The aims of this work are to examine the political, economic, financial and normative reasoning used by the governments and key departments of state of the three main victors of the First World War - the United States, Britain and France - in their decision-making on the question of whether or not to trade with the Soviet Union in the inter-war years; and to put the debate about Russian trade within these countries into the wider context of the domestic political and economic problems facing them and, in particular, to examine how the economic legacy of the Revolution, especially the denunciation of all Czarist-era debts to the West and the confiscation of Western property in the Soviet Union, as well as the question of "concessions", discussion of which parallelled the debate on trade.
Other objectives of the book are to put this debate into the context of the overall historiographical debates about the relations of these countries with the Soviet Union and with each other during the period in question; and to ask some broader theoretical questions about the role of "economic statecraft" in the foreign policy process and also to question what role should be played by great powers in the promotion of change in another state. One way of doing this is engage the debate about "hegemony" and the role of great powers in promoting "hegemonic stability" and "regimes", in this case a regime for trade and other contacts with the revolutionary state that was the Soviet Union. The book is an exercise in both domestic and comparative history, drawing on as eclectic a series of sources as possible, but in particular on the official archival resources that are to be found in the United States, Britain and France, and on private archives where they are relevant or are readily available.
- ISBN10 0719033306
- ISBN13 9780719033308
- Publish Date 1 October 1992
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 22 November 1999
- Publish Country GB
- Imprint Manchester University Press
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 240
- Language English