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Changing Directions in Russian-American Economic Relations, 1912-1917

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Jeanette E. Tuve
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In the nineteenth century Russia and the United States emerged as nations on the periphery of the West European economic and political vortex. Their relations with each other had been, for the most part, prompted by or integrated with some larger issue involving the powers of Western Europe. Economic relations were no exception. Both nations were traditionally exporters of raw materials to industrialized, urbanized nations, which in turn were prepared and eager to exchange manufactured goods for raw materials. Russian and American products were therefore competitive rather than reciprocal, and profitable mutual exchange of goods had not developed. Both nations were debtor nations and had relied on the surplus capital of the small and large investors of Western Europe to provide the beginnings of internal transportation and industrialization.

Type
Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 31 , Issue 1 , March 1972 , pp. 52 - 70
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1972

References

1. Cotton and agricultural machinery were the exceptions to this rule. The Russian cotton textile industry predated the development of cotton culture there; thus Russia purchased cotton from the United States. The U.S. farm implement industry produced machinery some of which was more appropriate for the extensive plains of Russia than European machinery. In addition, the International Harvester Company was unique among American industries in offering credit to Russian buyers. U.S. industry was not competitive with European industry in small farming equipment.

2. Here again there were exceptions in that there had been a small number of very wealthy Americans, such as J. P. Morgan, who were interested in speculative investment in Russia.

3. From the dispatches of Buchanan transmitted with the treaty. Miller, Hunter, ed., Treaties and Other International Acts of the United States of America, vol. 3 (1819-35) (Washington, D. C., 1933), p. 737 Google Scholar.

4. The treaty is stated in full in Miller (ibid., pp. 723-34). From the dispatches it appears that secrecy had been maintained during negotiation, for the British ambassador in St. Petersburg expressed surprise on the occasion of the signing of the treaty.

5. This fact has been well documented by Lebedev, V. V., Russko-amerikanskic ckonomicheskie otnosheniia, 1900-1917 (Moscow, 1964)Google Scholar, and by Gilbert C. Kohlenberg, “Russian-American Economic Relations, 1906-1917,” Ph.D. diss. (Urbana, 1951).

6. This is the view of Kulisher, I. M., Ocherk po istorii russkoi torgovli (St. Petersburg, 1923)Google Scholar and also of U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce, Miscellaneous Series, no. 57, German Foreign Trade Organization (Washington, D.C., 1914).

7. Russian Review, 1, no. 1 (February 1916): 35. The total of $7 billion was documented from statistics of the U.S. Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce.

8. An exact figure is impossible to compile. P. V. 0l, Inostrannye kapitaly v Rossii (Petrograd, 1922), p. 13, calculated the figure at 113, 900, 000 rubles of American investment. His figure has been generally accepted by American historians. Lebedev, Russkoamerikanskie ekonomicheskie otnosheniia, p. 18, believes the sum was 10, 000, 000 rubles more than 0l, or 123, 900, 000 rubles. (Ol’s figure of more than $1 billion total foreign investment in Russia does not take into account large loans made directly to the Russian government before 1907.)

9. U.S. Congress, House, Committee on Foreign Affairs, Hearing on Termination of the Treaty of 1832 Between the United States and Russia (Washington, D. C., 1911), p. 147.

10. Thomas A. Bailey, America Faces Russia (Ithaca, 1950), p. 115.

11. Hearing on Termination, p. 15.

12. Bailey, America Faces Russia, p. 219; State Department Memo, Apr. 22, 1911, National Archives 711.612/55.

13. U.S. Department of State, Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, 1911 (Washington, D.C., 1918), p. 695 Google Scholar. There was a provision that the treaty might be terminated on one year’s notice.

14. Ibid., pp. 697-99.

15. Bailey, America Faces Russia, p. 120.

16. Krasnyi arkhiv, 64 (1934): 16–19.

17. New York Times, Sept. 29, 1913, p. 1.

18. New York Times, Nov. 7, 1913, p. 3.

19. Lebedev, Russko-amerikanskie ekonomicheskie otnosheniia, p. 134.

20. Tompkins, Pauline, American-Russian Relations in the Far East (New York, 1949), p. 29.Google Scholar

21. New York Times, July 13, 1913, sec. 2, p. 9. See also Kohlenberg, “Russian-American Economic Relations,” p. 229.

22. For example, German exports to Russia in 1913 included $2, 784, 000 in raw cotton, an item which very likely came from the United States (German Foreign Trade Organisation, p. 140).

23. New York Times, Dec. 17, 1913, p. 8. Medzikhovsky’s purposes were explicitly written up in U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce, Special Consular Report, no. 61, Snodgrass, John J., Russia (Washington, D.C., 1913)Google Scholar.

24. Nolde, Boris E., Russia in the Economic War (New Haven, 1928).Google Scholar Nolde was undersecretary of state for foreign affairs in the tsar’s government and professor of international law at the University of Petrograd.

25. Ibid., p. 12.

26. Kohlenberg, “Russian-American Economic Relations,” p. 191; State Department Archives, Wilson to Bryan, Aug. 24, 1914. 611.6131/75.

27. Marye, George T., Nearing the End in Imperial Russia (Philadelphia, 1929), p. 40.Google Scholar

28. U.S. Department of State, Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States: The Lansing Papers, 2: 311-12.

29. Nolde, Russia in the Economic War, p. 147.

30. Lebedev, Russko-amerikanskie ekonomicheskie otnosheniia, p. 160.

31. Ibid., p. 163.

32. See Kalamantiano, S. K., Possibilities of Success of Import and Export Trade Between Russia and the USA After Present Events (Odessa, 1914).Google Scholar

33. Russia, 1, no. 1 (May 1916): flyleaf. Russian and American publications praised the new efficiency of peasant labor and the increased savings bank deposits which had resulted from the prohibition of vodka in 1914.

34. Moody’s Magazine, 19, no. 8 (August 1916): 473 (compares Petrograd to Chicago). Many articles appeared in Moody’s enlightening its readers about Russia. If the authors judged their readers correctly, the public was indeed ignorant of the most simple facts about Russia.

35. Edwin Francis Gay, dean of Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration, writing in Russia, May 1916, p. 6, was one of many who presented this view.

36. Moody’s Magazine, 19, no. 1 (January 1916): 3, reported that the figure ranged between $4 and $6 billion. The U.S. Department of Commerce figure, quoted earlier, was $7 billion.

37. Moody’s Magazine, 19, no. 4 (April 1916): 208.

38. Russian Review, 3, no. 3 (July 1917): 17.

39. Lebedev, Russko-amerikanskie ekonomicheskie otnosheniia, p. 220. Lebedev bases his discussion on notes and letters of G. L. Loris-Melikov, first secretary of the Russian embassy in Washington. According to Moody’s Magazine, 19, no. 1 (January 1916): 39, the American International Corporation was formed November 23, 1915, with a capital of $50 million to develop American foreign trade.

40. Ganelin, R. Sh., “Politika tsarizma i amerikanskii kapital vo vremia Pervoi Mirovoi Voiny (konets 1915-nachalo 1916),” pp. 321-63 in Akademiia nauk SSSR, Vnutrenniaia politika tsarizma (seredina XVI-nachalo XX v.) (Leningrad, 1967).Google Scholar

41. Lebedev, Russko-amerikanskie ekonomicheskie otnosheniia, pp. 222-27. Also Ganelin, “Politika tsarizma,” p. 360.

42. Lansing Papers, 1: 136-37.

43. Lebedev, Russko-amerikanskie ekonomicheskie otnosheniia, pp. 251-52.

44. Ganelin, “Politika tsarizma,” p. 332. The negotiations are explained in great detail by Ganelin (pp. 350-57), based on correspondence in the TsGIA (fonds 624 and 630) between the bank in New York, its representatives in St. Petersburg, and the Ministry of Finance. Upon request of the writer of this article, the Guarantee Trust Company (which incorporated Morgan interests) has advised that it does not find in its archives any files of the correspondence that Ganelin quotes.

45. Lansing Papers, 1: 148-49. Sazonov complained to Francis on another occasion that American bankers were demanding specific collateral and that Russia would make no loan that required security other than faith and credit.

46. Moody’s Magazine, 19, no. 7 (July 1916): 373-74.

47. Lebedev, Russko-amerikanskie ekonomicheskie otnosheniia, pp. 268-69.

48. Francis, David R., Russia from the American Embassy (New York, 1921), p. 1921.Google Scholar

49. Great, Britain, Parliamentary Debates (Commons), 5th ser., 85 (Aug. 1-23, 1916): 333.

50. Nolde, Russia in the Economic War, pp. 159-63.

51. Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, 1917, p. 200.

52. SSSR, Akademiia nauk, Ekonomicheskoe polozhenie Rossii nakanune Velikoi Oktiabr'skoi Sotsialisticheskoi Revolutsii: Dokumenty i materialy, part 2 (Moscow, 1957), p. 453 Google Scholar, letter of Foreign Affairs Minister Miliukov to the Ministry of Trade and Commerce, Mar. 16, 1917, and numerous other documents.

53. Michelson, Alexander M., Apostol, P. N., and Bernatzky, M. W., Russian Public Finance During the War (New Haven, 1928), p. 1928.Google ScholarAnother $125 million was granted Nov. 1, 1917, but was canceled in December 1917.

54. Ekonomicheskoe polozhenie Rossii, p. 454 and elsewhere.

55. Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, 1918, Russia, 1: 111.

56. Lebedev, Russko-amerikanskie ekonomicheskie otnosheniia, pp. 348-49.