It should be noted that Rockefeller’s approach to Soviet Russia was one of duplicity and double standards. Even as a staunch opponent of communism, Rockefeller nevertheless handled “the Russian issue” with a kind of dual personality. The management of one of his core companies— Standard Oil of New Jersey, led by Walter Teagle—purchased stock in 1920 in the Baku-based Nobel Brothers Petroleum Production Partnership, which was nationalized shortly thereafter. Realizing the futility of its claims for restitution following the Genoa Conference of 1922, Standard Oil displayed extreme intolerance and hostility towards everything that had to do with Soviet Russia as well as equitable business relations with its representatives. At the same time, two other Rockefeller-owned companies—Standard Oil of New York and Vacuum Oil Company—remained in constant contact with the Soviet Amtorg and Neftesindikat organizations out of pure business considerations and even began purchasing large amounts of petroleum products in the USSR.
As head of the giant oil corporation, Rockefeller in no way sought to set a common denominator for the actions of his subordinates. With Standard Oil of New York signing the first concession agreement with Neftesindikat for the construction of a refinery in Batumi in December 1926, Rockefeller was looking to carefully explore the prospects of obtaining even more favorable terms for his business in Soviet Russia in the future.
At the same time, given the ambiguous political situation in the US, Rockefeller clearly understood that this delicate mission would require the involvement of a prominent American whose activities were well-known in Soviet Russia and who was well-versed in politics, but who also was not a full-time Standard Oil Company employee.
This person could travel to the Soviet Union as a private civilian for an exotic tourist trip, and there was nobody more ideal for this role than Ivy Lee—Rockefeller’s confidant, an acclaimed journalist, and the so-called “father of public relations.” A graduate of Princeton University, Lee was a successful reporter for several leading New York publications and his work was very popular at the time. He later seriously considered the problem of relations between business and society and eventually laid the foundation for public relations. His phrase “Tell the truth” became a kind of motto for future generations of public relations specialists. Lee worked briefly at Standard Oil Company in 1914 before serving as an aide to the chairman of the American Red Cross during World War I.
In the early 1920s, Lee joined the movement of proponents for the establishment of friendly relations with Soviet Russia. In 1926, he wrote a famous letter to the president of the US Chamber of Commerce in which he presented a convincing argument for the need to normalize US-Soviet political and economic relations as soon as possible.
Unsurprisingly, Lee agreed to carry out the mission presented by Standard Oil Company following a confidential and detailed meeting with Rockefeller.
Prior to leaving for the USSR, Lee met with top officials from the American-Russian Chamber of Commerce, which had become the center of the progressive business community at the time and recognized the real benefits that could result from the normalization of economic and political relations with the Soviet Union. The president of the chamber was well-known financier and Chase National Bank Vice President Reeve Schley, while the chamber’s vice president was Allen Wardwell, the co-owner of a large law firm and a former member of the American Red Cross’s mission to Russia. The chamber’s 17 directors represented financial and insurance institutions and the largest industrial firms in the US. The Soviet representatives included members of Amtorg and the local branch of the All-Union Trade Union.
As soon as reports about his upcoming visit became public, US newspapers began publishing all kinds of sensational articles, including reports that Lee was allegedly helping the Soviets gain diplomatic recognition in the US. Lee, for his part, while not hiding his true feelings about “the government of the dictatorship of the proletariat,” believed that Soviet Russia was vitally interested in economic cooperation with the West despite its calls for the “export of revolution.” He therefore deemed it necessary to develop relations with Soviet Russia and even recognize it, but only in exchange for an end to its policy of double standards on the international stage.
Lee’s visit to Moscow was viewed as a major event and received wide attention in the Soviet press. He was given the opportunity to meet with Aleksey Rykov, the head of the Soviet government and chairman of the USSR Council of People’s Commissars.
During the long and exhaustive conversation with Rykov, the American envoy stressed that his visit was strictly of a private nature. Describing his visit with Rykov, Lee later wrote: “My sole purpose, I stated, was to regard the situation ‘objectively’ (a word the Russians love), and that I wanted primarily to see people rather than things.... Above all I wanted to see responsible representatives of the Government or the Communist Party who would be in a position to give me candidly their own personal interpretation of the philosophy underlying their regime, and their point of view as to their own situation and its relationship with the rest of the world.”
Lee asked Rykov a very pointed question during the conversation about whether there actually was a peculiar division of labor in the USSR, where the government limited itself to economic issues and signed treaties with capitalists, while the Communist International was battling these capitalists through its own organizations, and the Party Central Committee Politburo played the role of a conductor in this process. He did not, however, receive a clear answer to this question.
Lee also discussed the activities of Soviet trade unions with Mikhail Tomsky (Yefremov) (1880–1936), a Politburo member and chairman of the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions. Tomsky told Lee that civil war, economic chaos and famine had prompted the trade unions to actively cooperate in setting up production and restoring the country’s economy and that such goals could only be fulfilled though close cooperation with the Soviet authorities. Therefore, he said, the gradual governmentalization of the trade unions was inevitable because of the need to restore the labor force and ensure people’s survival. Lee also noted that Soviet trade unions were overloaded by the multitude of targets they had to meet in addition to the predominance of Party dictates, which prevented them from fully performing their primary function—protecting the socioeconomic rights and interests of the workers. He took two impressions away from this conversation: a concession is a special privilege offered to foreign capitalists by the Soviet government, and since concession companies are managed by capitalists, the working class employs all possible means to defend their rights, including “revolutionary violence.”
During a meeting with prominent Party journalist Karl Radek (Sobelson) (1885–1939), Lee expressed particular interest in communist propaganda, specifically, how it was organized, who directed it and whether the “united forces” of the government, Communist Party, and Communist International stood behind it.
Towards the end of his visit, Lee met with Deputy People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs Maxim Litvinov (Vallakh) (1876–1951), with whom he had a productive mutual exchange of views on specific areas of Soviet-US cooperation that could be improved. Lee stressed that the American people and government had a friendly attitude towards the Russian nation and its citizens, but the Soviet government had no credibility in the West because of its strong opposition to private property rights and its refusal to pay past debts.