WI: FDR Doesn't Recognize USSR

kernals12

Banned
FDR established diplomatic relations with Moscow in 1933. It's been argued that if it wasn't for the lies Walter Duranty provided to New York Times readers about the famine in Ukraine, it wouldn't have happened. So what if Duranty gets hit by a streetcar, the Times publishes the truth about the famine, and FDR chooses not to establish relations with the Soviet Union? Would they be established during the war? or maybe much later during Detente?
 
Eventually, they will most likely be established as a move against Japan, during 1936-37 at the latest IMO.
 
FDR established diplomatic relations with Moscow in 1933. It's been argued that if it wasn't for the lies Walter Duranty provided to New York Times readers about the famine in Ukraine, it wouldn't have happened. So what if Duranty gets hit by a streetcar, the Times publishes the truth about the famine, and FDR chooses not to establish relations with the Soviet Union? Would they be established during the war? or maybe much later during Detente?

Recognition had very little to do with Walter Duranty. It was a popular policy in 1933--even among some people who later condemned it--for reasons having little to do with sympathy for Soviet internal policy. As I wrote here a few months ago at https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...-democrat-us-presidents.449077/#post-17405492 on whether a more conservative Democratic president than FDR would have recognized the USSR:

***
Well, in the first place the Democrats are very unlikely to win the presidency in 1918 no matter who they nominate. As for 1932, there are plenty of Democrats who might have been chosen who would have been more conservative than FDR--Smith, Garner, Baker, Ritchie, etc. But I wouldn't assume they wouldn't recognize the Soviet Union--plenty of conservative businessmen supported recognition in 1933, partly because they wanted more trade with Russia to get the US out of the Depression, and partly to check Japanese expansionism in the Far East. See

The "Great Conspiracy" of 1933: A Study in Short Memories
PAUL F. BOLLER, JR.
Southwest Review
Vol. 39, No. 2 (SPRING 1954), pp. 97-112

https://www.jstor.org/stable/43463960?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

Boller summarized his findings in his Memoirs of an Obscure Professor:

"...Writers like William F. Buckley and newspapers like the Chicago Tribune and the Dallas Morning News charged that recognition planted the seeds of Communist subversion in the United States and they all blamed FDR for it. As the Dallas Morning News put it angrily on November 17, 1953: "Russia was recognized solely because Franklin D. Roosevelt as President insisted upon it."

"It was difficult for me to believe that the question of Soviet recognition was that simple—or that sinister. Late in 1953, therefore, I began spending part of each day in the stacks of SMU's Fondren Library turning the pages of countless magazines and newspapers back in 1933 to see if I could team with some precision just how Soviet recognition came about and what the American people thought about it at the time. The results were surprising, even to me; the majority of newspapers and the bulk of the American business community, I found, favored recognition at the time. They saw the possibility of profitable trade with Russia, for one thing; for another, they thought Russian recognition might serve to check Japanese aggression in China. The Dallas Morning News, I discovered to my delight, had been especially eager for recognition. "Some object to recognition," said the News late in 1933, "on the ground that Russia's system of government is communistic and in general antireligious. Internationally, however, each State in theory has the right to determine its own form of government and sphere of activity. . . . The general opinion in this country is that Russia and the United States should resume normal and diplomatic relations, since they have many common interests, especially in the Far East, and can readily develop trade relations, mutually profitable . . . "

"To the Dallas Morning News, Russia was "Just Another Customer." A News cartoon portrayed a Russian woman waiting before the counter in a grocery store to make her purchases while Uncle Sam, the clerk, tells two protesting women (the American Federation of Labor and the Daughters of the American Revolution): "Listen! 1 ain't goin' to marry the gal!" But my favorite finding was the report of the love feast held in Manhattan's Waldorf-Astoria Hotel on November 24, 1933, to celebrate recognition. It was an elegant party attended by Soviet officials (including Maxim Litvinov, chief Russian negotiator) and by prominent businessmen representing just about every major corporation in the United States. The high point of the evening came when the 2500 guests stood and faced a stage behind which hung a huge American flag beside the Red flag with Soviet hammer and sickle while the organ played "My Country of Thee" and then switched into the "Internationale." I wrote up my findings in an article entitled "The 'Great Conspiracy' of 1933: A Study in Short Memories," which appeared in the Southwest Review in the spring of 1954..." https://books.google.com/books?id=zvuuL-BoDt0C&pg=PT19

Note incidentally that on the recognition issue, FDR "was careful to enlist they support of Al Smith and other prominent Catholic politicians..." https://books.google.com/books?id=9rViPobMmoYC&pg=PA243
 

kernals12

Banned
Recognition had very little to do with Walter Duranty. It was a popular policy in 1933--even among some people who later condemned it--for reasons having little to do with sympathy for Soviet internal policy. As I wrote here a few months ago at https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...-democrat-us-presidents.449077/#post-17405492 on whether a more conservative Democratic president than FDR would have recognized the USSR:

***
Well, in the first place the Democrats are very unlikely to win the presidency in 1918 no matter who they nominate. As for 1932, there are plenty of Democrats who might have been chosen who would have been more conservative than FDR--Smith, Garner, Baker, Ritchie, etc. But I wouldn't assume they wouldn't recognize the Soviet Union--plenty of conservative businessmen supported recognition in 1933, partly because they wanted more trade with Russia to get the US out of the Depression, and partly to check Japanese expansionism in the Far East. See

The "Great Conspiracy" of 1933: A Study in Short Memories
PAUL F. BOLLER, JR.
Southwest Review
Vol. 39, No. 2 (SPRING 1954), pp. 97-112

https://www.jstor.org/stable/43463960?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

Boller summarized his findings in his Memoirs of an Obscure Professor:

"...Writers like William F. Buckley and newspapers like the Chicago Tribune and the Dallas Morning News charged that recognition planted the seeds of Communist subversion in the United States and they all blamed FDR for it. As the Dallas Morning News put it angrily on November 17, 1953: "Russia was recognized solely because Franklin D. Roosevelt as President insisted upon it."

"It was difficult for me to believe that the question of Soviet recognition was that simple—or that sinister. Late in 1953, therefore, I began spending part of each day in the stacks of SMU's Fondren Library turning the pages of countless magazines and newspapers back in 1933 to see if I could team with some precision just how Soviet recognition came about and what the American people thought about it at the time. The results were surprising, even to me; the majority of newspapers and the bulk of the American business community, I found, favored recognition at the time. They saw the possibility of profitable trade with Russia, for one thing; for another, they thought Russian recognition might serve to check Japanese aggression in China. The Dallas Morning News, I discovered to my delight, had been especially eager for recognition. "Some object to recognition," said the News late in 1933, "on the ground that Russia's system of government is communistic and in general antireligious. Internationally, however, each State in theory has the right to determine its own form of government and sphere of activity. . . . The general opinion in this country is that Russia and the United States should resume normal and diplomatic relations, since they have many common interests, especially in the Far East, and can readily develop trade relations, mutually profitable . . . "

"To the Dallas Morning News, Russia was "Just Another Customer." A News cartoon portrayed a Russian woman waiting before the counter in a grocery store to make her purchases while Uncle Sam, the clerk, tells two protesting women (the American Federation of Labor and the Daughters of the American Revolution): "Listen! 1 ain't goin' to marry the gal!" But my favorite finding was the report of the love feast held in Manhattan's Waldorf-Astoria Hotel on November 24, 1933, to celebrate recognition. It was an elegant party attended by Soviet officials (including Maxim Litvinov, chief Russian negotiator) and by prominent businessmen representing just about every major corporation in the United States. The high point of the evening came when the 2500 guests stood and faced a stage behind which hung a huge American flag beside the Red flag with Soviet hammer and sickle while the organ played "My Country of Thee" and then switched into the "Internationale." I wrote up my findings in an article entitled "The 'Great Conspiracy' of 1933: A Study in Short Memories," which appeared in the Southwest Review in the spring of 1954..." https://books.google.com/books?id=zvuuL-BoDt0C&pg=PT19

Note incidentally that on the recognition issue, FDR "was careful to enlist they support of Al Smith and other prominent Catholic politicians..." https://books.google.com/books?id=9rViPobMmoYC&pg=PA243
I did not realize how far back the bad faith right wing attacks on the New York Times went.
 
I did not realize how far back the bad faith right wing attacks on the New York Times went.

The New York Times under Adolph Ochs was a rather conservative newspaper. It's just that Duranty was a Stalin apologist (something which often put him at odds with the Times' editorial pages).
 

kernals12

Banned
The New York Times under Adolph Ochs was a rather conservative newspaper. It's just that Duranty was a Stalin apologist (something which often put him at odds with the Times' editorial pages).
I wouldn't call it conservative. The Times endorsed all but 3 (they passed over William Jenning Bryan in 1896, 1900, and 1908) Democratic Presidential candidates during Ochs' tenure. But they were staunchly anticommunist. Even Duranty wasn't a fellow traveller at all, he lied because his fibs were rewarded with money and influence.
 
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I wouldn't call it conservative. The Times endorsed all but 3 (they passed over William Jenning Bryan in 1896 and 1900 and Woodrow Wilson in 1912) Democratic Presidential candidates during Ochs' tenure. But they were staunchly anticommunist. Even Duranty wasn't a fellow traveller at all, he lied because his fibs were rewarded with money and influence.

It was a Democratic newspaper under Ochs, but still a rather conservative Democratic newspaper. It opposed Bryan even in 1908 when every living member of Cleveland's cabinet endorsed him, and when Bryan made clear that he was not running on his old "radical" issues like free silver and gvernment ownership of the railroads. And after all, the Democratic presidential candidates it did support-- people like Parker, Cox, Davis, and Smith--were hardly left-wing. (Even FDR in 1932 ran on a somewhat conservative platform, though his campaign was full of contradictions).
 

bguy

Donor
Well, in the first place the Democrats are very unlikely to win the presidency in 1918 no matter who they nominate. As for 1932, there are plenty of Democrats who might have been chosen who would have been more conservative than FDR--Smith, Garner, Baker, Ritchie, etc. But I wouldn't assume they wouldn't recognize the Soviet Union--plenty of conservative businessmen supported recognition in 1933, partly because they wanted more trade with Russia to get the US out of the Depression, and partly to check Japanese expansionism in the Far East.

Garner at least was strongly opposed to recognition in 1933. From Bascom Timmons' Garner of Texas:

"'I'd hate to see you get off on the wrong foot on this Russian business,' Garner told the President. 'I'd bide my time on it. I think the country and the bulk of the Democratic party are opposed to it. What support there is for it seems pretty tepid, and the opposition, including the churches and some important people in the American Federation of Labor, are hot against it. But regardless of the sentiment for or against it, I don't think it is right. If this outfit has kept its word to anyone or done anything in good faith I have not heard about it."

The same book also says that Garner disliked the Soviets for repudiating Russia's World War 1 war debt and confiscating U.S. property in Russia and for ongoing Comintern subversion, and did not believe trade with the Soviets would amount to anything since in Garner's own words, "I don't think Russia has any ability to buy from us. We would have to furnish the credit for any purchasing they did."
 
Garner at least was strongly opposed to recognition in 1933. From Bascom Timmons' Garner of Texas:

"'I'd hate to see you get off on the wrong foot on this Russian business,' Garner told the President. 'I'd bide my time on it. I think the country and the bulk of the Democratic party are opposed to it. What support there is for it seems pretty tepid, and the opposition, including the churches and some important people in the American Federation of Labor, are hot against it. But regardless of the sentiment for or against it, I don't think it is right. If this outfit has kept its word to anyone or done anything in good faith I have not heard about it."

The same book also says that Garner disliked the Soviets for repudiating Russia's World War 1 war debt and confiscating U.S. property in Russia and for ongoing Comintern subversion, and did not believe trade with the Soviets would amount to anything since in Garner's own words, "I don't think Russia has any ability to buy from us. We would have to furnish the credit for any purchasing they did."

I would use Timmons' book with some caution because it was written in 1948 and one of its purposes was to show that Garner had taken the right position on every issue--as seen from 1948. But it does seem plausible that Garner would oppose recognition in 1933. My point, though, is that as conservative a Democrat as Al Smith--probably the Democrat closest to Wall Street--supported recognition, so one cannot assume that a president other than FDR would not have recognized the USSR.
 
Moreover, what are you going to do, pretend half a continent doesn't exist? It's not like there's a functioning White government on an island off shore that you can recognize as a figleaf.

Recognition of a government has nothing to do with approval of its policies, and is mostly a simple recognition of the fact that they control the country concerned. Hence 'recognize', not 'approve'
 

kernals12

Banned
It was a Democratic newspaper under Ochs, but still a rather conservative Democratic newspaper. It opposed Bryan even in 1908 when every living member of Cleveland's cabinet endorsed him, and when Bryan made clear that he was not running on his old "radical" issues like free silver and gvernment ownership of the railroads. And after all, the Democratic presidential candidates it did support-- people like Parker, Cox, Davis, and Smith--were hardly left-wing. (Even FDR in 1932 ran on a somewhat conservative platform, though his campaign was full of contradictions).
Wilson (who I mistakenly believed the Times opposed in 1912) most certainly ran as a liberal.
 

kernals12

Banned
To put on my McCarthyist hat for a second, there's a lot more evidence for communist subversion of the right than the left. Robert A Taft, easily the most powerful Republican of the Truman era and a leader of the conservative wing of the GOP, was opposed to NATO, the UN, and the Korean war. He and his ilk thought that universal healthcare was more of a socialist threat to America than Stalin's imperialist ambitions for Europe and Asia. On the left, things were very different. With the exception of a few useful idiots such as Henry Wallace, leftists such as Hubert Humphrey and Norman Thomas were adamantly opposed to communism and enthusiastically backed Truman's containment policy.
 
Wilson (who I mistakenly believed the Times opposed in 1912) most certainly ran as a liberal.

In a way, yes, but note his opposition to TR's social welfare proposals:

"Fundamentally a state rights Democrat, he believed the federal power should be used only to sweep away special privileges and artificial barriers to the development of individual energies, and to preserve and restore competition in business. The idea of the federal government's moving directly into the economic field, by giving special protection to workers or farmers, was as abhorrent to Wilson in 1912 as the idea of class legislation in the interest of manufacturers or shipowners...

"The divergence in Wilson's and Roosevelt's views on the role government should play in human affairs was more vividly revealed, however, by Wilson's savage attacks on Roosevelt's proposals for social welfare legislation. He objected to Roosevelt's labor program because it was paternalistic, because it would inevitably mean that workingmen would become wards of the federal government. Perhaps Roosevelt's "new and all-conquering combination between money and government" would be benevolent to the people, he said; perhaps it would carry out "the noble programme of social betterment" which so many credulously expected; but he did not believe paternalism was the answer for free men." https://archive.org/stream/woodrowwilsonand007665mbp/woodrowwilsonand007665mbp_djvu.txt

(BTW, even in 1912 the Times was concerned that Taft finish ahead of TR at least as much as that Wilson be elected--the latter being a foregone conclusion anyway.)

By 1916, Wilson had moved to the left on economic issues. His endorsement that year by the Times is IMO the one time under Ochs that the Times supported a Democrat in a clear left vs. right presidential race.
 
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