Brussels Conference of 1921

a conference that took place on Oct. 6-8, 1921, in Brussels, among the representatives of Belgium, Great Britain, Germany, Denmark, Spain, Italy, China, Latvia, the Netherlands, Poland, Rumania, France, Czechoslovakia, Switzerland, Sweden, Estonia, and Japan, as well as the International Red Cross and the American Relief Administration.

The official motive for convening the Brussels Conference was the problem of aiding the hungry in Russia in connection with the bad harvest of 1921. The Brussels Conference did not adopt any practical solutions to this problem, citing the absence of precise data on the scope of the famine. However, the participants to the conference accepted a resolution proposed by the English delegation, which indicated the possibility of extending credits to the Soviet government on the condition that it recognize the debts of the tsarist and Provisional governments. The resolution also spoke of “providing assistance” to the hungry, but this was conditional upon obtaining “extensive guarantees of control” by those furnishing provisions and the dispatch of a commission of technical experts to “study” the economic situation of Soviet Russia and the creation in Russia of “economic conditions” guaranteeing “normal production and correct exchange of every sort of goods.” Thus, the initiators of the Brussels Conference wanted to exploit the difficult situation of the Soviet state in order to compel the Soviet government to capitulate on the question of debts and to agree to imperialistic interference in its internal affairs. The Soviet government unmasked this plan in a number of official documents and proclamations on the part of its representatives.