Roads Not Taken: An Intellectual Biography of William C. Bullitt by Alexander Etkind

Author:Alexander Etkind [Etkind, Alexander]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography & Autobiography, General, Political, History, United States, 20th Century
ISBN: 9780822983200
Google: lmhZDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
Published: 2017-12-15T20:36:47+00:00

12

DISENCHANTMENT

Once, the staff of the embassy found a microphone in Bullitt’s office at Spaso House, but it was not wired to anything. Thayer, Kennan, and Durbrow spent nights in the attic of the ambassador’s office, in shifts, a revolver in one hand and a flashlight in the other. Nobody appeared; those who installed the microphone knew about the ambush. The diplomats built a trap in the corridor that led to Bullitt’s office: hitting the cable, the agent would trigger an electric alarm. In response, all the electricity in the embassy was cut. After some insistence and laboring, the electric supply resumed, but Thayer found out that his trap had vanished along with the microphone. Later on, fighting wiretaps became a routine in the embassy. The Soviet secret service continued bugging the embassy even after Joe Davies, a much friendlier ambassador, replaced Bullitt. During his tenure, a microphone was found in his bedroom just between his and his wife’s pillows.1 This was all new for the Americans; before Bullitt’s mission to Moscow, the US embassies around the world did not have to contend with wiretaps and other security threats that have since become commonplace.

Thayer always carried a revolver in his pocket. He learned Russian and interpreted for Bullitt, willingly traveling across the Soviet Union. He preferred Tbilisi to Moscow, but he loved the whole empire. Thayer noted the surprising coexistence of xenophobia and hospitality among Muscovites. “Russian hospitality is a curious thing. Perhaps because for so long there has been little stability in their political and economic lives, with the police, Czarist and Bolshevik, confiscating and arresting at pleasure, they’ve come to look on possessions as rather transitory things, and when they have a bit of good luck they try to share it as quickly as possible with their friends. . . . What is more, they expect any temporarily affluent friend to do exactly the same thing with them.”2 This was, in fact, what the Soviet government expected from its new friends at Spaso House.

The Soviet government needed road-building equipment, trucks, rails, locomotives, weapons, and much more. In an effort to pay for this massive import, the government sold gold to Germany, timber to Sweden, and furs and collectible art to the United States. Litvinov played on the rivalry between France and Germany, trying to obtain credit from both countries. Hoping to get state-backed loans, the Soviet Union refused to purchase American goods and products for cash. However, no American loans or credits could be given to a country that did not pay its war debts, which Russia had not done. Involved in the grand geopolitics and petty accounting debates, Bullitt thought that Litvinov was obstructing his access to Stalin, and he tried to circumvent the commissar. Stalin thought that Bullitt was standing between him and Roosevelt, making it difficult to get loans and credits.

From Moscow, the Comintern funded the Communist Party of the USA, which engaged in propaganda and espionage campaigns. From the start of diplomatic relations, the Roosevelt

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