Did President Wilson help murder Nicholas II?

[Bev]

So how is that Wilson's fault?  Wilson didn't make that decision.  As to the Imperial family being in opposition to Wilson's ideals of democracy, any autocracy is in opposition to democracy.  In fact the definition of autocracy is diametrically opposed to democracy.  Why would any democrat want to support autocracy?  It's anathema to everything we believe in as a people. 

For some reason there seems to be a notion on this board held by some people that Wilson/U.S. had the kind of power necessary to support Tsar Nicholas II.  The U.S. was not a superpower.  It was Jeffersonian in foreign policy.  As a nation, we did not like foreign entanglements.  Some people seem to be looking at this situation through the prism of contemporary foreign policy which advocates a robust interaction with other nations.  What they don't seem to consider is that at the time Wilson had been elected in 1914, there was a backlash against foreign expansion by the U.S.  After the Spanish American war, there was a real anti-imperialist movement in this country - the people were sick of American adventurism - they didn't want war, they wanted trade. 

From the inception of our nation, we have tended towards isolationism and away from foreign entanglements.  Even Hamiltonians wanted nothing more than to enter the British trade alliance and were perfectly content to allow the British to patrol the sea lanes and enforce trade agreements.  The Jeffersonians did not even want to trade under the umbrella of the British trade alliance.  They were catagorically opposed to any kind of alliance with any country.  It was only through great expenditures of political capital that FDR was able to effect an alliance with Great Britain prior to our entry into WW II.  It wasn't until after WW II that the Wilsonian school of foreign policy gained any traction at all - the Marshall Plan being it's first success.  Even during WW I we still had not entered into any kind of formal alliance with the allies.  By November of 1918, Wilson was in effect powerless domestically - the American people had elected a republican congress.  Even though Wilson was re-elected in 1918, from then on he was a lame duck.  Whether he wanted to do anything or not, he could not, because he did not have the power. 

This historical revisionism with its criticism of Wilson (who deserves criticism for many things) always neglects the broader question - what could Wilson have done?  There was no viable alternative available to the U.S. and the allied powers to support any monarchy or any provisional government.  By the time the U.S. entered the war, the Tsar had abdicated and the imperial family had either fled or were in captivity.  There was not enough resources available to fight bolshies and Germans. 

Which of course begs the ultimate question - the Americans didn't allow the Bolsheviks to sieze power, the allied powers didn't allow the Bolsheviks to sieze power - the RUSSIANS allowed the Bolsheviks to sieze power.  The Russians were responsible for the overthrow of the tsar - not Wilson, not King George, not Clemenceau or Lloyd George - the RUSSIANS.    This reminds me of something I read by Yuri Nagabin - "the greatest guilt of the Russians is their perpetual guiltlessness in their eyes..."  So who is responsible for the death of the Imperial family?  Wouldn't that be the Russians?

[Alixz]

I am not saying that it was anyone's specific fault.  I am only saying that combined with Wilson's democratic ideals and his announcement that the US was only entering the war to "fight for democracy" not to preserve any status quo or to return to the old order or to even let the European countries decide for themselves if they wanted a return to monarchy that he helped to create (along with King George V and France and every other country that did nothing) an atmosphere of indifference to the fate of the Imperial Family.

Perhaps in the greater scheme of things, the position of the dethroned tsar was not given too much thought by those who had other things on their minds, like ending a dreadful war.  Perhaps as I said before, because no dethroned monarch since Louis XVI had suffered death by the proletariat and that was over 100 years earlier, no one thought it would happen again.

But do you notice that dethroned and toppled leaders after the Great War were treated much more humanely.  Those who did not commit suicide were arrested and tried.  Some, like the Shah of Iran and the ousted leader of the Phillipines (I can't remember his or his wife's names but she was the one with all the shoes) were taken right into the US.  (It was Imelda Marcos and her husband)

We are still a democracy and were took them in and they were also accused of many crimes against thier people.

Saddam Heussein is still living and still acting like a "President for Life" from his jail cell.  No one killed him in his "spider hole".

I guess what I am trying to say is what I took away from Theo Aronson's book Crowns in Conflict.  I took away a feeling that Wilson and his policies had a lot to do with the lack of interest in saving any royal family or keeping them on their thrones.  The idea of revolution may have been there first, but Wilson's Fourteen Points led to a "sea change" of thought in Europe and the Middle East.

[Bev]

It was the Russians who were indifferent to the fate of the Tsar, just as his death was their responsibility. George V had already asked his cabinet not to rescue the Tsar. 

Never once did Wilson suggest that anyone but the Europeans should decide for themselves their future government.  Here are Wilson's 14 pts:

Open covenants of peace, openly arrived at.
Freedom of the seas.
Removal of all economic barriers
reduction of armaments
adjustment of all colonial claims
evacuation of all Russian territory
readjustment of the frontiers of Italy
restoration of all French territory
autonomous development of the former Austro Hungarian Empire
Evacuation of the Balkans
break up the Ottoman Empire
An idependent Poland
formation of a general association of nations for the purpose of affording mutual guarantees of political independence.

Now which of those points would not give hope for a better world to people?  And why would anyone want to preserve a status quo or an old order that was the cause of such a tragedy to Europe?  And which of these points would take away the right of the people to self-determination?  Perhaps the greater question to ponder was why were the Russian people so indifferent to the fate of the Imperial family?  Why is the fate of the tsar everyone's responsibility but the Tsar and his fellow Russians?  The Tsar had abdicated long before Wilson even contemplated his 14 points.  Nicholas's abdication was the result of his own passivity and lack of assertiveness.  Wilson didn't help murder the tsar, that was done with the Tsar's collusion and indifference to his own fate and the fate of his family and by his own people.

[AGRBear]

..[in part]....
Which of course begs the ultimate question - the Americans didn't allow the Bolsheviks to sieze power, the allied powers didn't allow the Bolsheviks to sieze power - the RUSSIANS allowed the Bolsheviks to sieze power.  The Russians were responsible for the overthrow of the tsar - not Wilson, not King George, not Clemenceau or Lloyd George - the RUSSIANS.    This reminds me of something I read by Yuri Nagabin - "the greatest guilt of the Russians is their perpetual guiltlessness in their eyes..."  So who is responsible for the death of the Imperial family?  Wouldn't that be the Russians?

An oppressed people are obligated to rise up against the opresser and break their yoke of opression.  Once accomplished, it is then the obligation of the people to set forth laws which gives all men, women and children equal rights.  A failure to accomplish this task means the people have failed all the people.

We've been told that some of the guards were able to step aside and chose not to execute Nicholas II and the others.

There were those who didn't step aside but step forward and took from their commander  pistols meant for the task of killing.

Every Russian and non-Russian who pulled the trigger of their guns aimed at Nicholas II and the others  that eventful night in the basement of the Impatiev House had a reason to kill.  High on the list of reasons were revenge, hatred, glory and the need to survive.

Who can we blame?

We can blame the shooters.

We can blame those in charge of   the shooters.  

We can blame the  Bolshevik leaders who were in power who ordered the exection....

Where should we stop this blaming game?

The leaders didn't just happen.  The Russians chose their leaders.

The Russians are to blame for what occured.

The Russians didn't want Nicholas II and the others to survive so Nicholas II and the others vanished on the night of 16/17 July 1918.


AGRBear

[AGRBear]

Alixz wrote in part:

..Perhaps in the greater scheme of things, the position of the dethroned tsar was not given too much thought by those who had other things on their minds, like ending a dreadful war.

It wasn't that ex-Tsar Nicholas II or the uncrown Tsar Michael were not thought about by Wilson and the British,  perhaps it's more accurate to say that neither men were part of the plan which Wilson and the British thought was best for Russia.

Since we know Wilson and the British were sending troops into Russia to fight the Bolsheviks,  then reason #5 in Carney's book  FIGHTING THE RUSSIANS is accurate:
Reason:

5. He planned to support the White Russians, who were expected to form a stable and more democratic government... [/quote

[Bev]

That interests me.

[grandduchessella]

Perhaps in the greater scheme of things, the position of the dethroned tsar was not given too much thought by those who had other things on their minds, like ending a dreadful war.  Perhaps as I said before, because no dethroned monarch since Louis XVI had suffered death by the proletariat and that was over 100 years earlier, no one thought it would happen again.

I absolutely agree with these 2 points. I've always maintained that no one foresaw what would happen to them and thus concentrated on more immediate concerns--namely, the War. Even with the Reign of Terror in France, the royal children were imprisoned and, while not treated well, weren't sent off to the guillotine with their parents. 

[Alixz]

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.

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.

Who was he to even suggest such things?  If the US was nothing more than a third world power at that time, he would have had to have had a lot of chutzpa to write up those issues and present them to the combined leaders of Europe.

And Aronson points out that the Allies had to 'send a reply" to Wilson that explained their reasons for continuing to fight.

The Allies sent a combined reply and only Belgium did not participate because King Albert did not believe that Belgium was fighting to bring down and defeat Germany, as were the rest of the Allies. Belgium was fighting to maintain her right to neutrality and national soverignty.

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.

[griffh]

I felt a sudden bit of guilt when I saw on the news yesterday that they blew up the Woodrow Wilson bridge in Washington D.C. because it caused constant traffic jams.  Do you think we had anything to do with that?  I am not sure whether that was a good omen or a bad one.  But moving on, thanks Grandduchella for the update on Kennan, and I only was off by 50 years!!!  Woops!! 

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:

"Only by buying and seizing German and Dutch ships and American ships built in private yards did the Shipping Board meet the desperate need for merchantmen and transports.”

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. 

The President Wilson of April-Oct 1917 who delivers his Declaration of War in April 1917, while attempting to control the American Wall Street investors he has sent to Russia who are personally funding the Social Revolutionary party in their attempt to bolster the War Effort without his knowledge and who he then recalls..... 

Is not the increasingly nervous President Wilson of Nov 1917-Jan 1918 who avoids recognizing the Bolshevik overthrow while addressing hope to the Russian people in his Fourteen Points while trying to undo the damage caused by the American socialists that he had sent to Russia and who were openly talking with Trotsky and whose approval and support Trotsky mistakenly assumed was in accord with the American Government; is not the...... 

President Wilson of May-June 1918 [someone correct me if this date is off] who secretly sanctions in the Intervention....

And of course is not the President Wilson of after the Peace Treaty of 1919 who spent the rest of his term sitting in the White House looking out the window while Edith ran the country.  Go Girl!!!! 

And I imagine that the George V who offered asylum to the IF in March 1917 is not the same Geroge V who was facing the starvation of his civilian population in April 1917. 

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 for 1917. It seems that the most dramatic contraditons occured in at the end of November 1918 when the Soviet was starting its negociations with Germany for a separate peace and the Chief of the American Military Mission in Russia wanted to help draft Russian's Treaty.  Just to give an idea of how unstable everything was, Lenin's Commander and Chief at Moghliev and his Chief of General Staff in Petrograd were both former Czarist officers who had transitioned into the Provisional Government but who were not Bolsheviks butd at the same time were the men that the Allied Military Mission were addressing their complaints about the Bolsheiviks negociations with Germany.       

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

[Bev]

Who were the socialists that Wilson secretly sent?

[grandduchessella]

I always love to accept thanks but it wasn't me who cleared up the Kennan issue.  That was Bev and Helen.

I just drove over the Woodrow Wilson bridge on 2 consecutive weekends and what a pain in the ***.  I'm glad it's gone. Hopefully all the construction around DC will improve the horrendous traffic but knowing how it works done there it'll probably worsen it. 

[griffh]

Oh, double Woops!!!  Forgive me Bev and Helen.  Bev just a quick note to say what a great question and I am working on the anwser but I may not have posted tonight as it is already midnight and tomorrow is a day of social duties.....tra la.   I am about half way there with the answer so maybe I can prop my eyes open and get it done tonight...... 

[griffh]

Bev I didn’t mean to imply that Wilson sent the American Socialists secretly to Russia.  Sorry for the mixed signals. 

The two American socialists in Russia were Mr. Alexander Gumberg who was attached to The American Red Cross Commission, and Mr. Arthur Bullard, Head of The Committee on Public Information. 

MR. ALEXANDER GUMBERG
Gumberg was secretary and general aide to Mr. Russell Robins, Head of the American Red Cross Commission, Petrograd.  Alexander Gumberg had been born in Russia and had immigrated to NYC as a boy.  He moved in Russian-Socialist circles in NYC and became the managing editor of the Russian-Socialist newspaper, Novy Mir from 1914-1915.  He became acquainted with Trotsky through the pieces Trotsky published in the Novy Mir.  In the winter of 1917 (January 13-March 27) Trotsky lived on 162nd St. on the Upper eastside, in what he called “the working-class-district” NYC.  It was during these winter months, when Trotsky worked in the editorial offices of the Novy Mir that the two men became friends.  Just for the historically curious the offices of the newspaper were near Union Square. 

Alexander Gumberg was already in Russia when Wilson’s American Red Cross Commission arrived in Petrograd on August 7, 1917.  Having returned to Russia with his brother right after February Revolution, on his arrival, Gumberg obtained a Russian passport and consider himself to have duel citizenship.  Alexander's brother became a Bolshevik official, who adopted the current Communist craze for pseudonyms, re-christening himself, Comrade Zorin. 

Renewing his friendship with Trotsky, Alexander Gumberg immediately established intimate ties with Radek, Peters, and other high Bolshevik officials.  At the same time Gumberg worked as an aide for both the Root Commission and the American Advisory Commission of Railroad Experts, before his appointment as secretary and aide the Head of the American Red Cross Commission.       


MR. ARTHUR BULLARD
Bullard, Head of The Committee on Public Information, Petrograd,  was a self avowed socialist who had traveled widely and had become a well known novelist, journalist and free lance writer.  Bullard was a warm sympathizer with the Russian revolutionary movement and had gone to Russia in 1905 to observe the revolt.  He followed the subsequent history of Russia closely.  In the years just preceding the Great War, Bullard became Secretary of the American Friends of Russian Freedom; a private organization that had been formed in the early 1890’s by George Kennan (the elder), Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain), William Lloyd Garrison and whose purpose it was to bring aid to the victims of Tsarist oppression.  Kennan had been in Russia in the 1860’s and 1880’s and identified the cause of the American Friends of Russian Freedom with the pre- Marxist Social Revolutionary movement.  As a result, “In the period just before the Revolution, their sympathy and aid were addressed mainly to the Social-Revolutionaries who, comprising a socialist but not a Marxist party, appeared to them as the spiritual heirs to the earlier populist tendencies in the Russian Revolutionary movement.  They had little idea of the implications of the latter-day Marxist domination of Russian revolutionary thought.”

[griffh]

(continued from last post)

From 1915-1916 Arthur Bullard had been “unofficially” employed by Colonel House as his private European observer.  House held Bullard in high esteem and unsuccessfully tried to get Bullard appointed to the Root Commission.  But Bullard was considered to be too liberal.  However in April 1917 when George Creel was ordered by Wilson to quickly form the Committee on Public Information Headquarters in Washington D.C., Creel employed Bullard’s services.  Like Alexander Gumberg, Bullard was already in Russia, having arrived in Moscow in June 1917, when the Committee on Public Information opened it’s doors in Petrograd in November 1917.  Bullard was immediately drafted to join the Committee and soon he became it's Head.      

Because President Wilson had written Bullard an impressive letter of recommendation, when he left for Russia in June 1917, his traveling companion, Ernest Poole, was under the impression that Bullard had been set to Russia at the direct request of the President and therefore had special authority.  This impression was going to be repeated by several of the men Wilson recommended and it was the cause of serious misunderstandings. 

Once Bullard was appointed to Head the CPI he reported directly to Wilson, and continued his close correspondence with Colonel House.  As a result Bullard strongly influenced the formation of America's policy towards Russia until the summer of 1918.   

In my next post I will describe the three successive men Wilson appointed to Head of the Red Cross Commission.  I will also give the some background information on the formation of the Red Cross Commission and the CPI. 

The three sucessive Heads of the Red Cross Commission are:

Dr. Billing, the well respected physician who had no political agenda and, unknown to himself, had been used to mask the true purpose of the Commission;

William Boyce Thomas, the extremely colorful Copper tycoon and Wall Street Broker, who personally bankrolled the Social Revolutionary Party;

Mr. Russell Robins who, though his aide Alexander Gumberg, became closely connected with Trotsky and Lenin and influenced the Chief of the American Military Mission to Russia, Brigadier General William V. Judson to work directly with Trotsky in direct opposition to Wilson’s orders.   

Ok it is 2:30am and I am off to bed.  Sweet dreams……

[griffh]

I forgot to say how glad I am to know that blowing up the Woodrow Wilson bridge was a good omen....thanks....Grandduchessella

Oh I just more thing.  One of the first things that Bullard did on his arrival in Moscow in June 1917, was to make financial donations to the Social Revolutionary Party in his capasity as Secretary of American Friends of Russian Freedom.  And these donations to the Social Revolutionary committee are not to be confused with the donations made by William Boyce Johnson to the Social Revolutionary Party in Petrograd when he arrived with the Red Cross Commission in August 1917.  Where Bullard donations were significant, they were overshadowed Johnson who donated close to a million dollars. 

Gosh now it is about 4am....