The Russian situation is to me an unanswered and unanswerable riddle.

I cannot see how this element which is hostile to the very idea of nationality can claim

that they are the government of a nation, or expect to be recognized as such.

They are avowedly opposed to every government on earth. They openly propose to

excite revolutions in all countries against existing governments. They are as hostile to democracy

as they are to autocracy. If we should recognize them in Russia, we would encourage them and their

followers in other lands.

That would be a serious error.

To recognize them would give them an exalted idea of their own power, make them more insolent and impossible, and win their contempt, not their friendship.

U.S. Secretary of State Robert Lansing, Memorandum of December 2, 1917.

Welcome to the history of the 20th century.

Music The

The Theean, Episode 166, an unanswered riddle.

It took the American Secretary of State, Robert Lansing, very little time to sour on Russia's

new Bolshevik government, as you will have noticed from the quote I just read.

Mere weeks after the October Revolution, Lansing was opposed to recognizing the new

Russian government and regarded it as an implacable enemy. Lansing was an outlier in this respect.

Most of the leadership in Paris and London and Washington looked at Lenin and his government

with cautious optimism, or at least with a wait-and-see attitude.

Western leaders were unhappy that the new Russian government had so quickly ditched

Russia's pre-existing commitments to our allies to seek an armistice with the central powers.

Of course they were. But they also

...