Sir Reader Bullard, Frank Roberts and the Azerbaijan crisis of 1945–46: Bevin’s officials, perceptions and the adoption of a Cold War mentality in British Soviet Policy

Abstract

This article evaluates the influence of the Azerbaijan crisis of 1945–46 on evolving perceptions of the Soviet Union within the British Foreign Office. Utilising records from the National Archives and personal papers, it synthesises the history of the Azerbaijan crisis with studies of Britain’s changing Soviet policy, previously focused solely on the Northern Department and Moscow representative Frank Roberts. In so doing, the paper provides an original diplomatic history which argues that, although Europe remained the strategic priority for Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin, Iranian developments were of greater significance in prompting a perceptual transition from cooperation to Cold War confrontation.

Notes

¹ Raymond Smith, “A Climate of Opinion: British Officials and the Development of British Soviet Policy, 1945–7,” International Affairs 64, No. 4 (1988): 636; Sean Greenwood, “Frank Roberts and the ‘Other’ Long Telegram: The View from the British Embassy in Moscow, March 1946,” Journal of Contemporary History 25, no .1 (1990): 117.

² Victor Rothwell, Britain and the Cold War, 1941–1947 (London: Jonathan Cape, 1987), 262; Raymond Smith, “Ernest Bevin, British Officials and British Soviet Policy, 1945–47,” in Britain and the First Cold War, ed. Anne Deighton (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1990), 33; Alan Bullock, Ernest Bevin: Foreign Secretary, 1945–51 (London: Heinemann, 1983), 214–216, 237.

³ Sir Maurice Peterson, Both Sides of the Curtain: An Autobiography (London: Constable, 1950), 185–186, 241–242; William Roger Louis, The British Empire in the Middle East: Arab Nationalism, the United States, and Postwar Imperialism (Oxford: Clarendon, 1984), 73–75.

⁴ Ray Merrick, “The Russia Committee of the British Foreign office and the Cold War, 1946–47,” Journal of Contemporary History 20, No. 3 (1985): 463; Raymond Smith, “A Climate of Opinion,” 644–645; Anne Deighton, “Britain and the Cold War, 1945–1955,” in The Cambridge History of the Cold War, Volume I: Origins, ed. Melvyn P. Leffler and Odd Arne Westad (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 115, 119.

⁵ Francis Williams, A Prime Minister Remembers: The War and Postwar Memoirs of the Rt Hon Earl Attlee (London: Heinemann, 1961), 175.

⁶ John Kent, British Imperial Strategy and the Origins of the Cold War 1944–49 (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1993), 68.

⁷ Osamah F. Khalil, “The Crossroads of the World: U.S. and British Foreign Policy Doctrines and the Construct of the Middle East, 1902–2007,” Diplomatic History 38, No. 2 (2014): 302–303.

⁸ London, Imperial War Museum: Documents and Sound Section, Papers of Air Marshal Stephen Charles Strafford, 91/46/2, Preparatory notes by Strafford for a lecture to Chatham House, c. September 1954. (c) IWM and John C. Strafford.

⁹ Edward C. Hodgkin, “Sir Reader William Bullard,” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, published online January 2011, http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/30871 (accessed July 4, 2016).

¹⁰ Frank Roberts, Dealing with Dictators: The Destruction and Revival of Europe, 1930–70 (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1991), 78.

¹¹ Personal letter from Reader Bullard to Miriam Bullard, 7 January 1945, GB 165–0042, Papers of Sir Reader Bullard, Bullard 2/2, Middle East Centre Archive, Oxford (MECA). An abridged version of Bullard’s correspondence has been published as: Letters from Tehran: A British Ambassador in World War Two Persia, ed. Edward C. Hodgkin (London: I. B. Tauris, 1991).

¹² Sir Reader Bullard, The Camels Must Go: An Autobiography (London: Faber and Faber, 1961), 264; Harry S. Truman, Years of Trial and Hope, 1946–1953 (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1956), 98–101.

¹³ Personal letter from Reader Bullard to Miriam Bullard, 7 September 1941, Bullard 2/2, MECA .

¹⁴ Personal letter from Reader Bullard to Miriam Bullard, 16 December 1944, Bullard 2/2, MECA.

¹⁵ Personal letter from Reader Bullard to Miriam Bullard, 16 December 1943, Bullard 2/2, MECA; Personal letter from Bullard, 15 October 1944, Bullard 2/2, MECA.

¹⁶ ‘This Tribal Yarn’, unsigned minute believed to be a personal note by Bullard, c. November 1945, Bullard 3/7, MECA.

¹⁷ Memorandum by Bullard, 18 December 1945, FO 371/52664, E1216/5/34, The National Archives, KEW (TNA).

¹⁸ Ibid.

¹⁹ Unpublished manuscript, Chapter 2, ‘The Romance of Tabriz’, 1965, pp. 35–36, Papers of George V. Allen, Box 2, Harry S. Truman Library, Independence, Missouri.

^{20 ‘}Iranian-Soviet Cultural Society’, unsigned minute believed to be a personal note by Bullard, c. November 1945, Bullard 3/7, MECA.

²¹ Robert Pfau, “Containment in Iran, 1946: The Shift to an Active Policy,” Diplomatic History 1, No. 4 (1977): 359–360, 364–365.

²² Background survey of Middle East Countries by Air Officer Administrating Middle East Command (Strafford), c. July 1945, Strafford 91/46/2, IWM. (c) IWM and John C. Strafford.

²³ Sean Greenwood, Britain and the Cold War, 1945–91 (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1999), 13; Deighton, “Britain and the Cold War,” 115.

²⁴ ‘“Firm Stand in Turkey,” The Times, 24 December 1945, 4.

²⁵ Bullard to Foreign Office, 4 January 1946, FO 371/52661, E71/5/34, TNA.

²⁶ Bevin to Cadogan (New York), 19 March 1946, FO 371/52668, E2439/5/34, TNA.

²⁷ “Britain’s Policy in the Middle East,” Manchester Guardian, 24 November 1945, 6.

²⁸ Smith, “A Climate of Opinion,” 632.

²⁹ Memorandum by Captain J. C. Pringle, 13 January 1946 FO 371/52662, E580/5/34, TNA.

³⁰ Osborne (Holy See) to Foreign Office, 22 December 1946, FO 371/52661, E40/5/34, TNA.

³¹ Wall to Bullard, 12 January 1946, FO 371/52663, E904/5/34, TNA.

³² Wilson Centre Digital Archive, Cold War International History Project, Letter from Joseph Stalin to Ja’far Pishevari, 8 May 1946, http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/117827.pdf?v=e6009ab5370a3825c1c0c392340cf7a0 (accessed June 12, 2015).

³³ Roberts, Dealing with Dictators, 2, 6.

³⁴ Roberts to Bevin, 31 October 1946, N15702/165/38, in Documents on British Policy Overseas (DBPO): Series I, Volume VI: Eastern Europe, August 1945-April 1946, ed. M. E. Pelly, H. J. Yasamee and K. A. Hamilton (London: HMSO, 1991), 181–189. For Gaddis see: John Lewis Gaddis, “The Emerging Post-Revisionist Synthesis on the Origins of the Cold War,” Diplomatic History 7, No. 3 (1983): 171–190.

³⁵ Sargent to Houston-Boswell (Sofia), 26 November 1945, R19541/81/67, in DBPO: Eastern Europe, 245–247.

³⁶ Ritchie Ovendale, “Sir (Harold) Orme Garton Sargent,” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/35948 (accessed July 5, 2016).

³⁷ Roberts to Foreign Office, 5 January 1946, FO 371/52661, E206/5/34, TNA.

³⁸ Roberts, Dealing with Dictators, 86.

³⁹ Roberts to Foreign Office, 4 March 1946, FO 371/52666, E1979/5/34, TNA.

⁴⁰ Roberts to Foreign Office, 13 March 1946, FO 371/52667, E2290/5/34, TNA.

⁴¹ Roberts to Foreign Office, 14 March 1946, N4065/97/38, in DBPO: Eastern Europe, 305–312.

⁴² Roberts to Foreign Office, 17 March 1946, N4156/97/38, in DBPO: Eastern Europe, 315–326.

⁴³ Roberts to Foreign Office, 21 March 1946, N3812/605/38, in DBPO: Eastern Europe, 339–342.

⁴⁴ Roberts, Dealing with Dictators, 93.

⁴⁵ Roberts to Creswell (Tehran), 18 October 1947 FO 371/61973, E9287/1/34, TNA.

⁴⁶ Greenwood, “Frank Roberts and the ‘Other’ Long Telegram,” 113.

⁴⁷ Merrick, “The Russia Committee,” 458; Smith, “A Climate of Opinion,” 639–641.

⁴⁸ Minute by Pyman recording a meeting held at the Foreign Office, 18 April 1946, FO 371/52673, E3522/5/34, TNA; Alexander Nicholas Shaw, ‘Strong, United and Independent,” Middle Eastern Studies 52, No. 3 (2016): 510–511.

⁴⁹ Minute by Kirkpatrick, 22 May 1946, FO 930/488, P449/1/907, TNA.

⁵⁰ Minutes by R. G. Howe and Orme Sargent, 28 May 1946, FO 930/488, P449/1/907, TNA.

⁵¹ Peterson to Foreign Office, 31 May 1946, FO 371/52677, E5025/5/34, TNA.

⁵² Minute from Bevin to Sargent, 29 May 1946, FO 930/488, P449/1/907, TNA.

⁵³ Bevin to Cadogan, 2 April 1946, FO 371/52671, E2950/5/34, TNA.

⁵⁴ Bullock, Ernest Bevin: Foreign Secretary, 83, 105.

⁵⁵ Minute by John G. Ward, 17 May 1946, FO 371/52675, E4147/5/34, TNA.

⁵⁶ Colonel Wheeler to Major-General A. J. C. Pollock (Middle East Information Department), 29 January 1947 FO 953/65, PME422/422/934, TNA.

⁵⁷ Le Rougetel to Foreign Office, 17 June 1946, FO 371/52679, E6009/5/34, TNA.

⁵⁸ Memorandum by R. G. Howe, 12 July 1946, TNA, T 236/220, TNA.

⁵⁹ Colonel Wheeler to Major-General A. J. C. Pollock (Middle East Information Department), 29 January 1947 FO 953/65, PME422/422/934, TNA.

⁶⁰ Minutes by A. E. Lambert (Northern Department) and L. F. L. Pyman (Eastern Department), 13 March 1947, FO 953/65, PME422/422/934.

⁶¹ Oral History Interview with Loy W. Henderson, 14 June 1973, Truman Library, http://www.trumanlibrary.org/oralhist/hendrson.htm (accessed July 4, 2016), 39, 41.

⁶² Notes for discussion at meeting between R. G. Howe and Colonel Wheeler on 12 March 1947 FO 371/62037, E2240/2240/34.

⁶³ Foreign Office publicity directive, ‘Russia in the Middle East’, 17 October 1946, INF 12/61, TNA.

⁶⁴ Minute by P. Garran (Eastern Department) recording meeting on propaganda to the Middle East, 11 October 1946, FO 371/56911, E10209/970/34, TNA; Summary of meeting of the Information Officers’ Conference, October 1946, 14–18, INF 12/61, OP(46)29, TNA.

⁶⁵ Attlee to Bevin, 1 December 1946, E. Bevin Papers, FO 800/475, ME/46/22, TNA.

⁶⁶ Note by Dixon, 9 December 1946, Bevin Papers, FO 800/475, ME/46/24, TNA.

⁶⁷ Memorandum by Attlee, ‘Near Eastern Policy’, 5 January 1947, Bevin Papers, FO 800/476, ME/47/1, TNA.

⁶⁸ Ibid.

⁶⁹ Note by Dixon, 8 January 1947, Bevin Papers, FO 800/476, ME/47/2, TNA.

⁷⁰ Bevin to Attlee, 9 January 1947, Bevin Papers, FO 800/476, ME/47/4, TNA.

⁷¹ Note by Dixon, 10 January 1947, FO 800/476, ME/47/5, TNA.

⁷² Bevin to Peterson, 31 January 1947, India Office Records, IOR/L/PS/12/3537, British Library (BL), London.

⁷³ Memorandum by Pyman on instructions from Bevin, 29 September 1947, FO 371/61974, TNA.

⁷⁴ Elizabeth Monroe, “Russia, Middle East, and Britain,” Observer, 3 February 1946, 4.

⁷⁵ Roberts, Dealing with Dictators, 107.