Britain, Soviet Russia and the Collapse of the Versailles Order, 1919-1939 by Keith Neilson (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS 565 Overall, this volume is potentially of interest tomore than just the Central European specialist. It is a valuable contribution to the historiography of financial diplomacy and British economic influence inEurope in thewake of the FirstWorld War. Department of Languages andEuropean Studies G. Batonyi Universityof Bradford Neilson, Keith. Britain, SovietRussia and theCollapse of theVersaillesOrder, igig ig$g. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2006. x + 379 pp. Notes. Appendices. Bibliography. Index. ?50.00: $85.00. Keith Neilson's important new book tackles the perennial question about the origins of the Second World War. According to the author, it is a 'core-sample' (p. 8) of Anglo-Soviet relations in the years between the two World Wars. The book seeks to contextualize the failed quest for a 'Grand Alliance' with British strategic foreign policy as a whole. A challenge to the 'appeasement' and 'declinist' interpretations alike, itproceeds from the propo sition that far frombeing hostages to imperial decline, British decision-makers did have a real choice in the 1930s. They could have secured their impe rial interests by recruiting Soviet Russia as a counterforce to the Axis pow ers. To explain why this choice was not utilized, Neilson uses both the tra ditional methodologies of the diplomatic historian and the insights of the mentalites school. He ends up with a sophisticated,multi-layered argument that is pivoted on ideology as a key dimension in policy-making. Much of the book centres on the supposition that there was a major and ultimately unbridgeable 'mental and moral gap' (p. 332) between British and Soviet decision-makers. Eventually, thisgap produced a 'clash of sensibilities' (p. 120) that prevented the two sides from coming to a collaborative agree ment. British decision-makers, as Neilson convincingly argues, remained wedded to liberal internationalist ideas about multilateralism, disarmament and persuasion as the only legitimate tools of peace-keeping. Especially once linked with the intense suspicion over Soviet intentions and reliability that grew out ofpopularly accepted anti-Communist ideology, thesepresuppositional beliefsmade effective, sustained collaboration with the Soviet Union a highly unstable proposition. This applied to those, as well, who did recognize that the Soviet Union was a key and potentially useful player in the balance of power. On the Soviet side, on the other hand, the continued ascendancy of force-based concepts of the balance of power was a benchmark that no negotiations could erase. The Soviets distrusted the League ofNations and defined collective security in traditionalways that theBritish simply could not accept after 1919. In discussing Soviet intentions,Neilson carefully treads the narrow road between reductionism and revisionism ? denying, on the one hand, that Soviet ideology made war inevitable, yet refusing, on the other hand, to accept that the Soviet leadership sought security only. Instead, he sees Soviet leaders asMarxist ideologues who were willing to cooperate with 566 SEER, 86, 3, JULY 2008 the strongestcapitalist power precisely because theywere Marxist ideologues. In other words, collaboration was to them one among many means of advanc ing their ideological project, based on theMarxist-Leninist supposition that capitalist states remained enemies to be divided and exploited. This supposi tion alone, as Neilson persuasively argues, meant that even ifbasic agreement on short-term methodology had, perchance, been achieved, collaboration would stillhave entailed significant dangers for the British. Neilson culls these key arguments from impressively detailed investigations of Foreign Office, CID, Treasury and War Office memoranda. He looks at memoranda not just on strictlyAnglo-Soviet affairs but on British stra tegic foreign policy as a whole. One of the strongest aspects of his study is this very comprehensiveness, for it allows Neilson to throw light on his 'core-sample' by refracting it through the lenses also of theAnglo-Japanese, Anglo-German and Anglo-American relationships. In Neilson's succinct portrayals of each of the key actors, the importance of personality comes through clearly, as well. The wide-ranging approach isuseful also indemoting reductionist portrayals ofAnglophone anti-Communism as having somehow ipso facto prevented collaboration between Britain and the Soviet Union. As Neilson shows, even a man such as Sir Samuel Hoare ? a fervent anti Communist if there ever was one ? was in late 1935 more than willing to start loan and political talkswith the...