Did President Wilson help murder Nicholas II?

[AGRBear]

Did Carney give provenence for his list of reasons?

And Bev, no one is saying that Nicholas and the Russians were not the most responsible parties for the Imperial Family's fate.  We are only saying that others didn't do much to help get them out of the situation.

When the British, French and Americans went through various plots of rescue,  it was the Russians, whom people believed were loyal to Nicholas II,  who prevented the sucess.

And, it appears that some of you forget the Allies were fighting a war against Germany....

And, it appears that some of you forget there was a Revolution and a Counter-Revolution going on in Russia. 

The understanding of the full complexity of the situation must have been impossible by those living through those times.  Now,  as we sit by our computers with all kinds of books at each elbow and pilled on a table, can we appreciate those complexities.

Like I've commented before,  I never have been a student of Wilson so I can't debate each step of his every move.  However,  I sometimes think that certain historians miss the forrest because of the tree in front of them.

However, as you pointed out by posting the Fourteen Points, Wilson was interfering in Europe buy suggesting dissolutions and breakups and evacuations and adjustments and autonomus developments.  Sure from a US point of view, those are all great things for the poor tortured people of war torn Europe.  Probably in today's world (and aren't we doing it again) liberation of people from tyrants always sounds like a good idea. That is until US troops begin dying on foreign soil.

Why the US sent soliders to Europe in WWI  is probably more difficult for third and fourth generation Americans to understand.  However,  many of the men who went, fought and died were probably born in Europe...  I know my grandfather, a army private sent to Europe and later Russia, was born in Russia.  I know all the men from the area where he grew up in the mid-west were born in Europe or Russia.  If they were not born in Europe or Russia,  their parents and most of their siblings were.

Many American soliders knew what had been happening in Europe and Russia.  If you ever get the chance,  there are collections of letters written you can read which describe the events occuring in Russia by Russians who sent letters to relatives in the USA, Canada, Manchuria, China, South America, Europe.....  Real tear jerkers.   One of my grandmother's had a trunk full of letters from relatives....

Although many historians tell us that the soldiers didn't know why they were sent off to Europe and Russia,  I don't believe this is accurate.   What is true is that the politiics of the variouus leaders  may not have been understood.

Not long ago,  my book club had read a book I had suggested.  During our conversation,  I realized that the majority, although all college graduates from top schools,  were confused with the term "socialism" and "communism".

In 1912-1918  there was a great deal of "socialism".  It was Marx, Engel and Lenin who took "socialism" to a different level.

It doesn't surprise me that there were American "socialists" connected to  American Presidents from Wilson to  Clinton. American  Liberialism is often times considered a kissing cousin of "socialism".

Also, we do know that both the US and Britain sent troops to Russia to fight with the Whites.  But if it was done only to support them because Wilson believed that the Whites would "form a stable and democratic government", then again, he was interfering in things which he had no business interfering in.  He was pushing his agenda.

This world is full of opinions about when a country should be an "isolaltioniist",  "neutral", or pick up arms and go do something about men like Hitler and other bloody dictators yesterday and today.   All politiciams are pushing some kind of agenda

These words are what got my hackles up:

>>"... he was interfering in things which he had no business interfering in.""<<

Here is where I really disagree:   People who believe in freedom and human rights have an obligation to rise up against opressors.  [See previous post given from soap box yesterday].

Sometimes,  countries like Russia in 1917, 1918, 1919...,  end up with the wrong leaders, new dicators, who just have  different names from the old dicators.

I doubt Pres. Wilson had a cyrstal ball that told him Russia's future under Lenin and Stalin.

It is so easy to be arm chair critics of things gone by.... 

If you really are a student of history,  then you must realize:

"Political parties die from their own lies they have swallowed."

Or:

"Old poliiticians chew on wisdom past,
And totter on in bus'ness to the last."

Pope, Moral Essays. Epis i,1.117.

Or:

"There lies beneath this mossy stone
    A politicitan who
Touched a live issue without gloves,
    And never did come to."

Keith Preston, Epitaph.

Widrow Wilson used this slogan in his first campagin:  "Grover Cleveland said of it: 'Sounds fine-- I wonder what it means.' "

AGRBear 

[AGRBear]

...[in part]...

And continuing to move forward , AGRBear your quote about production in the private section of American industry i.e. gun production, does not contradict Luechenburgs remarks about lagging arms production in the govenment's war industry.  For instance when Leuchenburg said that the government could not produce a single war ship in time for the war, he pointed out how the government had to turn to America's private industy to make up for the slack:...

The private corp., companies and shops are part of our captialist society and so as it occured then and, now, they made and make up for the so-called "slack".

As I continue my research I am beginning to realize that the questions we asking about an individual like Wilson and his attitudes towards Russia could be answered in four different ways depending on the time frame. 

As do all politicians who become more informed of the various situations.

As I was working on a list of all those Americans but suddenly I felt it would be far more helpful to document the constanly changing politcal will by creating a chronology of events...

   

Like I've suggested,  these posts are scattered and can be confusing to who was doing what when and why.  

I will try to post a part of the chronology which deals with some of these issues.

 

A huge task that will be appreciated by all,  I'm sure.

AGRBear

[Bev]

That American liberalism is confused so often with socialism or cosidered a kissing cousin of socialism?  You have to wonder sometimes, don't you, where people get these ideas?  Cultural memes, I suppose...

[griffh]

Hey thanks AGRBear for your rich insights into the compexity of understanding motivations that are constantly changing to meet the continually changing future.  And Hey Bev thank you for that wonderful point about how American liberalism is often confused with socialism.  I certainly think that your point applys to Bullard.  Gumberg might be a different story.  I am working on the chronology but I want to complete the list of men and their political backgrounds. 

If I accept Bev's statement as true, "That American liberalism is confused so often with socialism..." and I do accept it as true, it makes me wonder if an American liberal like Arthur Bullard had any idea of Ruissian socalist agenda he was funding by giving donations to the Social Revolutionary Party in June 1917, and it would be interesting to know if that funding tipped balance of the Provisional Government.  What if that funding in June had gone to General Kornilov instead? 

Well thanks for hanging in there with me.  I love your point, AGRBear about the American soldiers being first generation citizens with close family ties to Europe.  You can even feel this with Alexander Gumberg.  I am working on the chronology but I will first complete the list of the American's.  It is not too long and it is vital to our growing understanding of all these complexities.  I am very sleepy so I am going to rest now.  I 
         

[Bev]

they probably were socialists, but then socialism wasn't a perjorative term then.  I think that what Clemens and these men had in common was that they were all members of the Anti-Imperialist League.  Clemens donated money to the Social Revolutionaries, including the proceeds from an article he wrote that the RSs distributed as a pamphlet.  Clemens was an unabashed autocrat despiser, although on his first trip abroad he met Alexander III and thought him personally a fine, family man.  I'm certain though, that Clemens would not have thought that murder was the solution to Russia's problems. 

[griffh]

Spot on Bev with your evaluation of Clemens and which could probably apply to Garrison as well.  The only problem is that both Clemens and Garrison had been dead for quite some time by 1917.  However the man who formed the American Friends of Russian Freedom, George Kennan Sr. (George Kennan's second cousin twice removed), was still alive.

Before 1880 Kennan Sr. would have been in accord with Clemens however his trip to Russia in the 1880's changed all that when he became befriended the Russian terrorists, Prince Peter Kropatkin and Sergei Kravchinsky.  Upon his return to America he espoused the cause of the Russian Revolution and so identified himself with Kravchinsky and Kropatkin that his trip to Russia in 1891 ended in his permanent banishment from the country.  It was shortly after that that Kennan Sr. formed the American Friends of Russian People.   

To give some idea of Kennan's friend Kravchinsky, Edvard Radzinsky, in his book Alexander II, makes the same point about the Russian socialists of 1872-1875 that Bev does about Clemens and follows this statement by quoting the terrorist Kravchinsky: 

"The propagandist of 1872-1875 had too much idealism.  But then Radzinsky adds, "A new type of revolutionary was developing, ready to take his place.  On the horizon appeared a dark figure, illuminated by a hellish flame, who with proudly raised head and gaze blazing challenge and revenge made his way through the cowed crowd, in order to step with firm tread onto the arena of history.  That was the terrorist!"

However Kennan was violently opposed to the Bolshevik Revolution, not because of the terrorism it employed to create change, but becasue, as he wrote the year before his death in 1923, "The Russian leopard has not changed its spots... The new Bolshevik constitution ... leaves all power just where it has been for the last five years--in the hands of a small group of self-appointed bureaucrats which the people can neither remove nor control."  This is a very interesting quote when you remember that 5 years before 1923 is 1918.  I think that my point is that this protrayal of the American Friends of Russian People as a group of altruistic American liberals who would be shocked by the use of violence, does not describe the group's political awareness 1917, or come close to describing its second generation members such as Bullard. 

And the fact that Wilson would employ Bullard as his Head of the CPI when less than a year befoe his appointment he was considered to "liberal" to be included in Root Mission to Russia is something that makes one pause, especially in light of the fact as stated by James R. Mock and Cedric Larson that , “…in some cases the CPI men did work which normally would have fallen to the lot of Military Intelligence…” 

Applying this information to the theme of the thread, I would have to say, Yeah Wilson's flirtation with American Socialists that the Dept of State would rely on to form their Russia policy in the summer of 1917, a policy that Wilson did not even bother to inform his Ambassordor to Russia about, a policy that backed American men like Bullard who privately funded groups determined to bring Nicholas to trial and possible execution (Social Revolutionists) in the summer of 1917, did indeed endanger the late Emperor's life.  And all of this was going on with the Americans under the surface while, while the Allied Ambassadors were trying to bolster the milder elements of the Provisional Governmern and while Kerensky, as that summer of 1917 progressed to fall, fought harder and harder to keep the IF from harm, a concern that finally led him to pack them in their train in August 1917 and send them to Tobolsk. 

Wilson's eventual political backpaddling (his secret plans for the intervention which men like Bullard or Gumberg would have seen "counter revolutionary") occur a year later after the handwriting was on the wall in the summer and fall of 1918.   


 

[griffh]

Continuing to lay the historic context before posting my chronology, I wanted to review the men attached to the American Embassy and some colorful descriptions of the unique flavor of the Embassy in 1916-1917. 

MR. DAVID FRANCIS
American Ambassador

David Francis, as has already been pointed out was having an especially difficult time obtaining any reliable information about the current political situation in Russia as it rapidly passed through three forms of government during Francis’ short tenure of office.  As I have already pointed out, Francis had been compromised in part by the sudden disappearance and unexpected self-recall of the former American Ambassador Marye, a departure that had deeply offended the Russian Foreign Office and brought into serious question America’s continued friendship with Russia.  Francis had further compromised his own standing by his relations with the Madame Mathilda de Cram, an individual Russia's Counter Inteligence suspected of being a German spy.  The disapprobation caused by Francis’ refusal to disassociate himself with Madame de Cram not only effected his relations with the Russian Court and the Allied Embassies, but it continued to create tension after the March Revolution with that great gaggle of American’s special representatives that descended on Francis and Russia.
 
I think that it will become increasingly clear how David Francis was compromised by Wilson and the State Department by their practice of not informing him as to the power or purpose of the Americans and the missions they sent to Russia during Francis’ tenure of office, including the dual position of his own Military attaché, General Judson, who was at the same time worked independently as the Chief of the Military Mission in Petrograd.   

Negley Farson, a young American business contractor in Russia negotiating along with hundreds of other American business men that had crowded into Petrograd to obtain extremely lucrative contracts with the Russian government for their goods which ranged from armaments to bicycles, gives us a glimpse of the difficult position Francis constantly found himself in. 

Negley describes how on the occasion of the first Provisional Parliament held by the Kerensky Government the American Ambassador David Francis, wearing a tweed suit, found himself seated in the Diplomatic Gallery sitting between the British Ambassador Sir George Buchanan and the French Ambassador “both of whom were in full rig.”  Mr. Francis’ tweed suit unfortunately had something more in common with the attire of the revolutionary members attending the meeting than the diplomatic corps and obviously symbolized the uncertainty of Francis as to his relation as American Ambassador to Kerensky’s government. 

I will let Farson tell us what happened next: 

“Just then...”Kerensky…strode in and the diplomats stood up…all but Ambassador Francis.

He half rose, his hands still supporting him on his seat, and whispered hoarsely to Sir George:  ‘I say, it’s just occurred to me that my Government has not yet recognized the Provisional Government.  What position do you think I should take?”

The British Ambassador adjusted his monocle, and looked down over his gold breast at the crouching Francis [said]: ‘I think—er—the position you are holding at present is eminently suitable.’”


MR. BUTLER WRIGHT
Counselor of the American Embassy

Mr. Wright, who would eventually become an Assistant Secretary of State, was David Francis’ Counselor of the Embassy.  He was a very conscientious young man with no special knowledge of Russian affairs, though he was very concerned about Provisional Governments ability to continue the prosecution of war.  Butler and Francis working relations were strained and lacked intimacy.  Francis felt Wright was a young career officer who lacked humanity and Wright felt that Francis “personified all the characteristic weakness of the political appointee in a diplomatic position.” 

The other bright and promising young counselor attached to the American Embassy was Norman Armour.  There was also the colorful figure of the Embassy’s attaché,  Mr. Honoraire.  Americans never had a uniform for Diplomatic occasions at Court and had to wear black tuxedoes which created the sorry impression of sedate undertakers amidst the gold breasts, feathered hats, and elegant ceremonial attire of their fellow diplomats. 

Honoraire changed all that by designing a uniform for the American Diplomatic Corps just before the first Revolution.  Negely Farson tells how Honoraire danced into his room as the Astoria wearing his new uniform on his way to a Court Levee, and asked him: 
 
“’Say Kid, how do I look—Admiral, bell-hop—or what?’  As a matter of fact, in neat navy blue and gold, with his iron grey hair and clean-cut Western jaw, he was one of the handsomest figures I had seen.  ‘You’re a knock-out!” I said.  ‘Thanks.’

He leapt into his famingo-coloured motor-car and drove off to the Winter Palace.’”     

 

[griffh]

Just a quick side-bar from our discussion about Wilson, to say how much I love that description of Honoraire leaping into his famingo-coloured sports car and speeding off to attend a Court Levee in the Winter Palace in his smart new uniform.  I included the description as part of my campaign to gradually destroy the prevailing concept among Western historians that Czarist Russia was somehow a backward country just before the Revolution.  The idea that anyone would be driving a flamingo colored sports car in 1916 Petrograd, even an American, is something almost incomprehensible to most historians.   

As early as January 1905, during the tragic events of "Bloody Sunday," those descriptions of mounted Cossacks mowing down Father Gapons unarmed followers, not only paint a misleading pictures that the West uses to point to the "primitive oppressive measures" that Nicholas’ and his government used, but those descriptions, with their vivid descriptions of those horses, also in spire a false impression of the mode of transportation current in Russia’s big cities in 1905. 

Here is what I am trying to get at.  When you see turn of the century pictures of the American police mounted on horses and mowing down the American strikers caught up in some mining conflict in 1900, you don’t feel that America’s use of force in 1900 indicates that the country was backward because you know about the long political struggle that it took to finally establish the American labor Unions and their protection of the American worker.  You don’t isolate the picture of American’s oppression of workers in 1900 to that time because you know that future advances vindicate the harsh measures employed by the American government, and besides the American President during that period of harsh repression was never described to you as “Bloody.” 

Because the Russian Revolution cut short the history of its progressive momentum of the Czars reforms, you condemn the measures against Father Gapon march’s on the Winter Palace in 1905 as proof the Russian’s governments repressive nature and you label Nicholas as “Bloody.”  The other thing is that when you see those mounted American policemen cutting down the American strikers, you don’t make any assumptions that American cities are not full of automobiles bustling about.  In spite of those pictures of brutal American police mounted on horses and clubbing American strikers to the ground, you know that that America’s big cities are modern and progressive and full of life. 

However when it comes to seeing those mounted Cossacks clubbing down Father Gapon’s followers to the ground, having no knowledge of Russia’s big cities in 1905, you assume that oppressive measures=backward technology.  Even when Alexander Werth tells you in the 1950’s that there were more cars in Moscow in 1905 than there were in NYC, you write him off as deluded.
Fifty years later when Solzhenitsyn accurately describes the 1905 revolution in terms of telephone calls and clandestine meeting on vacant fields where revolutionist and Russian nobles, both in English business suits, drive to vacant fields in their motor cars to meet and haggle over the amount of the ransom that will insure the safety of the Russian aristocrat's various country estates from being ransacked and burnt to the ground, you attack the man as a dissimulating fool.     

1905 Russia=horse drawn carriages, right?  Wrong!  Just take the example of Count Witte (who guided Nicholas the II to grant the Russian people their civil rights and a constitution) and Dr. Dillion (who would publish his description of "Bloody Sunday" to the West), as to their mode of transportation about St. Petersburg in 1905.  As those mounted Cossack troops were mowing down Russia demonstrators with the same enthusiasm their fellow mounted American police were mowing down American strikers, Dillion describes how he was whizzing up and down the Nevsky in his Panhard Lesvassor motor car, not to mention Witte rushing about in his Mercedes.  And that descripiton does not begin to include thel hundreds of Russian nobles, including the IF still resident in St. Petersburg in 1905 not to mention the members of the Czar’s government who were rushing about St. Petersburg in their elegant motor cars in 1905, and that was nothing compared to the automobiles rushing about in Moscow in 1905. 

And lest we forget this had all occurred a decade before that little cutie pie, Honoraire, all dolled-up in his terribly smart navy and gold uniform and looking like a million dollars, jumped in his flamingo-colored sports-roadster and rushed across the Palace Square to a Court Levee in 1916.  Hail Solzhenitsyn!!!!!! 

[Bev]

must have been quite a sight.

[griffh]

Hey Bev you are right, it really must have been quite a sight!  I never look at a photo of the Palace Square without remembering Honoraire in his flamingo-colored sports-roadster.  Well here is a brief description of Francis' military attache General Judson and General Maddin Summers, American Consul General, Moscow.  This will complete the picture of the Embassy staff and the Consul in Moscow.  Both men are moderate American liberals with close ties to members of the former Duma who were to play a part in the Provisional Government. 

BRIGADIER GENERAL WILLIAM V. JUDSON
American Embassy Military Attaché
Chief of the American Military Mission to Russia

General Judson held simultaneously the military position of Chief of the American Military Mission to Russia and the civil position of military attaché to David Francis, making the General both subordinate and not subordinate to the Ambassador.  This confusion over the way civil and military interacted was typical of the American State Department policy at the time.  And in all honesty I am sure similar confusion and blurred lines between military and civil positions in the diplomatic communities assigned to Russia as well because of the war and then because of the complications the Russian Revolutions introduced into the world of diplomacy.  One is reminded of the awkwardly conflicting positions of Sir George Buchanan in Petrograd and Bruce Lockhart in Moscow. 

In his civil duties as military attaché Judson was supposed to report his view of the political situation in Russia through the Ambassador; however in his military capacity as head of the Military Mission he was to report directly to the Secretary of War.  This caused endless confusion and hostility.  Judson was by profession a military engineer who had interrupted his career for five months in 1905 to become an observer on the Russian side during the Russo-Japanese war during which time he met and became friends with Guchkov.  Judson had returned to Russia as a member of the Root Mission in the summer of 1917 and had stayed on as Chief of the Military Mission when the Root commission went home.  Being a military man, General Judson was vitally concerned with Russia’s military efforts and had rekindled his friendship with Guchkov who was now the Provisional Government’s Minister of War.  Through his connection with Guchkov, Judson was one of the first American advisors to comprehend disastrous effects of Order #1 on the discipline of the troops, the German and Bolshevik propaganda that was undermining the morale of the troops, and the terrible consequences for the Allied war effort.  As Kennan states, “…like most others who tried to interpret the Russian Revolution to the Wilson administration, he (Judson) was left with the feeling of being brushed off and ignored.” 

GENERAL MADDIN SUMMERS
American Consul General, Moscow

General Maddin Summers was held the important position of Consul General in Moscow and had married a distinguished Russian, Madame Natalia Gorainoff.  Being assigned to Moscow as Consul General Summers had knowledge as to the commercial life of the country and he also supervised the American Consuls in Petrograd, Odessa, Tiflis, Irkutsk, and Vladivostok where the tons of munitions and supplies the Czar had purchased from America and Japan sat waiting for transportation.

General Summers the only senior American official in Russia who was uncompromisingly anti-Bolshevik as he had witnessed first hand the bloodshed and brutal seizure of power in Moscow by the Bolsheviks.  The fierce intellectual fervor of Lenin and Trotsky that had stirred and enthralled the American observers in Petrograd during the Bolshevik overthrow was not present in Moscow to mask the vicious ruthlessness so transparent in Moscow.  General Summers died shortly after the Bolshevik takeover and so ended the only senior American to warn the President of the sinister nature of Russia’s new rulers and their connection with Germany.  Summers reports were consider as being highly exaggerated views influenced by his wife pre-revolutionary liberal political views. 
 

[Alixz]

I am just not sure when a foreign country has the right to make the decision for another country that the leaders justly chosen by the proletariat are the wrong leaders.

I happen to believe in a "Prime Directive".  Such as, (and I know this is science fiction)the one trumpeted in Star Trek.  Non interference in the affairs of others.

I don't want to make enemies on this forum or on any other, but I truly believe in a bumper sticker that I saw just recently that showed and American flag and said" These colors don't run the world".  I support our troops, but I don't support their use in tearing up other countries just because someone decides that it is in eveyone's best interest to unseat the government of a foreign country.

I truly believe that the Treaty of Versailles caused great harm in addition to World War II and the Korean War and Vietnam and both Gulf Wars.  I am appalled at what the Allies did to the defeated countries and how they neatly redistributed land and borders to their own liking.

And they did it again after World War II.

We were furious when the World Trade Center was attacked.  Justly so.  Then why do were feel justified in attacking other countries?  Isn't that the same as putting someone to death because they killed someone?  How do we justify killing someone because he killed someone?

We don't want anyone telling us how to run our country except our own citizens, but we always feel so free to go into other countries and begin to tell them how to run theirs.

And that is why I think that Wilson had no business intefering and pushing his agenda.  If we want others to say out of our business, then we have to stay out of theirs.

My apologies to anyone whom I may have offended. 

My apologies to FA as well, in case he takes issue with what I have said.

[Robert_Hall]

Nothing to be offended by, Alixz.

[Tania]

Dear Alexz,

I agree 100% and of these points to back up the discussion for sure !

*We were furious when the World Trade Center was attacked.  Justly so.  Then why do were feel justified in attacking other countries?  Isn't that the same as putting someone to death because they killed someone?  How do we justify killing someone because he killed someone?

*We don't want anyone telling us how to run our country except our own citizens, but we always feel so free to go into other countries and begin to tell them how to run theirs.

*Wilson had no business intefering and pushing his agenda.  If we want others to say out of our business, then we have to stay out of theirs.

As always, right on !

Tatiana+

[Bev]

I not only believe in American exceptionalism, I believe in American isolationism - with few exceptions.  What I object to is this misinterpretation of Wilson's policy and Wilson's ability to mastermind and then determine world events.  Brtain might have had that kind of power and intelligence services, but the U.S. didn't.  America's foreign policy as it pertained to Europe was to not meddle in their domestic arrangements.  

This new hypothesis of Wilsonian diplomacy being responsible for the success of socialism in Russia and the resultant cold war, is not supported by the evidence.  In fact, the evidence supports the opposite hypothesis - that Wilson used his powers both ordinary and extraordinary to destroy socialism.  He used the war as an excuse to completely annihilate the Wobblies and practically eradicated the socialist party in the U.S.  He did everything in his power to bring down the Bolsheviks.  As I said before the problem with this hypothesis, is that it doesn't answer the bigger question - what could Wilson have done?  We weren't at war with Russia, we could not send troops to Russia without a declaration of war - to send troops into Russia to rescue the Tsar would have been an act of war, a direct provocation.  The British would have been enraged if we had done that, and the U.S. was dependent as the junior partner in our trade alliance with G.B.  

Where I disagree with you is on your contention that Wilson dictated peace terms to the central powers.  If Wilson had, it wouldn't have turned out to the punitive, avenging document that it was.  Who knows how it might have turned out if we had kept out of it altogether.  I think G. Washington voiced the best policy; "Observe good faith and justice toward all nations.  Cultivate peace and harmony with all.  Religion and morality enjoin this conduct, and can it be that good policy does not equally enjoin it?"

[griffh]

Alixz I totally agree with you and especially because you sorted out the loyalty issue from support of an American political policy that, was not only disastrous, but that did not represent the American people even if it did support American business interests.  As a people, if the average American had known of the actions those policies initiated on the welfare of other countries Americans would have been disgusted and horrified.  And believe me I can support that statement with historic fact.  However it is a very hard thing to speak of these things without appearing disloyal or unpatriotic.  But you are neither Alixz and I am so grateful for your courage.  And I am also so grateful for Tatiana's and Bev's support of your courage and honesty.

Hey Bev, thanks for being willing to hang in there and contribute the "counter defense" about Wilsonian policy towards Russia.  I am still only laying the ground work but I really value your point of view and look forward to your observations as I unfold my case.  I would like to examine your two statements: 

"This new hypothesis of Wilsonian diplomacy being responsible for the success of socialism in Russia and the resultant cold war, is not supported by the evidence."

There are three distinct periods in which to observer Wilsonian policy in connection with Russia. 

THE FIRST PERIOD:

We have Wilson's diplomacy in 1916-Mar 1917 to consider.  And we know from the historic record that it does not include Russia at this point.  We also know that Wilson, unlike other American Presidents, such as Theodore Roosevelt, does not have any previous knowledge or connection with the Russian government.  We also know from the historic record that Wilson, along with his Secretary of State does have sympathy for the failed 1905 revolutionary movement.