“I Did not Aspire and Do not Aspire to Become a Diplomatic Representative…” Solomon I. Gillerson and the Soviet Red Cross Mission in Czechoslovakia (July 1920 — June 1921)

Abstract

This article examines the main areas of activity of the first Soviet mission in the Czechoslovak Republic — the mission of the Red Cross of the RSFSR. The author provides extensive evidence that the mission performed functions that went far beyond its official task: providing assistance to former Russian prisoners of war and their repatriation. Considerable attention is paid to the diplomatic activities of the mission: establishing and maintaining contacts with Czechoslovakian officials, negotiations on the neutrality of Prague in the Polish-Soviet war of 1920 and on the recognition of the Soviet state. For Moscow, the Soviet Red Cross mission was an important source of information about the internal political and economic situation in Czechoslovakia, its foreign policy, and international relations in Central and South-Eastern Europe. The article demonstrates the conspiratorial activities of the mission, its support for the revolutionary movement in Czechoslovakia and neighboring countries, its mediating role between the Comintern and left-wing radical organisations in the region, and its work among former legionnaires in the ranks of Russian and Ukrainian emigrants. The author focuses on the personality of the head of the mission, Solomon I. Gillerson, his attitude towards some problems of the domestic and foreign policy of Soviet Russia, towards the communist movement in Czechoslovakia, and towards the directives he received from Moscow. The conflict between Gillerson and the Comintern agent V. Vishnevsky is examined in more detail. The article is based on the study of the funds of Russian and Czech archives, which contain documents of the mission itself (telegrams, letters, reports, and reviews sent to Moscow, and dispatches and instructions by the People’s Commissariat for Foreign Affairs of the RSFSR addressed to the mission), as well as materials relating to its position in Prague (diplomatic and other official and personal correspondence, reports from Czechoslovak police agents).