Why Washington and Moscow weren’t speaking, as a committee saw it in 1933

In 1933 the United States still had no diplomatic relations with the Soviet government. The American Foundation’s Committee on Russian-American Relations set out to explain what stood in the way, and this long report is the result. It weighs the political case and the practical questions any agreement would have to settle: trade between the two countries, debts, and what recognition itself would involve.

Its timing is what makes it worth reading now. The report came out on November 1, 1933; fifteen days later, on November 16, President Franklin D. Roosevelt established diplomatic relations with Moscow. So it records how the question looked to an American committee in the last two weeks before Washington changed course, a contemporary view of a decisive turn in the foreign policy of the years between the wars.

In complete copies it runs to 279 numbered pages after four preliminary leaves. This one is in its original pale green printed wrappers, faded and worn at the edges, curling at the corners and lightly creased. The text is legible and evenly toned, and a narrow slip of paper sits partway through; it has not been collated.