Waugh on pornography, Elton on Rowse Reviews by James Blish and Nicholas Richardson
Montgomery Hyde on cold war diplomacy
When Averell Harriman set out for Moscow with Lord Beaverbrook on President Roosevelt's instructions in 1941 tO discuss Russia's supply needs in the Light of the German invasion of the Soviet Union, Churchill wrote a letter of introduction to Stalin in which he described Harriman as "a remarkable American, wholeheartedly devoted to the victory of the common cause." Twentytwo years later, when President' Kennedy sent Harriman to Moscow for the nuclear test ban negotiations, a member of the Soviet embassy. in Washington remarked to Arthur Schlesinger: "As soon as I heard that Harriman was going, I knew you were serious."
Although he has fulfilled many other official assignments in the course of a long career in diplomacy and public administration including a spell in the gubernatorial mansion in Albany NY — indeed President Kennedy once said that he had held more important posts than anyone since John Quincy Adams—William Averell Harriman has devoted the major part of his time and energies to his country's relations with the USSR. Thus it is fitting that he should have spent some of his retirement in surveying the subject in the context of half a century's personal experience. His book* is a considerably expanded version of three lectures which he gave at Lehigh University in the winter of 1969-70. If the
lectures lack the wide historical background and analytical depth of those of Professor George Kennan which have been republished in his Russia and the West under Lenin and Stalin — Kennan is also a former American ambassador in Moscow — Harriman has met more of Russia's top people and has been on much more intimate terms with them than the Princeton professor, while his range of practical experience is wider, as indeed his book reflects.
Harriman has always shown a remarkable combination of firmness, flexibility and personal charm. I had an interesting example of this about twenty years ago when I spent an afternoon with him and his wife looking over an old château near Versailles. The property belonged to an eccentric American millionairess, Mrs William Corey, who then lived in London and whose late husband had been President of the United States Steel Corporation of Detroit and with whom Harriman had done business as a young man when in charge of purchasing supplies for the Union Pacific Railroad, then owned by the Harriman family. Not having visited the château for many years and having no intention of ever living there again, Mrs Corey conceived the idea of presenting it as a gift to the American government. At this time Averell Harriman was President Truman's roving ambassador in Europe with headquarters in Paris, and hearing that I was going to Paris on a short visit she asked me to see Harriman and convey the formal offer to him after I had taken him to see the property. In spite of German wartime occupation, it turned out to be in not such bad shape as we had thought, partly due to its having been taken over in recent years by Air France as a staff training centre. The great snag which we discovered and which the prospective donor had concealed from us was that she had neglected to pay any taxes for the previous thirty years or so and that these now amounted to several million francs. Thus it was a veritable damnosa hereditas which the US government was being asked to accept. The manner in which Averell Harriman firmly declined the offer in the politest terms without giving Mrs Corey the slightest grounds for taking offence appeared to me to be a model of diplomatic tact. Having witnessed this at close quarters I could easily see the secret of Harriman's success as an ambassador and negotiator.
Harriman's first experience as a negotiator with the Soviets was in the middle nineteen-twenties when he participated in a manganese mining concession in the Caucasus as a member of a private business group of Americans. On this occasion he had an interview with Trotsky, then chairman of the Soviet Concessions Committee. Although the meeting lasted four hours, Trotsky who was plainly apprehensive about his future — he was already on the way towards an unhappy exile — did little more than take note of Harriman's proposals. It was obvious to Harriman that their talk was being recorded by means of a hidden microphone, an experience to be repeated during his many subsequent visits.
The wealthy international polo-playing railroad magnate and merchant banker turned diplomat and Democrat — his family political background, as might be imagined, was staunchly Republican — was always a realist when he met the Russians on their own ground. Both Stalin and Khrushchev had the greatest respect for his integrity. The all-powerful Georgian dictator even took his advice on one occasion. Once, during the war, Stalin asked Harriman what he thought of Constantine Oumansky, the Soviet ambassador in Washington. Harriman replied that his impression was that Oumansky was "overzealous in watching out for Soviet interests in the United States," and that he thought that these interests "would be best served by a man who knew us and how to get along with us." The result was that Oumansky was shunted off to Mexico, and his place in Washington was taken by the more experienced Maxim Litvinov, who had been living in uneasy obscurity near Moscow for the past few years and in the event fully justified Harriman's confidence in him. With Khrushchev Harriman's relations were even more cordial and intimate. In fact, Khrushchev told Harriman he would gladly take him on as his economic adviser anytime. It is a pity he didn't, as Khrushchev might otherwise have escaped the errors in his agricultural policy which contributed to his downfall in 1964.
The United States was the last great power to recognise the Soviet Union, which it did in 1933. Since that time, Averell Harriman has been a most earnest advocate of the closest possible understanding between the two countries. Realising that it was impossible to destroy Soviet communism, it behoved the US in his view to work out the practical ways in which understanding might be best achieved; this, in the words used by Arthur Schlesinger in his introduction to Harriman's book, was best developed "by the calm, vigilant and rational defence of democratic interests and by the firm determination to seek agreement where agreement would be of mutual advantage." Harriman was quick to appreciate that, when the Russians insisted on having what they call "friendly governments" in their neighbouring countries, they have in mind something quite different from the western conception of the telin. "When a country, by strong-arm methods but under the guise of security, begins to extend its influence beyond its borders," so Harriman cabled Washington in 1944 after becoming US ambassador in Moscow, "it is difficult to see how a line can be drawn. Once the policy is accepted that the USSR has a right to penetrate its immediate neighbours for security, penetration of the next immediate neighbours becomes equally logical at a certain time . . . " For this reason he could never really forgive Stalin for going back on his word at Yalta.
There has grown a myth about Yalta that somehow or other Roosevelt and Churchill sold out Eastern Europe to Stalin. That wasn't true at all. I can't imagine why Stalin went to such extreme lengths in breaking the Yalta agreements if it had been true that they were so much to his advantage. It was agreed that the people in those countries were to decide on their own governments through free elections. But Stalin didn't permit it.
One wonders why he broke his agreement on Poland so soon, Personally, I think one of the reasons was that Bierut, the leading member of the Lublin Polish government — the Communist government — was in Moscow on Stalin's return from Yalta. He may have told Stalin that if he carried out his plan for free elections, Bierut and his comrades couldn't deliver Poland. Stalin had the idea that the Red Army would be accepted as a liberating army. In fact, he told me so. In this regard, perhaps the Communist partisans had reported too optimistically to Moscow. At any rate I think the Kremlin leaders were awfully hurt when they found that the Red Army was
looked upon by the Poles, the Rumanians, ad others as a new invading force.
On March 24, 1945, his last day in the White House before leaving for Pahl) Springs where he died a fortnight later, President Roosevelt received a cable from Harriman. According to Harriman, who get the story from one of the President's secretaries, he became quite angry after reading the message, "Averell is quite right," he exploded; "we can't do business with Stalin. He has broken every one of the promises he made in Yalta." Stalin also told Harriman how much importance he attached to having a navY and a merchant marine in the Mediterranean theatre as a base for extending Soviet influence through North Africa and reinforcing that influence in the Middle East. When Harriman congratulated Stalin at Potsdam on the Soviet armies having reached Berlin, Stalin shrugged his shoulders and remarked: "Tsar Alexander got to Paris." Harriman was certain Stalin aimed at getting to the Atlantic. Indeed he tried to establish a foothold in Tangier, al! aspiration which was vigorously squashed by Churchill. "We cannot deny the Soviet Union peaceful use of the Mediterranean and unfortunately that includes naval presence," Harriman writes. "We have to take this in our stride. We have no basis for considering the Mediterranean a mare Americanum, although we should support Europe's vital interest to prevent its becoming Russian-dominated." Harriman also describes the manY diplomatic conferences he has attended as well as his personal relations with the Soviet leaders. He explains why the course of American diplomacy since World War II has been a history of brilliance, such as President Kennedy's handling of the Cuban missiles crisis with Khrushchev, and incompetence, such as the insistence of the State Department and the Pentagon on trying to base a policy on the existence of a ' Sino-Soviet bloc' when the policies Of Moscow and Peking were poles apart Harriman's book appeared in America before President Nixon's recent demarche with Chairman Mao. The author is ne admirer of Richard Nixon and he may Web have to revise his judgement of the next phase of American-Soviet relations in /110 autobiography on which he is no* supposed to be working. Meanwhile the present work must be regarded as a tantalising hors d'oeuvre to the main literary meal, which I await with relish.
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