The Donkey, the Carrot, and the Club: William C. Bullitt and Soviet-American Relations, 1917-1948

(Hardback)

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This study focuses on the life of William C. Bullitt, perhaps the most charming, devious, and thoughtful person in Soviet-American relations in the interwar and early postwar years. Cassella-Blackburn introduces Bullitt as a young patrician who persistently pushed his views concerning Russia on the Wilson Administration. His thoughtfulness and persistence landed him the position as leader of a mission to the Bolsheviks in early 1919. He attempted to isolate the Bolsheviks within the Liberal world order while the Bolsheviks were weak. Fourteen years later, an older more politically suspect Bullitt clawed his way into the Roosevelt Administration where he could once again try to isolate the former Bolsheviks, now Soviet leadership. When it became obvious that the Soviets as Marxist-Leninists could never fit into such an order, Bullitt began a personal crusade to isolate and contain them. With the help of George F. Kennan, and many of those who would become the leadership in American efforts against the Soviet Union during the Cold War, Bullitt educated the American public that the Soviets were the true enemy to all that Americans held dear.

Reviews

[T]he book is sound and well-informed....[c]learly and fluidly written.-International History Review
In a detailed, well-crafted, and documented story incorporating newly declassified Russian and US materials (but, unfortunately, not Bullitt's papers held by his daughter, Anne), Cassella-Blackburn finds a subject who was intelligent, charismatic, passionate, and hard-working, as well as egotistical, manipulative, ambitious, mean-spirited, and an anticommunist ideologue blinded by the perils of fascism in the 1930s and early 1940s....Readers will find ample detail on Bullitt's diplomacy with the USSR, as well as on his constant juxtaposition with other "makers" of the first policies toward the USSR in the absence of clear direction from FDR. Another valuable thread highlighted is Bullitt's ideology of international liberalism, which helped produce his rabid anticommunism but dulled his ability to identify and address immediate threats to strategic world order. Ironically, Cassella-Blackburn concludes that Bullitt's long-range vision of the USSR as an enemy was correct, but that his disloyalty to the Democratic Party and FDR moved him out of government service entirely in 1943....Highly recommended.-Choice
This is an important book based on exhaustive research in Russian archives....This book updates Farnsworth, giving greater clarity and new information, supplementing earlier studies by Bullitt's biographers Will Brownell and Richard Billings, as well as the documentary collection edited by Bullitt's brother Orville. It joins a growing list of revisionist histories that attempt to balance Cold War attitudes with newly discovered data in Russian archives.-The Journal of American History
"The book is sound and well-informed....clearly and fluidly written."-International History Review
"[T]he book is sound and well-informed....[c]learly and fluidly written."-International History Review
"This is an important book based on exhaustive research in Russian archives....This book updates Farnsworth, giving greater clarity and new information, supplementing earlier studies by Bullitt's biographers Will Brownell and Richard Billings, as well as the documentary collection edited by Bullitt's brother Orville. It joins a growing list of revisionist histories that attempt to balance Cold War attitudes with newly discovered data in Russian archives."-The Journal of American History
"In a detailed, well-crafted, and documented story incorporating newly declassified Russian and US materials (but, unfortunately, not Bullitt's papers held by his daughter, Anne), Cassella-Blackburn finds a subject who was intelligent, charismatic, passionate, and hard-working, as well as egotistical, manipulative, ambitious, mean-spirited, and an anticommunist ideologue blinded by the perils of fascism in the 1930s and early 1940s....Readers will find ample detail on Bullitt's diplomacy with the USSR, as well as on his constant juxtaposition with other "makers" of the first policies toward the USSR in the absence of clear direction from FDR. Another valuable thread highlighted is Bullitt's ideology of international liberalism, which helped produce his rabid anticommunism but dulled his ability to identify and address immediate threats to strategic world order. Ironically, Cassella-Blackburn concludes that Bullitt's long-range vision of the USSR as an enemy was correct, but that his disloyalty to the Democratic Party and FDR moved him out of government service entirely in 1943....Highly recommended."-Choice

Author Bio

MICHAEL CASSELLA-BLACKBURN is Assistant Professor of History at Peninsula College in Port Angeles, Washington.