Company of San Francisco received gold bars, valued at thirty-nine million Swedish kroner, in its Stockholm account; the gold "bore the stamp of the old Czar Government of Russia." The Dollar Company agent in Stockholm applied to the American Express Company for facilities to ship the gold to the United States. American Express refused to handle the shipment. Robert Dollar, it should be noted, was a director of American International Company; thus AIC was linked to the first attempt at shipping gold direct to America.18
Simultaneously it was reported that three ships had left Reval on the Baltic Sea with Soviet gold destined for the U.S. The S.S. Gauthod loaded 216 boxes of gold under the supervision of Professor Lomonossoff — now returning to the United States. The S.S. Carl Line loaded 216 boxes of gold under the supervision of three Russian agents. The S.S. Ruheleva was laden with 108 boxes of gold. Each box contained three poods of gold valued at sixty thousand gold rubles each. This was followed by a shipment on the S.S. Wheeling Mold.
Kuhn, Loeb & Company, apparently acting in behalf of Guaranty Trust Company, then inquired of the State Department concerning the official attitude towards the receipt of Soviet gold. In a report the department expressed concern because if acceptance was refused, then "the gold [would] probably come back on the hands of the War Department, causing thereby direct governmental responsibility and increased embarrassment."19 The report, written by Merle Smith in conference with Kelley and Gilbert, argues that unless the possessor has definite knowledge as to imperfect title, it would be impossible to refuse acceptance. It was anticipated that the U.S. would be requested to melt the gold in the assay office, and it was thereupon decided to telegraph Kuhn, Loeb & Company that no restrictions would be imposed on the importation of Soviet gold into the United States.
The gold arrived at the New York Assay Office and was deposited not by Kuhn, Loeb & Company — but by Guaranty Trust Company of New York City. Guaranty Trust then inquired of the Federal Reserve Board, which in turn inquired of the U.S. Treasury, concerning acceptance and payment. The superintendent of the New York Assay Office informed the Treasury that the approximately seven million dollars of gold had no identifying marks and that "the bars deposited have already been melted in United States mint bars." The Treasury suggested that the Federal Reserve Board determine whether Guaranty Trust Company had acted "for its own account, or the account of another in presenting the gold," and particularly "whether or not any transfer of credit or exchange transaction has resulted from the importation or deposit of the gold."20
On November 10, 1920, A. Breton, a vice president of the Guaranty Trust, wrote to Assistant Secretary Gilbert of the Treasury Department complaining that Guaranty had not received from the assay office the usual immediate advance against deposits of "yellow metal left with them for reduction." The letter states that Guaranty Trust had received satisfactory assurances that the bars were the product of melting French and Belgium coins, although it had purchased the metal in Holland. The letter requested that the Treasury expedite payment for the gold. In reply the Treasury argued that it "does not purchase gold tendered to the United States mint or assay offices which is known or suspected to be of Soviet origin," and in view of known Soviet sales of gold in Holland, the gold submitted by Guaranty Trust Company was held to be a "doubtful case, with suggestions of Soviet origin." It suggested that the Guaranty Trust Company could withdraw the gold from the assay office at any time it wished or could "present such further evidence to the Treasury, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York or the Department of State as may be necessary to clear the gold of any suspicion of Soviet origin."21
There is no file record concerning final disposition of this case but presumably the Guaranty Trust Company was paid for the shipment. Obviously this gold deposit was to implement the mid-1920 fiscal agreement between Guaranty Trust and the Soviet government under which the company became the Soviet agent in the United States (see epigraph to this chapter).
It was determined at a later date that Soviet gold was also being sent to the Swedish mint. The Swedish mint "melts Russian gold, assays it and affixes the Swedish mint stamp at the request of Swedish banks or other Swedish subjects owing the gold."22 And at the same time Olof Aschberg, head of Svenska Ekonomie A/B (the Soviet intermediary and affiliate of Guaranty Trust), was offering "unlimited quantities of Russian gold" through Swedish banks.23
In brief, we can tie American International Corporation, the influential Professor Lomonossoff, Guaranty Trust, and Olof Aschberg (whom we've previously identified) to the first attempts to import Soviet gold into the United States.
Guaranty Trust's interest in Soviet Russia was renewed in 1920 in the form of a letter from Henry C. Emery, assistant manager of the Foreign Department of Guaranty Trust, to De Witt C. Poole in the State Department. The letter was dated January 21, 1920, just a few weeks before Allen Walker, the manager of the Foreign Department, became active in forming the virulent anti-Soviet organization United Americans (see page 165). Emery posed numerous questions about the legal basis of the Soviet government and banking in Russia and inquired whether the Soviet government was the de facto government in Russia.24 "Revolt before 1922 planned by Reds," claimed United Americans in 1920, but Guaranty Trust had started negotiations with these same Reds and was acting as the Soviet agent in the U.S. in mid-1920.
In January 1922 Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover, interceded with the State Department in behalf of a Guaranty Trust scheme to set up exchange relations with the "New State Bank at Moscow." This scheme, wrote Herbert Hoover, "would not be objectionable if a stipulation were made that all monies coming into their possession should be used for the purchase of civilian commodities in the United States"; and after asserting that such relations appeared to be in line with general policy, Hoover added, "It might be advantageous to have these transactions organized in such a manner that we know what the movement is instead of disintegrated operations now current."25 Of course, such "disintegrated operations" are consistent with the operations of a free market, but this approach Herbert Hoover rejected in favor of channeling the exchange through specified and controllable sources in New York. Secretary of State Charles E. Hughes expressed dislike of the Hoover-Guaranty Trust scheme, which he thought could be regarded as de facto recognition of the Soviets while the foreign credits acquired might be used to the disadvantage of the United States.26 A noncommittal reply was sent by State to Guaranty Trust. However, Guaranty went ahead (with Herbert Hoover's support),27 participated in formation of the first Soviet international bank, and Max May of Guaranty Trust became head of the foreign department of the new Ruskombank.28
Footnotes:1U.S. State Dept. Decimal File, 861.00/3094.2This section is from U.S., Senate, Russian Propaganda, hearings before a subcommittee of the Committee on Foreign Relations, 66th Cong., 2d sess., 1920.3Morris Hillquit was the intermediary between New York banker Eugene Boissevain and John Reed in Petrograd.4U.S. State Dept. Decimal File, 861.00/4214a.5Ibid., 861.00/1938.6Ibid.7Ibid., 861.00/2003.8Ibid.9Ibid., 861.00/2002.10Ibid.11Ibid., M 316-18-1306.12Ibid.13Ibid.14Ibid.15V. 1. Lenin, Report to the Tenth Congress of the Russian Communist Party, (Bolshevik), March 15, 1921.16William Reswick, I Dreamt Revolution (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1952), p. 78.17U.S. State Dept. Decimal File, 861.51/815.18Ibid., 861.51/836.19Ibid., 861.51,/837, October 4, 1920.20Ibid., 861.51/837, October 24, 1920.21Ibid., 861.51/853, November 11, 1920.22Ibid., 316-119, 1132.23Ibid., 316-119-785. This report has more data on transfers of Russian gold through other countries and intermediaries. See also 316-119-846.24Ibid., 861.516/86.
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Chapter X
J.P. MORGAN GIVES A LITTLE HELP TO THE OTHER SIDE
I would not sit down to lunch with a Morgan — except possibly to learn something of his motives and attitudes.
William E. Dodd, Ambassador Dodd's Diary, 1933-1938
So far our story has revolved around a single major financial house — Guaranty Trust Company, the largest trust company in the United States and controlled by the J.P. Morgan firm. Guaranty Trust used Olof Aschberg, the Bolshevik banker, as its intermediary in Russia before and after the revolution. Guaranty was a backer of Ludwig Martens and his Soviet Bureau, the first Soviet representatives in the United States. And in mid-1920 Guaranty was the Soviet fiscal agent in the U.S.; the first shipments of Soviet gold to the United States also traced back to Guaranty Trust.
There is a startling reverse side to this pro-Bolshevik activity — Guaranty Trust was a founder of United Americans, a virulent anti-Soviet organization which noisily threatened Red invasion by 1922, claimed that $20 million of Soviet funds were on the way to fund Red revolution, and forecast panic in the streets and mass starvation in New York City. This duplicity raises, of course, serious questions about the intentions of Guaranty Trust and its directors. Dealing with the Soviets, even backing them, can be explained by apolitical greed or simply profit motive. On the other hand, spreading propaganda designed to create fear and panic while at the same time encouraging the conditions that give rise to the fear and panic is a considerably more serious problem. It suggests utter moral depravity. Let's first look more closely at the anti-Communist United Americans.
In 1920 the organization United Americans was founded. It was limited to citizens of the United States and planned for five million members, "whose sole purpose would be to combat the teachings of the socialists, communists, I.W.W., Russian organizations and radical farmers societies."
In other words, United Americans was to fight all those institutions and groups believed to be anticapitalist.
The officer's of the preliminary organization established to build up United Americans were Allen Walker of the Guaranty Trust Company; Daniel Willard, president of the Baltimore 8c Ohio Railroad; H. H. Westinghouse, of Westinghouse Air Brake Company; and Otto H. Kahn, of Kuhn, Loeb 8c Company and American International Corporation. These Wall Streeters were backed up by assorted university presidents arid Newton W. Gilbert (former governor of the Philippines). Obviously, United Americans was, at first glance, exactly the kind of organization that establishment capitalists would be expected to finance and join. Its formation should have brought no great surprise.
On the other hand, as we have already seen, these financiers were also deeply involved in supporting the new Soviet regime in Russia — although this support was behind the scenes, recorded only in government files, and not to be made public for 50 years. As part of United Americans, Walker, Willard, Westinghouse, and Kahn were playing a double game. Otto H. Kahn, a founder of the anti-Communist organization, was reported by the British socialist J. H. Thomas as having his "face towards the light." Kahn wrote the preface to Thomas's book. In 1924 Otto Kahn addressed the League for Industrial Democracy and professed common objectives with this activist socialist group (see page 49). The Baltimore & Ohio Railroad (Willard's employer) was active in the development of Russia during the 1920s. Westinghouse in 1920, the year United Americans was founded, was operating a plant in Russia that had been exempted from nationalization. And the role of Guaranty Trust has already been minutely described.
In March 1920 the New York Times headlined an extensive, detailed scare story about Red invasion of the United States within two years, an invasion which was to be financed by $20 million of Soviet funds "obtained by the murder and robbery of the Russian nobility."2
United Americans had, it was revealed, made a survey of "radical activities" in the United States, and had done so in its role as an organization formed to "preserve the Constitution of the United States with the representative form of government and the right of individual possession which the Constitution provides."
Further, the survey, it was proclaimed, had the backing of the executive board, "including Otto H. Kahn, Allen Walker of the Guaranty Trust Company, Daniel Willard," and others. The survey asserted that
the radical leaders are confident of effecting a revolution within two years, that the start is to be made in New York City with a general strike, that Red leaders have predicted much bloodshed and that the Russian Soviet Government has contributed $20,000,000 to the American radical movement.
The Soviet gold shipments to Guaranty Trust in mid-1920 (540 boxes of three poods each) were worth roughly $15,000,000 (at $20 a troy ounce), and other gold shipments through Robert Dollar and Olof Aschberg brought the total very close to $20 million. The information about Soviet gold for the radical movement was called "thoroughly reliable" and was "being turned over to the Government." The Reds, it was asserted, planned to starve New York into submission within four days:
Meanwhile the Reds count on a financial panic within the next few weeks to help their cause along. A panic would cause distress among the workingmen and thus render them more susceptible to revolution doctrine.
The United Americans' report grossly overstated the number of radicals in the United States, at first tossing around figures like two or five million and then settling for precisely 3,465,000 members in four radical organizations. The report concluded by emphasizing the possibility of bloodshed and quoted "Skaczewski, President of the International Publishing Association, otherwise the Communist Party, [who] boasted that.the time was coming soon when the Communists would destroy utterly the present form of society."
In brief, United Americans published a report without substantiating evidence, designed to scare the man in the street into panic: The significant point of course is that this is the same group that was responsible for protecting and subsidizing, indeed assisting, the Soviets so they could undertake these same plans.
Is this a case of the right hand not knowing what the left hand was doing? Probably not. We are talking about heads of companies, eminently successful companies at that. So United Americans was probably a ruse to divert public — and official — attention from the subterranean efforts being made to gain entry to the Russian market.
United Americans is the only documented example known to this writer of an organization assisting the Soviet regime and also in the forefront of opposition to the Soviets. This is by no means an inconsistent course of action, and further research should at least focus on the following aspects:
(a) Are there other examples of double-dealing by influential groups generally known as the establishment?(b) Can these examples be extended into other areas? For example, is there evidence that labor troubles have been instigated by these groups?(c) What is the ultimate purpose of these pincer tactics? Can they be related to the Marxian axiom: thesis versus antithesis yields synthesis? It is a puzzle why the Marxist movement would attack capitalism head-on if its objective was a Communist world and if it truly accepted the dialectic. If the objective is a Communist world — that is, if communism is the desired synthesis — and capitalism is the thesis, then something apart from capitalism or communism has to be antithesis. Could therefore capitalism be the thesis and communism the antithesis, with the objective of the revolutionary groups and their backers being a synthesizing of these two systems into some world system yet undescribed?
Concurrently with these efforts to aid the Soviet Bureau and United Americans, the J.P. Morgan firm, which controlled Guaranty Trust, was providing financial assistance for one of the Bolshevik's primary opponents, Admiral Aleksandr Kolchak in Siberia. On June 23, 1919, Congressman Mason introduced House Resolution 132 instructing the State Department "to make inquiry as to all and singular as to the truth of . . . press reports" charging that Russian bondholders had used their influence to bring about the "retention of American troops in Russia" in order to ensure continued payment of interest on Russian bonds. According to a file memorandum by Basil Miles, an associate of William F. Sands, Congressman Mason charged that certain banks were attempting to secure recognition of Admiral Kolchak in Siberia to get payment on former Russian bonds.
Then in August 1919 the secretary of state, Robert Lansing, received from the Rockefeller-influenced National City Bank of New York a letter requesting official comment on a proposed loan of $5 million to Admiral Kolchak; and from J.P. Morgan & Co. and other bankers another letter requesting the views of the department concerning an additional proposed £10 million sterling loan to Kolchak by a consortium of British and American bankers.3
Secretary Lansing informed the bankers that the U.S. had not recognized Kolchak and, although prepared to render him assistance, "the Department did not feel it could assume the responsibility of encouraging such negotiations but that, nevertheless, there seemed to be no objection to the loan provided the bankers deemed it advisable to make it."4
Subsequently, on September 30, Lansing informed the American consul general at Omsk that the "loan has since gone through in regular course"5 Two fifths was taken up by British banks and three fifths by American banks. Two thirds of the total was to be spent in Britain and the United States and the remaining one third wherever the Kolchak Government wished. The loan was secured by Russian gold (Kolchak's) that was shipped to San Francisco. The timing of the previously described Soviet exports of gold suggests that cooperation with the Soviets on gold sales was determined on the heels of the Kolchak gold-loan agreement.
The Soviet gold sales and the Kolchak loan also suggest that Carroll Quigley's statement that Morgan interests infiltrated the domestic left applied also to overseas revolutionary and counterrevolutionary movements. Summer 1919 was a time of Soviet military reverses in the Crimea and the Ukraine and this black picture may have induced British and American bankers to mend their fences with the anti-Bolshevik forces. The obvious rationale would be to have a foot in all camps, and so be in a favorable position to negotiate for concessions and business after the revolution or counterrevolution had succeeded and a new government stabilized. As the outcome of any conflict cannot be seen at the start, the idea is to place sizable bets on all the horses in the revolutionary race. Thus assistance was given on the one hand to the Soviets and on the other to Kolchak — while the British government was supporting Denikin in the Ukraine and the French government went to the aid of the Poles.
In autumn 1919 the Berlin newspaper Berliner Zeitung am Mittak (October 8 and 9) accused the Morgan firm of financing the West Russian government and the Russian-German forces in the Baltic fighting the Bolsheviks — both allied to Kolchak. The Morgan firm strenuously denied the charge: "This firm has had no discussion, or meeting, with the West Russian Government or with anyone pretending to represent it, at any time."6 But if the financing charge was inaccurate there is evidence of collaboration. Documents found by Latvian government intelligence among the papers of Colonel Bermondt, commander of the Western Volunteer Army, confirm "the relations claimed existing between Kolchak's London Agent and the German industrial ring which was back of Bermondt."7
In other words, we know that J.P. Morgan, London, and New. York bankers financed Kolchak. There is also evidence that connects Kolchak and his army with other anti-Bolshevik armies. And there seems to be little question that German industrial and banking circles were financing the all-Russian anti-Bolshevik army in the Baltic. Obviously bankers' funds have no national flag.
Footnotes:1New York Times, June 21, 1919.2Ibid., March 28, 1920.3U.S. State Dept. Decimal File, 861.51/649.4Ibid., 861.51/6755Ibid., 861.51/6566Ibid., 861.51/767 — a letter from J. P. Morgan to Department of State, November 11, 1919. The financing itself was a hoax (see AP report in State Department files following the Morgan letter).7Ibid., 861.51/6172 and /6361.
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Chapter XI
THE ALLIANCE OF BANKERS AND REVOLUTION
The name Rockefeller does not connote a revolutionary, and my life situation has fostered a careful and cautious attitude that verges on conservatism. I am not given to errant causes...
John D. Rockefeller III, The Second American Revolution (New York: Harper & Row. 1973)
Evidence already published by George Katkov, Stefan Possony, and Michael Futrell has established that the return to Russia of Lenin and his party of exiled Bolsheviks, followed a few weeks later by a party of Mensheviks, was financed and organized by the German government.1 The necessary funds were transferred in part through the Nya Banken in Stockholm, owned by Olof Aschberg, and the dual German objectives were: (a) removal of Russia from the war, and (b) control of the postwar Russian market.2
We have now gone beyond this evidence to establish a continuing working relationship between Bolshevik banker Olof Aschberg and the Morgan-controlled Guaranty Trust Company in New York before, during, and after the Russian Revolution. In tsarist times Aschberg was the Morgan agent in Russia and negotiator for Russian loans in the United States; during 1917 Aschberg was financial intermediary for the revolutionaries; and after the revolution Aschberg became head of Ruskombank, the first Soviet international bank, while Max May, a vice president of the Morgan-controlled Guaranty Trust, became director and chief of the Ruskom-bank foreign department. We have presented documentary evidence of a continuing working relationship between the Guaranty Trust Company and the Bolsheviks. The directors of Guaranty Trust in 1917 are listed in Appendix 1.
Moreover, there is evidence of transfers of funds from Wall Street bankers to international revolutionary activities. For example, there is the statement (substantiated by a cablegram) by William Boyce Thompson — a director of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, a large stockholder in the Rockefeller-controlled Chase Bank, and a financial associate of the Guggenheims and the Morgans — that he (Thompson) contributed $1 million to the Bolshevik Revolution for propaganda purposes. Another example is John Reed, the American member of the Third International executive committee who was financed and supported by Eugene Boissevain, a private New York banker, and who was employed by Harry Payne Whitney's Metropolitan magazine. Whitney was at that time a director of Guaranty Trust. We also established that Ludwig Martens, the first Soviet "ambassador" to the United States, was (according to British Intelligence chief Sir Basil Thompson) backed by funds from Guaranty Trust Company. In tracing Trotsky's funding in the U.S. we arrived at German sources, yet to be identified, in New York. And though we do not know the precise German sources of Trotsky's funds, we do know that Von Pavenstedt, the chief German espionage paymaster in the U.S., was also senior partner of Amsinck & Co. Amsinck was owned by the ever-present American International Corporation — also controlled by the J.P. Morgan firm.
Further, Wall Street firms including Guaranty Trust were involved with Carranza's and Villa's wartime revolutionary activities in Mexico. We also identified documentary evidence concerning. a Wall Street syndicate's financing of the 1912 Sun Yat-sen revolution in China, a revolution that is today hailed by the Chinese Communists as the precursor of Mao's revolution in China. Charles B. Hill, New York attorney negotiating with Sun Yat-sen in behalf of this syndicate, was a director of three Westinghouse subsidiaries, and we have found that Charles R. Crane of Westinghouse in Russia was involved in the Russian Revolution.
Quite apart from finance, we identified other, and possibly more significant, evidence of Wall Street involvement in the Bolshevik cause. The American Red Cross Mission to Russia was a private venture of William B. Thompson, who publicly proffered partisan support to the Bolsheviks. British War Cabinet papers now available record that British policy was diverted towards the Lenin-Trotsky regime by the personal intervention of Thompson with Lloyd George in December 1917. We have reproduced statements by director Thompson and deputy chairman William Lawrence Saunders, both of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, strongly favoring the Bolshevists. John Reed not only was financed from Wall Street, but had consistent support for his activities, even to the extent of intervention with the State Department from William Franklin Sands, executive secretary of American International Corporation. In the sedition case of Robert Minor there are strong indications and some circumstantial evidence that Colonel Edward House intervened to have Minor released. The significance of the Minor case is that William B. Thompson's program for Bolshevik revolution in Germany was the very program Minor was implementing when arrested in Germany.
Some international agents, for example Alexander Gumberg, worked for Wall Street and the Bolsheviks. In 1917 Gumberg was the representative of a U.S. firm in Petrograd, worked for Thompson's American Red Cross Mission, became chief Bolshevik agent in Scandinavia until he was deported from Norway, then became confidential assistant to Reeve Schley of Chase Bank in New York and later to Floyd Odium of Atlas Corporation.
This activity in behalf of the Bolsheviks originated in large part from a single address: 120 Broadway, New York City. The evidence for this observation is outlined but no conclusive reason is given for the unusual concentration of activity at a single address, except to state that it appears to be the foreign counterpart of Carroll Quigley's claim that J.P. Morgan infiltrated the domestic left. Morgan also infiltrated the international left.
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York was at 120 Broadway. The vehicle for this pro-Bolshevik activity was American International Corporation — at 120 Broadway. AIC views on the Bolshevik regime were requested by Secretary of State Robert Lansing only a few weeks after the revolution began, and Sands, executive secretary of AIC, could barely restrain his enthusiasm for the Bolshevik cause. Ludwig Martens, the Soviet's first ambassador, had been vice president of Weinberg & Posner, which was also located at 120-Broadway. Guaranty Trust Company was next door at 140 Broadway but Guaranty Securities Co. was at 120 Broadway. In 1917 Hunt, Hill & Betts was at 120 Broadway, and Charles B. Hill of this firm was the negotiator in the Sun Yat-sen dealings. John MacGregor Grant Co., which was financed by Olof Aschberg in Sweden and Guaranty Trust in the United States, and which was on the Military Intelligence black list, was at 120 Broadway. The Guggenheims and the executive heart of General Electric (also interested in American International) were at 120 Broadway. We find it therefore hardly surprising that the Bankers Club was also at 120 Broadway, on the top floor (the thirty-fourth).
It is significant that support for the Bolsheviks did not cease with consolidation of the revolution; therefore, this support cannot be wholly explained in terms of the war with Germany. The American-Russian syndicate formed in 1918 to obtain concessions in Russia was backed by the White, Guggenheim, and Sinclair interests. Directors of companies controlled by these three financiers included Thomas W. Lamont (Guaranty Trust), William Boyce Thompson (Federal Reserve Bank), and John Reed's employer Harry Payne Whitney (Guaranty Trust). This strongly suggests that the syndicate was formed to cash in on earlier support for the Bolshevik cause in the revolutionary period. And then we found that Guaranty Trust financially backed the Soviet Bureau in New York in 1919.
The first really concrete signal that previous political and financial support was paying off came in 1923 when the Soviets formed their first international bank, Ruskombank. Morgan associate Olof Aschberg became nominal head of this Soviet bank; Max May, a vice president of Guaranty Trust, became a director of Ruskom-bank, and the Ruskombank promptly appointed Guaranty Trust Company its U.S. agent.
What motive explains this coalition of capitalists and Bolsheviks?
Russia was then — and is today — the largest untapped market in the world. Moreover, Russia, then and now, constituted the greatest potential competitive threat to American industrial and financial supremacy. (A glance at a world map is sufficient to spotlight the geographical difference between the vast land mass of Russia and the smaller United States.) Wall Street must have cold shivers when it visualizes Russia as a second super American industrial giant.
But why allow Russia to become a competitor and a challenge to U.S. supremacy? In the late nineteenth century, Morgan/Rockefeller, and Guggenheim had demonstrated their monopolistic proclivities. In Railroads and Regulation 1877-1916Gabriel Kolko has demonstrated how the railroad owners, not the farmers, wanted state control of railroads in order to preserve their monopoly and abolish competition. So the simplest explanation of our evidence is that a syndicate of Wall Street financiers enlarged their monopoly ambitions and broadened horizons on a global scale. The gigantic Russian market was to be converted into a captive market and a technical colony to be exploited by a few high-powered American financiers and the corporations under their control. What the Interstate Commerce Commission and the Federal Trade Commission under the thumb of American industry could achieve for that industry at home, a planned socialist government could achieve for it abroad — given suitable support and inducements from Wall Street and Washington, D.C.
Finally, lest this explanation seem too radical, remember that it was Trotsky who appointed tsarist generals to consolidate the Red Army; that it was Trotsky who appealed for American officers to control revolutionary Russia and intervene in behalf of the Soviets; that it was Trotsky who squashed first the libertarian element in the Russian Revolution and then the workers and peasants; and that recorded history totally ignores the 700,000-man Green Army composed of ex-Bolsheviks, angered at betrayal of the revolution, who fought the Whites and the Reds. In other words, we are suggesting that the Bolshevik Revolution was an alliance of statists: statist revolutionaries and statist financiers aligned against the genuine revolutionary libertarian elements in Russia.3
'The question now in the readers' minds must be, were these bankers also secret Bolsheviks? No, of course not. The financiers were without ideology. It would be a gross misinterpretation to assume that assistance for the Bolshevists was ideologically motivated, in any narrow sense. The financiers were power-motivated and therefore assisted any political vehicle that would give them an entree to power: Trotsky, Lenin, the tsar, Kolchak, Denikin — all received aid, more or less. All, that is, but those who wanted a truly free individualist society.
Neither was aid restricted to statist Bolsheviks and statist counter-Bolsheviks. John P. Diggins, in Mussolini and Fascism: The View from America,4 has noted in regard to Thomas Lamont of Guaranty Trust that
Of all American business leaders, the one who most vigorously patronized the cause of Fascism was Thomas W. Lamont. Head of the powerful J.P. Morgan banking network, Lamont served as something of a business consultant for the government of Fascist Italy.
Lamont secured a $100 million loan for Mussolini in 1926 at a particularly crucial time for the Italian dictator. We might remember too that the director of Guaranty Trust was the father of Corliss Lamont, a domestic Communist. This evenhanded approach to the twin totalitarian systems, communism and fascism, was not confined to the Lamont family. For example, Otto Kahn, director of American International Corporation and of Kuhn, Leob & Co., felt sure that "American capital invested in Italy will find safety, encouragement, opportunity and reward."5 This is the same Otto Kahn who lectured the socialist League of Industrial Democracy in 1924 that its objectives were his objectives.6 They differed only — according to Otto Kahn — over the means of achieving these objectives.
Ivy Lee, Rockefeller's public relations man, made similar pronouncements, and was responsible for selling the Soviet regime to the gullible American public in the late 1920s. We also have observed that Basil Miles, in charge of the Russian desk at the State Department and a former associate of William Franklin Sands, was decidedly helpful to the businessmen promoting Bolshevik causes; but in 1923 the same Miles authored a profascist article, "Italy's Black Shirts and Business."7 "Success of the Fascists is an expression of Italy's youth," wrote Miles while glorifying the fascist movement and applauding its esteem for American business.
The Marburg Plan, financed by Andrew Carnegie's ample heritage, was produced in the early years of the twentieth century. It suggests premeditation for this kind of superficial schizophrenia, which in fact masks an integrated program of power acquisition: "What then if Carnegie and his unlimited wealth, the international financiers and the Socialists could be organized in a movement to compel the formation of a league to enforce peace."8
The governments of the world, according to the Marburg Plan, were to be socialized while the ultimate power would remain in the hands of the international financiers "to control its councils and enforce peace [and so] provide a specific for all the political ills of mankind."9
This idea was knit with other elements with similar objectives. Lord Milner in England provides the transatlantic example of banking interests recognizing the virtues and possibilities of Marxism. Milner was a banker, influential in British wartime policy, and pro-Marxist.10 In New York the socialist "X" club was founded in 1903. It counted among its members not only the Communist Lincoln Steffens, the socialist William English Walling, and the Communist banker Morris Hillquit, but also John Dewey, James T. Shotwell, Charles Edward Russell, and Rufus Weeks (vice president of New York Life Insurance Company). The annual meeting of the Economic Club in the Astor Hotel, New York, witnessed socialist speakers. In 1908, when A. Barton Hepburn, president of Chase National Bank, was president of the Economic Club, the main speaker was the aforementioned Morris Hillquit, who "had abundant opportunity to preach socialism to a gathering which represented wealth and financial interests."11
From these unlikely seeds grew the modern internationalist movement, which included not only the financiers Carnegie, Paul Warburg, Otto Kahn, Bernard Baruch, and Herbert Hoover, but also the Carnegie Foundation and its progenyInternational Conciliation. The trustees of Carnegie were, as we have seen, prominent on the board of American International Corporation. In 1910 Carnegie donated $10 million to found the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and among those on the board of trustees were Elihu Root (Root Mission to Russia, 1917), Cleveland H. Dodge (a financial backer of President Wilson), George W. Perkins (Morgan partner), G. J. Balch (AIC and Amsinck), R. F. Herrick (AIC), H. W. Pritchett (AIC), and other Wall Street luminaries. Woodrow Wilson came under the powerful influence of — and indeed was financially indebted to — this group of internationalists. As Jennings C. Wise has written, "Historians must never forget that Woodrow Wilson... made it possible for Leon Trotsky to enter Russia with an American passport."12
But Leon Trotsky also declared himself an internationalist. We have remarked with some interest his high-level internationalist connections, or at least friends, in Canada. Trotsky then was not pro-Russian, or pro-Allied, or pro-German, as many have tried to make him out to be. Trotsky was for world revolution, for world dictatorship; he was, in one word, an internationalist.13 Bolshevists and bankers have then this significant common ground — internationalism. Revolution and international finance are not at all inconsistent if the result of revolution is to establish more centralized authority. International finance prefers to deal with central governments. The last thing the banking community wants is laissez-faire economy and decentralized power because these would disperse power.
This, therefore, is an explanation that fits the evidence. This handful of bankers and promoters was not Bolshevik, or Communist, or socialist, or Democrat, or even American. Above all else these men wanted markets, preferably captive international markets — and a monopoly of the captive world market as the ultimate goal. They wanted markets that could be exploited monopolistically without fear of competition from Russians, Germans, or anyone else — including American businessmen outside the charmed circle. This closed group was apolitical and amoral. In 1917, it had a single-minded objective — a captive market in Russia, all presented under, and intellectually protected by, the shelter of a league to enforce the peace.
Wall Street did indeed achieve its goal. American firms controlled by this syndicate were later to go on and build the Soviet Union, and today are well on their way to bringing the Soviet military-industrial complex into the age of the computer.
Today the objective is still alive and well. John D. Rockefeller expounds it in his book The Second American Revolution — which sports a five-pointed star on the title page.14 The book contains a naked plea for humanism, that is, a plea that our first priority is to work for others. In other words, a plea for collectivism. Humanism is collectivism. It is notable that the Rockefellers, who have promoted this humanistic idea for a century, have not turned their OWN property over to others.. Presumably it is implicit in their recommendation that we all work for the Rockefellers. Rockefeller's book promotes collectivism under the guises of "cautious conservatism" and "the public good." It is in effect a plea for the continuation of the earlier Morgan-Rockefeller support of collectivist enterprises and mass subversion of individual rights.
In brief, the public good has been, and is today, used as a device and an excuse for self-aggrandizement by an elitist circle that pleads for world peace and human decency. But so long as the reader looks at world history in terms of an inexorable Marxian conflict between capitalism and communism, the objectives of such an alliance between international finance and international revolution remain elusive. So will the ludicrousness of promotion of the public good by plunderers. If these alliances still elude the reader, then he should ponder the obvious fact that these same international interests and promoters are always willing to determine what other people should do, but are signally unwilling to be first in line to give up their own wealth and power. Their mouths are open, their pockets are closed.
This technique, used by the monopolists to gouge society, was set forth in the early twentieth century by Frederick C. Howe in The Confessions of a Monopolist.15 First, says Howe, politics is a necessary part of business. To control industries it is necessary to control Congress and the regulators and thus make society go to work for you, the monopolist. So, according to Howe, the two principles of a successful monopolist are, "First, let Society work for you; and second, make a business of politics."16 These, wrote Howe, are the basic "rules of big business."
Is there any evidence that this magnificently sweeping objective was also known to Congress and the academic world? Certainly the possibility was known and known publicly. For example, witness the testimony of Albert Rhys Williams, an astute commentator on the revolution, before the Senate Overman Committee:
. . . it is probably true that under the soviet government industrial life will perhaps be much slower in development than under the usual capitalistic system. But why should a great industrial country like America desire the creation and consequent competition of another great industrial rival? Are not the interests of America in this regard in line with the slow tempo of development which soviet Russia projects for herself?
Senator Wolcott: Then your argument is that it would be to the interest of America to have Russia repressed?
MR. WILLIAMS: Not repressed ....
SENATOR WOLCOTT: You say. Why should America desire Russia to become an industrial competitor with her?
MR. WILLIAMS: This is speaking from a capitalistic standpoint. The whole interest of America is not, I think, to have another great industrial rival, like Germany, England, France, and Italy, thrown on the market in competition. I think another government over there besides the Soviet government would perhaps increase the tempo or rate of development of Russia, and we would have another rival. Of course, this is arguing from a capitalistic standpoint.
SENATOR WOLCOTT: So you are presenting an argument here which you think might appeal to the American people, your point being this, that if we recognize the Soviet government of Russia as it is constituted we will be recognizing a government that can not compete with us in industry for a great many years?
MR. WILLIAMS: That is a fact.
SENATOR WOLCOTT: That is an argument that under the Soviet government Russia is in no position, for a great many years at least, to approach America industrially?
MR. WILLIAMS: Absolutely.17
And in that forthright statement by Albert Rhys Williams is the basic clue to the revisionist interpretation of Russian history over the past half century.
Wall Street, or rather the Morgan-Rockefeller complex represented at 120 Broadway and 14 Wall Street, had something very close to Williams' argument in mind. Wall Street went to bat in Washington for the Bolsheviks. It succeeded. The Soviet totalitarian regime survived. In the 1930s foreign firms, mostly of the Morgan-Rockefeller group, built the five-year plans. They have continued to build Russia, economically and militarily.18 On the other hand, Wall Street presumably did not foresee the Korean War and the Vietnam War — in which 100,000 Americans and countless allies lost their lives to Soviet armaments built with this same imported U.S. technology. What seemed a farsighted, and undoubtedly profitable, policy for a Wall Street syndicate, became a nightmare for millions outside the elitist power circle and the ruling class.
Footnotes:1Michael Futrell, Northern Underground (London: Faber and Faber, 1963); Stefan Possony, Lenin: The Compulsive Revolutionary (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1966); and George Katkov, "German Foreign Office Documents on Financial Support to the Bolsheviks in 1917," International Affairs 32 (Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1956).2Ibid., especially Katkov.3See also Voline (V.M. Eichenbaum), Nineteen-Seventeen: The Russian Revolution Betrayed (New York: Libertarian Book Club, n.d.).4Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Prss, 1972.5Ibid., p. 149.6See p. 49.7Nation's Business, February 1923, pp. 22-23.8Jennings C. Wise, Woodrow Wilson: Disciple of Revolution (New York: Paisley Press, 1938), p.459Ibid., p.4610See p. 89.11Morris Hillquit, Loose Leaves from a Busy Life (New York: Macmillan, 1934), p. 81.12Wise, op. cit., p. 64713Leon Trotsky, The Bolsheviki and World Peace (New York: Boni & Liveright, 1918).14In May 1973 Chase Manhattan Bank (chairman, David Rockefeller) opened it Moscow office at 1 Karl Marx Square, Moscow. The New York office is at 1 Chase Manhattan Plaza.15Chicago: Public Publishin, n.d.16Ibid.17U.S., Senate, Bolshevik Propaganda, hearings before a subcommittee of the Committee on the Judiciary, 65th Cong., pp. 679-80. See also herein p. 107 for the role of Williams in Radek's Press Bureau.18See Antony C. Sutton, Western Technology and Soviet Economic Development, 3 vols. (Stanford, Calif.: Hoover Institution, 1968, 1971, 1973); see also National Suicide: Military Aid to the Soviet Union (New York: Arlington House, 1973).
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Appendix II
THE JEWISH-CONSPIRACY THEORY OF THE BOLSHEVIK REVOLUTION
There is an extensive literature in English, French, and German reflecting the argument that the Bolshevik Revolution was the result of a "Jewish conspiracy"; more specifically, a conspiracy by Jewish world bankers. Generally, world control is seen as the ultimate objective; the Bolshevik Revolution was but one phase of a wider program that supposedly reflects an age-old religious struggle between Christianity and the "forces of darkness."
The argument and its variants can be found in the most surprising places and from quite surprising persons. In February 1920 Winston Churchill wrote an article — rarely cited today — for the London Illustrated Sunday Herald entitled"Zionism Versus Bolshevism." In this' article Churchill concluded that it was "particularly important... that the National Jews in every country who are loyal to the land of their adoption should come forward on every occasion . . . and take a prominent part in every measure for combatting the Bolshevik conspiracy." Churchill draws a line between "national Jews" and what he calls "international Jews." He argues that the "international and for the most atheistical Jews" certainly had a "very great" role in the creation of Bolshevism and bringing about the Russian Revolution. He asserts (contrary to fact) that with the exception of Lenin, "the majority" of the leading figures in the revolution were Jewish, and adds (also contrary to fact) that in many cases Jewish interests and Jewish places of worship were excepted by the Bolsheviks from their policies of seizure. Churchill calls the international Jews a "sinister confederacy" emergent from the persecuted populations of countries where Jews have been persecuted on account of their race. Winston Churchill traces this movement back to Spartacus-Weishaupt, throws his literary net around Trotsky, Bela Kun, Rosa Luxemburg, and Emma Goldman, and charges: "This world-wide conspiracy for the overthrow of civilisation and for the reconstitution of society on the basis of arrested development, of envious malevolence, and impossible equality, has been steadily growing."
Churchill then argues that this conspiratorial Spartacus-Weishaupt group has been the mainspring of every subversive movement in the nineteenth century. While pointing out that Zionism and Bolshevism are competing for the soul of the Jewish people, Churchill (in 1920) was preoccupied with the role of the Jew in the Bolshevik Revolution and the existence of a worldwide Jewish conspiracy.
Another well-known author in the 1920s, Henry Wickham Steed describes in the second volume of his Through 30 Years 1892-1922 (p. 302) how he attempted to bring the Jewish-conspiracy concept to the attention of Colonel Edward M. House and President Woodrow Wilson. One day in March 1919 Wickham Steed called Colonel House and found him disturbed over Steed's recent criticism of U.S. recognition of the Bolsheviks. Steed pointed out to House that Wilson would be discredited among the many peoples and nations of Europe and "insisted that, unknown to him, the prime movers were Jacob Schiff, Warburg and other international financiers, who wished above all to bolster up the Jewish Bolshevists in order to secure a field for German and Jewish exploitation of Russia."1 According to Steed, Colonel House argued for the establishment of economic relations with the Soviet Union.
Probably the most superficially damning collection of documents on the Jewish conspiracy is in the State Department Decimal File (861.00/5339). The central document is one entitled "Bolshevism and Judaism," dated November 13, 1918. The text is in the form of a report, which states that the revolution in Russia was engineered "in February 1916" and "it was found that the following persons and firms were engaged in this destructive work":
| (1) Jacob Schiff | Jew | |
| (2) Kuhn, Loeb & Company | Jewish Firm | |
| Management: | Jacob Schiff | Jew |
| Felix Warburg | Jew | |
| Otto H. Kahn | Jew | |
| Mortimer L. Schiff | Jew | |
| Jerome J. Hanauer | Jew | |
| (3) Guggenheim | Jew | |
| (4) Max Breitung | Jew | |
| (5) Isaac Seligman | Jew | |
The report goes on to assert that there can be no doubt that the Russian Revolution was started and engineered by this group and that in April 1917
Jacob Schiff in fact made a public announcement and it was due to his financial influence that the Russian revolution was successfully accomplished and in the Spring 1917 Jacob Schitf started to finance Trotsky, a Jew, for the purpose of accomplishing a social revolution in Russia.
The report contains other miscellaneous information about Max Warburg's financing of Trotsky, the role of the Rheinish-Westphalian syndicate and Olof Aschberg of the Nya Banken (Stockholm) together with Jivotovsky. The anonymous author (actually employed by the U.S. War Trade Board)2 states that the links between these organizations and their financing of the Bolshevik Revolution show how "the link between Jewish multi-millionaires and Jewish proletarians was forged." The report goes on to list a large number of Bolsheviks who were also Jews and then describes the actions of Paul Warburg, Judus Magnes, Kuhn, Loeb & Company, and Speyer & Company.
The report ends with a barb at "International Jewry" and places the argument into the context of a Christian-Jewish conflict backed up by quotations from the Protocols of Zion. Accompanying this report is a series of cables between the State Department in Washington and the American embassy in London concerning the steps to be taken with these documents:3
5399 Great Britain, TEL. 3253 i pmOctober 16, 1919 In Confidential File
Secret for Winslow from Wright. Financial aid to Bolshevism & Bolshevik Revolution in Russia from prominent Am. Jews: Jacob Schiff, Felix Warburg, Otto Kahn, Mendell Schiff, Jerome Hanauer, Max Breitung & one of the Guggenheims. Document re- in possession of Brit. police authorities from French sources. Asks for any facts re-.
* * * * *
Oct. 17 Great Britain TEL. 6084, noon r c-h 5399 Very secret. Wright from Winslow. Financial aid to Bolshevik revolution in Russia from prominent Am. Jews. No proof re- but investigating. Asks to urge Brit. authorities to suspend publication at least until receipt of document by Dept.
* * * * *Nov. 28 Great Britain TEL. 6223 R 5 pro. 5399
FOR WRIGHT. Document re financial aid to Bolsheviki by prominent American jews. Reports — identified as French translation of a statement originally prepared in English by Russian citizen in Am. etc. Seem most unwise to give — the distinction of publicity.
It was agreed to suppress this material and the files conclude, "I think we have the whole thing in cold storage."
Another document marked "Most Secret" is included with this batch of material. The provenance of the document is unknown; it is perhaps FBI or military intelligence. It reviews a translation of the Protocols of the Meetings of the Wise Men of Zion, and concludes:
In this connection a letter was sent to Mr. W. enclosing a memorandum from us with regard to certain information from the American Military Attache to the effect that the British authorities had letters intercepted from various groups of international Jews setting out a scheme for world dominion. Copies of this material will be very useful to us.
This information was apparently developed and a later British intelligence report makes the flat accusation:
SUMMARY: There is now definite evidence that Bolshevism is an international movement controlled by Jews; communications are passing between the leaders in America, France, Russia and England with a view to concerted action....4
However, none of the above statements can be supported with hard empirical evidence. The most significant information is contained in the paragraph to the effect that the British authorities possessed "letters intercepted from various groups of international Jews setting out a scheme for world dominion." If indeed such letters exist, then they would provide support (or nonsupport) for a presently unsubstantiated hypothesis: to wit, that the Bolshevik Revolution and other revolutions are the work of a worldwide Jewish conspiracy.
Moveover, when statements and assertions are not supported by hard evidence and where attempts to unearth hard evidence lead in a circle back to the starting point — particularly when everyone is quoting everyone else — then we must reject the story as spurious. There is no concrete evidence that Jews were involved in the Bolshevik Revolution because they were Jewish. There may indeed have been a higher proportion of Jews involved, but given tsarist treatment of Jews, what else would we expect? There were probably many Englishmen or persons of English origin in the American Revolution fighting the redcoats. So what? Does that make the American Revolution an English conspiracy? Winston Churchill's statement that Jews had a "very great role" in the Bolshevik Revolution is supported only by distorted evidence. The list of Jews involved in the Bolshevik Revolution must be weighed against lists of non-Jews involved in the revolution. When this scientific procedure is adopted, the proportion of foreign Jewish Bolsheviks involved falls to less than twenty percent of the total number of revolutionaries — and these Jews were mostly deported, murdered, or sent to Siberia in the following years. Modern Russia has in fact maintained tsarist anti-Semitism.
It is significant that documents in the State Department files confirm that the investment banker Jacob Schiff, often cited as a source of funds for the Bolshevik Revolution, was in fact against support of the Bolshevik regime.5 This position, as we shall see, was in direct contrast to the Morgan-Rockefeller promotion of the Bolsheviks.
The persistence with which the Jewish-conspiracy myth has been pushed suggests that it may well be a deliberate device to divert attention from the real issues and the real causes. The evidence provided in this book suggests that the New York bankers who were also Jewish had relatively minor roles in supporting the Bolsheviks, while the New York bankers who were also Gentiles (Morgan, Rockefeller, Thompson) had major roles.
What better way to divert attention from the real operators than by the medieval bogeyman of anti-Semitism?
Footnotes:1See Appendix 3 for Schiff's actual role.2The anonymous author was a Russian employed by the U.S. War Trade Board. One of the three directors of the U.S. War Trade Board at this time was John Foster Dulles.3U.S. State Dept. Decimal File, 861.00/5399.4Great Britain, Directorate of Intelligence, A Monthly Review of the Progress of Revolutionary Movements Abroad, no. 9, July 16, 1913 (861.99/5067).5See Appendix 3.
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