The Origins of Detente: The Genoa Conference and Soviet-Western Relations, 1921–1922

by Stephen White

• ISBN13: 9780521526173
• ISBN10: 0521526175
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2002-06-27
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

The Genoa Conference of April-May 1922 saw the first serious and sustained attempt to negotiate a modus vivendi between the newly established Soviet government in Moscow and the western capitalist countries that surrounded it. Drawing upon a wide range of archival and other sources, many of them unfamiliar or previously unexplored for this purpose, this study traces the evolution of Soviet-Western relations from the Revolution up to the autumn of 1921, when the proposal for a conference first began to emerge, and then considers in more detail the course of preconference diplomacy and the proceedings of the conference itself, up to the early summer of 1922. In his final chapter Dr White argues that the failure to resolve East-West differences at Genoa was attributable to a variety of circumstances, but above all to a failure of political will.

Table of Contents

Preface	vii
List of abbreviations	xiii
Technical note	xv
Europe and Russia after the war	1	(28)
Approaching the Russian problem	29	(23)
From Cannes to Boulogne	52	(21)
Diplomatic preliminaries	73	(24)
Soviet Russia and Genoa	97	(24)
The conference opens	121	(26)
Rapallo	147	(22)
Closing stages	169	(23)
Genoa and after	192	(20)
Notes	212	(26)
Select bibliography	238	(11)
Index	249