19
discussions. Moreover, I fear I will also have to announce that the prospects of any conference
this year are remote”.
83
On April 16, 1944, the Ambassador in the UK Winant forwarded an
urgent personal telegram to Secretary Morgenthau from the British Chancellor of the Exchequer
agreeing to publication of the principles of the IMF “in both countries on a date and time to be
fixed immediately.” (pg.112) And again on April 20
th
: “Urgent message from the Chancellor of
the Exchequer: ‘I thank you for your personal message of April 18. Arrangements are being
made for publication here on Saturday morning to fit the timing of publication in the United
States….”
84
There was little enthusiasm for the financial agreements by either side of parliament. The
tone of the often hostile debate was shown by Robert Boothby’s remark that it constituted “an
economic Munich” and warned the Labor government that it had no mandate to “sell the British
Empire for a pack of cigarettes.” Lord Woolton, the conservative leader, spoke of “dollar
dictation” and exclaimed, “It is not a respectable way to treat a great country.” While the
conservatives saw the American objective as the destruction of imperial preference, a socialist
G.D.H. Cole, almost echoed the Soviet Union when he contended that the American government
was “using our own economic difficulties arising out of the war as an opportunity to prevent our
government from applying its socialist principles to international trade.”
85
The British
displeasure with the structure and implications of the Bretton Woods agreements was mirrored in
the Soviet Union, albeit in secrecy. As with the British, the Soviets objected privately to the
relative gains the agreements bestowed on the already rich United States.
While most other participants ratified the Bretton Woods accords by the deadline of
December 31, 1945, the Soviet Union did not. Some historians have argued that the Soviets
feared that Bretton Woods would interfere with their economic system. Lloyd Gardner, for
instance, maintains that the IMF would have intervened “Quite extensively” in Soviet policies,
perhaps even retarding East European industrialization in order to retain export markets there for
the West. Thomas Patterson describes Bretton Woods as part of a concerted American
campaign, culminating in the Marshall Plan and German rehabilitation, to exert hegemony over
Western Europe and the Middle East. Similarly, Gabriel Kolko believes that the United States
sought control over the Bretton Woods institutions in order to promote American free enterprise
and defeat European socialism.
86
Yet none of these scholars explains why the Soviets accepted
the Bretton Woods agreements in July 1944, only to reject them in December 1945. According
to Gaddis, “Moscow’s refusal to participate in the Bretton Woods monetary system or to relax
trade barriers in the areas under its control was an effect rather than a cause of the Cold War.”
87
In reality Moscow’s refusal to participate may have been an effect of US financial policy and not
either country’s military policy, ideology or politics.
Despite reservations, the Soviet Union made it clear early on that it was ready to
cooperate with and support the US on a joint statement accepting a conference on postwar
monetary arrangements to be held at Bretton Woods, in direct contrast to Britain which objected
immediately and had to be coerced. As Molotov sent word to Morgenthau in April 1944, “there
exists among our financial experts a major discord with respect to the basic conditions of the
organization of the IMF. The majority of our experts object to a series of points. Speaking with
complete frankness, the Government of the USSR has not yet succeeded in studying fully the
basic conditions in question. However, if it is necessary to the Government of the United States
of America to have the voice of the USSR to secure due effect in the external world, the Soviet
Government agrees to give instructions to its experts to associate themselves with the project of
Mr. Morgenthau.”
88
Following the Bretton Woods conference, the memoranda prepared in the ministries (the
people’s commissariat for external trade and the commissariat for external affairs) were
Convention