No More Learning

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
[t88]
? 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]
? The Russian Revolution
"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 . . . 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
[1951
? ? Revolution and War
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.
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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.
[198]
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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.