No More Learning

? ? 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 . . . somewhat slowed down," and Lenin told the assembled delegates that "the international revolution we predicted is developing, but not along the straight line we expected. " The congress approved a set of theses declaring that "the first period of the post-war revolutionary movement . . . seems in essentials to be over" and con- cluded that "world revolution will require a fairly long period of revolu- tionary struggle. "209
The prospects for rapid revolutionary advances had declined even more by the Fourth Congress in November 1922. Lenin's report struck a pes- simistic tone, and he warned that "all the parties which are preparing to take the direct offensive against capitalism in the near future must now give thought to the problem of preparing for a possible re? reat. " Even the normally exuberant Zinoviev cautioned against "precipitate action and un- prepared risings," and Karl Radek, the Polish Bolshevik now serving as ECCI secretary, told the delegates that "the conquest of power as an imme- diate task of the day is not on the agenda. "210 In response, the congress abandoned the narrow sectarianism of the Twenty-one Points and directed foreign Communists to form "united fronts" with non-Communist labor
parties. 211
The failure of the October 1923 uprising in Germany accelerated these trends. The Fifth Comintern Congress in the summer of 1924 conceded that "the bourgeoisie had succeeded almost everywhere in carrying out success- fully its attack on the proletariat. " This theme continued at the fifth ECCI plenum in March 1925, with Stalin announcing that "in the center of Eu- rope, . . . the period of revolutionary upsurge has already ended. " This view was reinforced by the parallel claim that the Soviet order had stabilized it- self as well, which implied that the two systems might coexist for some time. This conclusion strengthened the case for a policy of "socialism in one
209 In his own speech, Trotsky conceded that in 1918-19 "it seemed . . . that the working class would in a year or two achieve State power . . . [but) History has granted the bour- geoisie a fairly long breathing spell. " Quotations from Carr, Bolshevik Revolution, 3:384; Eudin and Fisher, Soviet Russia and the West, 82-87; and Degras, Communist International, 1:230, 243.
210 See Lenin, Selected Works, 3:719; Carr, Bolshevik Revolution, 3:443-48; Eudin and Fisher, Soviet Russia and the West, 122; and Braunthal, History of the International, 257.
211 The aim was to unite the working class under Communist leadership, though the offi- cial line alternated between endorsing tactical alliances with the leaders of non-Communist labor parties (the united front "from above") and attempting to persuade members of rival parties to join the Communists (the united front "from below"). See Degras, Communist In- ternational, 1:307-22; Eudin and Fisher, Soviet Russia and the West, 201-202; Carr, Bolshevik Rev- olution, 389-92, 406-12, 422-25, and Socialism in One Country, 3:79-8- 1, 525-30, 937-38; and Borkenau, World Communism, chap. 12.
[1931
? Revolution and War
country," and the theme of stabilization remained a central tenet of Com- intern doctrine for the next four years. 212
Soviet authority within the Comintern increased as faith in world revolu- tion faded. The Third Congress had declared that "unconditional support of Soviet Russia remains . . . the cardinal duty of the communists of all coun- tries," and d\espite Lenin's warning that the Comintern was becoming "too Russian," the Fourth Congress approved a reorganization of the ECCI that eliminated the autonomy of the foreign parties and in Braunthal's words, made them "sections of the Russian Communist Party, ruled by the Polit- buro. " This trend was completed at the Fifth Congress in 1924, which con- firmed the authority of the ECCI and imposed even greater uniformity and discipline within the Comintern itself, with the Russian Communist Party serving as the model for the rest. 213
The transformation of the Comintern from an international revolution- ary organization to an subordinate agency of the Soviet state reveals a great deal about the evolution of Soviet foreign policy after 1917. The primacy of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was due to its status as the only party to have successfully gained power, reinforced by the growing depen- dence of foreign Communist parties on financial subsidies from Moscow. The emergence of the new doctrine was also influenced by the power struggle that followed Lenin's death in January 1924. The slogan of "so- cialism in one country" was an effective weapon in Stalin's campaign against Trotsky (who maintained that the creation of socialism required a world revolution but later become a leading advocate of increased eco- nomic ties with the capitalist states) because it appealed to Russian na-
tional pride and allowed Stalin to ,portray his rival as both overly pessimistic and prone to adventurism. Most important of all, "socialism in one country" was the obvious response to dim revolutionary prospects abroad; if world revolution was not on the agenda, then protecting Soviet Russia was the next best thing. 214
212 Zinoviev told the congress, "We misjudged the tempo (of world revolution): we counted in months when we had to count in years. " In June, Stalin told an audience at Sverdlov Uni- versity that there would be no proletarian revolution in the West "for ten or fifteen years. " These quotations are from McKenzie, Comintern and World Revolution, 51; Carr, Socialism in One Country, 3:73, 287; and Richard Lowenthal, World Communism: The Disintegration ofa Sec-
ular Faith (London: Oxford University Press, 1964), 292 n. 6.
213 This was known as the policy of "Bolshevization. " See Braunthal, History ofthe Interna-
tional, 261? 3; Carr, Bolshevik Revolution, 3=445-50, Socialism in One Country, 3:92? 4, 283, and Foundations ofa Planned Economy, 1926-1929 (London: Macmillan, 1969-1978) 3=122.
214 Stalin's campaign against Trotsky provided another motive for "Bolshevization," as strict discipline over foreign Communists kept Trotsky from rallying support within the Comintem, where his popularity and prestige remained high. See Carr, Socialism in One C o u n t ry , 3 : 9 0-9 4 , 2 9 3 - 3 00 ; D e u t s c h e r, P r ap h e t U n a r m e d , 1 4 6- 5 1 , 2 8 4 ? ; an d R o be r t C . T u c k e r , Stalin as Revolutionary, 1878-1919: A Study in History and Personality (New York: Norton, 1973), 384? ?
? ? ? ? ? ? The Russian Revolution
The Deterioration of Soviet Foreign Relations
RelationswiththeWest. TheSovietstrategyofpeacefulcoexistencewasin- tended to gain recognition and more normal relations with potentially hos- tile powers. Its successes included the Baltic peace treaties, the Anglo-Soviet trade agreement, the rapprochement with Germany, the friendship treaties with Turkey, Afghanistan, and Persia, and the wave of diplomatic recogni- tions in 1924. But these advances were undermined by repeated attempts to export the revolution beyond Russia's borders (as in Poland in 1920 and Germany in 1921 and 1923), and the tension between these conflicting ob- jectives impaired Soviet efforts to improve relations with the other major powers. 215 The conflicts eventually triggered sharp Western responses that reignited Soviet fears of an imperialist war and led to a sharp deterioration in the Soviet Union's international position.
This first evidence of trouble was a sudden decline in Angllo-Soviet rela- tions. The Labour government in Britain fell in October 1924, and the. Con- servative Party's return to power was aided by the publication of the so-called Zinoviev letter, a clever forgery by a group of anti-Bolshevik exiles that seemed to show the Soviet government to be actively working to top- ple the British government. The Conservative government rejected a new trade agreement that the Labour Party had negotiated the previous year, and Anglo-Soviet relations soon reached their lowest point since 1923. 216
Soviet relations with France were marred by continued wrangling over the tsarist debts and by French accusations that the Soviets were aiding rebel forces in Morocco. An even more worrisome development was the emerging detente between Germany and the Western powers, beginning with the Dawes plan in August 1924 and culminating in the Locarno treaty of 1925 and Germany's entry into the League of Nations the following year. Zinoviev described the Locarno negotiations as "a direct attempt at a break, an immediate preparation for war against the Soviet Union," and Stalin an- nounced that "the danger of intervention is again becoming real. "217
215 Thus, the British government threatened to abrogate the trade agreemelllt in May 1923 unless the Soviet Union ceased its propaganda activities in Asia and gave way on a number of other issues. See White, Britain and the Bolshevik Revolution, 159--61; Degras, Soviet Docu- ments, 1:396-97; Eudin and Fisher, Soviet Russia and the East, 184-88; Coates and Coates, Anglo-Soviet Relations, 102-19; Carr, Interregnum, 168-73; and Jacobson, When the Soviet Union Entered, chap. 5?
216 See Carr, Socialism in One Country, 3=34; and Lewis Chester, Stephen Fay, and Hugo Young, The Zinoviev Letter (London: Heinemann, 1967). For a recent assessment of this inci- dent, see Jacobson, When the Soviet Union Entered, 137-39.
? 217 The Dawes plan created less onerous arrangments for the payment of German war repa- rations, and the Locarno treaty guaranteed Germany's western border and normalized rela- tions with its wartime adversaries. As Stalin told the Fourteenth Party Congress, "If the Dawes Plan is fraught with a revolution in Germany, the Locarno Treaty is fraught with a
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The Soviet government responded by reinforcing its diplomatic position and intensifying efforts to rebuild its internal strength, while seeking to avoid a war for which it was obviously unprepared. New nonaggression treaties were negotiated with Turkey, Afghanistan, and Persia, and a similar pact with Lithuania was completed in September 1926. 218 The Soviets also took steps to strengthen ties with Germany, beginning with a new commercial agreemen? in October 1925. Chicherin paid official visits to Poland and France to remind! Germany of the benefits of its Russian connection, and his efforts paid off when the Soviet Union and Germany signed a new nonaggression treaty in April 1926. Soviet officials were increasingly convinced that Germany was not a reliable partner, however, especially after the Social Democrats began a pub- lic campaign against the covert military relationship with the Soviet Union. 219
Similar setbacks occured during 1926 and 1927. The Soviet government's unwise endorsement of a general strike in England prompted new denuncia- tions by British Conservatives, and British officials also blamed a series of anti-Western strikes in Shanghai on Soviet interference. The Foreign Office eventually issued a formal protest against Soviet activities in February 1927. The British government broke diplomatic relations and suspended trade in May after a raid on the office of the Soviet trade mission in London uncovered
evidence of Soviet espionage. 220 Relations with France remained distant as well, and though negotiations on the thorny issue of Russian debts had re- sumed in 1924, the talks made little progress. Relations deteriorated further after the Soviet ambassador signed a bellicose Communist proclamation and the French government insisted on his recall. 221 Soviet relations with Poland
? new war in Europe. " Similarly, Chicherin's report to the CPSU Central Committee in October 1924 warned of a "recently opened offensive of world imperialism," and Radek greeted 1925 by declaring in Pravda that the Soviet Union was entering "a period of international dan- gers. " Quotations from Uldricks, "Russia and Europe," 73; Jacobson, When the Soviet Union Entered, 144, 146; and Carr, Socialism in One Country, 3:248-49.
218 See Eudin and Fisher, Soviet Russia and the West, 277-83, 323-37; Carr, Socialism in One Country, 3:38-40, and Foundations ofa Planned Economy, 3:37-46.
219 The German ambassador to Russia called the Soviet-German alignment "a marriage of necessity," and a former German diplomat suggests that "no love was lost between the pol- icy makers of the two states; it was a purely pragmatic arrangement between two govern- ments sharing a few problems and having a few enemies in common. " By 1927, an Izvestiya correspondent warned that "ultimately the German bourgeoisie, capitalist Germany, will take its stand where its fundamental class interests dictate. " See Gustav Hilger and Alfred G. M e y e r , T h e I n c o m p a t i b l e A l l i e s : A M e m o i r - H i s t o r y of G e r m a n - S o v i e t R e l a t i o n s , 1 9 1 8 - 1 9 4 1 ( N e w York: Macmillan, 1953), 150; Jacobson, When the Soviet Union Entered, 128, 16<Ki2, 185-86; Uldricks, "Russia and Europe," 75; and R. Craig Nation, Black Earth, Red Star: A History ofSo- viet Security Policy, 1917-1991 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992), 6o.
220 See Eudin and Fisher, Soviet Russia and the West, 341-45; Carr, Foundations ofa Planned Economy, 3:18-30; and Coates and Coates, Anglo-Soviet Relations, 251-90.
221 The declaration called for the "defeat of all bourgeois states which wage war against the So- viet Union," and retired general Ferdinand Foch added to the tensions by stressing the continued threat of Bolshevism in a public interview. See Carr, Foundations ofa Planned Economy, 3:64-65.
? ? The Russian Revolution
and the Baltic states were equally guarded, and Pilsudski's return to power in 1926 and the assassination of the Soviet ambassador in Warsaw in June 1927 gave the Soviet government additional grounds for concern. Taken together, these developments reinforced the growing Soviet belief that the capitalist powers were preparing to wage a counterrevolutionary war against them.
The Chinese Debacle. The deterioration of the Soviet position in Europe was matched by an even more dramatic decline in its position in China. In addition to reestablishing relations with the official government in Beijing, Moscow had been carefully cultivating Sun Yat-sen's Guomindang (GMD) movement since the early 1920s. Although Sun was not a Marxist, he shared the Soviets' opposition to imperialism and saw their success in Russia as a model for his own efforts in China. He had agreed to permit members of the newly formed Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to join the GMD as indi- viduals in June 1922 (though he rejected proposals for a formal alliance be- tween the two parties), and Sun and a Soviet emissary issued a joint statement in January 1923 reaffirming Soviet support for the "completion of [China's] national unification and . . . full national independence. " This an- nouncement was immediately endorsed by the ECCI, which described the GMD as "the only serious national revolutionary group in Chnna," and the CCP was ordered to unite with it despite Sun's belief that the Soviet system was not appropriate for China. Thus, even as the Soviet treaty with the Bei- jing government neared completion, Moscow was moving to align itself with one of Beijing's main opponents. 222
Until 1927, the tacit alliance between the GMD and the CCP provided the clearest example of the "united front" doctrine in action, and China became the object of the Soviet government's most extensive and sustained effort to export revolution. The Soviet government provided extensive material sup- port to the GMD; Sun sent his chief of staff, Chiang Kai-shek Giang Jieshi), to Moscow for military training; and the Soviets assigned Michael Borodin, an experienced. Bolshevik agent, to serve as the Comintern representative at GMD headquarters in Canton (Guangzhou). Soviet military aid strength- ened the GMD armies, and Borodin? contributed to transforming the GMD into a more disciplined and effective organization. 223
222 The joint statement is reprinted in Degras, Soviet Documents, 1:37<>-71; and see also Gott- fried-Karl Kindermann, "The Attempted Revolution in China: 1924-27,'' in Hammond, Anatomy ofCommunist Takeovers, 194-95? The Comintern also directed the CCP to "oppose every GMD attempt to court the capitalist powers" and warned that the CCP "must not . . . merge with the GMD and . . . must not furl up its own banner. " Quoted in Eudin and North, Soviet Russia and the East, 141, 217-19, 343-46; and Carr, Socialism in One Country, 3:690-<)1.
223 On Borodin and his role, see Dan Jacobs, Borodin: Stalin's Man in China (Cambridge: Har- vard University Press, 1981); and Lydia Holubnychy, Michael Borodin and the Chinese Revolu- tion, 1923-25 (Ann Arbor, Mich. : University Microfilms for the East Asian Institute of Columbia University, 1979); Robert C. North, Moscow and Chinese Communists (Stanford: Stan-
? ? ? ? Revolution and War
This policy seemed to pay off handsomely at first. CCP membership was growing rapidly, and Soviet optimism continued to rise after Sun Yat-sen's death in March 1925 and a series of violent labor disputes in Chinese indus- trial centers. 224 Because the GMD was hostile to imperialism and far stronger than the Chinese Communists, however, Soviet interests still seemed better served by courting the former rather than by trying to sponsor an indepen- dent social revolution by the CCP. 225
In the end, Soviet hopes proved illusory and the united front ended in disaster. The GMD split into left- and right-wing factions after Sun Yat-sen's death in 1925, and the latter group became increasingly worried about Com- munist influence. Chiang Kai-shek was now the dominant figure within the GMD, but his plans for a military campaign against the northern warlords placed him at odds with his Soviet advisors, who wanted to consolidate Communist influence within the GMD before trying to subdue their other opponents. Thus, when Borodin left Canton in March 1926 to consult with other Chinese leaders, Chiang arrested a number of prominent CCP leaders and purged the rest. 226
The Soviets responded with a series of fatal blunders. Convinced that a social revolution was impossible and that Chiang was still a1 reliable partner, Stalin ignored his recent coup and continued to endorse the united front. The Great Northern Campaign was launched in July 1926, and the GMD armies had seized most of central and eastern China by the end of the year. The campaign brought an upsurge in peasant support, inspiring the left wing of the GMD and the CCP to advocate more aggressive efforts to pre- pare an agrarian uprising. Stalin rejected this suggestion to avoid alienating Chiang further, although Borodin did try to curtail Chiang's authority by
ford University Press, 1963), 72--'76; Carr, Socialism in One Country, 3:694--'700; and C. Martin Wilbur and Julie Lien-ying How, Missionaries of Revolution: Soviet Advisors and Nationalist China, 192o-27 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989), chap. 2.
224 CCP influence was especially strong in the so-called May 30 movement in Shanghai. CCP membership increased from roughly 1,000 in May 1925 to 30,000 in July 1926 and nearly 6o,ooo by April 1927, and membership in the associated Socialist Youth Corps rose from 2,000 in 1925 to 35,000 in 1927, with nearly one million workers and farmers under their political control. See Kindermann, "Attempted Revolution in China," 205; and Carr, Foundations ofa Planned Economy, 3:789-9<>.
? ? 225 Zinoviev told the Fourteenth Party Congress in December 1925: "There were moments when the yoUIgI\ Chinese Communist Party and the leaders of the Shanghai trade unions [were) in favor of sharpening the conflict to the point of armed insurrection. . . . Comintem gave a directive against these moods, recommending the party to execute a gradual putting on of brakes. " Quoted in Carr, Socialism in One Country, 3:738-39.
226 See Wilber and How, Missionaries ofRevolution, 103-106, 188-95, 25o-51; Kindermann, "Attempted Revolution in China," 195-97, 206; North, Moscow and Chinese Communists, 85-87; and James Pinckney Harrison, The Long March to Power: A History of the Chinese Com- munist Party, 1921-27 (New York: Praeger, 1972), 77-Bo.
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? ? The Russian Revolution
shifting the GMD headquarters to Wuhan and arranging to remove Chiang from his party posts. 227
Chiang quickly reestablished his primacy. When pro-CCP laborers in Shanghai launched a violent uprising in February 1927, Chiang kept his own forces outside the city while the workers battled the local authorities. Still con- vinced that Chiang could be trusted, Stalin ordered the Communist forces to hide their weapons and avoid a direct conflict with Chiang's forces, telling the ECCI that Chiang and the Right-GMD had to be "utilized to the end, squeezed like a lemon and then thrown away. " But it was Chiang who did the squeezing: after reaching an agreement with the local warlords, his troops began a bloody campaign against the disarmed and helpless Communists in Shanghai. "Within a few days," writes Robert North, "the Shanghai Commu- nists and their labor supporters were all but annihilated. " Stalin still refused
to permit the CCP to withdraw from the united front, however, and ordered it to maintain its alliance with the Left-GMD and to purge the united front of "unreliable elements. "228 The Left-GMD saw this order as a threat to their own positions and promptly expelled the Communists from Wuhan in July. With the united front in ruins and the CCP now isolated, Stalin at last authorized an armed insurrection. These poorly planned uprisings were crushed, and by the end of 1927 the Soviet Union's entire Chinese policy lay in ruins. 229
The debacle in China illustrates why exporting a revolution is difficult, particularly when a revolutionary state tries to guide the revolution from afar. Soviet officials misjudged events in China because they were poorly in- formed about conditions there and because they tried to apply principles that had worked in Russia to a fundamentally different set of circumstances. Soviet efforts to promote revolution in China may have aided the eventual triumph of the CCP by helping it acquire greater discipline and organiza- tional coherence, but a successful revolution would take place only after the
Chinese Communists abandoned unquestioned obedience to Moscow and developed their own revolutionary strategy. 230
Prelude to Stalinism: The War Scare of 1 927. The deterioration of the So- viet Union's international position culminated in the so-called war scare of 1927, which ended with the expulsion of Trotsky and Zinoviev and cleared the way for Stalin's "revolution from above. " Although some authors have
227 SeeNorth,MoscowandChineseCommunists,90-93?
228 Ibid. , 97, 105-107.
229 To make matters worse, the warlord regime in Beijing had broken relations with
Moscow and executed twenty Communists in April, after a raid on the Soviet embassy un- covered evidence of subversive activities.
230 SeeWilberandHow,MissionariesofRevolution,416-17. Forageneralaccountofthede- bacle in China, see Conrad Brandt, Stalin's Failure in China, 1924-1927 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1958).
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interpreted this episode as a Stalinist hoax devised to undermine his do- mestic rivals, the available evidence suggests that the Soviet fear of war was genuine.
231 Stalin had warned in October 1926 that "the period of peaceful coexistence was fading into the past," and Bukharin issued an even more ominous warning in January. Their statements triggered a flurry of hoarding and other signs of public alarm, which Stalin sought to dispel in March. These events suggest that the war scare was a genuine re- sponse to international trends and did not originate with Stalin alone. 232
The war scare became overt at the Central Committee Plenum in April 1927, when Stalin's opponents attempted to blame him for the Soviet Union's deterioriating international position. By arguing that war was im- minent, however, they unwittingly undermined their own positions. Stalin accused his opponents of sowing dissension in the face of a growing exter- nal threat and declared that "the chief contemporary question is the threat of a new imperialist war . . . against the Soviet Union in particular. "233
Stalin's counterattack discredited his opponents and the war scare passed quickly, but it was more than just a manifestation of the internal struggle for power. Soviet diplomats, worried about the risk of war, went to great lengths to persuade France and Germany not to imitate Britain's decision to break relations. The Soviet delegation to the World Economic Conference stressed the danger of war and the need for economic ties between the two social systems, and Litvinov made a dramatic appeal for total disarmament at a League of Nations conference in November. Finally, Stalin's report to the Fifteenth Party Congress in December 1927 warned that the period of "peaceful coexistence" was giving way to "a period of imperialist attacks" and he reminded the party, "Our task consists in postporung the war, in buying ourselves off by paying a tribute to the capitalists, and in taking all measures to maintain peaceful relations. "234 Thus, the fear of war seems to
231 Examplesofthe"hoax"interpretationincludeAdamB. Ulam,ExpansionandCoexistence: Soviet Foreign Policy, 1 917-1973 (New York: Praeger, 1974), 165? 6; Fischer, Soviets in World Af- fairs, 2:739-42; and Robert V. Daniels, The Conscience ofthe Revolution (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1? <>), 285-86.
232 In March, Bukharin declared, "We have no guarantee against an invasion of our coun-
try. It is of course not a question of today or tomorrow, or even of next month, but we have no guarantee whatever that it may not come in the spring or the autumn. " Stalin's view at this point was much less alarmist, and he argued the Soviet Union's "active policy of peace . . . makes war with our country difficult. " Quoted in Alfred G. Meyer, "The War Scare of 1927,'' Soviet Union/Union Sovietique 5, no. 1 (1978), 4? ; and see also John Sontag, "The Soviet War Scare of 1927," The Russian Review 34, no. 1 (1975).
233 Foreignobserversreportedthatthefearofwarwasevident"evenamongcautiousmem- bers of the [Soviet] government" and there was another wave of hoarding during the summer. Quoted in Meyer, "War Scare," 9-16; and see also Degras, Soviet Documents, 2:233-35; Carr, Foundations ofa Planned Economy, 3:S-11; and Fischer, Soviets in World Affairs, 2:740.
234 For these quotations and further discussion, see Meyer, "War Scare," 3, 24-25; Carr, Foundations ofa Planned Economy, 3:27; Sontag, "Soviet War Scare," 72-73; and Eudin and Fisher, Soviet Russia and the West, 407-409.
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have been genuine, even if it also gave Stalin a golden opportunity to elim- inate his principal rivals. It also provided a rationale for the brutal strategy of autarky and forced industrialization that Stalin initiated several years later, for if the West was unremittingly bent on war, then the Soviet Union needed the capacity to defend itself and could not expect the capitalist states to help them acquire the necessary forces.
Yet as noted earlier, Soviet perceptions of a growing capitalist danger were largely a mirage. None of the Western powers was planning to attack the Soviet Union, and their anti-Soviet policies were for the most part de- fensive responses to Soviet actions. Unfortunately, the Soviets' enduring be-
lief in capitalist hostility and their long-range commitment to world revolution combined to undo the progress achieved after 1921 and prevent the Soviet Union from taking its place as a fully accepted member of the in- ternational community.
In one sense, the doctrine of "socialism in one country" was the culmina- tion of a process that had begun as soon as the Soviets gained control. Hav- ing successfully seized state power, the Bolsheviks automatically acquired an interest in preserving their position within a particular geographic area. In practice, this meant defending the security of the Soviet state, so when the revolution failed to spread as expected, Russia's new leaders concen- trated on enhancing their hold on power within their own borders. Soviet diplomacy began forging working relations with a number of foreign pow- ers, and the Comintern was converted from an international revolutionary party into an obedient tool of Soviet policy.
In another sense, however, "socialism in one country" marked a return to the harsh and conflictive image of international relations that had domi- nated Soviet perceptions during the civil war. Soviet officials gave up their hopes of integrating Russia into the world economy and became increas- ingly fearful of a renewed imperialist war. If world revolution was no longer seen as imminent, neither was normalization. Thus, the Soviet Union would have to go it alone, and Stalin's formula of autarky, forced industri- alization, and the primacy of Soviet state interests was the logical (and tragic) result.
CoNCLUSION: THE RussiAN REvoLUTION AND BALANCE OF THREAT THEORY
The international impact of the Russian Revolution was to intensify the level of security competition between states. To be sure, the revolu- tion did reduce the level of conflict briefly by taking Russia out of World War I, and a weakened Russia would have been a ripe source of conflict
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even if Nicholas II had retained his throne. By dissolving the tsarist em- pire and bringing to power a messianic and xenophobic revolutionary movement, however, the Bolshevik revolution raised the level of inter- national tension substantially. In the short term, it opened a window of opportunity and gave other states additional incentives to intervene. Over the longer term, it created a new state that was fundamentally hos- tile to the prevailing international order and openly committed to spreading its principles to other countries. Because one simply cannot imagine tsarist Russia adopting such a policy or having the same impact on the other great powers, we may safely infer that tlne revolution was
responsible for the intense suspicions that characterized Soviet foreign relations after 1918.
The Balance ofPower
The revolution in Russia caused a major shift in the balance of power in Eurasia. As the theory in chapter 2 predicts, this shift exacerbated existing incentives for conflict and created a number of new ones.
The initial motive behind Allied intervention in Russia was the fear that the revolution would shift the balance of power in favor of Germany. Afteir the war, European intervention was fueled by the Allies' concern over Rus- sia's place in the postwar balance of power and by each great power's desire to enhance its position vis-a-vis the others. A similar pattern occurred in the Far East: Japan and China endeavored to take advantage of Russia's weak- ness while the United States tried to check Japanese ambitions and support the largely nonexistent forces of Russian liberalism. The Russo-Polish war sprang from similar roots, insofar as Poland's leaders believed that expan- sion was necessary for their long-term security and that Russia's weakness was an opportunity Poland could not ignore.
The detente that began after the civil war can also be traced to states' growing awareness of the true balance of power. The end of the Russo- Polish war offers the most obvious example; according to Pyotr Wandycz, "peace became possible only after both sides tried to accomplish their aims and failed. At that point there was no alternative. "235 Similarly, the Allies withdrew from Russia after recognizing that removing the Bolsheviks would require a much larger commitment of men and money than they were willing to undertake. Balance-of-power logic is also revealed in the rapprochement between Soviet Russia and Weimar Germany and the friendship treaties with Afghanistan, Turkey, and Iran. In each case, isolated powers joined forces to counter a specific external threat, despite their obvi- ous ideological differences.
235 Soviet-Polish Relations, 290; and see also Carr, Bolshevik Revolution, 3=216. [202]
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Perceptions ofIntent
The diplomacy of the Russian Revolution highlights the tendency for revolutionary states to assume the worst about other states' intentions, an assumption that is usually reciprocated. Although both the Soviets and the onlookers had! legitimate grounds for suspicion, each side interpreted the other's actions in ways that reinforced its initial suspicions and inflated the perceived level of threat even more. In the end, the Soviet susceptibil- ity to a highly paranoid view of world politics helped derail the initial process of normalization and ensured that Soviet foreign relations would remain deeply conflictive for several more decades.
The belief that the capitalist world was intrinsically hostile was a central tenet of Bolshevik ideology, so Soviet Russia tended to view the behavior of other powers in the least generous terms possible. The Soviets saw Western support for the Whites as directed primarily against them (though the pol- icy was originally inspired by fear of Germany), and they interpreted the Entente's offers of support prior to Brest-Litovsk as an insincere attempt to lure them to their doom. Allied policy at the Paris Peace Conference was seen as hostile and duplicitous, and the Soviets subsequently accused Britain and France of instigating the Polish invasion in 1920 as well. These inferences were all of dubious validity: the Allies were sincerely interested in supporting the Russian war effort, on condition the Bolsheviks be willing to resume fighting; Allied policy at the peace conference owed more to un- certainty and nnternal disagreements than to any careful plan to overthrow Soviet Russia; and the Polish invasion, which was Pilsudski's own doing, was condemned by most Western officials. Yet the Soviets clung to their idea of imperialism as intrinsically hostile, even after the capitalist powers had begun to trade with Russia and several had provided extensive relief aid during the famine in the Ukraine in 1921-22. The belief that Soviet Russia could at best achieve a temporary accommodation with capitalism justified
the Bolsheviks' continued efforts to subvert the Western powers and im- peded the establishment of more normal relations despite the other great powers' genuine interest in relaxing tensions.
The Entente powers also failed to appreciate how their own actions rein- forced Soviet suspicions. Allied intervention in Russia during World War I was driven by the incorrect belief that the Bolsheviks were German agents, and the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was seen as evidence of pro-German sym- pathies rather than as a desperate concession to German power. Subsequent Soviet peace offers never received adequate attention (because Allied states- men did not trust them and were loathe to confer recognition on the new regime), and accommodation was further discouraged by the belief that it would do no good. Although Wilsdn and Lloyd George wanted to respond favorably to the Soviet peace offensive, their efforts foundered in the face of
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opposition from France, the White leaders, and conservatives at home. Fi- nally, the Allies do not seem to have realized that the Soviet government would inevitably regard their stated disinterest in interfering in Russia as wholly insincere, since Allied troops were already present on Russian soil and the Entente was already supporting the Whites militarily. The result was the worst of all possible worlds: these inconsistencies appeared to the Soviets as evidence of imperialist duplicity, while the Entente believed their own actions to have been part of a genuine if not very extensive effort to bring peace to a divided and war-ravaged Russia.
Conflict between Russia and the West was not due solely to this sort of misperception, of course, and both sides also had legitimate grounds for suspicion. The Bolsheviks did aspire to lead a worldwide movement that would usher in the socialist epoch; for this reason, conservatives such as Lansing, Foch, and Churchill regarded Bolshevism as the embodiment of evil, and even such moderates as Lloyd George and Wilson preferred that Russia be governed by a non-Bolshevik regime. At the same time, however, both sides seem to have underestimated the existing willingness to compro- mise. They therefore may have neglected to pursue promising opportunities for accommodation; for example, a deal along the lines of either the Prinkipo proposal or the terms worked out by Bullitt in March 1919 would have been no worse, and probably considerably better, than continued Western involvement in the civil war. Given the mutual suspicions and the absence of established channels of communication, however, these possibil-
ities never had much chance. 236 Similarly, a less confrontational policy would have made it ea,sier for the Soviets to end Western intervention and obtain the economic assistance they so desperately needed.
While it never vanished completely, the extreme hostility that shaped in- ternational relations during the Russian Civil War began to ease after 1920. Both the Soviets and their peers abroad remained wary, but they were in- creasingly willing to attempt limited forms of cooperation. Lenin's New Economic Policy was seen by many as a sign of moderation, and the Soviets agreed to suspend hostile propaganda as part of the Anglo-Soviet trade agreement (though these activities continued under the auspices of the Comintern). Soviet representatives attended international conferences in Genoa and Lausanne in 1922 and 1923, and the government signed friend- ship treaties with Turkey, Iran, and Afghanistan despite the anti-Communist policies that each regime pursued at home. By 1925 Moscow had estab- lished diplomatic relations with most of the other great powers and was playing an increasingly active role in other international forums. As each side's image as incorrigibly aggressive eroded, the level of threat declined and more normal relations became possible. The tragedy of Soviet diplo-
? 236 On this point, see Thompson, Russia, Bolshevism, and Versailles, 379-Bo, 396-9- 7.
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macy lies in the fact that Bolshevik ideology predisposed them to assume the worst about their adversaries, and to interpret any setback as evidence of renewed imperialist aggression. And from the Soviet perspective, the greater tragedy is that their own self-defeating actions undoubtedly left them unnecessarily isolated and insecure. 237
Offense, Defense, and the Export ofRevolution
The early history of revolutionary Russia supports the hypothesis that revolutions nourish a state's perceptions of a particular sort of offensive ad- vantage. The Bolsheviks were convinced that a worldwide socialist revolu- tion was inevitable and their long-term survival depended on it. Although Lenin warned against placing too much hope in an imminent world revolu- tion, the belief that their triumph in Russia would soon be repeated else- where affected Soviet policy at several critical moments. The assumption of a forthcoming wave of revolutions across Europe cost them considerable territory at Brest-Litovsk. It also meant the Soviets viewed the formation of the Hungarian and Bavarian Soviets, the Kapp putsch in Germany, the army mutinies and labor disturbances in France, and the "Hands Off Russia" movement in England as signs that the revolutionary tide was still rising. The decision to invade Poland in 1920 rested on similar expectations, as did the Soviets' continued reliance on propaganda and subversion despite the negative responses these activities provoked.
Over time, however, a steady diet of failure eroded Soviet hopes for an im- minent upheaval in the West. Indeed, where the Second Congress of the Com- intern had breathlessly tracked the Red Army's progress in Poland, the Third Congress admitted that "the world revolution . . . will require a prolonged pe- riod of revolutionary struggle. "238 Although Soviet hopes rebounded on occa- sion, the ideal of world revolution was gradually subordinated to the more immediate need to enhance the power, security, and status of the Soviet state. But because the goal of world revolution was never formally abandoned, other states remained wary long after the danger had faded.
Perceptions of the offense-defense balance affected foreign responses to the revolution as well, in mixed ways. During World War I, advocates of Al- lied intervention argued that the Central Powers could easily exploit vast areas of Russia while a modest Allied force could avert this possibility at rel- atively low cost. After the war, Soviet hopes that the revolution would spread to Europe were mirrored by Western fears that the Bolsheviks might be right. Many Western statesmen believed Europe was vulnerable to revo- lutionary subversion in the aftermath of World War I, justifying their sup-
237 See Uldricks, "Russia and Europe," 8cHll.
238 Quoted in Eudin and Fisher, Soviet Russia and the West, 87.
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port for the Whites during the civil war and playing a key role in the En- tente's decision not to recognize the new regime. 239 The belief that the Soviet regime was fragile and unpopular encouraged these policies as well: sup- port for the Whites made more sense if the Bolsheviks were vulnerable, and accommodation would be unnecessary if the Soviet regime were about to collapse. 240 Thus, the impression of Soviet Russia as both dangerous and
vulnerable led to repeated attempts to isolate or overthrow it, even if these efforts were not especially extensive.
Indeed, despite the widespread consensus that Bolshevism was a threat, there was little agreement on how to respond to it. The differences were based largely on competing assessments of the offense-defense balance, and in par- ticular, on the expected cost of trying to overcome the new regime. Churchill and Clemenceau thought Bolshevik Russia would be relatively easy to re- move, while Wilson and Lloyd George believed intervention would merely increase the appeal of Bolshevism both at home and abroad. And once it be- came clear that ousting the Soviet regime would require a major Western ef- fort-owing to both Russia's vast size and the Bolsheviks' unexpected staying power-the Allies abandoned their halfhearted efforts to topple it and turned to a combination of containment and accommodation instead.
Thus, perceptions of a profound offensive advantage over Soviet Russia were not universal, especially with respect to the prospects for foreign in- tervention. Although they regarded the Soviet regime as illegitimate and unpopular, the leaders of the Entente quickly realized that their own popu- lations would not support a large-scale effort to overturn it. As a result, they were forced to pin their hopes on the corrupt, contentious Whites or on still- born schemes for action by various Eastern European forces. The Allies' awareness that intervention in Russia would not be easy stands in marked contrast to the cavalier approach to intervention that France's enemies adopted in 1792-93, and is the main reason why the revolution in Russia did not lead to a larger war. 241
239 According to William Chamberlin, "probably the decisive factor in bringing about a continuation of the policy of limited intervention was the fear, by no means unreasonable or ungrounded in 1919, that Bolshevism in one form or another might spread to other European countries. " Russian Rroolution, 2:152.
240 In November 1917, the British Foreign Office reported that "Bolshevism was probably on its last legs," and U. S. ambassador David Francis declared, "This Bolshevik government can not survive. " According to Phillip Knightley, "in the two years from November 1917 to November 1919, the New York Times reported no fewer than ninety-one times that the Bol- shevikswereabouttofallor,indeed,hadalreadyfallen. "SeeRobertK. Murray,RedScare:A Study ofNational Hysteria, 1919-1920 (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964), 40; and Phillip Knight- ley, The First Casualty: The War Correspondent as Hero, Propagandist, and Mythmaker (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1975), 138.
241 Even Churchill opposed the use of conscripts in Russia, and recalled that "it would not have been right after the Great War was over, even had it been possible, to use British, French, or American troops in Russia. " Aftermath, 286.
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The Russian Revolution confirms that expectations about the likelihood of a revolution spreading (or collapsing) will have a powerful effect on rela- tions between a revolutionary state and its main foreign adversaries. It also suggests that states' initial assessments are not cast in stone, and the secu- rity competition sparked by a revolution can ease once each side's initial ex- pectations are dispelled.
Uncertainty and Misinformation
Uncertainty and misinformation helped magnify each side's perceptions of threat, thereby contributing to the security competition that followed the Rus- sian Revolution. During World War I, for example, British and French responses to the revolution were based on a series of unlikely scenarios-in- volving the seizure of Allied supplies, the arming of German and Austrian prisoners of war, and the possible use of Vladivostok as a German U-boat base. The worries were baseless, but the Western powers could not simply re- ject them out of hand. The United States was vulnerable to this problem as well, as revealed by Wilson's decision to send U. S. troops to northern Russia to guard Allied stores that were no longer there. France's expedition to Odessa in 1918 was based on its ignorance about conditions in the Ukraine, just as British aid to the Whites was sustained in part by inaccurate estimates of their truemilitaryprospects. Fromtheverybegingnin ,therefore,alackofinforma- tion contributed to the growing conflict between Moscow and the West.
Lack of information also undermined several early attempts at accommo- dation. The severing of diplomatic relations and the withdrawal of Western diplomats left the Allies without a reliable way to ascertain if support for Bol- shevism was growing or declining and made it difficult for either side to de- termine what the other was doing and why. Accommodation was also impeded by the near impossibility of communicating directly with the Soviet regime. The Bolsheviks had been excluded from the peace conference, and communication with Moscow was further impaired by the Allies' reluctance to take steps that might signal their acceptance of the Soviet regime. As a re- sult, the two sides were forced to rely on unreliable radio communications or on unofficial emissaries who were all too easy to disregard. These obstacles
introduced additional delays and ensured that positive efforts would be overtaken by events. The isolation of Soviet Russia also meant that the anti- Bolshevik exiles (whose ranks included many former tsarist officials) became Russia's main voice in the West. As one would expect, the exiles opposed any understanding with the new regime, and their testimony reinforced Allied intransigence at several crucial moments. 242
242 See Tongour, "Diplomacy in Exile"; Kennan, Decision to Intervene, chap. 14; and Ullman, Britain and the Russian Civil War, 141-44, 173? 77.
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Most important of all, neither the Soviets nor the Entente powers could gauge the potential for either revolution or counterrevolution in the wake of the Bolshevik victory in Russia. Fear of Bolshevism justified Western efforts to overthrow the new regime (or at least to keep it at arm's length), while Soviet hopes for world revolution accounted for the invasion of Poland in 1920 and their continued willingness to engage in counterproductive acts of revolutionary subversion.
Socialization and Learning
Finally, the early history of Soviet foreign relations lends partial-but only partial-support to neorealist claims about the socializing effects of anarchy. On the one hand, Soviet leaders did moderate their revo? utionary aims in order to advance specific diplomatic objectives, and they proved to be adept practioners of traditional balance-of-power politics. Moreover, as each side gained a more accurate estimate of the balance of threats, the level of security competition declined, prospects for cooperation increased, and Soviet for- eign relations took on a more normal cast. On the other hand, Bolshevik ide- ology continued to shape both its avowed objectives and its perceptions of foreign powers, even when the policies that emerged exacerbated its isola- tion and insecurity. Such behavior is difficult to reconcile with a purely struc- tural theory such as neorealism, which reminds us that foreign policy is never determined solely by structural factors. With hindsight, it is all too ob- vious that Leninist ideology was a serious handicap for Soviet diplomacy. Both the commitment to world revolution and the deep suspicion of other states endured because, first, the evidence against them was not clear-cut; second, they were a central part of the CPSU's claim to rule; third, they had been institutionalized in the Comintem and in the CPSU itself; and fourth, the Communist system inhibited critical debate about fundamental princi- ples. As a result, although the Soviet Union made tactical adjustments in re-
sponse to changing conditions, it did not formally abandon its revolutionary agenda until 1986, when it was already on its last legs. 243
The diplomacy of the fledgling Soviet state backs my tlheory that revolu- tions intensify security competition between states and raise the probability of war. Moscow's relations with most other states deteriorated badly after 1917, several foreign powers tried to overthrow the new regime, foreign troops occupied portions of Russian territory until 1924, and Russia and Poland fought a brief but intense war in 1920. Relations between Russia and
243 1986markedthefirsttimewhenacongressoftheCommunistPartyoftheSovietUnion omitted an assessment of the "world revolutionary process. " See Jacobson, When the Soviet
? Union Entered, 30.
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the outside world improved slightly from 1921 to 1924, but efforts to estab- lish more cordial relations ultimately failed to overcome the mutual percep- tions of threat, keeping the Soviet Union in a self-imposed state of partial isolation.
This unfortunate result was due primarily to the enduring legacy of Bol- shevik ideology. Although the revolution in Russia had not spread as they had anticipated, the Soviet leaders were unable or unwilling to give up the long-range goal of world revolution. They quickly learned to make tactical adjustments for the sake of immediate advantages (something Leninist ide- ology had long endorsed), but external pressures did not induce them to abandon the overthrow of capitalism as a long-term objective. And holding fast to this policy had very real costs, as it greatly increased the number of potential enemies the Soviets faced and would make it far more difficult to attract allies in the future.
Unlike the French case, however, the revolution in Russia did not lead to a war among the great powers. In addition to the sheer size of Soviet Russia (and the innate defensive advantage that this produced), the absence of great-power war is also explained by the massive bloodletting that had taken place between 1914 and 1918. Despite the intense fears of Bolshevism and their deep suspicion of Soviet intentions, none of the European powers was in a position to make a serious effort to oust the Soviet regime.