Public Diplomacy in Total War

Countering the Obtuse Arguments of the Bolsheviks: Estonian efforts to guide opinion in Sweden, the US and Britain, 1940-45

Thank you for listening!

Questions?

Rei & Laretei in Stockholm and Warma in Helsinki

Main directions of counter-propaganda, 1942:

1) the strategic argument - protection of Leningrad

2) the economic argument - untenable

3) barrier to trade

4) the social argument - public health and social insurance,

5) lack of civilizational development

Impact?

A. Rei's propaganda:

Hans Ronimois:

• no influence outside Sweden
• the pathetic style unreadable for Anglo-Saxons

Results, 1944

"Estlands kyrka under Sovjetväldet 1940-1941"

"Have the Baltic Countries Voluntarily Renounced Their Freedom?":

• elections of 1940 illegitimate
• national liberty and political independence... most sacred and most precious assets...
• Baltic peoples had proven their ‘capacity...to make valuable contributions to the general civilization’

The Times, 17 October 1944:

• show-windows for the Soviet Union
• No collectivization of land
• Freedom of religion guaranteed

Alexander Werth:

• “There is no fundamental hostility”
• Moscow planning ‘delicate handling of the Estonian people'

Home intelligence on opinion and morale:

• complete lack of interest in Britain

August Torma in London

Torma's memorandum 1942:

• an Estonian bought 20 times more British goods than a Soviet citizen
• Gladstone, Eden: equality of states, no zones of hegemony
• peace in the Baltic affects general peace

Reactions:

*H. Jackson: 'the most impartial that has ever come from a Legation'

*V. Raud: 'meek and totally out of place with the requirements of the time'

*EH Carr: reading with great interest but do not agree entirely

*Swedish ambassador: "tragic situation", Finland pleading for “strategic frontiers” and Estonia the non-importance of such frontiers’

Contents

• the discursive context
• Rei in Sweden
• Pusta in the US
• Torma in Britain
• The results, 1944

The Manchester Guardian controversy, 1943

AJP Taylor:

• Brest-Litovsk and the cordon sanitaire!
• control of the Baltic states saved Leningrad
• 'fragments of peoples’ too small to exist
• Soviet treatment of nationalities no worse than the British treatment
• naive to expect Britain and the US to keep a military force in the Baltic

Torma's ghost writers:

• Arthur Duncan-Jones, Dean of Chichester
• Russia's security secured by assistance treaties in 1939
• Re-occupation of Ireland not been advocated

The Political-Ideas debate

Self-determination no longer taken for granted. Liberal disappointment

EH Carr:

• new means of total war
• need for larger markets

Walter Lippmann: self-determination is

• a licence to intervention and aggression
• ‘deeply un-American and uncivilizing’
• leads to ‘atomization of human society’

Kaiv in New York and Pusta in Washington

K.R. Pusta's campaigning

Self-determination:

• destruction of the right ‘caused the war’
• 'the only valid basis' for peace

Paper to Council of Foreign Relations:

• freedom of the Baltic nations=freedom of the Baltic sea=freedom of the seas
• integration replacing great-power alliances
• Baltic achievements "magnificent"
• strategically, Estonia proved a "trap for the Russian army"

Circulation & impact?

• sent by post to 793 notables
• personally distributed 157 copies
• 90 copies to the Estonian consulate
• 350 copies to prof. K. Jedrzcjewski (?)
• 700 copies to the Finnish legation
• 300 copies to the Polish legation
• 1 copy to the Russian Institute in the US
• 509 to Senators and Representatives (in 1943)