50; and Carr,
Bolshevik
Revolution, 312-19.
Revolution and War_nodrm
" Ullman, Anglo-Soviet Accord, 224-25, 254, 269.
On Kamenev's expulsion, see Butler and Bury, British Documents, 783-91.
160 The text of the agreement is reprinted in Ullman, Anglo-Soviet Accord, 474-78.
161 For the details of this fascinating episode, see Ullman, Anglo-Soviet Accord, 274-81, 307-3o8.
162 Ullman,Anglo-SovietAccord,415-19,438-43.
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Thus, despite enduring suspicions, continued insecurity, deep domestic opposition, and a host of misconceptions, Britain and Russia managed to take the first step toward a more normal relationship. Above all else, their willingness to do so reveals a growing recognition of the postwar balance of threats. Although Churchill and Curzon continued to oppose the trade agreement on the grounds that Soviet Russia "makes no secret of its inten- tions to overthrow our institutions everywhere," the claim that the Soviet
government could be toppled easily was now untenable. Lloyd George drew the obvious conclusion: if Bolshevism could not be eliminated, then Britain should come to terms with it. Similarly, although Soviet leaders had not abandoned their hope for a world revolution, they were begin- ning to realize that it might not be imminent and were becoming increas- ingly aware of their own economic liabilities. 163 Agreeing to mute their propaganda offensive was a small price to pay for recognition and the restoration of trade, which they believed would foster recovery and dis- courage a renewed imperialist offensive. Not surprisingly, similar calcula-
tions were beginning to shape Soviet relations with a number of other countries as well.
Soviet Diplomacy in Asia
The Soviet government saw the developing world as a natural ally in the struggle against imperialism, and the liberation of the colonial areas re- ceived particular attention at the Second Comintern Congress in July and August of 1920. 164 The Soviets began cultivating close ties with Persia, Afghanistan, Turkey, and China during this period. In each case, the desire to enhance the security of the Soviet state proved stronger than the commit- ment to world revolution.
Before World War I, Persia's position in international politics was defined by the Anglo-Russian Convention of 1907, which gave Russia a sphere of in- fluence in the north of Persia and Britain a sphere of influence in the south. The Soviet government renounced these treaty rights in January 1918, and British forces moved into the vacuum as Russia withdrew. The pro-British Cabinet of Vusuq al-Dawlah signed a new Anglo-Persian treaty on August
163 In November, Lenin admitted, "Though we have not yet won a world victory . . . we have fought our way into a position where we can coexist with the capitalist powers, who now are forced to have trade relations with us. " In December, he acknowledged that "the speed, the tempo, at which revolution is developing in the capitalist countries is far slower than it was in our country. " Quotations from Ullman, Anglo-Soviet Accord, 412; and Lazitch and Drachkovitch, Lenin and the Comintern, 1:540.
164 At the congress, Lenin called for "the closest alliance, with Soviet Russia, of all the na- tional and colonial liberation movements. " Lenin, Selected Works, 3:434; and Carr, Bolshevik Revolution, 3:251-59.
? ? Revolution and War
9, 1919; had it been ratified, the agreement would have given Britain de facto control over much of Persia's foreign and domestic policy. 165
Britain's attempt to solidify its influence in Persia sparked a storm of protests, however, and the situation was complicated further when Mirza Kuchik Khan, a dissident nationalist, proclaimed an independent "Republic of Gilan" in northern Persia and began receiving aid and military backing from the Soviet regime in Azerbaijan. The British withdrawal from northern Persia following a Soviet raid on Enzeli shook Persian confidence in British protection, and the Persian government quickly dispatched an envoy to Russia to negotiate the resumption of relations.
British officials responded by arranging for a Persian colonel, Reza Shah, to conduct a coup d'etat in January 1921. 166 This move appeared to backfire when Reza denounced the Anglo-Persian agreement and signed a formal treaty of friendship with the Soviet government in February 1921. The Sovi- ets again renounced any special privileges in Persia, but the treaty autho- rized their entry "should a third power intervene with armed force" on Persian territory. 167 Reza Shah carefully maintained his freedom of action, however, suppressing local Communists and refusing to allow the Soviet ambassador to enter Tehran until all Soviet forces had withdrawn from Per- sian soil. The Soviets abandoned KUchik Khan as relations with Tehran im- proved, and the "Republic of Gilan" quickly collapsed. All told, the initial course of Soviet-Persian relations offered an early indication of Moscow's willingness to disregard immediate revolutionary objectives for the sake of tangible diplomatic benefits. 168
Soviet relations with Afghanistan followed a similar pattern. Prior to World War I, Afghanistan lay largely within the British sphere of influence, but the revolution in Russia inspired Emir Amanullah to declare war on
165 The Soviets renounced any "spheres of influence and exclusive interests" in Persia at Brest-Litovsk, and Lenin sent a formal message to the government of Persia "repudiating all Tsarist privileges and agreements that are contrary to the sovereignty of Persia. " See R. K. Ra- mazani, The Foreign Policy ofIran, 150o-1941: A Developing Nation in World Affairs (Char- lottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1966), 148-51; Carr, Bolshevik Revolution, 3:232 n. 2; George Lenczowski, Russia and the West in Iran, 1918-1948 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1949), 49-50; and Harish Kapur, Soviet Russia and Asia, 1917-1927 (Geneva: Michael Joseph,
1966), 154?
166 For an account of the coup that stresses the British role, see Ullman, Anglo-Soviet Accord, 355-57, 376-8;8 for a version downplaying it, see Ramazani, Foreign Policy of Iran, 176-77.
167 The Soviet-Persian treaty was an obvious attempt to balance against Great Britain, but Reza Shah recognized that Russia was a potential threat as well. He therefore tried to main- tain cordial relations with Britain and the United States, a policy consistent with Persia's tra- ditional practice of seeking third powers to balance British and Soviet pressure. See Ramazani, Foreign PolicyofIran, 203-11, 3o8-309.
168 The Soviet ambassador told Khan, "Soviet Russia at this time regards all revolutionary movements as not only fruitless but also harmful. Therefore, Soviet Russia has adopted a new form of policy as evidenced by its new treaty with the government of Iran. " Quoted in R a m a z a n i , F o r e i g n P o l i c y of I r a n , 1 9 1 .
[18o]
? TheRussian Revolution
Britain in April 1919 and request aid from Moscow. The Soviet government was in no position to help, however, and Amanullah's forces were soon de- feated. Britairi acknowledged Afghan independence in August, and Lenin subsequently sent a telegram to the emir proposing a trade agreement and a treaty of friendship directed against "the most rapacious imperialist gov- ernment on Earth-Great Britain. "169
This offer led directly to the Soviet-Afghan treaty of February 1921. Ideo- logical solidarity played no role in this agreement (if anything, Amanullah's pan-Islamic beliefs were a potential threat to Soviet control in Central Asia), and the treaty failed to prevent a number of serious disagreements between Moscow and Kabul. 170 Like the Persians, the Afghanis were primarily inter- ested in balancing between Britain and Russia, and the Soviet-Afghan treaty was followed by a similar agreement with Great Britain in November.
Russia's policy toward Afghanistan offers further evidence of its prag- matic approach to diplomatic relations with the border states, particularly in areas where the threat of imperialist interference was especially acute. E. H. Carr notes, "What was significant in all this was not the extension of propaganda for world revolution but the succession of Soviet Russia to the traditional Russian role as Britain's chief rival in central Asia. "171
Soviet policy toward Turkey also sought to counter Western (especially British) influence. Tsarist Russia and the Ottoman Empire had been rivals for centuries, but Soviet Russia and the new Turkish state found them- selves united by a number of common interests. Clandestine discussions between Karl Radek and several prominent members of the Young Turk movement had already raised the possibility of a Soviet-Turkish alliance against British imperialism. Chicherin broadcast a radio message warning of the dangers of imperialism and proposing Soviet-Turkish cooperation to "expel the European robbers" in September 1919. Until the summer of
1920, however, Soviet hopes rested primarily on the Turkish Communist movement. 172
As discussed at length below in chapter 6, foreign interference in Turkey eventually caused a nationalist revolution led by Mustafa Kemal Pasha, a prominent Ottoman general. In April 1920, when the revolt was well un- derway, Kemal sent a formal note to Moscow proposing diplomatic rela-
169 Lenin'smessagecongratulatedtheAfghanpeopleontheirstruggleagainst"foreignop- pressors" and referred to the "wide possibilities for mutual aid against any attack by foreign bandits on the freedom of others. " Quoted in Fischer, Soviets in World Affairs, 1:285-86.
}29CH)2.
171 BolshevikRevolution,3:292. 172 Ibid. , 3:244-47?
170 The
? [181]
main dispute concerned the emir of Bokhara, who was ousted by a Bolshevik "Young Bokharan" movement in September 1920. The emir fled to Afghanistan while his supporters tried to oust the new government, and this incident delayed the Soviet-Afghan treaty for several months. See Kapur, Soviet Russia and Asia, 222-28; Carr, Bolshevik Revolution,
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tions and a joint "struggle against foreign imperialism which threatens both countries. "173
The harsh peace terms imposed at Versailles accelerated the Soviet-Turk- ish rapprochement. Turkey and Russia began direct negotiations in Moscow in July, and a Soviet representative arrived in Ankara in November. A friendship treaty emphasizing "their solidarity in the struggle against im- perialism" was signed in March 1921; six months later, the Treaty of Kars settled the remaining border disputes between the new Turkish state and the Soviet republics of Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. 174
Despite these favorable developments, Russia and Turkey faced several enduring disputes during this period. Both states still coveted parts of Transcaucasia, and Kemal's overt anti-Communism was an obvious irritant as well. Soviet self-interest soon overcame any ideological inclinations, and Russia sent a military delegation to Ankara in November 1921 and agreed to provide a subsidy of 3? 5 million gold rubles and enough arms and amum ni- tion for three divisions. This gesture did little to bind Turkey to Moscow, however, and when the Greeks withdrew following their final defeat in 1922, Kemal moved away from Moscow and suppressed the Turkish Com- munist Party even more vigorously. Turkey also reversed its earlier position
on the Turkish Straits and agreed to negotiate a new arrangement with the . Western powers. The Soviets' response to these setbacks was restrained, a policy that paid off when Turkey insisted that Russia be invited to partici- pate in the negotiations for a new straits regime. 175
On the whole, Soviet relations with Persia, Afghanistan, and Turkey are best seen as attempts to balance against a common threat. They are thus en- tirely consistent with the dictates of realpolitik. At the same time, Bolshevik ideology clearly affected Moscow's evaluation of alternative partners. The 1921 friendship treaties both stabilized Soviet relations with three of its neighboring countries and presented a worrisome threat to Western influ- ence in the developing world. Although maintaining these connections re- quired Moscow to overlook the persecution of local Communist groups, it was a small price to pay for such obvious diplomatic benefits.
The Far East did not at first appear to be an area of great revolutionary potential. The "Congress of Peoples of the East" held in Baku in 1920 fo- cused primarily on the Near East and South Asia, and the first "Congress of Toilers of the Far East" did not meet until January 1922. The Soviet govern- ment played a only minor role in the founding of the Chinese and Japanese
173 Quoted in ibid. , 248; and also see Salahi Ramsdan Sonyel, Turkish Diplomacy, 1918-1923: Mustafa Kemal and the Turkish National Movement (Beverly Hills, Calif. : Sage, 1973), 39-42?
174 In an obvious attempt to exclude the Entente, the Treaty of Kars also declared that Rus- sia and Turkey would negotiate a new treaty governing the Straits of Constantinople. See De- gras, Soviet Documents, 1:237-42, 263? 9; and Kapur, Soviet Russia and Asia, 107.
? 175 See Kapur, Soviet Russia and Asia, 109-14, 124-30.
? ? ? The Russian Revolution
Communist parties, neither of which was a significant political force at this stage. 176 Lack of interest in the Far East was also a function of timing, as So- viet hopes for an imminent "world revolution" had begun to fade by the time the civil war was over and contact with the Far East restored. As a re- sult, Soviet policy in the Far East initially eschewed direct efforts to foment revolution and focused on reasserting traditional Russian interests.
The task of restoring Soviet power in the Far East was complicated by the turbulent situation in China and the ambiguous status of Outer Mongolia and Manchuria. The overthrow of the Manchu dynasty in 1911 had failed to produce an effective government, and China was now ruled by a set of com- peting warlords. The official government in Beijing saw the collapse of Russian power in 1917 as a chance to reassert its authority over Outer Mon- golia and the Chinese Eastern Railway, and China also sent a token force to Vladivostok during the Allied intervention and set up a satellite regime in the Mongolian capital of Urga in the fall of 1919. 177
The Soviets' policy toward China was quite conciliatory at first, a position that reflected their own weakness. They offered to establish diplomatic re- lations immediately and renounced Russia's former privileges in Mongolia and Manchuria. Communications between Moscow and the Far East had been cut off by the civil war, however, and this offer did not reach Beijing until March 1920. Circumstances had changed dramatically by then: a group of rival warlords had ousted the Beijing government, the Whites were nearing defeat, and foreign involvement in the civil war was drawing to a close. When a Chinese delegation finally arrived in Moscow in October
1920, therefore, the Soviet government abandoned its earlier offers and in- sisted on its former rights to the Chinese Eastern Railway. After several false starts and a protracted series of negotiations, the two sides signed a treaty resolving the railway issue and establishing de jure recognition in May 1924. Although Chicherin hailed the agreement as a "historic step in the emancipation of the Eastern peoples," the Sino-Soviet treaty in fact marked the restoration of Russia's former predominance over the official govern- ment in Beijing. 176
176 The Chinese Communist Party had fewer than one hundred members at its founding in 1921, and Zinoviev told the Congress of the Toilers of the Far East in January 1922 that the Communist parties in the East "represent at present only small groups. " See Xenia Eudin and Robert C. North, Soviet Russia and the East, 192o-1927: A Documentary Survey (Stanford: Stan- ford University Press, 1957), 222.
m See Allen S. Whiting, Soviet Policies in China, 1917-1924 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1954), 26--28; Tang, Russian and Soviet Policy, 115-21, 36<>-65; Carr, Bolshevik Revolution, 3:491; and Bruce A. Ellemann, "Secret Sino-Soviet Negotiations on Outer Mongolia, 1918-1925,'' Pacific Affairs 66, no. 4 (1993-94).
178 The treaty renounced several earlier concessions and acknowledged Chinese sover- eignty in? Outer Mongolia, but it also gave Moscow the dominant role in managing the Chi- nese Eastern Railway. Allen Whiting observes, "whatever good intentions may have
? ? Revolution and War
The reestablishment of Russian power was even more apparent in the conquest of Outer Mongolia. The turmoil in China had enabled a Cossack adventurer named Baron von Ungem-Stemberg to seize power in Urga in February 1921, but his regime was quickly ousted by Soviet troops in July. A Provisional People's Government "invited" the Soviet troops to remain, and the new "Mongolian People's Republic" signed a treaty restoring Russia's traditional predominance in November. 179
The Japanese withdrawal from Siberia gave an additional boost to Rus- sia's reemergence in the Far East. Pressure from the United States and Great Britain, together with the costs of occupation and the ascendancy of a mod- erate faction in Tokyo, had led Japan to begin a withdrawal from Siberia in 1922. Taliks between Japanese and Soviet representatives were unsucccessful at first, but discussions resumed in January 1923 and culminated in an agreement on "basic rules of relations" two years later. 180 The agreement es- tablished normal diplomatic and consular relations and committed both powers to additional negotiations on a range of other issues. It also com- mitted the signatories "to live in peace and amity with each other" and to refrain from "any act overt or covert liable in any way whatever to endan- ger the order and security" in either state's territory. Negotiations to replace the 1907 Russo-Japanese Fishery Convention began shortly thereafter, andl a new agreement was eventually signed two years later. 181
These advances were possible because both sides were willing to over- look ideological differences for the sake of tangible diplomatic benefits. 182 For the ]apanese, detente with the Soviet Union provided a counterweight to British and U. S. pressure. Japanese officials also hoped that access to the Russian market would spur their sputtering economy. The Soviets shared the hope that trade would accelerate their own recovery, but they also sought fro prevent the capitalist powers from forming an anti-Soviet bloc in the Far East. Soviet-Japanese cooperation was based entirely on self-
prompted the revolutionary foreign policy of self-denial in 1917-1918, by 1923 Soviet Russia was looking at the Far East exactly as had Tsarist Russia. " See his Soviet Policies in China, 28-30, 200; and also Eudin and North, Soviet Russia and the East, 128-30, 245-48, 316-18; Tang, Russian and Soviet Policy, 138-41, 148-78; and Degras, Soviet Documents, 1:212-15.
? 179 See Thomas T. Hammond, "The Soviet Takeover of Outer Mongolia: Model for Eastern Europe? " in his Anatomy of Communist Takeovers; and Carr, Bolshevik Revolu tion, 3:500-502, 5 1 1-23.
180 See Carr, Bolshevik Revolution, 1:355-63, 3:536; George Alexander Lensen, Japanese Recog- nition ofthe USSR: Soviet-Japanese Relations, 1921-1930 (Tokyo: Sophia University with the Diplomatic Press, 1970), 11; and Debo, Survival and Consolidation, 381-89.
181 Lensen, Japanese Recognition, 177-95 and chap. 9; Eudin and North, Soviet Russia and the East, 253; and Edward Hallett Carr, Socialism in One Country, 1924-1926 (New York: Macmil- lan, 1958-64), J:87<r76.
182 This policy required certain compromises; for example, the Soviets agreed to refrain from revolutionary activities in Japan and to observe the elaborate religious etiquette of the imperial court. See Lensen, Japanese Recognition, 318, 345?
? ? The Russian Revolution
interest, therefore, and as Lensen notes, "neither party lowered its guard. "183 The Japanese government continued to repress local Commu- nists and kept the Soviet representatives in Japan under surveillance, but these policies did not prevent the two states from making deals. As in Turkey, Persia, and elsewhere, in short, spreading revolution remained a secondary objective. 184
Viewed as a whole, Soviet relations in Asia were recovering rapidly by the end of 1924. The Soviet government had signed treaties of friendship with Persia, Afghanistan, and Turkey; Japan was withdrawing from Russian soil and moving toward recognition, and Moscow had regained control of most of Siberia and Outer Mongolia and reestablished its primacy in the Chinese Railway Zone. These achievements were facilitated by Moscow's willingness to subordinate its revolutionary goals to more immediate polit- ical imperatives, but the lingering commitment to world revolution would have more pernicious effects in the years to come.
Alliance ofOutcasts: The Soviet-German Rapprochement
Allied intervention had pushed Soviet Russia toward Germany even be- fore World War I was over; after the war, the two states were drawn together by their shared status as pariahs and their mutual hostility toward Poland and the Entente. Germany was also the main object of the Bolsheviks' revo- lutionary ambitions, however, and Soviet policy toward the Weimar Re-
public combined efforts to cultivate close political and mili? ary ties with shakier attempts to spark a proletarian revolution. Repeated failures taught the Soviets to focus on direct diplomatic and military cooperation, but be- cause their faifrh in Germany's revolutionary potential proved extremely re- silient, this learning process was surprisingly slow and erratic. 185
Origins. At the end of World War I, Soviet-German relations were not promising. The Bolsheviks viewed the Social Democratic Party in Germany with contempt and expected it to collapse in the face of continued revolu- tionary agitation. Relations were also troubled by the presence of German military units in the Baltic region, where they fought against both Allied
183 Japan refused an offer of Soviet aid after a major earthquake in 1924, fearing that the aid mission might be an instrument of Communist subversion. The Japanese Communist Party disbanded in 1924 and was reconstituted in 1925-26, but government repression kept it on the fringes of Japanese political life. See Lensen, Japanese Recognition, 137-43; Eudin and North, Soviet Russia and the East, 272-79; and Carr, Socialism in One Country, 3:883-iJ4?
184 Lensen concludes in his detailed study of Soviet-Japanese relations, "In the late 1920s, the Russian leaders took pains not to jeopardize Soviet-Japanese relations by overt subver- sion. " Japanese Recognition, 361.
185 See Edward Hallett Carr, German-Soviet Relations between the Two World Wars (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1951), 25-26.
? ? Revolution and War
and Bolshevik forces during the civil war. 186 Although German officials were already contemplating a closer relationship with Russia, the belief that Bol- shevism was both potentially threatening and unlikely to survive dictated a cautious response. Thus, when some German officers proposed an alliance with Soviet Russia against the Versailles Treaty, the commander of the Ger- man Army, Wilhelm Groener, stated that "an alliance with Russia, that is with Bolshevism, is something for which I cannot take the responsibility. "187
Resentment of the harsh terms imposed at Versailles soon overruled these reservations. As one German diplomat later recalled, most of his colleagues "were more sympathetic to the West than to the East'' but the Versailles Treaty revealed that "the West was much the more dangerous foe. " This view was especially pronounced within the German millltary, where an al- liance with Russia was expected to provide an outlet for German industry in the short term and to improve Germany's bargaining position over time. 188 Gwener's successor, General Helmut von Seeckt, believed that the danger of Communist subversion did not preclude closer ties between the two governments, and he soon decided that "a political and economic agreement with Russia [would be] an irrevocable purpose of our policy. "189
Progress toward rapprochement was swift. Germany had already refused to honor the Allied blockade of Russia in November 1919, and the two states signed an agreement for the release of prisoners in April 1920 and ex- changed diplomatic representatives in June. Berlin took a decidedly pro- Soviet position during the Russo-Polish war, refusing to permit the Allies to send military supplies to the Poles across German territory and briefly rais- ing the possibility of territorial adjustments in the event of a Soviet vic- tory. 190 By the end of 1920, Von Seeckt had established a special bureau to
study the "possibilities of cooperation with the Red Army" and powerful external forces were now pushing the two countries together despite their ideological differences. Lenin observed in November: "The German bour- geois government madly hates the Bolsheviks, but the interests of the inter-
186 See Robert G. Waite, Vanguard ofNazism: The Free Corps Movement in Postwar Germany, 1918-1923 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1952), chap. 5?
1 87 At the same time, Groener told the cabinet that Germany "must do what is required to secure Russia's friendship in the future. " See Freund, Unholy Alliance, 3? 40, 43? There is some ambiguous evidence of informal military cooperation between Russia and Germany in October 1919; for details, see Carr, Bolshevik Revolution, 3:247, 361.
188 Quoted in Freund, Unholy Alliance, 4?
50; and Carr, Bolshevik Revolution, 312-19.
189 Quoted in Freund, UnholyAlliance, 46. .
190 On Germany and the blockade, see Robert H. Haigh, David S. Morris, and Anthony R.
Peters, German-Soviet Relations in the Weimar Era: Friendshipfrom Necessity (Totowa, N. J. : Barnes and Noble, 1985), 61-62. During the Russo-Polish war, some German officials feared that the Red Army might continue on to Germany, while Von Seeckt and others believed that a Soviet victory would be a powerful blow against the entire Versailles system. See Freund, Unholy Alliance, 6? 73; and Werner T. Angress, Stillborn Revolution: The Communist Bid for Power in Germany, 1921-23 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963), So-81.
[186]
? The Russian Revolution
national situation are pushing it towards peace with Soviet Russia against its own will. " And Lenin left no doubt that Russia would welcome these overtures, because "so long as we are alone and the capitalist world is strong, . . . [we are] obliged to utilize [these] disagreements" nn the capitalist world. A preliminary economic accord was completed by mid-February, leaving the two states on the brink of a de facto alliance. l91
Yet despite the failure of the Spartacist uprisings in Berlin in January 1919 and the collapse of the short-lived Communist republic in Bavaria in May, the Soviet government had not lost all hope in the revolutionary potential of the German working class. In March 1920, an abortive coup by right-wing forces (the so-called Kapp putsch) sparked a general strike in Berlin and a brief Communist uprising in the Ruhr. Lenin now predicted that "the time is not far off when we shall march hand in hand with a German Soviet gov- ernment. " Soviet diplomats helped smuggle arms and explosives to Com- munist groups in Germany, and Soviet officials began to intervene directly in the internal politics of the German working-class movement. These ef- forts paid off in October 1920, when Zinoviev persuaded a majority of the Independent Socialist Party to unite with the German Communist Party
(KPD) and join the Comintern. Three months later, Comintern officials arranged the replacement of the KPD leader, Paul Levi, by officials more amenable to Soviet influence. 192
These developments culminated in the KPD's attempt to launch a prole- tarian uprising in March 1921. The party's new leaders were convinced that international and domestic conditions were ripe for revolution, and a dele- gation from the Executive Committee of the Comintem arrived in Germany at the beginning of March and began to press for an armed insurrection. The KPD proceeded to launch a violent but poorly planned revolt on March 23. Their belief that millions of non-Communist workers would rise up and join them proveol false, and the "March action" was quickly crushed. 193
191 Quoted in Carr, Bolshevik Revol! :? tion, 3:33D-31. As usual, Lenin saw cooperation with capitalist states as a temporary expedient and not a permanent option. In a prescient passage, he noted that "Germany wants revenge, and we want revolution. For the moment our aims are the same, but when our ways part, they will be our most ferocious and greatest enemies. " Quoted in Dennis, Foreign Policies ofSoviet Russia, 154-55; and see also Lionel Kochan, Russia and the Weimar Republic (Cambridge: Bowes and Bowes, 1954), 38-39; and Gordon A. Craig, The Politics of the Prussian Army (London: Oxford University Press, 1964), 409?
192 Lenin's statement is quoted in Freund, Unholy Alliance, 62. On the Spartacist uprisings and Russian manipulation of the KPD, see Angress, Stillborn Revolution, 13-31, 91-100. On the brief career of the Bavarian Soviet Republic, see Allan Mitchell, Revolution in Bavaria, 1918-1920: The Eisner Regime arad the Soviet Republic (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965).
193 The March action is described in detail by Angress in Stillborn Revolution, chap. 4, and "TheTakeoverThatRemained inLimbo:TheGermanExperience, 1918-1923," inHammond, . AnatomyofCommunist Takeovers, 176-S- o. Carr reports that KPD membership declined from 450,000 to 180,000 following the March action, and the debacle "set in motion a wave of re-
? criminations which continued for many years to split the party. " Bolshevik Revolution, J337?
? ? Revolu tion and War
A new sense of realism had set in by the time the Third Comintem Congress met in Moscow in June. Lenin now admitted that "the development of the world revolution . . . did not proceed along the direct line we anticipated," andl Trotsky told the delegates, ''We are not so immediately near . . . to the world rev? olution. In 1919 we said to ourselves: 'it is a question of months. ' Now we say: 'it is perhaps a question of years. ' " When viewed alongside the Anglo-Soviet trade agreement and the friendship treaties with Turkey, Afghanistan, and Iran, such statements were a clear sign that hopes for an immediate world revolution was declining. According to E. H. Carr, "a new and well-grounded pessimism about the prospects of the European revolution confirmed and reinforced the drive towards a temporary accommodation with the capitalist world. "194
By weakening the German left, the debacle in March 1921 made it easier for the German government to move closer to Moscow without fear of leav? ing itself vulnerable to revolutionary subversion. At the same time, the Al? lied announcement of the final reparations bill and the French decision to enforce the reparations clause by occupying parts of the Ruhr had increased! Germany's interest in an alignment with Russia. Germany and Russia signed a secret agreement in April for the production of German aircraft and! munitions in Russia, the economic agreement negotiated in January was completed in May, and the two states agreed to exchange new diplomatic representatives shortly therafter. A German military delegation arrived to provide advice. for the restoration of Russia's military industries, and covert meetings between Soviet and German officers continued through the fall. 195
Rapallo and After. The conference in Genoa in April 1922 brought the Soviet-German rapprochement out into the open. The conference was orig- inally intended to create an international consortium for European recon- struction, including the restoration of regular commerce with Russia. As part of the new policy of peaceful coexistence, Chicherin had issued a for- mal note in October 1921 stating Russia's willingness to make concessions on the debt issue and proposing a conference "to consider the claims of the Powers against Russia and of Russia against the Powers, and to draw up at definite treaty of peace between them. " Following a suggestion from Lloyd George, the Supreme Allied Council agreed to combine the two goals and is- sued a resolution calling for an economic and financial conference "to rem- edy the paralysis of the European system. " 196
194 Quotations from Eudin and Fisher, Soviet Russia and the West, 82-84; and Carr, Bolshevik Revolution, }:338, 385.
? 195 See Freund, Unholy Alliance, 93-94; Craig, Politics ofthe Prussian Army, 409-11; and Hans W. Gatzke, "Russo-German Military Collaboration during the Weimar Republic," American Historical Review 63, no. 3 (1958).
I% The Soviet note is in Degras, Soviet Documents, 1:27<r72; the resolution by the Supreme Allied Council is quoted in Eudin and Fisher, Soviet Russia and the West, 98. Lenin personally
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? The Russian Revolution
Unfortunately, the collapse of the Briand government in France returned Rene Poincare to power in January 1922, and his steadfast refusal to alter the reparations arrangements ended any possibility of creating an international body for European recovery. Relations with Russia became the main item of discussion by default, and the German delegates began to fear that the Western powers were about to make a separate deal with Russia. To avoid complete isolation, they accepted a Soviet invitation for a clandestine meet- ing in the neal! "by town of Rapallo and signed an agreement restoring diplo- matic relations between Germany and Russia and committing both powers to consult each other before signing international economic agreements. The Rapallo agreement prevented the Allies from excluding either power from a more general settlement and offered the first sign of an overt Soviet-German alignment. 197
Soviet-German cooperation expanded considerably the following year.
The two states exchanged ambassadors after Rapallo and signed a conven- tion for military cooperation in August. The Soviets supported Germany when the French occupied the Ruhr in January 1923; Izvestiya declared, "So- viet Russia in her own vital interests cannot permit the final su1bjugation and destruction of Germany by . . . France and her vassals," and Bukharin an- nounced that the Red Army would probably intervene if Poland tried to take advantage of Germany's present weakness. 198
The blossoming Soviet-German relationship was soon threatened by an- other misguided outburst of revolutionary enthusiasm. The Soviets' faith in an imminent world revolution had declined steadily after the March action in 1921, but this objective revived whenever conditions seemed more en- couraging. Germany was now reeling from a combination of hyperinflation and domestic political paralysis, and the crisis helped the KPD recover from its earlier setbacks. Several Soviet officials saw the fall of the Cuno cabinet in August as a sign that the German revolution was finally at hand and con- vinced themselves that the German proletariat would rise up once the initial blow had fallen. Lenin's second stroke had removed him as a restraining in-
fluence and the KPD gradually succumbed to Soviet pressure. The day of the insurrection was fixed for November 7, and the campaign began with the appointment of KPD chief Heinrich Brandler and several other KPD members to ministerial posts in the state government of Saxony. The Ger- man chancellor, Gustav Stresemann, quickly obtained emergency powers and ordered the army into Saxony to dissolve the local government. At-
? ? edited Chicherin's speech to the conference in order to eliminate any revolutionary rhetoric that might alarm the other great powers. See Uldricks, "Russia and Europe," 62 n. 27.
197 As Freund points out, "more important than the formal contents of the treaty was the fact that Germany and Russia had dared to sign it. " Unholy Alliance, 118.
198 See Freund, Unholy Alliance, 125-26, 142-46, 152-53.
? ? tempts to organize a general strike were ineffective and the KPD decided to cancel the insurrection. Owing to a failure in communications, however, the KPD organization in Hamburg went ahead and began fthe revolt, but it was easily suppressed by government forces. The German revolution had ff'nz- zled once again, further discrediting the advocates of world revolution. 199
Beginning in 1920, the Soviet Union and the capitalist powers had made a genuine attempt to establish more normal relations. Soviet leaders began to acknowledge that world revolution might not occur for quite some time-so capitalism and socalism could be forced to coexist indefinitely- and they were increasingly confident that the Soviet regime would survive. Western leaders had reached similar conclusions; although the Sovnet regime could not be removed at an acceptable cost, the danger that Bolshe- vism would spark a wave of revolutionary upheavals seemed less worri- some as well. As their perceptions of threat declined, in short, both sides became more willing to explore a more normal relationship.
The effects of this development were readily apparent The British La:bour Party took office for the first time in January 1924 and Britain and Italy ex- tended de jure recognition to the Soviet Union the following month. A host of other countries (Austria, Denmark, Greece, Hungary, Mexico, and Swe- den) soon followed suit, and France finally took the plunge in October. As one Soviet commentator proudly declared in March, the Soviet Union was becoming "a full-fledged member on the chessboard of international diplo- macy. "2oo
199 According to Werner Angress, "in their eagerness to revive the revolutionary wave in Europe, the Bolshevik leaders succumbed to wishful thinking, to a misjudgment of the true situation in Germany, and to the temptation to sponsor a 'German October' uprising. " See Stillborn Revolution, 378, 394--<)7; Isaac Deutscher, The Prophet Unarmed, Trotsky: 1921-1929 (London: Oxford University Press, 1959), 142-44; Lerner, Radek, 123-25; and Edward Hallett Carr, The Interregnum: 1923-24 (New York: Macmillan, 1954), 201-204, 212-15.
200 See Eudin and Fisher, Soviet Russia and the West, 191--<)2, 235; Carr, Interregnum, 251-52. The United States was the main exception to this trend; it refused to recognize a power "whose conceptions of international relations are so alien to its own, so utterly repugmmt to its moral sense. " Foreign Relations of the United States, 1920 (Washington, D. C. : U. S. Gov- ernment Printing Office, 1936), 3:463-68. Nonrecognition did not prevent the United States from providing extensive relief aid during a devastating famine in 1921-22, but Soviet of-
ficials regarded the relief mission with suspicion and did not revise their hostile image of the United States. U. S. business firms did begin establishing economic ties with Russia, however, and U. S. exports to Russia quadrupled between 1923 and 1924 while imports in- creased sevenfold. The United States was responsible for one-third of Soviet foreign trade in 1925 and by 1927 U. S. investments in Russia were second only to Germany's. See Ben- jamin M. Weissman, Herbert Hoover and Famine Relief to Soviet Russia, 1921-23 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1974); Joan Hoff Wilson, Ideology and Economics: U. S. Relations with the Soviet Union, 1918-1933 (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1974); Peter G. Fi- lene, Americans and the Soviet Experiment, . 1 9 1 7-1933 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967).
Revolution and War
[190]
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"SociALISM IN ONJE CouNTRY"
The year 1924 was the high-water mark of peaceful coexistence, and So- viet relations with the outside world deteriorated sharply thereafter. Efforts to integrate the Soviet Union into the world economy had failed to generate the expected levels of foreign trade and investment, and the Western pow- ers continued to regard the USSR with considerable suspicion. 201 A series of diplomatic setbacks convinced key Soviet officials that the danger of an im- perialist war was growing and contributed to the growing consensus on the need for heightened military preparations. 202
Tragically, these perceptions of threat were based on a fundamental mis- reading of Western intentions. The Western powers were not engaged in a new campaign to overthrow Bolshevism; instead, their seemingly hostile re- actions were for the most part defensive responses to the activities and rhetoric of the Comintern and the Soviet government's reluctance to explic- itly disavow the export of revolution. This reluctance also gave conserva- tives in the West abundant ammunition with which to oppose a further accommodation with Moscow, and the Manichean nature of the Bolsheviks' ideology made them especially prone to take such setbacks as evidence of imperialist plots, even when their own actions were in fact responsible for them. Thus, the deterioriation of Soviet foreign relations after 11924 provides another example of the tendency for revolutionary states to engage in self- defeating spirals of suspicion with foreign powers.
These perceptions of threat played a key role in shaping the emerging doc- trine of "socialism in one country. "203 First enunciated by Bukharin in 1923 and formally adopted at the Fourteenth Party Congress in December 1925, the new policy proclaimed that the Soviet Union could build socialism with- out waiting for the revolution to spread to other countries. Strengthening the Soviet Union was now portrayed as the best way to hasten revolutions else- where, and foreign Communists were expected to support the Soviet Union even when doing so jeopardized their own revolutionary prospects. 204 Fi-
? ? 201 According to Ullman, the trade agreement with England "resulted in precious little trade--Qnly [? ]108 million in the first five years, 282 million in the first decade. " See Ullman, Anglo-Soviet Accord, 454; and also Uldricks, "Russia and Europe," 69.
202 See Uldricks, "Russia and Europe," 66-68; and Jacobson, When the Soviet Union Entered, 147-50. On Soviet military capabilities, see John Erickson, The Soviet High Command: A Mili- tary-Political History, 1918-I941 (London: Macmillan, 1962), chap. 7; and Mark von Hagen, Soldiers in the Proletarian Dictatorship: The Red Army and the Soviet Socialist State, 1917-1930 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990), 202-{;7.
203 On "socialism in one country," see Nollau, International Communism, 92-96; Eudin and Fisher, Soviet Russia and the West, 255-59, 283-85, 289-91; Carr, Socialism in One Country, 2:chap. 12; and Jacobson, When the Soviet Union Entered, 14o-43.
204 As Stalin put it in 1927, "he is a revolutionary who, without reservation, unconditionally, openly and honestly . . . is ready to protect and defend the USSR. " Quoted in Degras, Soviet Documents, 2:243.
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nally, because the West was unlikely to help the Soviet Union acquire the eco- nomic and military capacity it needed, the Soviet people would have to do this on their own. Although world revolution remained the touchstone of So- viet foreign policy, the emphasis increasingly shifted toward advancing So- viet state interests.
The Transformation ofthe Comintern
The waning faith in world revolution and the priority attached to Sovieft state interests was clearly evident in the evolution of the Comintern. Con- vinced that the Bolshevik triumph in Russia had demonstrated the value of a disciplined, vanguard party of dedicated revolutionaries, Lenin's goal in founding the Comintern was to put this principle to work on a worldwide scale. 205 Accordingly, the platform of the First Comintern Congress in 1919 declared that its aim was to subordinate "so-called national interests to the interests of the international revolution," based on the firm belief that "the epoch of the communist revolution" was at hand. 206
Yet as we have seen, the initial wave of revolutionary optimism passed quickly. The invasion of Poland brought a burst of renewed hope to the Sec- ond Comintern Congress in August 1920, but Lenin cautioned the delegates that "in the great majority of capitalist countries the preparations of the pro- letariat . . . have not been completed, indeed in many cases have not even been systematically begun. " Accordingly, he warned, "The immediate task is to accelerate the revolution, taking care not to provoke it artificially before adequate preparations have been made. "207 Consistent with Lenin's belief that success required a disciplined and centralized revolutionary move- ment, the Second Congress approved a set of twenty-one conditions for membership, intended to eliminate "reformist" or social-democratic ten- dencies. Foreign parties were required to accept the decisions of the con- gress and the Executive Committee of the Comintem (ECCI), and members refusing to accept the Twenty-one Points were expelled. By imposing Bol-
shevik organizational principles, the congress laid the foUlndation for Rus- sian dominance within the allegedly "international" movement. 208
205 Julius Braunthal, Historyofthe International, vol. 2: 1914-43, trans. John Clark (New York: Praeger, 1967), 177.
206 Text presented in Jane Degras, ed. , The Communist International, 1 9 1 9-1943: Documents (London:OxfordUniversityPress,1956-5-6),1:17-24.
2(]7 Comintern president Gregor Zinoviev told the congress that "the decisive hour is ap- proaching," and he later recalled that the delegates had followed the progress of the Red Army in Poland "with breathless interest. " Quoted in Carr, Bolshevik Revolution, 3:188; and Degras, Communist International, 1:117-18.
208 See Degras, Communist International, 1:168-72; and also Braunthal, History ofthe Interna- tional, 1 7f>-73; Borkenau, World Communism: A History of the Communist International (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1962), 197-99; and Carr, Bolshevik Revolution, J19J--{)6.
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Revolutionary hopes had faded further by the Third Congress in July 1921, and Russian primacy was increasingly evident. Zinoviev acknowl- edged prior to the Congress that "the tempo of the international proletar- ian revolution is .
160 The text of the agreement is reprinted in Ullman, Anglo-Soviet Accord, 474-78.
161 For the details of this fascinating episode, see Ullman, Anglo-Soviet Accord, 274-81, 307-3o8.
162 Ullman,Anglo-SovietAccord,415-19,438-43.
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Thus, despite enduring suspicions, continued insecurity, deep domestic opposition, and a host of misconceptions, Britain and Russia managed to take the first step toward a more normal relationship. Above all else, their willingness to do so reveals a growing recognition of the postwar balance of threats. Although Churchill and Curzon continued to oppose the trade agreement on the grounds that Soviet Russia "makes no secret of its inten- tions to overthrow our institutions everywhere," the claim that the Soviet
government could be toppled easily was now untenable. Lloyd George drew the obvious conclusion: if Bolshevism could not be eliminated, then Britain should come to terms with it. Similarly, although Soviet leaders had not abandoned their hope for a world revolution, they were begin- ning to realize that it might not be imminent and were becoming increas- ingly aware of their own economic liabilities. 163 Agreeing to mute their propaganda offensive was a small price to pay for recognition and the restoration of trade, which they believed would foster recovery and dis- courage a renewed imperialist offensive. Not surprisingly, similar calcula-
tions were beginning to shape Soviet relations with a number of other countries as well.
Soviet Diplomacy in Asia
The Soviet government saw the developing world as a natural ally in the struggle against imperialism, and the liberation of the colonial areas re- ceived particular attention at the Second Comintern Congress in July and August of 1920. 164 The Soviets began cultivating close ties with Persia, Afghanistan, Turkey, and China during this period. In each case, the desire to enhance the security of the Soviet state proved stronger than the commit- ment to world revolution.
Before World War I, Persia's position in international politics was defined by the Anglo-Russian Convention of 1907, which gave Russia a sphere of in- fluence in the north of Persia and Britain a sphere of influence in the south. The Soviet government renounced these treaty rights in January 1918, and British forces moved into the vacuum as Russia withdrew. The pro-British Cabinet of Vusuq al-Dawlah signed a new Anglo-Persian treaty on August
163 In November, Lenin admitted, "Though we have not yet won a world victory . . . we have fought our way into a position where we can coexist with the capitalist powers, who now are forced to have trade relations with us. " In December, he acknowledged that "the speed, the tempo, at which revolution is developing in the capitalist countries is far slower than it was in our country. " Quotations from Ullman, Anglo-Soviet Accord, 412; and Lazitch and Drachkovitch, Lenin and the Comintern, 1:540.
164 At the congress, Lenin called for "the closest alliance, with Soviet Russia, of all the na- tional and colonial liberation movements. " Lenin, Selected Works, 3:434; and Carr, Bolshevik Revolution, 3:251-59.
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9, 1919; had it been ratified, the agreement would have given Britain de facto control over much of Persia's foreign and domestic policy. 165
Britain's attempt to solidify its influence in Persia sparked a storm of protests, however, and the situation was complicated further when Mirza Kuchik Khan, a dissident nationalist, proclaimed an independent "Republic of Gilan" in northern Persia and began receiving aid and military backing from the Soviet regime in Azerbaijan. The British withdrawal from northern Persia following a Soviet raid on Enzeli shook Persian confidence in British protection, and the Persian government quickly dispatched an envoy to Russia to negotiate the resumption of relations.
British officials responded by arranging for a Persian colonel, Reza Shah, to conduct a coup d'etat in January 1921. 166 This move appeared to backfire when Reza denounced the Anglo-Persian agreement and signed a formal treaty of friendship with the Soviet government in February 1921. The Sovi- ets again renounced any special privileges in Persia, but the treaty autho- rized their entry "should a third power intervene with armed force" on Persian territory. 167 Reza Shah carefully maintained his freedom of action, however, suppressing local Communists and refusing to allow the Soviet ambassador to enter Tehran until all Soviet forces had withdrawn from Per- sian soil. The Soviets abandoned KUchik Khan as relations with Tehran im- proved, and the "Republic of Gilan" quickly collapsed. All told, the initial course of Soviet-Persian relations offered an early indication of Moscow's willingness to disregard immediate revolutionary objectives for the sake of tangible diplomatic benefits. 168
Soviet relations with Afghanistan followed a similar pattern. Prior to World War I, Afghanistan lay largely within the British sphere of influence, but the revolution in Russia inspired Emir Amanullah to declare war on
165 The Soviets renounced any "spheres of influence and exclusive interests" in Persia at Brest-Litovsk, and Lenin sent a formal message to the government of Persia "repudiating all Tsarist privileges and agreements that are contrary to the sovereignty of Persia. " See R. K. Ra- mazani, The Foreign Policy ofIran, 150o-1941: A Developing Nation in World Affairs (Char- lottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1966), 148-51; Carr, Bolshevik Revolution, 3:232 n. 2; George Lenczowski, Russia and the West in Iran, 1918-1948 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1949), 49-50; and Harish Kapur, Soviet Russia and Asia, 1917-1927 (Geneva: Michael Joseph,
1966), 154?
166 For an account of the coup that stresses the British role, see Ullman, Anglo-Soviet Accord, 355-57, 376-8;8 for a version downplaying it, see Ramazani, Foreign Policy of Iran, 176-77.
167 The Soviet-Persian treaty was an obvious attempt to balance against Great Britain, but Reza Shah recognized that Russia was a potential threat as well. He therefore tried to main- tain cordial relations with Britain and the United States, a policy consistent with Persia's tra- ditional practice of seeking third powers to balance British and Soviet pressure. See Ramazani, Foreign PolicyofIran, 203-11, 3o8-309.
168 The Soviet ambassador told Khan, "Soviet Russia at this time regards all revolutionary movements as not only fruitless but also harmful. Therefore, Soviet Russia has adopted a new form of policy as evidenced by its new treaty with the government of Iran. " Quoted in R a m a z a n i , F o r e i g n P o l i c y of I r a n , 1 9 1 .
[18o]
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Britain in April 1919 and request aid from Moscow. The Soviet government was in no position to help, however, and Amanullah's forces were soon de- feated. Britairi acknowledged Afghan independence in August, and Lenin subsequently sent a telegram to the emir proposing a trade agreement and a treaty of friendship directed against "the most rapacious imperialist gov- ernment on Earth-Great Britain. "169
This offer led directly to the Soviet-Afghan treaty of February 1921. Ideo- logical solidarity played no role in this agreement (if anything, Amanullah's pan-Islamic beliefs were a potential threat to Soviet control in Central Asia), and the treaty failed to prevent a number of serious disagreements between Moscow and Kabul. 170 Like the Persians, the Afghanis were primarily inter- ested in balancing between Britain and Russia, and the Soviet-Afghan treaty was followed by a similar agreement with Great Britain in November.
Russia's policy toward Afghanistan offers further evidence of its prag- matic approach to diplomatic relations with the border states, particularly in areas where the threat of imperialist interference was especially acute. E. H. Carr notes, "What was significant in all this was not the extension of propaganda for world revolution but the succession of Soviet Russia to the traditional Russian role as Britain's chief rival in central Asia. "171
Soviet policy toward Turkey also sought to counter Western (especially British) influence. Tsarist Russia and the Ottoman Empire had been rivals for centuries, but Soviet Russia and the new Turkish state found them- selves united by a number of common interests. Clandestine discussions between Karl Radek and several prominent members of the Young Turk movement had already raised the possibility of a Soviet-Turkish alliance against British imperialism. Chicherin broadcast a radio message warning of the dangers of imperialism and proposing Soviet-Turkish cooperation to "expel the European robbers" in September 1919. Until the summer of
1920, however, Soviet hopes rested primarily on the Turkish Communist movement. 172
As discussed at length below in chapter 6, foreign interference in Turkey eventually caused a nationalist revolution led by Mustafa Kemal Pasha, a prominent Ottoman general. In April 1920, when the revolt was well un- derway, Kemal sent a formal note to Moscow proposing diplomatic rela-
169 Lenin'smessagecongratulatedtheAfghanpeopleontheirstruggleagainst"foreignop- pressors" and referred to the "wide possibilities for mutual aid against any attack by foreign bandits on the freedom of others. " Quoted in Fischer, Soviets in World Affairs, 1:285-86.
}29CH)2.
171 BolshevikRevolution,3:292. 172 Ibid. , 3:244-47?
170 The
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main dispute concerned the emir of Bokhara, who was ousted by a Bolshevik "Young Bokharan" movement in September 1920. The emir fled to Afghanistan while his supporters tried to oust the new government, and this incident delayed the Soviet-Afghan treaty for several months. See Kapur, Soviet Russia and Asia, 222-28; Carr, Bolshevik Revolution,
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tions and a joint "struggle against foreign imperialism which threatens both countries. "173
The harsh peace terms imposed at Versailles accelerated the Soviet-Turk- ish rapprochement. Turkey and Russia began direct negotiations in Moscow in July, and a Soviet representative arrived in Ankara in November. A friendship treaty emphasizing "their solidarity in the struggle against im- perialism" was signed in March 1921; six months later, the Treaty of Kars settled the remaining border disputes between the new Turkish state and the Soviet republics of Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. 174
Despite these favorable developments, Russia and Turkey faced several enduring disputes during this period. Both states still coveted parts of Transcaucasia, and Kemal's overt anti-Communism was an obvious irritant as well. Soviet self-interest soon overcame any ideological inclinations, and Russia sent a military delegation to Ankara in November 1921 and agreed to provide a subsidy of 3? 5 million gold rubles and enough arms and amum ni- tion for three divisions. This gesture did little to bind Turkey to Moscow, however, and when the Greeks withdrew following their final defeat in 1922, Kemal moved away from Moscow and suppressed the Turkish Com- munist Party even more vigorously. Turkey also reversed its earlier position
on the Turkish Straits and agreed to negotiate a new arrangement with the . Western powers. The Soviets' response to these setbacks was restrained, a policy that paid off when Turkey insisted that Russia be invited to partici- pate in the negotiations for a new straits regime. 175
On the whole, Soviet relations with Persia, Afghanistan, and Turkey are best seen as attempts to balance against a common threat. They are thus en- tirely consistent with the dictates of realpolitik. At the same time, Bolshevik ideology clearly affected Moscow's evaluation of alternative partners. The 1921 friendship treaties both stabilized Soviet relations with three of its neighboring countries and presented a worrisome threat to Western influ- ence in the developing world. Although maintaining these connections re- quired Moscow to overlook the persecution of local Communist groups, it was a small price to pay for such obvious diplomatic benefits.
The Far East did not at first appear to be an area of great revolutionary potential. The "Congress of Peoples of the East" held in Baku in 1920 fo- cused primarily on the Near East and South Asia, and the first "Congress of Toilers of the Far East" did not meet until January 1922. The Soviet govern- ment played a only minor role in the founding of the Chinese and Japanese
173 Quoted in ibid. , 248; and also see Salahi Ramsdan Sonyel, Turkish Diplomacy, 1918-1923: Mustafa Kemal and the Turkish National Movement (Beverly Hills, Calif. : Sage, 1973), 39-42?
174 In an obvious attempt to exclude the Entente, the Treaty of Kars also declared that Rus- sia and Turkey would negotiate a new treaty governing the Straits of Constantinople. See De- gras, Soviet Documents, 1:237-42, 263? 9; and Kapur, Soviet Russia and Asia, 107.
? 175 See Kapur, Soviet Russia and Asia, 109-14, 124-30.
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Communist parties, neither of which was a significant political force at this stage. 176 Lack of interest in the Far East was also a function of timing, as So- viet hopes for an imminent "world revolution" had begun to fade by the time the civil war was over and contact with the Far East restored. As a re- sult, Soviet policy in the Far East initially eschewed direct efforts to foment revolution and focused on reasserting traditional Russian interests.
The task of restoring Soviet power in the Far East was complicated by the turbulent situation in China and the ambiguous status of Outer Mongolia and Manchuria. The overthrow of the Manchu dynasty in 1911 had failed to produce an effective government, and China was now ruled by a set of com- peting warlords. The official government in Beijing saw the collapse of Russian power in 1917 as a chance to reassert its authority over Outer Mon- golia and the Chinese Eastern Railway, and China also sent a token force to Vladivostok during the Allied intervention and set up a satellite regime in the Mongolian capital of Urga in the fall of 1919. 177
The Soviets' policy toward China was quite conciliatory at first, a position that reflected their own weakness. They offered to establish diplomatic re- lations immediately and renounced Russia's former privileges in Mongolia and Manchuria. Communications between Moscow and the Far East had been cut off by the civil war, however, and this offer did not reach Beijing until March 1920. Circumstances had changed dramatically by then: a group of rival warlords had ousted the Beijing government, the Whites were nearing defeat, and foreign involvement in the civil war was drawing to a close. When a Chinese delegation finally arrived in Moscow in October
1920, therefore, the Soviet government abandoned its earlier offers and in- sisted on its former rights to the Chinese Eastern Railway. After several false starts and a protracted series of negotiations, the two sides signed a treaty resolving the railway issue and establishing de jure recognition in May 1924. Although Chicherin hailed the agreement as a "historic step in the emancipation of the Eastern peoples," the Sino-Soviet treaty in fact marked the restoration of Russia's former predominance over the official govern- ment in Beijing. 176
176 The Chinese Communist Party had fewer than one hundred members at its founding in 1921, and Zinoviev told the Congress of the Toilers of the Far East in January 1922 that the Communist parties in the East "represent at present only small groups. " See Xenia Eudin and Robert C. North, Soviet Russia and the East, 192o-1927: A Documentary Survey (Stanford: Stan- ford University Press, 1957), 222.
m See Allen S. Whiting, Soviet Policies in China, 1917-1924 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1954), 26--28; Tang, Russian and Soviet Policy, 115-21, 36<>-65; Carr, Bolshevik Revolution, 3:491; and Bruce A. Ellemann, "Secret Sino-Soviet Negotiations on Outer Mongolia, 1918-1925,'' Pacific Affairs 66, no. 4 (1993-94).
178 The treaty renounced several earlier concessions and acknowledged Chinese sover- eignty in? Outer Mongolia, but it also gave Moscow the dominant role in managing the Chi- nese Eastern Railway. Allen Whiting observes, "whatever good intentions may have
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The reestablishment of Russian power was even more apparent in the conquest of Outer Mongolia. The turmoil in China had enabled a Cossack adventurer named Baron von Ungem-Stemberg to seize power in Urga in February 1921, but his regime was quickly ousted by Soviet troops in July. A Provisional People's Government "invited" the Soviet troops to remain, and the new "Mongolian People's Republic" signed a treaty restoring Russia's traditional predominance in November. 179
The Japanese withdrawal from Siberia gave an additional boost to Rus- sia's reemergence in the Far East. Pressure from the United States and Great Britain, together with the costs of occupation and the ascendancy of a mod- erate faction in Tokyo, had led Japan to begin a withdrawal from Siberia in 1922. Taliks between Japanese and Soviet representatives were unsucccessful at first, but discussions resumed in January 1923 and culminated in an agreement on "basic rules of relations" two years later. 180 The agreement es- tablished normal diplomatic and consular relations and committed both powers to additional negotiations on a range of other issues. It also com- mitted the signatories "to live in peace and amity with each other" and to refrain from "any act overt or covert liable in any way whatever to endan- ger the order and security" in either state's territory. Negotiations to replace the 1907 Russo-Japanese Fishery Convention began shortly thereafter, andl a new agreement was eventually signed two years later. 181
These advances were possible because both sides were willing to over- look ideological differences for the sake of tangible diplomatic benefits. 182 For the ]apanese, detente with the Soviet Union provided a counterweight to British and U. S. pressure. Japanese officials also hoped that access to the Russian market would spur their sputtering economy. The Soviets shared the hope that trade would accelerate their own recovery, but they also sought fro prevent the capitalist powers from forming an anti-Soviet bloc in the Far East. Soviet-Japanese cooperation was based entirely on self-
prompted the revolutionary foreign policy of self-denial in 1917-1918, by 1923 Soviet Russia was looking at the Far East exactly as had Tsarist Russia. " See his Soviet Policies in China, 28-30, 200; and also Eudin and North, Soviet Russia and the East, 128-30, 245-48, 316-18; Tang, Russian and Soviet Policy, 138-41, 148-78; and Degras, Soviet Documents, 1:212-15.
? 179 See Thomas T. Hammond, "The Soviet Takeover of Outer Mongolia: Model for Eastern Europe? " in his Anatomy of Communist Takeovers; and Carr, Bolshevik Revolu tion, 3:500-502, 5 1 1-23.
180 See Carr, Bolshevik Revolution, 1:355-63, 3:536; George Alexander Lensen, Japanese Recog- nition ofthe USSR: Soviet-Japanese Relations, 1921-1930 (Tokyo: Sophia University with the Diplomatic Press, 1970), 11; and Debo, Survival and Consolidation, 381-89.
181 Lensen, Japanese Recognition, 177-95 and chap. 9; Eudin and North, Soviet Russia and the East, 253; and Edward Hallett Carr, Socialism in One Country, 1924-1926 (New York: Macmil- lan, 1958-64), J:87<r76.
182 This policy required certain compromises; for example, the Soviets agreed to refrain from revolutionary activities in Japan and to observe the elaborate religious etiquette of the imperial court. See Lensen, Japanese Recognition, 318, 345?
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interest, therefore, and as Lensen notes, "neither party lowered its guard. "183 The Japanese government continued to repress local Commu- nists and kept the Soviet representatives in Japan under surveillance, but these policies did not prevent the two states from making deals. As in Turkey, Persia, and elsewhere, in short, spreading revolution remained a secondary objective. 184
Viewed as a whole, Soviet relations in Asia were recovering rapidly by the end of 1924. The Soviet government had signed treaties of friendship with Persia, Afghanistan, and Turkey; Japan was withdrawing from Russian soil and moving toward recognition, and Moscow had regained control of most of Siberia and Outer Mongolia and reestablished its primacy in the Chinese Railway Zone. These achievements were facilitated by Moscow's willingness to subordinate its revolutionary goals to more immediate polit- ical imperatives, but the lingering commitment to world revolution would have more pernicious effects in the years to come.
Alliance ofOutcasts: The Soviet-German Rapprochement
Allied intervention had pushed Soviet Russia toward Germany even be- fore World War I was over; after the war, the two states were drawn together by their shared status as pariahs and their mutual hostility toward Poland and the Entente. Germany was also the main object of the Bolsheviks' revo- lutionary ambitions, however, and Soviet policy toward the Weimar Re-
public combined efforts to cultivate close political and mili? ary ties with shakier attempts to spark a proletarian revolution. Repeated failures taught the Soviets to focus on direct diplomatic and military cooperation, but be- cause their faifrh in Germany's revolutionary potential proved extremely re- silient, this learning process was surprisingly slow and erratic. 185
Origins. At the end of World War I, Soviet-German relations were not promising. The Bolsheviks viewed the Social Democratic Party in Germany with contempt and expected it to collapse in the face of continued revolu- tionary agitation. Relations were also troubled by the presence of German military units in the Baltic region, where they fought against both Allied
183 Japan refused an offer of Soviet aid after a major earthquake in 1924, fearing that the aid mission might be an instrument of Communist subversion. The Japanese Communist Party disbanded in 1924 and was reconstituted in 1925-26, but government repression kept it on the fringes of Japanese political life. See Lensen, Japanese Recognition, 137-43; Eudin and North, Soviet Russia and the East, 272-79; and Carr, Socialism in One Country, 3:883-iJ4?
184 Lensen concludes in his detailed study of Soviet-Japanese relations, "In the late 1920s, the Russian leaders took pains not to jeopardize Soviet-Japanese relations by overt subver- sion. " Japanese Recognition, 361.
185 See Edward Hallett Carr, German-Soviet Relations between the Two World Wars (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1951), 25-26.
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and Bolshevik forces during the civil war. 186 Although German officials were already contemplating a closer relationship with Russia, the belief that Bol- shevism was both potentially threatening and unlikely to survive dictated a cautious response. Thus, when some German officers proposed an alliance with Soviet Russia against the Versailles Treaty, the commander of the Ger- man Army, Wilhelm Groener, stated that "an alliance with Russia, that is with Bolshevism, is something for which I cannot take the responsibility. "187
Resentment of the harsh terms imposed at Versailles soon overruled these reservations. As one German diplomat later recalled, most of his colleagues "were more sympathetic to the West than to the East'' but the Versailles Treaty revealed that "the West was much the more dangerous foe. " This view was especially pronounced within the German millltary, where an al- liance with Russia was expected to provide an outlet for German industry in the short term and to improve Germany's bargaining position over time. 188 Gwener's successor, General Helmut von Seeckt, believed that the danger of Communist subversion did not preclude closer ties between the two governments, and he soon decided that "a political and economic agreement with Russia [would be] an irrevocable purpose of our policy. "189
Progress toward rapprochement was swift. Germany had already refused to honor the Allied blockade of Russia in November 1919, and the two states signed an agreement for the release of prisoners in April 1920 and ex- changed diplomatic representatives in June. Berlin took a decidedly pro- Soviet position during the Russo-Polish war, refusing to permit the Allies to send military supplies to the Poles across German territory and briefly rais- ing the possibility of territorial adjustments in the event of a Soviet vic- tory. 190 By the end of 1920, Von Seeckt had established a special bureau to
study the "possibilities of cooperation with the Red Army" and powerful external forces were now pushing the two countries together despite their ideological differences. Lenin observed in November: "The German bour- geois government madly hates the Bolsheviks, but the interests of the inter-
186 See Robert G. Waite, Vanguard ofNazism: The Free Corps Movement in Postwar Germany, 1918-1923 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1952), chap. 5?
1 87 At the same time, Groener told the cabinet that Germany "must do what is required to secure Russia's friendship in the future. " See Freund, Unholy Alliance, 3? 40, 43? There is some ambiguous evidence of informal military cooperation between Russia and Germany in October 1919; for details, see Carr, Bolshevik Revolution, 3:247, 361.
188 Quoted in Freund, Unholy Alliance, 4?
50; and Carr, Bolshevik Revolution, 312-19.
189 Quoted in Freund, UnholyAlliance, 46. .
190 On Germany and the blockade, see Robert H. Haigh, David S. Morris, and Anthony R.
Peters, German-Soviet Relations in the Weimar Era: Friendshipfrom Necessity (Totowa, N. J. : Barnes and Noble, 1985), 61-62. During the Russo-Polish war, some German officials feared that the Red Army might continue on to Germany, while Von Seeckt and others believed that a Soviet victory would be a powerful blow against the entire Versailles system. See Freund, Unholy Alliance, 6? 73; and Werner T. Angress, Stillborn Revolution: The Communist Bid for Power in Germany, 1921-23 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963), So-81.
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? The Russian Revolution
national situation are pushing it towards peace with Soviet Russia against its own will. " And Lenin left no doubt that Russia would welcome these overtures, because "so long as we are alone and the capitalist world is strong, . . . [we are] obliged to utilize [these] disagreements" nn the capitalist world. A preliminary economic accord was completed by mid-February, leaving the two states on the brink of a de facto alliance. l91
Yet despite the failure of the Spartacist uprisings in Berlin in January 1919 and the collapse of the short-lived Communist republic in Bavaria in May, the Soviet government had not lost all hope in the revolutionary potential of the German working class. In March 1920, an abortive coup by right-wing forces (the so-called Kapp putsch) sparked a general strike in Berlin and a brief Communist uprising in the Ruhr. Lenin now predicted that "the time is not far off when we shall march hand in hand with a German Soviet gov- ernment. " Soviet diplomats helped smuggle arms and explosives to Com- munist groups in Germany, and Soviet officials began to intervene directly in the internal politics of the German working-class movement. These ef- forts paid off in October 1920, when Zinoviev persuaded a majority of the Independent Socialist Party to unite with the German Communist Party
(KPD) and join the Comintern. Three months later, Comintern officials arranged the replacement of the KPD leader, Paul Levi, by officials more amenable to Soviet influence. 192
These developments culminated in the KPD's attempt to launch a prole- tarian uprising in March 1921. The party's new leaders were convinced that international and domestic conditions were ripe for revolution, and a dele- gation from the Executive Committee of the Comintem arrived in Germany at the beginning of March and began to press for an armed insurrection. The KPD proceeded to launch a violent but poorly planned revolt on March 23. Their belief that millions of non-Communist workers would rise up and join them proveol false, and the "March action" was quickly crushed. 193
191 Quoted in Carr, Bolshevik Revol! :? tion, 3:33D-31. As usual, Lenin saw cooperation with capitalist states as a temporary expedient and not a permanent option. In a prescient passage, he noted that "Germany wants revenge, and we want revolution. For the moment our aims are the same, but when our ways part, they will be our most ferocious and greatest enemies. " Quoted in Dennis, Foreign Policies ofSoviet Russia, 154-55; and see also Lionel Kochan, Russia and the Weimar Republic (Cambridge: Bowes and Bowes, 1954), 38-39; and Gordon A. Craig, The Politics of the Prussian Army (London: Oxford University Press, 1964), 409?
192 Lenin's statement is quoted in Freund, Unholy Alliance, 62. On the Spartacist uprisings and Russian manipulation of the KPD, see Angress, Stillborn Revolution, 13-31, 91-100. On the brief career of the Bavarian Soviet Republic, see Allan Mitchell, Revolution in Bavaria, 1918-1920: The Eisner Regime arad the Soviet Republic (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965).
193 The March action is described in detail by Angress in Stillborn Revolution, chap. 4, and "TheTakeoverThatRemained inLimbo:TheGermanExperience, 1918-1923," inHammond, . AnatomyofCommunist Takeovers, 176-S- o. Carr reports that KPD membership declined from 450,000 to 180,000 following the March action, and the debacle "set in motion a wave of re-
? criminations which continued for many years to split the party. " Bolshevik Revolution, J337?
? ? Revolu tion and War
A new sense of realism had set in by the time the Third Comintem Congress met in Moscow in June. Lenin now admitted that "the development of the world revolution . . . did not proceed along the direct line we anticipated," andl Trotsky told the delegates, ''We are not so immediately near . . . to the world rev? olution. In 1919 we said to ourselves: 'it is a question of months. ' Now we say: 'it is perhaps a question of years. ' " When viewed alongside the Anglo-Soviet trade agreement and the friendship treaties with Turkey, Afghanistan, and Iran, such statements were a clear sign that hopes for an immediate world revolution was declining. According to E. H. Carr, "a new and well-grounded pessimism about the prospects of the European revolution confirmed and reinforced the drive towards a temporary accommodation with the capitalist world. "194
By weakening the German left, the debacle in March 1921 made it easier for the German government to move closer to Moscow without fear of leav? ing itself vulnerable to revolutionary subversion. At the same time, the Al? lied announcement of the final reparations bill and the French decision to enforce the reparations clause by occupying parts of the Ruhr had increased! Germany's interest in an alignment with Russia. Germany and Russia signed a secret agreement in April for the production of German aircraft and! munitions in Russia, the economic agreement negotiated in January was completed in May, and the two states agreed to exchange new diplomatic representatives shortly therafter. A German military delegation arrived to provide advice. for the restoration of Russia's military industries, and covert meetings between Soviet and German officers continued through the fall. 195
Rapallo and After. The conference in Genoa in April 1922 brought the Soviet-German rapprochement out into the open. The conference was orig- inally intended to create an international consortium for European recon- struction, including the restoration of regular commerce with Russia. As part of the new policy of peaceful coexistence, Chicherin had issued a for- mal note in October 1921 stating Russia's willingness to make concessions on the debt issue and proposing a conference "to consider the claims of the Powers against Russia and of Russia against the Powers, and to draw up at definite treaty of peace between them. " Following a suggestion from Lloyd George, the Supreme Allied Council agreed to combine the two goals and is- sued a resolution calling for an economic and financial conference "to rem- edy the paralysis of the European system. " 196
194 Quotations from Eudin and Fisher, Soviet Russia and the West, 82-84; and Carr, Bolshevik Revolution, }:338, 385.
? 195 See Freund, Unholy Alliance, 93-94; Craig, Politics ofthe Prussian Army, 409-11; and Hans W. Gatzke, "Russo-German Military Collaboration during the Weimar Republic," American Historical Review 63, no. 3 (1958).
I% The Soviet note is in Degras, Soviet Documents, 1:27<r72; the resolution by the Supreme Allied Council is quoted in Eudin and Fisher, Soviet Russia and the West, 98. Lenin personally
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? The Russian Revolution
Unfortunately, the collapse of the Briand government in France returned Rene Poincare to power in January 1922, and his steadfast refusal to alter the reparations arrangements ended any possibility of creating an international body for European recovery. Relations with Russia became the main item of discussion by default, and the German delegates began to fear that the Western powers were about to make a separate deal with Russia. To avoid complete isolation, they accepted a Soviet invitation for a clandestine meet- ing in the neal! "by town of Rapallo and signed an agreement restoring diplo- matic relations between Germany and Russia and committing both powers to consult each other before signing international economic agreements. The Rapallo agreement prevented the Allies from excluding either power from a more general settlement and offered the first sign of an overt Soviet-German alignment. 197
Soviet-German cooperation expanded considerably the following year.
The two states exchanged ambassadors after Rapallo and signed a conven- tion for military cooperation in August. The Soviets supported Germany when the French occupied the Ruhr in January 1923; Izvestiya declared, "So- viet Russia in her own vital interests cannot permit the final su1bjugation and destruction of Germany by . . . France and her vassals," and Bukharin an- nounced that the Red Army would probably intervene if Poland tried to take advantage of Germany's present weakness. 198
The blossoming Soviet-German relationship was soon threatened by an- other misguided outburst of revolutionary enthusiasm. The Soviets' faith in an imminent world revolution had declined steadily after the March action in 1921, but this objective revived whenever conditions seemed more en- couraging. Germany was now reeling from a combination of hyperinflation and domestic political paralysis, and the crisis helped the KPD recover from its earlier setbacks. Several Soviet officials saw the fall of the Cuno cabinet in August as a sign that the German revolution was finally at hand and con- vinced themselves that the German proletariat would rise up once the initial blow had fallen. Lenin's second stroke had removed him as a restraining in-
fluence and the KPD gradually succumbed to Soviet pressure. The day of the insurrection was fixed for November 7, and the campaign began with the appointment of KPD chief Heinrich Brandler and several other KPD members to ministerial posts in the state government of Saxony. The Ger- man chancellor, Gustav Stresemann, quickly obtained emergency powers and ordered the army into Saxony to dissolve the local government. At-
? ? edited Chicherin's speech to the conference in order to eliminate any revolutionary rhetoric that might alarm the other great powers. See Uldricks, "Russia and Europe," 62 n. 27.
197 As Freund points out, "more important than the formal contents of the treaty was the fact that Germany and Russia had dared to sign it. " Unholy Alliance, 118.
198 See Freund, Unholy Alliance, 125-26, 142-46, 152-53.
? ? tempts to organize a general strike were ineffective and the KPD decided to cancel the insurrection. Owing to a failure in communications, however, the KPD organization in Hamburg went ahead and began fthe revolt, but it was easily suppressed by government forces. The German revolution had ff'nz- zled once again, further discrediting the advocates of world revolution. 199
Beginning in 1920, the Soviet Union and the capitalist powers had made a genuine attempt to establish more normal relations. Soviet leaders began to acknowledge that world revolution might not occur for quite some time-so capitalism and socalism could be forced to coexist indefinitely- and they were increasingly confident that the Soviet regime would survive. Western leaders had reached similar conclusions; although the Sovnet regime could not be removed at an acceptable cost, the danger that Bolshe- vism would spark a wave of revolutionary upheavals seemed less worri- some as well. As their perceptions of threat declined, in short, both sides became more willing to explore a more normal relationship.
The effects of this development were readily apparent The British La:bour Party took office for the first time in January 1924 and Britain and Italy ex- tended de jure recognition to the Soviet Union the following month. A host of other countries (Austria, Denmark, Greece, Hungary, Mexico, and Swe- den) soon followed suit, and France finally took the plunge in October. As one Soviet commentator proudly declared in March, the Soviet Union was becoming "a full-fledged member on the chessboard of international diplo- macy. "2oo
199 According to Werner Angress, "in their eagerness to revive the revolutionary wave in Europe, the Bolshevik leaders succumbed to wishful thinking, to a misjudgment of the true situation in Germany, and to the temptation to sponsor a 'German October' uprising. " See Stillborn Revolution, 378, 394--<)7; Isaac Deutscher, The Prophet Unarmed, Trotsky: 1921-1929 (London: Oxford University Press, 1959), 142-44; Lerner, Radek, 123-25; and Edward Hallett Carr, The Interregnum: 1923-24 (New York: Macmillan, 1954), 201-204, 212-15.
200 See Eudin and Fisher, Soviet Russia and the West, 191--<)2, 235; Carr, Interregnum, 251-52. The United States was the main exception to this trend; it refused to recognize a power "whose conceptions of international relations are so alien to its own, so utterly repugmmt to its moral sense. " Foreign Relations of the United States, 1920 (Washington, D. C. : U. S. Gov- ernment Printing Office, 1936), 3:463-68. Nonrecognition did not prevent the United States from providing extensive relief aid during a devastating famine in 1921-22, but Soviet of-
ficials regarded the relief mission with suspicion and did not revise their hostile image of the United States. U. S. business firms did begin establishing economic ties with Russia, however, and U. S. exports to Russia quadrupled between 1923 and 1924 while imports in- creased sevenfold. The United States was responsible for one-third of Soviet foreign trade in 1925 and by 1927 U. S. investments in Russia were second only to Germany's. See Ben- jamin M. Weissman, Herbert Hoover and Famine Relief to Soviet Russia, 1921-23 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1974); Joan Hoff Wilson, Ideology and Economics: U. S. Relations with the Soviet Union, 1918-1933 (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1974); Peter G. Fi- lene, Americans and the Soviet Experiment, . 1 9 1 7-1933 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967).
Revolution and War
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"SociALISM IN ONJE CouNTRY"
The year 1924 was the high-water mark of peaceful coexistence, and So- viet relations with the outside world deteriorated sharply thereafter. Efforts to integrate the Soviet Union into the world economy had failed to generate the expected levels of foreign trade and investment, and the Western pow- ers continued to regard the USSR with considerable suspicion. 201 A series of diplomatic setbacks convinced key Soviet officials that the danger of an im- perialist war was growing and contributed to the growing consensus on the need for heightened military preparations. 202
Tragically, these perceptions of threat were based on a fundamental mis- reading of Western intentions. The Western powers were not engaged in a new campaign to overthrow Bolshevism; instead, their seemingly hostile re- actions were for the most part defensive responses to the activities and rhetoric of the Comintern and the Soviet government's reluctance to explic- itly disavow the export of revolution. This reluctance also gave conserva- tives in the West abundant ammunition with which to oppose a further accommodation with Moscow, and the Manichean nature of the Bolsheviks' ideology made them especially prone to take such setbacks as evidence of imperialist plots, even when their own actions were in fact responsible for them. Thus, the deterioriation of Soviet foreign relations after 11924 provides another example of the tendency for revolutionary states to engage in self- defeating spirals of suspicion with foreign powers.
These perceptions of threat played a key role in shaping the emerging doc- trine of "socialism in one country. "203 First enunciated by Bukharin in 1923 and formally adopted at the Fourteenth Party Congress in December 1925, the new policy proclaimed that the Soviet Union could build socialism with- out waiting for the revolution to spread to other countries. Strengthening the Soviet Union was now portrayed as the best way to hasten revolutions else- where, and foreign Communists were expected to support the Soviet Union even when doing so jeopardized their own revolutionary prospects. 204 Fi-
? ? 201 According to Ullman, the trade agreement with England "resulted in precious little trade--Qnly [? ]108 million in the first five years, 282 million in the first decade. " See Ullman, Anglo-Soviet Accord, 454; and also Uldricks, "Russia and Europe," 69.
202 See Uldricks, "Russia and Europe," 66-68; and Jacobson, When the Soviet Union Entered, 147-50. On Soviet military capabilities, see John Erickson, The Soviet High Command: A Mili- tary-Political History, 1918-I941 (London: Macmillan, 1962), chap. 7; and Mark von Hagen, Soldiers in the Proletarian Dictatorship: The Red Army and the Soviet Socialist State, 1917-1930 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990), 202-{;7.
203 On "socialism in one country," see Nollau, International Communism, 92-96; Eudin and Fisher, Soviet Russia and the West, 255-59, 283-85, 289-91; Carr, Socialism in One Country, 2:chap. 12; and Jacobson, When the Soviet Union Entered, 14o-43.
204 As Stalin put it in 1927, "he is a revolutionary who, without reservation, unconditionally, openly and honestly . . . is ready to protect and defend the USSR. " Quoted in Degras, Soviet Documents, 2:243.
? ? Revolution and War
nally, because the West was unlikely to help the Soviet Union acquire the eco- nomic and military capacity it needed, the Soviet people would have to do this on their own. Although world revolution remained the touchstone of So- viet foreign policy, the emphasis increasingly shifted toward advancing So- viet state interests.
The Transformation ofthe Comintern
The waning faith in world revolution and the priority attached to Sovieft state interests was clearly evident in the evolution of the Comintern. Con- vinced that the Bolshevik triumph in Russia had demonstrated the value of a disciplined, vanguard party of dedicated revolutionaries, Lenin's goal in founding the Comintern was to put this principle to work on a worldwide scale. 205 Accordingly, the platform of the First Comintern Congress in 1919 declared that its aim was to subordinate "so-called national interests to the interests of the international revolution," based on the firm belief that "the epoch of the communist revolution" was at hand. 206
Yet as we have seen, the initial wave of revolutionary optimism passed quickly. The invasion of Poland brought a burst of renewed hope to the Sec- ond Comintern Congress in August 1920, but Lenin cautioned the delegates that "in the great majority of capitalist countries the preparations of the pro- letariat . . . have not been completed, indeed in many cases have not even been systematically begun. " Accordingly, he warned, "The immediate task is to accelerate the revolution, taking care not to provoke it artificially before adequate preparations have been made. "207 Consistent with Lenin's belief that success required a disciplined and centralized revolutionary move- ment, the Second Congress approved a set of twenty-one conditions for membership, intended to eliminate "reformist" or social-democratic ten- dencies. Foreign parties were required to accept the decisions of the con- gress and the Executive Committee of the Comintem (ECCI), and members refusing to accept the Twenty-one Points were expelled. By imposing Bol-
shevik organizational principles, the congress laid the foUlndation for Rus- sian dominance within the allegedly "international" movement. 208
205 Julius Braunthal, Historyofthe International, vol. 2: 1914-43, trans. John Clark (New York: Praeger, 1967), 177.
206 Text presented in Jane Degras, ed. , The Communist International, 1 9 1 9-1943: Documents (London:OxfordUniversityPress,1956-5-6),1:17-24.
2(]7 Comintern president Gregor Zinoviev told the congress that "the decisive hour is ap- proaching," and he later recalled that the delegates had followed the progress of the Red Army in Poland "with breathless interest. " Quoted in Carr, Bolshevik Revolution, 3:188; and Degras, Communist International, 1:117-18.
208 See Degras, Communist International, 1:168-72; and also Braunthal, History ofthe Interna- tional, 1 7f>-73; Borkenau, World Communism: A History of the Communist International (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1962), 197-99; and Carr, Bolshevik Revolution, J19J--{)6.
? ? The Russian Revolution
Revolutionary hopes had faded further by the Third Congress in July 1921, and Russian primacy was increasingly evident. Zinoviev acknowl- edged prior to the Congress that "the tempo of the international proletar- ian revolution is .
