In episode 45 of the Versailles Anniversary Project, we examine the lesser known mission of William C. Bullitt, Philadelphia aristocrat and Ivy League prodigy – at least according to his mother – who was selected to lead a top secret American delegation to Soviet Russia. Bullitt’s aims were multi-layered, and he didn’t quite understand the limits of this mission or of his own capabilities, but that won’t stop us analysing the fortunes of this very interesting statesman. Bullitt would find a Russia starving and demoralised, yet he couldn’t help but be impressed by Lenin or by the potential of this regime. 

Return the food and withdraw the soldiers, Bullitt believed, and the Russian people would eject the more extreme Bolsheviks, and the West wouldn’t have to lift a finger. When Bullitt returned to Paris with these incredibly optimistic ideas, he found that everything had changed in the two and a half weeks since he had been gone. Compromise and Bolshevism were now impossible partners, and Bullitt himself had become persona non-grata in the allied consciousness. Bullitt, predictably enough, did not take this change in circumstances well…

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