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Complete Bolshevik Paper
Notes on "The Wall Street Trilogy, A History" Anthony C. Sutton Global Alliance Publications Inc. 2018
The first volume of this Trilogy deals with various Wall Street financial firms' involvement with the Russian Revolution of 1917. Marx had created a myth of implacable enmity between capital and socialist revolution, a red herring drug across history's trail, causing most historians, somewhat sympathetic to Marx's overarching thesis, to completely miss the link that brought and held Wall Street and bolshevism together, monopoly: one to provide it, the other to exploit it. Yet no historian has sufficiently "followed the money" that financed this revolution. Bolshevik myths of self financing through bank robberies, donations, taxes and other trivial (in the big picture) sources of money are accepted at face value. Hard evidence of money transfers are ignored by a captured press. Yet this evidence does exist in State Department files, where much of the evidence in this book originates.
Pg. 25. The book begins by pointing out some realities to those who wish to accept a more rose colored view of human nature, a view exploited by the myths of both Wall Street and Marxist dogma: both the left wing of socialism, international communism, and the right wing, national fascism, are totalitarian political-economic systems based on naked, unfettered political power and individual coercion. Both systems require monopoly control of society. The "Robber Baron" era of capitalism focused on monopoly control of industry, but by the early 19th century capitalists understood that the most efficient way to gain monopoly control of industries was to gain political control of the productive process through myths of "the greater good" and "public interest".
pg 25. ...both the extreme left and the extreme right of the conventional political spectrum are absolutely collectivist.... both communism and fascism recommend totalitarian political-economic systems based on naked , unfettered political power and individual coercion. Both systems require monopoly control of society. "...get a monopoly...for a legislative grant, franchise, subsidy, or tax exemption...does not require any labor, either physical or mental, for its exploitation. pg. 26 ....given the weakness of socialist central planning, the totalitarian socialist state is a perfect market for monopoly capitalists.
Leon Trotsky's role in the Russian Revolution is pivotal. Exiled from Russia to Germany, then to France, then Spain, he finally landed in New York on January 13, 1917. Knowing only German and Russian, he and his family lodged in an apartment with a telephone and a refrigerator, both luxuries in that year, and traveled in a chauffeured limousine. Trotsky was in New York for three months. When he returned to Russa via Canada in April 1917, $10,000 was taken from him by the authorities in Halifax. Pg. 29.
Trotsky left with a U.S. passport, a Russian entry visa, and a British transit visa, despite ongoing State Department efforts to tighten up procedures. On board with Trotsky was the American communist Lincoln Steffens and Charles Richard Crane, a former chairman of the Democratic Party's finance committee, who had organized the Westinghouse Company in Russia, and who had made no fewer that 23 visits to Russia between 1890 and 1930. Crane was receiving updates on events in Russia from the U.S. State Department. All this suggests some kind of connection between Crane and Trotsky. Pg. 30. Trotsky's return to Russia and his aid to the revolution aided, some think decisively, in the victory of the Bolsheviks and the subsequent withdrawal of Russia from the war, prolonging that war by estimates of up to a year. Pg. 40-42.
Chapter 3. Lenin and German Assistance for the Bolshevik Revolution
The Sisson Documents. In early 1918 Edgar Sasson, the Petrograd representative of the U.S. Committee on Public Information, bought a batch of documents that purported to prove that Lenin, Trotsky, and other Bolshevik revolutionaries were not only in the pay of, but also agents of, the German government. The documents were eventually determined to be forgeries, although based on very good information. The documents were used to "prove" various things by various factions. The author of this book claims they were used as a smoke screen against public knowledge of the things revealed in this book. Pg. 49-51.
A review of the documents by the U.S. State Department suggest that the State Department was remarkably well informed about the intentions and progress of the Bolsheviks. On November 28, 1917 President Woodrow Wilson ordered no interference with the Bolshevik Revolution. On February 15, 1918, the State Dept. ordered that Ambassador Francis should "keep informal touch with the Bolsheviks that would avoid any official recognition," hoping to avoid antagonizing any of the various power centers. Unofficial sources felt that any men, money, or material sent to the Bolsheviks would be as likely to be used against the Russian people as against Germany. Pro Bolshevik forces were also at work. Woodrow Wilson's advisor Colonel House, as early as November 28, 1917 cabled the President that it was "exceedingly important" that US newspapers "advocating Russia should be treated as enemies must be suppressed". Pg. 52-54
Chapter 4. Wall Street and World Revolution
Before WW 1, the financial and business structure of the U.S. was dominated by two conglomerates--the Rockefeller enterprise and the Morgan complex of industries--finance and transportation companies. Through trusts and interlocking directorates they dominated almost the entire economic fabric of the U.S. At the end of WW 1 the Guaranty Trust and the Bankers Trust were the first and second largest trusts in the US, and both were dominated by Morgan interests.
Pg 56. American financers associated with these groups were involved in financing revolution even before 1917. Intervention by the WS law firm Sullivan and Cromwell into the Panama Canal controversy is recorded in the 1913 Congressional hearings....Congressman Rainey: "..had it not been for the interference of this government it would not have been possible for a successful revolution to occur...violating the treaty of 1846....the Declaration of Independence was prepared right here in N.Y. City and carried down there by Nelson Cromwell."
Pg. 57 ...The best documented example of Wall Street intervention in revolution is the operation of a NY syndicate in the Chinese revolution of 1912, which was led by Sun Yat-Sen. In return for financial support Sun Yat-Sen promised the Hill syndicate railroad, banking, and commercial concessions in the new, revolutionary China.
Pg. 58. In 1915-16 a German agent attempted to embroil the US in the Mexican Civil War by attempting to divert ammunition then flowing to the Allies in Europe to Poncho Villa, who subsequently made several raids, arranged by WS, into the US..."to be so timed and so atrocious that it would settle the election", presumably of Wilson. ....the 1919 Fall Committee yielded documentary evidence of the link between Bolshevik interests in the US, German activity, and the Carranza forces in Mexico. The Carranza revolution probably not have succeeded without American munitions, and probably not lasted as long without American help.
Pg. 59-62. American bankers and Tsarist loans.
Europe went to war in August 1914, and the US followed in April 1917, thus were neutral between those dates and legally prevented from raising loans for either waring side. When J.P. Morgan raised loans for Britain and France in 1915, these were disguised as trade loans, a distinction President Wilson had made earlier. WS firms had made loans to Russia while the US was still neutral, even though the US State Dept. had pointed out the illegality of those loans. WS continued to violate international laws, and the State Dept. continued to advise them of the illegality of these actions. All the while these transactions were transmitted over State Dept. cables (encrypted!).
Chapter 5. The American Red Cross in Russia -- 1917
Pg. 77. ..in WW 1, the Red Cross depended heavily on WS, and specifically on the Morgan firm. The majority of the mission was made up of lawyers, financiers, most with military titles, and their assistants. It's 7 doctors, out of 30 total, left the mission on Sept. 11, 1917, having stayed one month. It's main activity seemed to be political intrigue. Pg. 85-6. Donations to Bolshevik interests could be described as lavish ($2 million of "popular education"), while no money was forwarded to the legitimate medical needs of the concurrent Romanian Red Cross mission whose accounts they handled.
PG. 83. The American Red Cross mission to Romania.
In 1917 the American Red Cross also sent a medical assistance mission to Romania, then fighting the Central Powers as an ally of Russia. A comparison of the American Red Cross mission to Russia with that sent to Romania suggests that the Red Cross mission based in Petrograd had very little connection with the Red Cross and even less connection with medical assistance. Whereas the Red Cross mission to Romania valiantly upheld the Red Cross twin principles of humanity and neutrality, the Red Cross mission in Petrograd flagrantly abused both. The mission to Romania consisted of 30 persons, sixteen of whom were either doctors or surgeons. The Romanian mission had only two lawyers, one treasurer, and one engineer. The Russian mission had 15 lawyers and businessmen. None of the Romanian mission lawyers or doctors came from anywhere near the New York area but all, except for one, of the lawyers and businessmen with the Russian mission came from that area. From his personnel the Russian mission could be classified as a commercial or financial mission, but from its actions it was a subversive political Action Group.
The medical staff of the American Red Cross mission in Russia --the seven doctors-- quit in disgust in August of 1917, protesting the political activities of Colonel Thompson, and returned to the United states. Consequently, in September 1917, Romanian mission appealed to Petrograd for American doctors and nurses to help in the near crisis conditions and Jesse, there were no American doctors or nurses in Russia available to go to Rumania. The Russian mission handled the affairs of the Romanian mission and was unresponsive to a request from Romania for $5,000,000 to meet the impending catastrophe in Romania, a danger of an epidemic as the winter closed in.
Meanwhile William Boyce Thompson, de facto head of the Red Cross mission to Russia, made a $2,000,000 donation to Kerensky’s party, who was then running Russia after winning a popular election, $1,000,000 for pro war propaganda urging the Russians to continue the war against Germany, to spend according to their best judgement. The rest was to buy Russian Liberty Loans. This money came from J.P. Morgan.
Of greater historical significance, however, was the assistance given to the Bolsheviks by Thompson, as recorded in the Washington Post on February 2, 1918. Thompson made a personal contribution of $1 million to the Bolsheviks, who by then had staged a successful coup against the Kerensky government, for the purpose of spreading their doctrine in Germany and Austria. The money was actually paid by J.P. Morgan and was used for “political purposes.”
Thompson left Russia in December of 1917, shortly after the Bolshevik coup, in the company of Thomas Lamont, also JP Morgan. He left in charge of the Russian mission his deputy, Raymond Robbins. Robbins had made his money developing mineral claims, first in Florida, and later in Alaska during the Klondike gold rush period. Then, for no observable reason, he switched to socialism and the reform movement. By 1912 he was an active member of Roosevelt’s Progressive Party. He joined the 1917 American Red Cross mission to Russia as a “social economist”. Robin's social economy was decidedly Bolshevik variety. He was accused by other diplomats of misrepresentation in his dispatches back to the United States. When it came time to him for him to return, the Bolsheviks smoothed his way by requesting pro Soviet newspapers in the United States to arrange speaking engagements for him.
Pg. 90. Unknown to its administrators, the Red Cross has been used from time to time as a vehicle for revolutionary activities. Red Cross markings for unauthorized purposes is not uncommon. To summarize, the picture we form of the 1917 American Red Cross mission to Russia is remote from one of neutral humanitarianism. The mission was in fact a mission of Wall Street financiers, to influence and pave the way for control, through either Kerensky or the Bolshevik revolutionaries, of the Russian market and resources. Neither Thompson nor Robbins was a Bolshevik, nor was even a consistent socialist. The socialist appeals of each man were covers for more prosaic objectives. Each man was intent on the commercial, that is, each sought to use the political process in Russia for personal financial ends. William Boyce Thompson later became a director of a Federal Reserve Bank, raising questions about his Red Cross mission to Russia, its connections to the Bolshevik party, and both’s connection to the Wall Street syndicate.
Chapter 6. Consolidation and Export of the Revolution
Pg. 93. Without the assistance of WS bankers financial, but more importantly, diplomatic and propaganda assistance, to Lenin and Trotsky, it is likely that Russia would have evolved into a socialist but constitutional society. One of these bankers of particular importance n this book is William Boyce Thompson, a promoter of mining stocks, and one of the best in this high-risk business. This had gained him a substantial personal fortune, and a seat on the board of many mining and railroad corporations, and a heavy stock ownership in Chase National Bank. He later became the first full time director of the New York branch of the Federal Reserve System.
Pg. 96. In late 1917 two WS bankers, Thomas Lamont representing the Morgan interests, and William Thompson representing the Chase interests, went to London to meet with British Prime Minister Lloyd George. Lloyd George was not a free agent, but was heavily indebted to international arms dealer Sir Basil Zaharoff, as were other high level politicians in Europe at that time. Thompson, recently returned from Russia, had a meeting with the British War Cabinet, and convinced them that the Revolution was here to stay, that the West should report more favorably on them and increase their representation in St. Petersburg. He essentially proposed that they work together against Germany, with the realization that they would eventually have to fight each other over the right to "develop" Russia. As a result, the British sent an informal representative to Russia to work with the Soviets.
The Diplomatic Corp sent to Russia was not sympathetic to the Bolsheviks. They saw them as agents of rapine and anarchy, and cabled Washington to that effect, largely to no avail. Socialism was well embedded in the US at the highest levels, including the President, Woodrow Wilson.
Had Thompson not been in Russia in 1917, subsequent history might have followed a quite different course. Without the financial and, more importantly, the diplomatic and propaganda assistance given to Trotsky and Lenin by Thompson, Robbins, and their New York associates, the Bolsheviks may well have withered away, and Russia evolved into a socialist but constitutional society.
Chapter 7. The Bolsheviks return to N.Y.
Pg. 116-126. Deals with Bolshevik efforts to gain recognition for the new Russian government, and efforts to establish trade relations with US and European bankers and industrialists.
Early efforts to establish diplomatic relations with the US were unsuccessful and in early 1919 the Soviet Bureau was established, headed by a German citizen, Ludwig Martens, who is usually billed as the first ambassador of the Soviet Union in the United states, and who up to that time had been vice president of Weinberg and Posner, an engineering firm. The firm was located in New York City, which suggests that trade rather than diplomacy was its primary objective. Industry had collapsed in Russia, and it needed material, machinery, railway goods, clothing, chemical, drugs, indeed everything utilized by modern civilization.
May 1919 the state department slapped down the business intervention in behalf of the Bureau and repudiated Ludwig Martens, the Soviet Bureau, and the Bolshevik government of Russia. When the Soviet Bureau offices were raided on June 12, 1919, by representatives of the Lusk committee of the state of New York, files of letters to and from American businessmen, representing almost 1000 firms, were unearthed.
According to Martins, instead of carrying on propaganda among the radicals and the proletariat he has addressed most of his efforts to winning to the side of Russia the big business and manufacturing interests of this company, the meat packers, United States Steel Corporation, the Standard Oil company, and other big concerns engaged in international trade. Martens asserted that most of the big business houses of the country were aiding him in his effort to get the government to recognize the Soviet government.
Chapter 8. 120 Broadway, N.Y. City
Pg.127. William B. Thompson, who was in Petrograd from July until November last, (as head of the Red Cross mission) has made a personal contribution of $1,000,000 to the Bolsheviks for the purpose of spreading their doctrine in Germany and Austria....Washington Post, February 2, 1918.
...this book could have been written incorporating only the persons, firms, and organizations located at 120 Broadway in 1917.The original building was destroyed by fire before WW 1. Subsequently the site was sold to Equitable Office Building Company, organized by General T. Coleman du Pont, president of du Pont de Nemours Powder Company. A new building was completed in 1915 and the Equitable Life Insurance Company moved back to its old site. In passing we should note an interesting interlock in Equitable history. In 1916 the cashier of the Berlin Equitable Life Assurance Company was William Schacht, father of Hjalmar Horace Greeley Schacht--later to become Hitler's banker and financial genie. William Schacht was an American citizen and worked for 30 years for Equitable in Germany...The building at 120 Broadway was known as the Equitable Life Building...The Banker's Club was located on the 34th floor.
Pg. 128. The tenants list in 1917 in effect reflected American involvement in the Bolshevik Revolution and its aftermath. The office of the Federal Reserve Board, and several of its officers were located there.
Pg. 128. With an almost unanimous lack of perception the academic world has described and analyzed international relations in the context of an unrelenting conflict between capitalism and communism... More than 50 years ago the House of Morgan firm made the decision to infiltrate the left-wing movements in the U.S. This was relatively easy to do as the groups were starved for funds and eager for a voice to reach the people. Wall Street supplied both.
Pg.129. ...The evidence supplied in this chapter will suggest that the operational vehicles for infiltrating or influencing foreign revolutionary movements were located at 120 Broadway, the first, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, heavily laced with Morgan appointees. The second, the Morgan controlled International Corporation.
Chapter 9. Guaranty Trust Goes to Russia
Pg. 146-154 recounts a series of letters between WS lawyers, A State Dept. official, a Bolshevik operative in Sweeden, and a Russian railroad executive tracing $10,000 in living expenses transfered through bank accounts from Russia to the US. Previously money from Russian Bolsheviks to their US agents had to be smuggled into the US.
Pg. 155. The American League to Aid and Cooperate with Russia is formed. Members included the President of John Hopkins University, 4 Senators, 2 Congressmen, Henry Ford, board members of General Electric, representatives of oil and railroad interests, and prominent socialists.
Pg. 157. Germany and the US Struggle for Russian Business. In 1918 the embryonic aid give to Russian Bolsheviks was justified on the grounds of defeating Germany and inhibiting German exploitation of Russia. A commission to Russia "armed with credit and good business advise" was recomended.
...economic conditions within Russia were critical, and the necessity of an embrace of capitalism became obvious to Lenin and Trotsky, the later citing the necessity of an organizer like Bernard Baruch. A large order for 50 million pounds of food products was made in 1919-20 with a Chicago meat processor associated with the Swift family.
Pgs. 158-163 examins the ways Soviet gold made its way to American banks (often through Swedish banks) to secure trade relations, considering that the Bolsheviks were not yet recognized as the official Russian government.
Chapter 10. Wall Street Gives a Little help to the Other Side
Pg. 164-167. In 1920 the organization United Americans was founded "whose sole purpose would be to combat socialists, communists, I.W.W., Russian organizations, and radical farmer's societies." Its officers were drawn from some of the same organizations who funded the early Bolshevik movement, including Guaranty Trust Company, the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, Westinghouse, WS law firms, and assorted university presidents.
In March 1920 the NY Times published a "survey" by the Uniteed Americans group alleging that within 2 years the Soviet Russians would be launching an attack on the US, starting in N.Y. City, to be financed by Russia with $20 million to fund some 3-5 million American radicals, all this without substantial evidence.
The author speculates that possibly some Marxist dialectic was in play, with capitalism being the thesis, communism being the antithesis, and some as yet undescribed world system being the synthesis.
Chapter 11. The Alliance of Bankers and Revolution
Pg. 170-173. The Evidence Presented, A synopsis.
Pg.173-175. The Explanation for the Unholy Alliance. Russia was then, as it is today, the world's largest untapped market. Moreover, Russia, then and now, constitutes the greatest potential competitive threat to US financial and industrial supremacy. ...So the simplest explanation of our evidence is that a syndicate of WS financiers enlarged their monopoly ambitions and broadened horizons on a global scale. Russia was to become a huge captive market and a technical colony to be exploited by a few American financiers and the corporations under their control. Finally, some of these same WS figures financed and advised Mussolini's Black Shirt fascists.
Pg. 175-179. The Marburg Plan. Financed by Andrew Carnegie was a plan to unite international financiers and socialists into a league to enforce peace. In 1910 Carnegie made a $10 million bequeath to found the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Bankers and Bolsheviks had much in common: they were all internationalists. Bolsheviks demanded central government, and international finance prefers to deal with centralized authority. Such a syndicate did go on to build the Soviet Union. More recently John D. Rockefeller renew the plea with his book "The Second American Revolution", a naked plea for humanism, a plea for collectivism, but a collectivism for others, not the WS financiers.
Appendix 2. The Jewish Conspiracy Theory of the Bolshevik Revolution
Pg. 184-188. In 1920 Winston Churchill wrote an article.... entitled " Zionism versus Bolshevism," encouraging "National Jews" to take a prominent part in combating Bolshevism, drawing a line between them and the "atheistic and internationalist Jews" who had a "very great" role in bringing about Bolshevism and the Russian Revolution. He asserted (contrary to fact) that the majority of the leading Bolsheviks, with the exception of Lenin, were Jews, and that (also contrary to fact) in many cases Jewish concerns and Jewish places of worship were exempt from seizure. etc., etc. Another well known author, Henry Wickam Steed, tried to convince Woodrow Wilson of the international conspiracy of Jewish bankers behind Bolshevism. Many aonomous sources plied government adminiatratins with translations of "The Protocals of the Elders of Zion", a tract created by Czarist Russia's itelligence service. Noe of tthe statements cited could be backed up by hard evidence, at most citing evidence held by 3rd parties. There is no evidence that Jews participated in the Russian revolution, or any other revolution, simply because they were Jewish. Most of the Jews involved in Bolshevism were deported to Siberia or murdered. Modern Russia has in fact retained tsarist anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitism was a medieval bogeyman used to divert attention from the real operators.