Origins of Economic Containment: From Cordon Sanitaire to Iron Curtain

Abstract

Since Lenin’s revolutionary attempts to turn Russia communist, most Western countries have raised barriers in order to check the spread of Bolshevism beyond its present territory. All kinds of political, economic and military instruments have been brought to use, in order to minimize the area which was already contaminated with the Bolshevik or Communist germ. They have used military means to overthrow the rebels, but have at times also established an economic cordon sanitaire around Soviet Russia, placing Bolshevism as it were in quarantine. U.S. President Woodrow Wilson’s policy of ‘containment’ avant la lettre was clear:

I believe in letting them [the Russians] work out their own salvation, even though they wallow in anarchy a while. I visualize it like this: A lot of impossible folk, fighting among themselves. You cannot do business with them, so you shut them all up in a room and lock the door and tell them that when they have settled matters among themselves you will unlock the door and do business.¹