It is commonly believed that the Cold War between the U.S. and the Soviet Union began in the mid-1940s. Professor of History at the University of Illinois Donald Davis and President of the University of Virginia Eugene Trani have arrived at a surprise conclusion – the Cold War started much earlier.

When in 1913 Woodrow Wilson became President, America, the authors hold, was not ready for a constructive dialog with Russia. Contacts between the two countries were sporadic. In the United States, the prevailing mood was that a despotic regime was in power in Russia. Up to the 1917 Revolution, American officials, including the President, had only a vague idea of the real developments in Russia.

Wilson’s efforts to organize U.S. diplomacy in Russia boiled down to a mere search for a worthy candidate to fill the vacant post of U.S. Ambassador to Russia. The final choice was a failure – the former Governor of Missouri, David Francis, “was more a spectator than a mover” (p. 16). The authors also criticize the President himself for his hesitations and inability to work out an adequate policy to respond to rapid developments in Russia. Right after the February Revolution, Washington was the first to recognize the legitimacy of the Provisional Government in Russia. But instead of supporting the initiatives undertaken by the new democratic Cabinet, Wilson marked time – he set up two ad hoc commissions to probe into the situation in Russia. Their efforts yielded no fruit, however, and Washington had lost the opportunity to render real assistance to Russia’s Provisional Government. Davis and Trani call the period between March and November 1917 a period of lost opportunities in U.S.-Russian relations. In their opinion, all this eventually led to tragic results.

Analyzing U.S.-Soviet relations after the October 1917 Revolution, Davis and Trani note that the U.S. Government could have chosen one of the following three lines of behavior: to assume a wait-and-see stand and make no concrete moves; to enter into negotiations with the Bolsheviks and persuade them to continue the war; or to pursue a firm non-recognition policy in respect of the new regime in Russia. Hoping for a quick collapse of the Bolshevik regime, Wilson opted for Ambassador Francis’ choice – wait and see.

In late 1917 and early 1918 the question of whether to continue the war, or not, dominated relations between the United States and Bolshevik Russia. President Wilson was against recognizing a regime that was seeking to withdraw Russia from World War I. The U.S. Administration took a series of steps to try to convince Lenin’s Government not to halt hostilities. Having failed, Wilson started pinning hopes on a victory of the counterrevolutionary forces in Russia or on formation of an anti-Bolshevik government that would be ready to continue war. But Wilson’s hopes never came true – the Bolshevik Government stayed in power and the attempts to prevent Russia from withdrawing from the war failed.

Defining the causes of the U.S. armed intervention in Soviet Russia in mid-1918, the authors note that Wilson was against any interference in Russia’s internal affairs. U.S. troops landed in Russia’s North and Siberia under British and French pressure. The aim of the American intervention was to restore the Eastern Front, protect the property of the United States and its allies in Russia, stabilize the “democratic regimes” where it existed and transport the Czech Legion to France. But only the latter was successful, the authors stress.

Analyzing Wilson’s actions to resolve the “Russian problem” during the Paris Peace Conference in spring 1919, the scholars point to the President’s initiatives aimed at halting hostilities and normalizing the situation in Russia. Initially, Wilson made a proposal to hold talks between the Bolsheviks and the anti-Bolshevik governments of Kolchak, Denikin and some others on the Prince Islands under Entente mediation. Only the Bolsheviks accepted the proposal. But the flop of the peace talks initiative did not stop Wilson – he sent an American envoy, William Bullitt, on a special mission to Moscow. Bullitt met with Bolshevik leaders but they failed to come to any agreement. The authors explain the fiasco of Wilson’s peace initiatives by the fact that the alignment of forces in Russia had by then radically changed in favor of the Bolsheviks. By 1920, Davis and Trani write, Wilson did not have any illusion that the Bolshevik regime could be reformed. The Entente powers had fully realized the logic of developments in Russia and started curtailing the intervention and evacuating their troops. The Unites States was no exception. When the troops of Admiral Kolchak — Washington’s last hope — were routed and the Admiral was shot by his executioners, the Wilson Administration’s illusions about restoring democratic government in Russia vanished completely. As a result, America had taken the course of refusing to recognize Soviet power under any circumstances. It was against this scenario that, on August 9, 1920, a note by State Secretary Bainbridge Colby was issued; and that note, in the authors’ view, was the starting point of the “First Cold War”. A diplomatic quarantine was actually imposed on Bolshevik Russia and political technologies that would later become inalienable attributes of the Cold War were put in motion.

But the U.S. refusal to recognize the Soviet Union diplomatically is not the only reason for calling the American-Russian relations of that period the “First Cold War”. Wilson’s and his associates’ firm belief that a spreading Bolshevik influence posed a danger, and Washington’s desire to contain the Bolshevik ideas within the boundaries of one country pointed to a major cooling in American-Russian relations. It is quite safe to say that a confrontation between two systems with different economic, social and political setups began.

Subsequent Republican administrations followed the course of isolating the Soviet Union. It was as late as 1933 that President Roosevelt finally recognized the Soviet Union. The authors are inclined to believe that Wilson’s “Soviet policy” had a powerful impact on the shaping of the Truman Administration’s course.

Drawing an analogy between the American-Soviet relations of the 1920s and those of the second half of the 20th century, the authors do not take into account the specifics of the international situation and Russia’s home affairs. When the Versailles system of international relations was taking shape in the early 1920s, the world was multi-polar and Soviet Russia’s leaders adhered to an extreme radical idea – the idea of world revolution. But after World War II a bipolar model of international relations had formed and both superpowers started pursuing imperial foreign policies, rivaling for spheres of world influence. Correspondingly, in the 1920s Wilson merely sought to isolate Bolshevik Russia, whereas in the late 1940s President Truman launched a struggle against the Soviet Union for world hegemony. It is different end goals that comprise a major distinction between Davis’ and Trani’s “First Cold War” and the commonly known Cold War.

Despite its minor drawbacks, Davis’ and Trani’s book will undoubtedly evoke a lively reader response and will find a prominent place among publications dealing with the dramatic events of the first decades of the 20th century.