Was The Russian Revolution really financed by investment bankers on wallstreet?

Question

That is I guess a "conspiracy theory" that I read lately on a website?

Anybody have any thoughts about the truth of this?

Answer 1

Wrong stock market!

There is absolutely no doubt that Alexander Isreal Helphand (Parvus, 1867-1924) received substantial payments from the German Foreign Ministry to support a programme of fomenting revolution in Russia. Helphand was responsible for raising in the neighborhood of 25 million gold marks from the German Foreign Ministry to foment revolution in Russia. He facilitated smuggling paper, ink and the means to print revolutionary pamphlets and fund clandestine operations.

He was a contradictory and colourful character with a chequered career as an arms dealer, marxist theoretician, embezler and with a taste for the highlife.

Lenin was always careful to keep him at arm's length in exile and prevented Parvus from returing to Russia after October with his notable condemnation that the revolution needs clean hands.

Funds may have been diverted by Parvus to the Bolsheviks but that is not the same as stating that the Bolsheviks accepted German funding. As with any episode as murky as this, questions may not have been asked in spite of well based suspicions as to the source of monies. It is precisely why much was made of this issue particularly in the era of the Cold War.

Paradoxically Parvus was using the German regime as much as they were using him. His decadence, debauchery and corruption did not necessarily preclude his revolutionary sincerity.

Answer 2

Germany financed the Lennin"s fraction of the Russian revoltion in ordered to queit the eastern front and allow Germany and it allies to move some of these troops to the western front. Germany had a relationship with the soveits the ended when Hitler Invaded the USSR in 1941.
I do not think that at the time wall street had much of an interest in comunism, some wealth Americans did privately support Communism just as some supporteed the (White Russian loyalist troops) The Allied powers (Inculding the US) even sent an Expiditionary force to russia. AEF Russia "Polor Bear Expidition".