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The ARCOS Case and “War Scare” of 1927 in Soviet-British Relations
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The ARCOS Case and “War Scare” of 1927 in Soviet-British Relations
Annotation
PII
S207987840032145-8-1
DOI
10.18254/S207987840032145-8
Publication type
Article
Status
Published
Authors
Evgeny Sergeev 
Affiliation: Institute of World History RAS
Address: Russian Federation, Moscow
Edition
Volume 15 Issue 7 (141)
Abstract

The author examines the Soviet-British conflict, which was caused by the raid of the London police on the office of ARCOS and the USSR trade mission in mid-May 1927. The article covers the background, process and consequences of the search carried out by the Metropolitan police, focusing on the severance of diplomatic connections and the situation of “war scare” caused by the incident that led to the most serious crisis in bilateral relations during the twentieth century. Basing on declassified materials of British counterintelligence, as well as on the recently available documents from Soviet and British archives, including diplomatic correspondence, expert notes of both countries, private correspondence of participants and accounts of witnesses, as well as on press comments, the author concludes that the enacted police action could be explained by a complex of political and economic factors which made it inevitable, putting the USSR and Great Britain on the brink of an armed clash. It destabilized the process of the post-war international reconstruction within the framework of the Versailles-Washington world order. The material of the article aids to reconstruct the course of events in the spring and summer of 1927 from the perspective of today, emphasizing the relevance of studying the crises of the interwar period (1919—1939) for formulating the foreign policy of modern Russia.

Keywords
Soviet-British relations, ARCOS, “war scare” of 1927
Источник финансирования
The article was prepared within the framework of a grant provided by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation (agreement No. 075-15-2024-537).
Received
08.05.2024
Publication date
30.08.2024
Number of characters
55496
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