Poole, DeWitt Clinton Lorraine M. Lees and William S. Rodner (review)

Abstract

SEER, 94, 4, October 2016 762 is best to end by saying that this fine, thought provoking book gives us new insights into the civil wars while opening up many issues for further discussion. George Mason University Rex A. Wade Poole, DeWitt Clinton. An American Diplomat in Bolshevik Russia. Edited by Lorraine M. Lees and William S. Rodner. University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, WI, 2014. xxiii + 332 pp. Illustrations. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $26.95 (paperback). Arguably, every memoir is an exercise in self-justification and glorification. However, in this instance, American diplomat DeWitt Clinton Poole (1885– 1952) largely avoids boastfulness while dancing around his more controversial activity. Poole’s claim to fame is that he served as US consul in Moscow during the tumultuous and fateful year between late 1917 and late 1918. Besides being a keen and thoughtful observer, Poole was a direct participant in some of these events. Poole has also been aptly described by espionage historian Svetlana Chervonnaya as a ‘spymaster […] and an expert in anti-Communist propaganda and psychological and political warfare’ (DocumentsTalk.com). To find that in this volume, one will have to look very closely and usually between the lines. The origins of this book lie in taped interviews of Poole conducted in early 1952 by the Columbia University Oral History Research Office. The editors, Lorraine M. Lees and William S. Rodner, have limited the current volume to 1917–20, with four of the seven chapters, about two-thirds of the book, focused on the critical months of 1917–18. The remaining chapters deal, respectively, with Poole’s activities as American consul in Archangel, his observations of the Paris Peace Conference, and his subsequent duties as head of the State Department’s Russian Division. Lees is a professor of History at Old Dominion University and a specialist in Yugoslav-American relations, and Rodner is a professor of History at Tidewater Community College in Virginia specializing in British studies. They have done an excellent job in annotating Poole’s recollections; indeed, the annotations comprise maybe a third of the total text. They correct many of Poole’s assorted misstatements and, more importantly, identify the multitude of people he mentions, often only in passing. Poole was describing people and events from more than thirty years prior and his memory, while remarkably good, definitely was not perfect. He is frequently mistaken on details, especially dates, for example, misstating the 1918 Armistice as 7 November as opposed to the 11th (p. 216). He also erroneously credits Maria Spiridonova with the attempted REVIEWS 763 assassination of Lenin (it was Fania Kaplan or, at least, not Spiridonova) and puts the Hitler-Stalin Pact in 1941, not 1939 (p. 162). For anyone familiar with the people and events, these are petty errors, but for the initiated the notes will be a tremendous help. Both Poole and the editors quote extensively from State Department correspondence, and Poole often cites letters he wrote to his sister and others. The son of an Army officer descended from old Yankee stock, Poole was a sterling example of the early twentieth-century American liberal bourgeois. Priding himself on a democratic attitude and sense of fairness, he also evidences naïveté, snobbery and sentimentality, perhaps what he meant by ‘my American provincialism’ (p. 80). In his dealings with Bolsheviks he was more put off by their shabby dress than by their ideology. A true diplomat, Poole rarely says anything negative and was evidently willing to work in a civil manner with just about anyone. He took a particular shine to Georgii Chicherin, the Soviet Commissar for Foreign Affairs, perhaps because the ‘dapper’ Chicherin looked and acted as Poole believed a government representative should (pp. 86–87). Poole claims that the timorous Chicherin later lived in mortal dread of Stalin poisoning him (p. 90). Overall, Poole says less about what was actually happening in Russia than what he and others thought or hoped was happening: a diplomacy of lost opportunities. There is frequent repetitiveness, mostly due to the interview format, but there are points Poole seems determined to make again and again. One is his assertion that American diplomatic actions were based overwhelmingly on the wartime exigencies of...