Reconstructing Russia: The political economy of American assistance to revolutionary Russia, 1917-1922

This dissertation examines US efforts to promote social and economic reconstruction in Siberia between 1917 and 1922. After the collapse of the Provisional Government, Siberia became a focal point in the Great Powers' struggle to redivide the existing spheres of influence. This study views the American assistance policy as part of this broader imperial rivalry and necessarily implies a wider perspective on the debate over the American involvement in revolutionary Russia. It demonstrates that this policy simultaneously represented the primary response of American statesmen to events in revolutionary Russia and an important new dimension in their efforts to promote an Open Door political economy.;The Wilson Administration's assistance policy focused on two complementary initiatives: the restoration of operations on the Trans-Siberian Railway and the provision of commercial assistance to the Siberian population via the region's prominent peasant cooperatives. These forms of assistance were aimed at promoting the recovery of Russian civil society in order to help Russia develop its own form of "self-government." American statesmen believed Siberia would rapidly develop a post-Tsarist civil society because of its rich natural resources and its relatively egalitarian social structure. As this social and economic transformation proceeded, Siberia would provide an unparalleled outlet for American investment and thereby help to solidify an Open Door system.;Between 1919 and 1922, the US sponsored the establishment of the inter-Allied Railway Committee for supervision of the Trans-Siberian Railway, an institutional innovation which foreshadowed post-WW II developmental agencies. Finally, this study draws important parallels between the reconstruction efforts in Siberia and the developmental policy the US had been promoting in China since 1900.;Since American policy-makers considered Bolshevism to be epiphenomenal, the byproduct of widespread instability, the counter-revolutionary tendencies inherent in Wilson's policy toward Siberia were subordinate to the progressive role American Open Door diplomacy played in its struggle against the efforts of the European Powers and Japan to establish spheres of influence in the Russian Empire. Therefore, the American plan for Siberia should be viewed as a distinctly Wilsonian experiment in foreign assistance policy.