No More Learning

But this Provisional Government was weak and vacil-
lating from the start. The military and economic situa-
tion steadily deteriorated. Kerensky became Premier in
July and tried desperately to stem the tide. He turned
out to be, however, more an orator than an effective
administrator or commander-in-chief of the armed forces.
The Bolsheviks under the leadership of Lenin grew
stronger week by week during the summer of 1917,
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? THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUHD
spreading abroad everywhere the slogan, "Peace, bread
and the land. " On November 7 they forcibly took over
Petrograd (formerly St. Petersburg, now Leningrad) and
the next day established a Soviet government. The Com-
munist Revolution was an accomplished fact.
2. From November, 1917, through World War II
American Government officials, most of our represen-
tatives in Russia and public opinion in the United
States were almost totally unprepared for the Communist
Revolution. With the advent of the Soviet Government,
American-Russian relations immediately took a turn for
the worse. The American press constantly depicted
Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin and the other Soviet leaders as
criminals, murderers and paid agents of the German
Government. The fact that Lenin got back to Russia
from Switzerland through Germany in a sealed train
provided by the German Government, which wished to
see Russia withdraw from the war, was widely interpreted
as proof that he was in the pay of the Kaiser. And under-
standably enough, America, Britain, France and Italy
became incensed over the attempt of the Soviets to make
a separate peace with the Germans and over the Bolshevik
propaganda for world revolution.
The two American representatives in Russia who
came to possess the clearest grasp of the situation were
Colonel W. B. Thompson and Colonel Raymond Robins
of the Red Cross Mission, which arrived in Petrograd
early in August, 1917. Thompson and Robins both sym-
pathized with the Kerensky regime and supported it and
the Left against the revolt led by the reactionary Tsarist
officer, General Kornilov, and favored by the various
Allied ambassadors. The incredible Thompson donated
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? SOVIET CIVILIZATION
$1,000,000 of his own money for pro-Kerensky and anti-
Bolshevik propaganda.
Both Thompson and Robins, however, quickly ad-
justed themselves to the realities of Soviet power. As
Robins said of the Provisional Government, "The thing
to do with a corpse is not to sit up with it but to bury it. "3
Colonels Thompson and Robins adopted a view op-
posed to that of practically every other American or
Allied representative in Soviet Russia; and sent cable
after cable to America stating that Lenin and his col-
leagues had come to stay, that they were not German
agents and that the Allies ought to cooperate with them
against the German armies. Meanwhile the Kaiser's
forces were rolling steadily onward against the crumbling
Russian defenses. And although Lenin and his associates
favored neither side in the imperialist conflict, they were
perfectly willing to utilize international capitalist contra-
dictions to promote their own cause.
Colonel Thompson realized that he would come in
for some pretty bitter criticism back home. "I guess they
would call me tainted down on Wall Street now," he
confided to a friend. "I have learned a lot over here. . . .
Why, this revolution was as necessary to the development
of Russia as the abolition of slavery to us. All they are
asking for is land, a little land. . . . Russia looks to me
now as the West used to look when I was a boy. . . . The
mines in Russia are where the mines in the Rocky
Mountains were forty years ago. I can shut my eyes and
see Russia exporting the hard metals and feeding the
whole world. And the people are crying out for just a
little land. "4
At a special meeting Thompson and Robins outlined
their ideas to the representatives of the different Allied
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? THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUHD
embassies and missions: "If support is given by the Allies
to the present Bolshevik Government, it is entirely pos-
sible to use existing Russian opinion and governmental
activity to undermine the morale of the German army.
To this end a genuine friendliness on the part of the
Allied embassies to the existing or any revolutionary
government -- involving loans of money and the trans-
port of supplies for the relief of the civilian population --
is in our judgment justified by the soundest considera-
tions for the Allied cause. "6
The Allied diplomats were indignant. "Deal with the
Bolsheviki? " they cried. "Those creatures are German
agents, traitors, crooks, thieves! " Colonel Robins hit
back with a priceless bit of repartee. "Suppose they are,"
he remarked. "Some of us have dealt with American
political bosses, and if there is anyone in Smolny [tempo-
rary headquarters of the Soviet Government in Petro-
grad] more corrupt than some of our crooks, then they
are some crooked, that's all. "6 The diplomats ended the
conversation by declaring that the Soviets would last six
weeks at the most.
But Thompson and Robins were determined char-
acters. They decided together that Thompson should go
to England and the United States to present their case
first-hand to leading British and American officials. It
was a paradoxical situation, not only because W. B.
Thompson, fabulously wealthy, a conservative Repub-
lican and, from all past appearances, a typical American
capitalist, should take such an unorthodox view of Soviet
Russia; but also because among Thompson's firmest
backers on this matter in America were none other than
three partners of the banking firm of J. P. Morgan & Co.
These were Henry P. Davison, chief of the American
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? SOVIET CIVILIZATIOH
Red Cross, who had appointed Thompson in the first
place and maintained a sympathetic attitude toward his
opinions; Dwight W. Morrow, later American Ambas-
sador to Mexico; and my father, Thomas W. Lamont,
who had been a close friend of Thompson since they had
gone to the Phillips Exeter Academy together some
thirty years previously.
Mr. Lamont was in Europe during November and
December of 1917 as an unofficial adviser to the American
Mission, led by E. M. House, which was consulting with
the Allies on the conduct of the war. When Colonel
Thompson arrived in London on December 10, Mr.
Lamont had a long talk with him and was greatly im-
pressed by what he had to say concerning the new Russia.
Two days later Mr. Lamont cabled Mr. Davison in the
United States that he was "much depressed" over the lack
of understanding in England and France of Russian con-
ditions; that it seemed to him "of real importance to have
all Allied authorities secure benefits of Thompson's ex-
perience and viewpoint";7 and that "after his interviews
here, Thompson should immediately return to America
for personal interview with President to acquaint him
fully at first hand with this gigantic international situ-
ation, upon the possible solution of which depends the
future peace of the world. "8
Mr. Lamont proceeded to put Thompson in touch
with high British officials, such as Admiral Reginald Hall,
chief of Naval Intelligence, and John Buchan (later Lord
Tweedsmuir), head of British propaganda. Then Lamont
and Thompson went to 10 Downing Street for luncheon
with Prime Minister Lloyd George, who gave them two
full hours and reacted most favorably to Thompson's
story about Soviet Russia. According to a memorandum
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? THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
drawn up by Mr. Lamont, the Prime Minister "said
more than once that he was convinced that the Allied
representatives in Petrograd had failed utterly to grasp
the significance of developments in Russia. "9
At the close of the interview he added: "I want you
to tell President Wilson of this talk with me. Tell him
that we are most sympathetic here with the idea of trying
to handle Russia with greater insight and that I will co-
operate with him to the full. I think it would be wise if
the President were to see fit to make a concrete suggestion.
. . . I will pick out the best man we have in Great Britain
and will send him to Russia to work with the best man
President Wilson will pick out in America. Together
they shall go to those people and see if they cannot help
them work out a better destiny. "10 Only a month or so
later Lloyd George fulfilled his half of the proposed
bargain by sending R. H. Bruce Lockhart on a special
mission to Petrograd with the purpose of working out a
fresh and more fruitful policy.
The day after their talk with Lloyd George, Thomp-
son and Lamont sailed for America on His Majesty's
Transport No. 8210 (the former liner Olympic). Arriv-
ing in the United States, they immediately went to Wash-
ington on the supposition that President Wilson would
surely see them. The President, however, refused to re-
ceive them. Secretary of State Lansing gave them an in-
terview, and cut it short before Thompson could really
deliver his message. Colonel Thompson tried all sorts
of indirect approaches with the aim of reaching Wilson,
but did not succeed. Together with Mr. Lamont, he
drew up a "Memorandum on the Present Situation in
Russia" and sent it to the President. Among other things
this memorandum stated: "We are forcing Russia into
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? SOVIET CIVILIZATION
German power by our silence and our refusal to display
the slightest interest in the deep convictions that possess
the Russian people. They want peace, but they do not
want a German peace, nor will they submit to one if
given any intelligent aid or support in the negotia-
tions. "11
About a week later, on January 8, 1918, President
Wilson delivered to Congress his address embodying the
famous Fourteen Points on America's conditions for
peace. Point Six was devoted to the Soviet situation and
included some very sensible and sympathetic ideas. It
mentioned that all Russian territory must be evacuated
and that there should be an independent development
of Russia "under institutions of her own choosing. "
Then Wilson declared: "The treatment accorded to
Russia by her sister nations in the months to come will
be the acid test of their good will, of their comprehension
of her needs as distinguished from their own interests,
and of their intelligent and unselfish sympathy. "12
Meanwhile the Soviet Government, on December 22,
1917, had sent its delegation to negotiate with the Ger-
mans at Brest-Litovsk for a treaty based on the principle
of no annexations and no indemnities. As was to have
been expected, the German imperialists insisted on terms
which were in utter violation of this principle; they
offered a robber's peace at the point of the sword. On
February 10, 1918, the Soviet delegation broke off the
negotiations, although Lenin wisely opposed this step
on the grounds that it would be merely playing into the
hands of Germany.
During the previous few months there had been no
real change in the bitterly hostile attitude of the Allies
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? THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUHD
toward the Soviet regime. The Lockhart Mission, as
Mr. Lockhart himself tells us in his book British Agent,
was sabotaged by the British Foreign Office and accom-
plished next to nothing. Though Lloyd George was
probably sincere in wanting to establish better relations
with the Soviets, he was not able or not sufficiently de-
termined to overcome, either in this early period or later
at the Paris Peace Conference, the resistance of the im-
placable anti-Soviet Tories.
With the breakdown of the Brest-Litovsk negotiations
and the almost immediate advance of the German army
all along the line, the Communists decided to ask the
Allies for definite aid against the Kaiser. And Lenin
sent his famous note to a meeting of the Central Commit-
tee of the Communist Party: "Please add my vote in
favor of the receipt of support and arms from the Anglo-
French imperialist bandits. "13 Through Raymond Rob-
ins, who personally talked the matter over with Lenin,
and through Bruce Lockhart, the Allied and American
Governments were thoroughly apprised of the situation.
But since no significant shift of policy on their part
took place, the Soviet Government felt forced, on March
3, 1918, to accept the considerably worsened German
terms.
Even then Lenin and the others kept hoping that the
Allies would move. After all, the Supreme Congress of
the Soviets still had to ratify the treaty. At 11. 30 P. M.
on the night of March 16 Lenin was sitting on the plat-
form where the Congress was meeting and Robins on
the steps leading to the platform. Lenin beckoned Rob-
ins to him and asked, "What have you heard from your
Government? " "Nothing," Robins replied. "What has
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? SOVIET CIVILIZATION
Lockhart heard from London? " "Nothing," Robins re-
peated.
Then Lenin said slowly: "Neither the American
Government nor any of the Allied Governments will
cooperate, even against the Germans, with the workmen's
and peasants' revolutionary government of Russia. I
shall now speak for the peace. It will be ratified. "14 And
the Congress adopted the onerous Treaty of Brest-Litovsk
by a vote of 724 to 276, with 204 abstaining.
Thus it was that back in 1917 and 1918 hate and
fear, and the misunderstandings engendered by hate and
fear, held back America and the Allies from any reason-
able collaboration with Soviet Russia, and left the Soviets
with no practicable alternative except to submit to the
imperialist peace imposed by an arrogant German gov-
ernment flushed with victory. We cannot resist the con-
clusion that the Allies and associated powers, rather than
take a single step which might strengthen the Socialist
Republic, preferred to see the German militarists weaken
it, tap the resources of the immense territories they had
annexed and grow stronger against the Allies themselves.
All this has a familiar ring in view of the Franco-
British attitude toward Soviet Russia and Germany some
two decades later. In 1938 and 1939 the French and Brit-
ish Governments, with plenty of encouragement from
America, refused to take effective action on behalf of a
genuine peace front with the U. S. S. R. against Nazi ag-
gression. On the contrary, by their vacillations and sur-
render to Hitler at Munich they egged on Germany once
more against Russia, forcing the Soviet Government in
self-defense to come to an agreement with imperialist
Germany.
So it was that Foreign Minister Molotov, in
explaining the Soviet-German Non-Aggression Pact of
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? THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
1939, stated that the French and British Governments
were afraid that "the conclusion of a real pact of mutual
assistance with the U. S. S. R. may strengthen our country,
the Soviet Union, which, it appears, does not answer their
purpose. It must be admitted that these fears outweighed
other considerations. "16 In this situation at least, history
repeated itself with a vengeance.
Returning to the eventful year of 1918, we find that
within a month after the Brest-Litovsk Treaty the Allies
commenced their armed intervention against Soviet
Russia and their close military collaboration with the
White counter-revolutionaries. Soon French, English and
American expeditionary forces landed at Murmansk and
Archangel in the Arctic region; the Japanese attacked at
Vladivostok in the Far East, and later American troops
pushed in from the same port; a British army invaded
the Caucasus and occupied Baku and Batumi.
The public pretext for all this was to re-establish the
Eastern Front. The real reason was to overthrow the
Soviet Government, "to throttle in its infancy the noi-
some beast of Bolshevism," as one British general frankly
put it. That this was the fundamental purpose of the
intervention was proved up to the hilt by the fact that
after the German surrender on November 11, 1918, the
Allied invasion and blockade, far from ceasing, was in-
tensified. What President Wilson had called "the acid
test" of good will and sympathy on the part of Russia's
sister nations had become for the Russians very acid
indeed.
The Allied statements at the Paris Peace Conference
did nothing to halt the undeclared world war against
Soviet Russia; nor did they arrive at any workable solu-
tion of the Russian problem. Paris was swarming with
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? SOVIET CIVILIZATION
Tsarist refugees who were certain that they would soon
return to their native land and resume the life of leisure
to which they had been accustomed. Emigre liberals also
spread their own particular brand of confusion, and
among them the likable ex-premier, Kerensky. Here
again my father entered the picture briefly. Early in
1919 the Big Four (Clemenceau, Lloyd George, Orlando
and Wilson) delegated him and Felix Frankfurter, now
a Justice of the United States Supreme Court, to meet
with Kerensky and find out what he thought ought to be
done about Russia. Mr. Lamont and Mr. Frankfurter
had dinner with Kerensky one night in a private room
at a Paris restaurant and talked with him till two o'clock
in the morning. Kerensky, true to his oratorical nature,
kept making stump speeches all evening, rising from the
table and striding around the room in his excitement.
But he never came down from the clouds to concrete
formulations and definite plans, and his hazy ideas
seemed to keep floating away into thin air.
In Russia itself the Communist regime continued to
fight for its life. But in Siberia General William S.
Graves, in command of the 7,000 troops of the American
expeditionary force, refused to attack the Soviets and in-
stead tried to counter Japanese infiltration into the
Russian Far East and to forestall any Japanese move to
annex Russian territory. The Americans were also help-
ful to Soviet Russia in the extensive famine relief which
they supplied from 1921 to 1923. The head of the Amer-
ican Relief Administration was Herbert Hoover, then
U. S. Secretary of Commerce. He collected approxi-
mately $66,000,000 for Russian relief and shipped almost
a million tons of food to the U. S. S. R. American altruism
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? THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUHD
and humanitarianism saved millions of Russians from
starvation during this terrible emergency.
At the same time the American Government came
out for the territorial integrity of Russia and declined
to enter into various imperialist schemes for the dismem-
berment of the country. In 1920 Secretary of State Bain-
bridge Colby officially stated that the United States
"would regard with satisfaction a declaration by the
Allied and associated powers that the territorial integrity
and true boundaries of Russia shall be respected. These
boundaries should include the whole of the former
Russian Empire, with the exception of Finland proper,
ethnic Poland, and such territory as may by agreement
form a part of the Armenian state. "16 The American
Government reluctantly recognized the independence
of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania only in 1922 and with
the expectation that the Baltic States would return to
Russia when the Soviet Republic collapsed.
Aside from the antagonistic and often hysterical atti-
tude of America toward the Soviet Union in the early
years of the Revolution, direct friction between the two
Governments and peoples arose over the matter of debts.
The United States Government demanded that the $187,-
000,000 loaned to the Provisional Government should
be paid back by the Soviet regime. Also there were the
claims, totaling about $400,000,000, of private American
citizens who had held property in Tsarist Russia or who
had bought Tsarist bonds. They recovered hardly a
penny. As for the Provisional Government's obligation,
the Soviet Republic took the position that while it had
the right to repudiate the debts of its predecessors, it
would be glad to discuss the matter with the American
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? SOVIET CIVILIZATION
Government and try to reach a satisfactory settlement.
The Soviets pointed out that much of the loan had
been spent after they came into power for anti-Soviet
propaganda and for military supplies which were actual-
ly used against them. Furthermore, the Soviet Union had
large counter-claims to advance because of damages in-
flicted by American soldiers in northern Russia and
Siberia. A further complication arose from the fact that
in the Treaty of Rapallo, signed in 1922, Germany re-
nounced all its financial claims on Soviet Russia, provided
that the Russians did not "satisfy similar claims made
by any third state. " The Soviet proposal was to work off
the debt to the United States obliquely by paying excess
interest rates on a loan from America. But this plan
never got very far.
Long before diplomatic ties were established between
the U. S. A. and the U. S. S. R. a considerable volume of
trade developed between the two nations which was of
much economic assistance to the Soviets and helped keep
American workers employed during some of the worst
years of the Great Depression. The peak was reached in
1930 when exports from the United States to Soviet
Russia amounted to $114,000,000 and imports from
Russia to $24,000,000. The year 1931 was almost equally
good for American-Soviet trade. American firms such
as General Electric, the Ford Motor Company and Inter-
national Harvester carried through technical aid con-
tracts with the Soviet regime which were of immense
importance for its industrialization program and height-
ened the admiration the Russians have always had for
American technique. An outstanding American engi-
neer, the late Colonel Hugh Cooper, was decorated by
the Soviet Government for his part in the construction
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? THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
of the great Dnieper River Dam in the Ukraine.
Despite America's continued failure to recognize the
Soviet Government, the Soviets welcomed American
visitors in their country. And up till the outbreak of
World War II thousands of American students, intel-
lectuals and tourists in general went to the U. S. S. R. to
observe conditions. Many eminent American writers
and journalists produced articles or books on the pro-
gress of Soviet Russia which contributed to an under-
standing of that country in the United States. But the
anti-Soviet chorus always remained vociferous and swayed
large sectors of American public opinion.
Shortly after the Communist Revolution individuals
and groups in the United States started to call for Ameri-
can recognition of the Soviet Republic. Later Senator
William E. Borah of Idaho and Senator Joseph I. France
of Maryland labored ceaselessly towards the same end.
However, as long as the Republican Party remained in
power, under Presidents Harding, Coolidge and Hoover,
there was little chance for a far-reaching shift in the
official American attitude toward the Soviets. When in
1932 the people of the United States elected as President
Franklin D. Roosevelt, a man of profound vision in
international as well as domestic affairs, it soon became
evident that drastic changes in foreign policy were in the
offing. The coming of Hitler to power early in 1933 and
the continued aggression of the Japanese in China were
also significant factors in moderating American policy
toward the U. S. S. R. and in the general climate of opinion.
In the spring of 1933 a group of private citizens set
up a special Committee on Russian-American Relations,
with Curtis Bok of Philadelphia as Chairman and includ-
ing Thomas S. Gates, President of the University of
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? SOVIET CIVILIZATION
Pennsylvania, Thomas W. Lamont, Roland S. Morris,
former Ambassador to Japan, and Roscoe W. Pound,
Dean of the Harvard Law School. A few months later
this Committee issued a report thoroughly reviewing
Russian-American relations and calmly presenting the
factual material essential to "the interested non-expert
citizen in making up his mind" about recognition. Since
the report was objective and got away from the atmo-
sphere of heated controversy, its effect was unquestionably
to further the campaign for recognition.
In October, 1933, President Roosevelt wrote Soviet
President Kalinin a letter stressing "the desirability of an
effort to end the present abnormal relations between the
one hundred and twenty-five million people of the United
States and the one hundred and sixty million people of
Russia"; and saying that he would be "glad to receive
any representatives you may designate to explore with
me personally all questions outstanding between our two
countries. " The Soviet authorities promptly accepted
this invitation and sent as their representative to Wash-
ington Foreign Secretary Litvinov. After private confer-
ences lasting over a week the United States, on November
16, 1933, formally recognized the Soviet Government
on the basis of notes exchanged by Litvinov and Roose-
velt covering the principal points at issue between the
two Governments. Thus, sixteen years after the Soviet
Republic came into existence the American Government
recognized it, whereas Tsarist Russia had taken double
that time to recognize the American Republic. Paradox-
ically, now America instead of Russia was the great con-
servative power and Russia instead of America the great
radical power.
Alexander Troyanovsky became the first Soviet Am-
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? THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
bassador to the United States and William C. Bullitt the
first American Ambassador to the Soviet Union. Mr.
Bullitt, who had headed the abortive American Mission
to Soviet Russia in 1919, was at first fairly friendly
towards the Russians. After he went to Moscow as am-
bassador he soon grew disillusioned with the U. S. S. R.
and later developed into one of the most bitter of anti-
Soviet fanatics. In the summer of 1935 the American
Government through Mr. Bullitt protested to the Soviet
Government over speeches made by American Commun-
ists at the Seventh World Congress of the Third Inter-
national or Comintern. Ambassador Bullitt stated that
this constituted a violation of the recognition agreement,
which pledged non-interference in each other's domestic
affairs and which promised that neither the U. S. A. nor
the U. S. S. R. would permit the formation on its soil of
any group aiming to use force in changing the political
or economic system of the other country.
The Soviet Government replied that it had no res-
ponsibility for the actions of the Comintern. It argued
that freedom of speech and assembly for workers' organi-
zations implied the right of the Third International to
meet in the Soviet Union. "It is therefore quite incom-
prehensible," the Soviet note went on to say, "why the
Soviet Government alone should place obstacles in the
way of the activities of Communist organizations, when
even the conservative bourgeois governments of various
countries are compelled to tolerate the existence of legal
Communist Parties. " This whole issue became rather
academic a few years later when, in 1940, the Communist
Party of the United States withdrew from the Comintern.
In 1943 the Communist International itself dissolved.
In 1936 Joseph E. Davies succeeded Mr. Bullitt as
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? SOVIET CIVILIZATION
Ambassador to Moscow and served until the middle of
1938. Making a genuine attempt to understand Soviet
affairs and the Soviet point of view, Mr. Davies did much
to improve relations between the United States and Soviet
Russia. But following the Soviet-German Non-Aggres-
sion Pact of August, 1939, and the Soviet invasion of Fin-
land in November, those relations sank to a new low.
In December, President Roosevelt imposed a "moral
embargo" on the sale of certain war materials to the
U. S. S. R. This embargo was repealed in January of 1941;
and American-Soviet relations took a turn for the better
as rumors filtered through of German-Soviet friction and
a probable Nazi attack on the Soviet Union.
When that attack finally came in June the whole
American-Soviet picture rapidly altered. In November
President Roosevelt publicly stated, "I have found that
the defense of the U. S. S. R. is vital to the defense of the
United States," and thereby brought Soviet Russia with-
in the provisions of the Lend-Lease Act. The American
Government immediately set up a billion-dollar credit
for the Soviets, and by the end of the war had extended
a total of $11,000,000,000 in Lend-Lease to the Soviet
Union. Cooperation and good feeling between the
United States and Soviet Russia reached a high point
from the autumn of 1941 to the conclusion of the Second
World War. At both the Teheran Conference in 1943
and the Yalta Conference in 1945 President Roosevelt
and Premier Stalin, together with Prime Minister Chur-
chill, personally talked through and came to an accord
on various problems of military collaboration and post-
war international affairs.