1
The Ideological and Political Foundations of Soviet Foreign Policy

Lenin, International Relations, and Revolution in Russia

By the time he led the Bolsheviks to power in Russia in 1917, Lenin had developed a highly sophisticated concept of international relations.^[1] In a number of works written in the years immediately before the October Revolution, most prominent among them Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism (1916), Lenin identified what he regarded as the most significant features of the political economy of the early twentieth century. In its imperialist stage, the capitalist mode of production became monopolized on a global scale; financial and industrial capital merged; a powerful oligarchy of "finance capital" appeared; the further development and survival of the world economy depended on the export of capital as well as of commodities; global monopolies appropriated the world's markets; and imperialist states completed the territorial division of the globe.^[2] Once they had taken over the less developed areas of the world economy as colonies or semicolonies, the imperialist powers could continue their competition for resources, markets, and investments only by taking them from one another. An interimperialist war of redistribution, the ultimate contradiction of capitalism, would then weaken the imperialist system to the point of collapse. In this, Lenin's social theory of history, the crisis of capitalist development, was not confined to contradictions within the domestic economy, as it was in classical Marxism. It was a matter of global economics and world politics.

So too was Lenin's theory of revolution. Because monopoly-finance capitalism developed unevenly from country to country, socialist revolutions would not start simultaneously everywhere in the world. Instead, capitalism would fail at a single point, or perhaps at several points—at the weakest link or links in the imperialist chain. Revolution would begin in

several countries, or even in one separate country; it would not be instantly international. For this reason, different states with opposing social systems would exist at the same time after the inception of proletarian revolution. Here Lenin's theory is significant in two ways. With it he made national differences a crucial element in the causation and inception of socialist revolution, and he created theoretical space for postrevolutionary relations between socialist and capitalist countries.

Lenin's critique of imperialism (much of which he shared with the German Social Democrat, Rudolf Hilferding), his theory of the unevenness of capitalist development (which he shared with Trotsky), along with the importance he attributed to the global economy, to the state, to national diversity, and to conflict among nations, represented significant contributions to socialist thought. Karl Marx had left an ambiguous legacy to his ideological heirs. While in his more journalistic writings he tended to be "state focused, politically oriented, and open ended," Marx's more theoretical work was "class-oriented, economics-grounded, and determinist."^[3] In the latter, he located the main contradictions of capitalism in the internal workings of developed industrial societies. In his inaugural address to the First International, he called upon workers to "master the mysteries" of international politics,^[4] but Marx himself did not do so. It was Lenin's adaptation of Marxism that placed distinct national societies and global relationships alongside class conflict within advanced capitalist countries at the core of revolutionary theory. Thus, the Bolsheviks came to power with a leader who was ideologically predisposed to think in terms of international relations.

As it happened, those who led the new Soviet state engaged intensively in international relations from the moment they came to power. "From the very beginning of the October Revolution," Lenin later stated, "foreign policy and international relations have been the main questions facing us."^[5] During the months from October 1917 to November 1920, the Soviets made peace with the Central Powers; Finland, the Baltic states, and Poland became independent nations; much of the remainder of the former Tsarist Empire was reconquered; the Red Army defeated the forces of counterrevolution in a long civil war; the military intervention of the Allied powers was turned back; and a war with Poland carried the Red Army to the gates of Warsaw.^[6] Only in October-November 1920, with the preliminary Treaty of Riga terminating the Soviet-Polish War, and with the defeat of the forces of Baron Wrangel, the last of the White generals, did three years of violent, international, ethnic, and class warfare come to an end. As civil war and international relations merged to present the new regime with its major problems, Lenin and the Bolshevik leadership of necessity gave

considerable attention and thought to foreign affairs. This period of conflict also left an indelible mark on their concept of foreign relations.

The Bolsheviks had come to power with two central expectations. They believed, first of all, that the imperialists would attempt to overthrow the revolution in Russia and that, with their combined forces, they were capable of doing so. The revolution in Russia would therefore not be secure until the threat of imperialist intervention had been eliminated by the spread of proletarian revolution to several, if not all, of the major powers of Europe. Second, they expected that the Russian Revolution would detonate a chain reaction of socialist revolutions that would spread throughout Europe and the world in a single movement, putting an end to socialist-capitalist opposition and rendering nations and national institutions obsolete, thus obviating the need for conventional interstate relations. None of them were certain how long the entire process would take, but they were convinced that the October Revolution could not survive in isolation. Its fate depended on what happened in Europe. Ultimately, socialist revolution and a system of capitalist states could not exist side by side. Either proletarian revolution would spread to Europe or the revolution in Russia would be defeated by international action.

In the months after the end of the World War in November 1918, revolution did sweep through Central Europe. By the spring and summer of 1919, the Bolshevik leadership from Lenin to Zinoviev was predicting that a European Soviet Republic lay only months, a year at the most, in the future. However, local security forces and foreign intervention crushed the Soviet elements in the Central European revolutions. And the Soviet-Polish War of 1920, which General Mikhail Tuchachevskii—but not most of the party leadership—regarded as a revolutionary war and an opportunity to establish soviets in Poland by military force,^[7] ended without victory. Neither a Soviet Germany, nor a Soviet Hungary, nor a Soviet Poland—much less a European Socialist Republic—became established. And by November 1920, just after the end of the Soviet-Polish War and the defeat of Wrangel, the last prospect of proletarian revolution in Europe—factory occupations conducted by workers in Italy—died out. On the other hand, revolution in Russia was not extinguished. The Red Army defeated its class enemies, divided its opponents along ethnic lines, and turned back the intervention of the British, the French, and the Americans. (The Japanese remained at Vladivostok until October 1922.) These three years of revolution and civil war confirmed the Bolsheviks in their basic beliefs that the leading capitalist powers were fundamentally hostile to Soviet power and at the same time highly vulnerable to it.

Revolution and war also left an international situation that sharply

contradicted the initial expectations of the party leadership. The revolution in Russia was surviving in isolation without the support of successive proletarian revolutions in Central Europe, and this situation seemed likely to continue for the next few years at least.^[8] For this situation the Bolsheviks were prepared neither by Lenin's prerevolutionary theory of capitalist crisis nor by the initial expectations of the party leadership regarding relations between revolutionary Russia and the imperialist powers. It necessitated an agonizing reappraisal of the world political situation and the formulation of a foreign policy for the new Soviet state. Both took place from November 1920 to July 1921, the first nine months of peace following the three years of revolution, civil war, and intervention.

The central feature of the post-Civil War situation was, as Lenin stated it during these months, an equilibrium between the forces of capitalism and socialism, a balance that he termed "temporary" and "highly unstable," "but one that [was], nevertheless, certain, obvious, indisputable." "Our predictions have not materialized," he admitted candidly. "Neither side... has gained victory or suffered defeat." "It is very strange for those of us who have lived through the revolution from its inception... to see how things have now developed .... Probably none of us expected or could have expected that things would shape out like this." There existed, he determined, "a highly protracted situation, without any final decision one way or the other." Nevertheless, a significant objective had been achieved, he believed. The capitalist powers had been forced to abandon armed intervention without defeating the Soviets and without extinguishing the flame of socialist revolution. Proletarian rule and the Soviet Republic survived although "world revolution" was delayed. The result was, Lenin concluded, that

without having gained an international victory, which we consider to be the only sure victory, we are in a position of having won conditions enabling us to exist side by side with capitalist powers.... We have won the fight to an independent existence.... Today we can speak, not merely of a breathing spell [peredyshka ], but of a real chance of a new and lengthy period of development. Until now we have actually had no basis in the international sense. Now we have this basis.

The Russian Communist Party (Bolshevik), or RCP(B), led what could exist as a viable, independent state within the capitalist world system. This, Lenin affirmed, was "something much more significant" than the "breathing spell" won in March 1918 with the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk ending the war with Germany.^[9]

The defeat of counterrevolution and military intervention was one of two essential elements in the international equilibrium of 1921, as Lenin saw it. The demise of European proletarian revolution was the other. Following the suppression of the Communist revolutions in Munich and in Hungary in mid-1919, he began to express doubts about specific revolutionary situations in Central Europe, and by the spring of 1920 he was attacking the "infantile disorder" of "leftism" within the German Communist Party (KPD). However, Lenin continued to speak and write confidently and often of the imminence of world proletarian revolution through November 1920, until the last prospects for immediately extending proletarian revolution to Europe had died. He did so for the last time on 6 November, at the celebration of the third anniversary of the October Revolution. Thereafter he acknowledged in his public speeches that he had given up the expectation that revolution would soon spread to Europe. Beginning on 21 December 1920, when he spoke of "world revolution," it was to say that it would not come in the near future.^[10] By March 1921 he was informing the Tenth Party Congress that "it would be madness on our part to assume that help will shortly arrive from Europe in the shape of a strong proletarian revolution.... In these past three years, we have learned to understand that placing our stake on the world revolution does not mean relying on a definite date."^[11] It remained for Trotsky to justify what he would soon call "the strategy of temporary retreat" to the assembled Communists of Europe, America, and Asia at the Third Comintern Congress in June-July. "At that time, in 1919," he said in a statement that was to become famous, "we said to ourselves: 'It is a question of months.' Now we say: 'It is a question of years.'"^[12]

In the context of this emergent international equilibrium the Bolsheviks took actions in February and March 1921 that proved to be of major consequence for the foundation of Soviet foreign relations and the formation of the Russian Socialist Republic. Treaties of mutual recognition were signed with Persia (26 February), Afghanistan (28 February), and Turkey (16 March)—the latter being the first treaty between Soviet Russia and a state of major importance in the international system. Negotiations leading to the first commercial treaty with a capitalist power, Great Britain, were concluded on 16-21 March. On 18 March the Treaty of Riga with Poland was finalized. These agreements, all of which had been under negotiation for months, were important steps in the adoption of a foreign policy of diplomacy and commerce, as opposed to a foreign policy of revolutionary offensive, either by means of insurrection or conquest. During the same weeks, the Tenth Party Congress (8-16 March) heard Lenin propose the abandonment of War Communism and the adoption of what

would be called the New Economic Policy (NEP), and it approved measures to discipline the workings of the Russian Communist Party by forbidding intraparty factions.

Taken together, these measures have been referred to as Lenin's "new course." It has been argued that they were inherent in his political strategy from the time the Bolsheviks seized power, that, beginning at that moment, he made a series of deliberate compromises in foreign affairs by which he sacrificed international socialist revolution for the survival of the Russian Socialist Republic as a state.^[13] The more conventional argument maintains, however, that the steps taken in the spring of 1921 represented a retreat from previous policies and "a single integrated pull-back executed on... different battlefields in the same war."^[14] There can be little doubt that these actions were interrelated, although there is ample reason to question whether they were the result of a fully coordinated decision-making process at the highest levels of the party leadership.^[15] Open rebellion against the regime among both the famine-ridden peasantry of the Volga and the original supporters of the revolution at the naval station at Kronshtadt made reform necessary; the end of Allied military intervention and the new international equilibrium made it possible. The New Economic Policy, and in particular the restoration of market relations in the countryside, was aimed both at fostering relations of "peaceful coexistence" with the bourgeois states and at restoring the economy. Its purpose was, Lenin stated later, "to give the capitalists such advantages as will compel any state, however hostile to us, to establish contacts and to deal with us."^[16]

In these measures both sides of the legacy of Leninism to the development of the Soviet Union can be discerned. In the Lenin of NEP and "peaceful coexistence" historians have discovered a "farsighted and flexible genius" and "the grandfather of perestroika ."^[17] In the Lenin who prohibited intraparty factions, who suppressed political dissidence and diversity, who persecuted the Social Revolutionary Party, and who deported two hundred professors (the "philosophers' ship" to Germany), they have seen the founder of the authoritarian, single-party state incapable of reforming itself. Upon reflection it seems that one necessitated the other and that they were joined in a single dynamic. The retreats from prerevolutionary expectations in economic and foreign policy to positions previously occupied by anti-Bolshevik revolutionaries such as the Mensheviks and the Social Revolutionaries necessitated that the party be disciplined and the alternatives to it repressed.^[18]

As this work will demonstrate, the new international situation of 1920-21—the survival of proletarian revolution in Russia without the support of similar, successful uprisings in Europe—had fundamental implications for

the theory and practice of Soviet foreign relations. Insurrectionary initiative in Europe was officially postponed until a majority of the working class there was brought under the influence of communist parties. Anti-imperialist revolt in Asia became the ultimate assurance of successful global socialist revolution. The security of Soviet Russia was made to rest on the capabilities of its diplomats and on solidarity with the European proletariat. The needs of what came to be called "the world revolutionary process" were coordinated with the requirements of Soviet national interest—the security and reconstruction of the socialist homeland, a supportive international communist movement made in the image of Bolshevism, and conventional foreign relations conducted within the norms of the international diplomatic community. These developments are considered in the remainder of this chapter and the three that follow.

Beginning "Peaceful Coexistence"

When he issued the Decree on Peace shortly after coming to power in October 1917, Lenin did not expect that a lengthy period of "peaceful coexistence" would follow the outbreak of proletarian revolution in Russia. Because he expected the existing governments of Germany, England, and France to be unable to accept the Soviet peace offer, the new leaders of Russia would be obliged to "prepare and launch a revolutionary war," as he had written in 1915, and "to systematically incite all those peoples now downtrodden by the Great Russians, all the colonial and dependent countries of Asia (India, China, Persia, etc.), and also...call to insurrection the socialist proletariat of Europe against their governments...."^[19] However, when the German High Command did not accept the Bolshevik peace offer, both Lenin and Trotsky recognized the impossibility of transforming Russia's war with Germany into a European-wide war of revolutionary proletarians against their capitalist oppressors. Instead Lenin gathered support within the party for a separate peace with Germany while Trotsky conducted an all-out campaign of propaganda directed at the peoples of the Central Powers and the Allies alike. It was in the context of this nonmilitary struggle against imperialism, which took place during the negotiations with Germany leading to the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk in March 1918, that Trotsky—in the first public use of the term—called for "peaceful coexistence" among all peoples.^[20] Lenin, during the same period, associated the concept of peaceful coexistence with a respite from military conflict, with peredyshka , a brief "breathing spell," or, perhaps more aptly, a "peace break," during which proletarian revolution would be preserved in Russia while it spread to Europe. Thus "peaceful coexistence" between revolutionary Russia and the rest of the world, the initial foreign policy stance

adopted by the Bolshevik leadership, began as a measure of revolutionary security, as a policy designed to protect proletarian revolution from the superior forces of the German army.

Beginning in late 1919, what was then called the People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs (Narkomindel or NKID) conducted what it termed a "peace offensive" directed at the peoples of Europe and, in particular, at the more progressive and pacifist segments of the populations of the Baltic states and Great Britain. The objective was to put an end to the economic blockade, the diplomatic isolation, and the military intervention to which the new Soviet state was subjected. The first breakthrough came when Estonia requested peace negotiations in November and concluded a treaty of peace with Moscow in February 1920. Lenin called the conclusion of this agreement—Soviet Russia's first permanent arrangement with a European state—an event of "gigantic historical significance" and shortly thereafter employed the phrase "peaceful coexistence" for the first time. He does not seem to have meant the term to denote a stable and durable settlement between the two states but rather stated instead that "we do not want to shed the blood of workers and Red Army fighters for the sake of a piece of territory." More diplomatically, Georgii Chicherin, Trotsky's successor as people's commissar for foreign affairs, called the Estonian treaty "the first experiment in peaceful coexistence with bourgeois states" and "a dress rehearsal for understanding with the Entente." Soon afterward he began to call for "peaceful coexistence with other governments no matter what they are."^[21] Agreements followed with Lithuania in July and Latvia in August. All three treaties were negotiated by Leonid Krasin, who more than any other Bolshevik at the time favored forgoing revolution in Europe and ending the state of war with the bourgeois states in order to repair, restock, and revive the Russian economy.^[22] Thus, Trotsky initially used the term "peaceful coexistence" to refer to relations among oppressed peoples; Chicherin employed it to mean normal interstate relations between the Soviet government and the governments of the capitalist states; while to Krasin "peaceful coexistence" meant trade agreements and commercial relations as a means of rescuing the Russian economy.

By the spring of 1920, Lenin's concept of peaceful coexistence was evolving from that of a short "peace break" in the imperialist war to something more developed. With the defeat of the forces of General Anton Denikin and his evacuation from the Crimea on a British destroyer in March, Lenin envisioned an end to the Civil War; following the failure of insurrectionary soviets in Hungary and Bavaria, he called for the disciplining of "infantile leftism" within the international communist movement in April; with the lifting of the Allied naval blockade in January, he aimed at a

trade agreement with England. Thereafter he seems not to have wavered from a policy of stabilizing the Soviet regime in Russia and improving relations with capitalist states, although the diversity of policy preferences within the party leadership compelled him to speak and act ambivalently.^[23] The crucial debate among the leadership took place at the Ninth Party Congress in September over whether the Red Army was to be utilized to support proletarian revolution in Europe, with Trotsky, Kamenev, Dzerzhinskii, and Bukharin in favor, and Lenin, Radek, and others opposed.^[24] When the Red Army was driven back from Warsaw and the Civil War came to an end—marked by the withdrawal of Wrangel's forces in November, escorted from the Crimea by the French—Lenin determined that what the international situation offered to the revolution in Russia was no longer a "peace break" but what he called "a new and lengthy period of development." During the months that followed, as he reevaluated the international situation, he concluded that Soviet Russia had won the right to an independent existence within the capitalist world system, and his concept of peaceful coexistence took on the form it would retain for the remainder of his active political life.

The historic purpose to which the "new and lengthy period" was to be put, as Lenin saw it, was the restoration and development of the infrastructure of the Russian economy, for which he thought it necessary to acquire the investment, the machinery, and the expertise of the industrialized economies of Europe and America. The new leaders of Russia wanted to establish economic relations with the advanced capitalist economies of Europe and America, Lenin told the Eighth All-Russian Congress of Soviets in December 1920, "because we realize [their] necessity—our chief interest is in obtaining as quickly as possible, from the capitalist countries, the means of production (locomotives, machines, and electrical equipment) without which we cannot more or less seriously rehabilitate our industry, or perhaps may even be unable to do so at all, because the machinery needed by our factories cannot be made available." "We must turn all our efforts to achieving this." Lenin's stated objective was to close the gap between Russia and the advanced capitalist states by 25 to 50 percent. Without machine purchases from abroad, he concluded, "we shall be in a very difficult position indeed, and shall be unable to overtake them without superhuman effort."^[25]

Thus in late 1920, Lenin announced the readiness of the party to take on the task of economic reconstruction. However, five years of the World War, Civil War, and War Communism had left the Russian economy near collapse. And by February 1921, destruction of the economic infrastructure, diminished resources, shortages of goods, lack of services, and, above

all, low farm production and famine threatened the survival of the regime itself. The peasantry was in open rebellion against the grain requisitions of War Communism, and even the navy, the vanguard of the October Revolution, was in revolt. In response to this crisis, Lenin formally introduced what came to be called the New Economic Policy at the Tenth Party Congress in March.

As the New Economic Policy developed over the next two years,^[26] it constituted first and foremost an effort to revive agricultural production by ending government grain requisitions, allowing a legal market in agricultural commodities, and eliciting grain sales from the peasantry by providing consumer merchandise for purchase. Limited private enterprise in retail trade and small manufacturing employing less than twenty persons was restored, while the "commanding heights"—major industry, transportation, banking, and foreign trade—remained nationalized, and the economy stayed under government supervision.

Foreign technology and capital were invited to participate in the Soviet economy on a concessionary basis, for NEP was intended to promote the conditions in which Soviet Russia could conduct foreign trade and gain access to the technology of Europe and America. In the words of a resolution of the Executive Committee of the Communist International (ECCI) passed subsequently (in 1922), the New Economic Policy was "the expression of the solution of the task of incorporating the proletarian state in the chain of international relations."^[27] To this end, Russia concluded a commercial agreement with Britain the same month NEP was announced, and this was followed by similar agreements with Germany (May), Norway (September), Austria and Italy (December), Sweden (February 1922), and Czechoslovakia (June).^[28]

The prospects for obtaining "the means of production" from Europe looked favorable at this time. Trade between Russia and Europe had developed rapidly since early 1920 in what amounted to a foreign trade explosion. In 1920 Russian foreign trade was ten times larger than in 1919, albeit only one percent of what it had been before 1914. Made possible by the lifting of the Allied naval blockade, this revived trade involved primarily purchases of equipment and materials for the Russian railways. It was financed by expending some of the gold reserves accumulated by the tsarist regime which were reminted in Sweden to escape the restrictions placed by the United States and Britain on the acceptance of Russian gold.^[29] Purchases of heavy machinery from abroad continued to be funded with gold until mid-1922. Eventually Soviet economic planners would look to grain exports and to foreign loans to pay for imports from Europe and America. However there was no question of grain exports in 1921, for the

proclamation of a new economic policy coincided with one of the worst famines in modern history.

The famine was centered in the drought-prone Volga region and extended east into the Urals, west into the Ukraine, and south into Caucasia. The regions affected contained 37.5 million persons; however, no reliable figures exist for the number of persons directly affected.^[30] Reports of drought and crop failures brought the famine to the attention of the party/ state leadership in November 1920, and again in the following January with reports of large-scale peasant migration from the Volga. By early 1921 it was apparent that government grain reserves would be inadequate and that the railway system was so badly devastated that what food supplies existed could not be delivered. This situation raised critical political problems. To acknowledge the extent of the famine would encourage "the enemies of Soviet power," as anti-Bolsheviks at home and abroad could lay responsibility for the disaster at the door of the regime itself.^[31] Consequently the seriousness of the problem was publicly acknowledged and brought to the attention of the world only in July. At that time the Central Committee admitted that the situation was desperate, and, in an effort to attract foreign assistance, it appointed an All-Russian Famine Relief Committee composed of well-known non-Bolshevik personalities as well as of party members such as Kamenev and Krasin. Urgent appeals for international aid were issued first through the writer Maxim Gorky (13 July) and then by Chicherin (2 August).

The famine undermined the basis on which NEP was premised—a free market in grain. It also made peaceful coexistence a matter of life or death for the people of the Volga. To the Soviet regime the famine posed a dilemma of survival. On the one hand, foreign famine relief seemed indispensable; on the other, intervention conjured bad memories for the Bolsheviks. Allied food relief had been deployed on the side of counterrevolution during 1919, both in Central Europe and in the Russian Civil War. Russian émigrés spoke of transforming the All-Russian Famine Relief Committee into a new provisional government. Assistance would be accompanied, the Soviet leadership believed, by the danger of renewed intervention—what Lenin called "new plans for further invasions, interventions, and counter-revolutionary conspiracies."^[32]

In the spring of 1921 news of economic difficulties in Russia sent the international standing of the new regime into a severe decline. By August, however, there occurred what the NKID subsequently referred to as "a turnabout."^[33] The regime was rescued from its dilemma by Herbert Hoover, the American secretary of commerce, who, ignoring the All-Russian Famine Relief Committee, quickly offered directly to the Soviet

government the assistance of the American Relief Administration (ARA) in return for the release of all American prisoners and full freedom in administering relief. Hoover promised that the ARA would not engage in political activities. He himself hoped that this action would increase the influence of the United States in Russia and eventually induce transformations in the Soviet system that would go beyond those of NEP. American farmers were inundated by a huge grain surplus due to the end of wartime demand, the end of price controls, and the resumption of foreign competition. Supplies arrived quickly. Eventually, at the height of its efforts in 1921-22, the ARA sustained 10 million people, and Congress appropriated $20 million for the project.^[34] At the same time, the line put forth by the foreign press shifted 180 degrees, from one predicting that the famine would bring an end to the Soviet regime, to one that saw in famine relief the beginnings of closer economic relations between Russia and America and Europe. Lloyd George discussed the famine in the House of Commons, where he linked up relief and an economic rapprochement with the Soviets. The Supreme Allied Council, meeting in Brussels in early October, approved private philanthropic assistance but linked famine relief to a comprehensive reconstruction of the Russian economy, and it made government credits dependent on the willingness of the Soviet government to reverse its cancellation of the foreign debts of previous Russian regimes.

In response, Chicherin announced in a note to the Allied powers on 28 October the willingness of the Soviet government to recognize the prewar debts of the tsarist regime "as part of a system of agreements" providing for economic aid to Russia, for full recognition of the Soviet regime as the legal government of Russia, and for an international conference to settle differences between the two sides and to effect "a final reconciliation" between the Allies and Soviet Russia. We know little about what debate may have taken place within the Politburo and the NKID regarding the decision to take this step. The report of the NKID for the year, made to the Ninth Soviet Congress two months later, and published only in 1990, states only that "recognition of the debts of the Tsarist regime followed from the current policy of the Russian government, which is aimed at cooperating with capitalist countries in the economic sphere, tackling the economic rehabilitation of Russia as a priority task, and using Western capital to this end."^[35]

With this demarche, "peaceful coexistence" reached a new level of importance in Soviet policy. By October 1921 it had become a means of exploiting the prospective benefits of the new international equilibrium for two interrelated purposes. One was to normalize relations with Europe and America, to put an end to the diplomatic isolation that had persisted after

the end of the Civil War, to reduce the potential for further anti-Soviet coalitions, and thereby to provide the security necessary for the consolidation of Soviet power in the lands of the former Russian Empire in Asia. The other was to obtain the technology, the machinery, and the expertise necessary to reconstruct and develop the war-torn Russian economy. With this security and these resources, the RCP(B) would be able to stabilize Soviet power in Russia and to prevent a relapse into capitalism and a restitution of bourgeois rule. A policy of such historic importance deserves full analysis.

Lenin consistently rejected autarky as an economic objective of the New Economic Policy. "It would be absolutely ridiculous, fantastic, and utopian," he stated, "to hope that we can achieve complete economic independence."^[36] There is every indication that he and other economic "integrationists" among the party/state leadership expected the concessions granted to foreign capitalists along with the New Economic Policy to last for decades, perhaps half a century.^[37]

However, the interdependence of the economy of socialist Russia and the capitalist economies of Europe and America, on which the strategy of economic recovery and reconstruction propounded by Lenin in 1921 was premised, was partial. The projected integration of Russia into the global economy was limited by the nationalization of foreign trade decreed in April 1918 (as a measure of War Communism) and by a foreign trade monopoly that took a definitive form in March 1922. By controlling imports through this monopoly, the Foreign Trade Commissariat could and did limit the import of consumer goods and allocate foreign exchange to the purchase of the machinery and raw materials necessary for economic reconstruction. Controlled exports prevented foreigners from buying up cheaply national treasures, natural resources, and agricultural produce. More broadly, the foreign trade monopoly was designed to eliminate profiteering foreign middlemen and to prevent outside capitalist interference in the socialist development of Russia. In London, Paris, Berlin, New York, and elsewhere, special trading companies were formed that operated as branches of Soviet trade delegations. So that no questions could arise regarding the enforceability of the contracts they negotiated, the trading companies were incorporated under the laws of the countries in which they operated.^[38]

Among the top party/state leadership, Lenin stood as the main advocate of the foreign trade monopoly and as the main supporter of the strategy of limited integration into the capitalist world economy, although on neither issue was there complete agreement. Other consistent supporters of inte-

gration among the Bolsheviks included Rykov, Krasin, and Sokolnikov. Aleksei Rykov became head of the Supreme Economic Council in 1923-24 and when Lenin died he replaced him as chairman of the Council of People's Commissars. As a member of the Politburo from 1922 to 1930 he was the most persistent spokesman for economic integration within that body. Grigori Sokolnikov, a Central Committee member since 1917, became commissar for finance in 1922, a position in which he remained until 1926. He was mainly responsible for framing the integrationist strategy, and he was its major proponent during the years 1921-1926. The financial reform he engineered in 1922 made Soviet currency convertible and thus the whole New Economic Policy possible. For this "economic miracle" the foreign press referred to him as "the Bolshevik Count Witte."^[39] He subsequently became ambassador to London (1929-32) and deputy commissar for foreign affairs (1933-34). Leonid Krasin, a fervent supporter of the foreign trade monopoly, saw long-term low-interest development loans from the capitalist powers as the solution to the problems of economic development.^[40] He was commissar for foreign trade from 1920 to 1924 and as such negotiated the Anglo-Soviet Trade Agreement in March 1921 and attended the international economic conferences at Genoa and The Hague in 1922. The Bolshevik most respected by European governments, he handled the sensitive negotiations with Britain following the "Curzon ultimatum" in 1923 and represented the Soviet government in Paris in 1924-25 and in London in 1925-26.

The program of the integrationists—to grant concessions to Russia's natural resources, to conclude trade treaties, and to integrate partially the economy of Russia with those of Europe and America—had political purpose. Indeed Lenin represented the benefits of economic relations with capitalist states as primarily political. Commercial relations would win over a section of the capitalist world "to our side," he stated, and would serve to accentuate the antagonisms among them and to prevent them from "forming an alliance among themselves for the struggle against us." The Japanese, he thought, could be divided from the Americans, the Americans from the Europeans, and the Germans from the Entente. All the conflicts among the capitalist states generated by the World War could be used to protect Russia while the technology acquired from them was used to restore and develop the Russian economy to the point where it could resist future efforts by its enemies to overwhelm it.^[41] Foreign trade became the means to the security of an isolated and militarily vulnerable Socialist Republic in a postwar world.

By what means would the aims of the integrationists be attained? "Before the October Revolution," Chicherin later stated, "no attempt was

ever made to work out a program of the foreign policy of the socialist state in the midst of capitalist states."^[42] However, Soviet foreign relations came to be guided by a complex set of coherent and interdependent expectations that can be discovered in the statements of Lenin and the other integrationists. By late 1921 Lenin had come to expect that commercial transactions with the capitalist powers, whether explicitly approved by the governments involved or not, would lead to a diplomatic breakthrough and to recognition of the Soviet regime as the government of Russia. Normal diplomatic and commercial relations would in turn provide access to the industrial technology necessary to restore and reconstruct the Russian economy as well as reduce the likelihood of resumed military intervention. Military security and economic reconstruction would then promote the further political consolidation of the new regime. Economic exchange was presumed to lead to diplomatic recognition; both were prerequisite to security and to reconstruction required for regime stability. Military security, political consolidation, and economic reconstruction were in turn linked to the advance of international proletarian revolution. The economic development and political consolidation of the first socialist republic would both inspire by example the working classes of the capitalist, colonial, and semicolonial countries and make possible economic assistance to proletarian revolutions abroad.

In the context of these expectations, what did "peaceful coexistence" mean? The term became a part of the vocabulary of Soviet foreign relations at a time when it was believed that the capitalists would find no relief from proletarian revolution and that the revolutionaries of Russia would have but a short "peace break" in which to catch their breath before the military onslaught of the imperialists resumed. However, with the Red victory in the Civil War and the revolutionary recession of 1920-21, the term gained new meaning. Chicherin perhaps spoke too candidly, if he did indeed state in November 1921 what has been attributed to him, when he said: "Our foreign policy is a mere expression of the new economic policy, which is as a matter of fact a proletarian Thermidor."^[43] As Lenin explained it in his programmatic statements of 1920-21, "peaceful coexistence" described the status of relations between Russia on the one hand and Europe and America on the other at a specific moment in history, when the forces of socialism and capitalism had come to the point of equilibrium with neither able to overcome the other Looking at that equilibrium, he perceived something much more significant than the Brest-Litovsk "peace break" in the midst of the imperialist onslaught; he envisioned "a real chance of a new and lengthy period of development." This notion of a lengthy period was stated more fully in a resolution adopted by the Central Committee in May

1922, following the Genoa Conference: "the whole course of international relations recently bears witness to the inevitability, at the present stage of historical development, of the temporary coexistence of the communist and bourgeois systems of property."^[44] Thus, after 1921 the notion of peaceful coexistence was associated with something other than a short "peace break" or a simple tactical expedient. It did not, however, imply international reconciliation or a policy of "live and let live." In the Bolshevik theory of foreign relations, socialist and capitalist systems remained antagonistic; neither would nor could be transformed by coexisting peacefully.^[45]

Strictly speaking, "peaceful coexistence" referred to relations between socialist and bourgeois systems of property. In actuality, however, the NKID and Lenin himself used the term to refer to relations between states within an international system and, in particular, to normal, stable, and favorable diplomatic relations with the industrialized capitalist states and mutually beneficial trade and economic relations with them. Peaceful coexistence was a state of international relations, however, and not a policy. The policy conducted in the state of peaceful coexistence came to be called either "the struggle for peace" or "the struggle for peace and disarmament." The process by which both peaceful coexistence and the struggle for peace and disarmament became the central notions of Soviet foreign relations began in 1922, when Chicherin and Deputy Commissar Maksim Litvinov first put them forth in international settings at the Genoa and Hague economic conferences and then at the Moscow disarmament conference. There and thereafter the phrases served a variety of purposes. They linked Soviet Russia's foreign policy toward the capitalist powers with Marxist-Leninist ideology; they integrated the public presentation of foreign policy; they sloganized the interests of Soviet Russia within the international system; and they exposed "the hypocrisy of bourgeois statesmanship" in polemical form. In 1927 they became fixtures of Soviet foreign relations, when "peaceful coexistence" was installed as official party doctrine and Litvinov issued the Soviet plea for universal peace and disarmament at the Preparatory Commission on Disarmament at Geneva.^[46]

Ideology and the Foreign Policy of the Early Soviet State

Thirty years later, at the Twentieth Party Congress in 1956, Nikita Khrushchev revitalized the term "peaceful coexistence" within the vocabulary of Soviet foreign relations and made it the centerpiece of a new post-Stalin bundle of socialist doctrines. In his usage "peaceful coexistence" no longer referred to a "peace break" from the imperialist onslaught or even to "a new and lengthy period of development." Instead it became the only alter-

native to the destruction of both socialist and capitalist society in total thermonuclear war. In the Khrushchevian doctrine, a third imperialist war was neither desirable nor necessary to the collapse of capitalism; socialism would triumph through economic and ideological competition.^[47] This doctrine amounted to a significant departure from the doctrine of war—stated by Lenin during World War I and reconfirmed by Stalin in 1928-29—that global imperialist warfare was inevitable and advanced the world revolutionary process. To lend authority to the introduction of this notion, one with which Mao Zedong and the Chinese Communist Party would disagree strongly, Khrushchev stated that "peaceful coexistence" had always been the basic principle of Leninist foreign policy.

For the thirty years after that, the omnipresence of "peaceful coexistence" throughout Soviet history remained the official line of the CPSU and the Soviet Foreign Ministry: Peacefulness was inherent in socialism, and the "struggle for peace, disarmament, and cooperation among nations" was the central feature of the Leninist course that Soviet foreign relations had always followed. Lenin had conceived "the struggle for peace" even before the October Revolution, and he and his successors pursued it unceasingly. "Lenin's concept of peaceful coexistence" and "Leninist principles of Soviet foreign policy" continued to be as valid "in the present-day world" as they were in Lenin's time. "The Leninist policy of peace" had been, was, and always would be the basis of all Soviet foreign relations.^[48]

In the era of "the new political thinking" fostered by perestroika , the meaning of Lenin's legacy for the foreign relations of the Soviet Union was reconstructed. In a work on the history, theory, and politics of "peaceful coexistence" published in 1988, Alexander Bovin, a former speech writer for Khrushchev and Andropov and one of the ideologues of the déente of the 1970s, dramatically rejected the thesis that an elaborate preconceived concept of "peaceful coexistence" guided Lenin's diplomacy. In so doing he attacked the standard work on the topic written during the Brezhnev years by the prominent historian of foreign relations A. O. Chubarian.^[49] Moreover, in publications supported or authorized by the Foreign Ministry of Eduard Shevardnadze, what was esteemed in Lenin's foreign policy was not "meaningless theorizing" but rather Lenin's ability to abandon the theoretical positions assumed by the Bolshevik Party before 1917. An editorial in the May 1990 issue of the official Foreign Ministry journal affirmed "the special value" of the practical experience in "building foreign political relations" that Lenin had acquired as he "simply addressed himself to every problem that arose as the revolution went on." The significance of Lenin's legacy was found not in his theory building but in his method for understanding the problems of foreign relations and in his approach to their

solution. That approach was identified as "political realism." Lenin did not regard himself "as an enunciator of everlasting truths"; "he resolutely revised his own conclusions, especially when theoretical concepts formed earlier clashed with life."^[50] The same year, N. V. Zagladin, professor at the Academy of Social Sciences of the Central Committee of the CPSU, published a full-scale reexamination of the entire history of the Soviet foreign policy—both its successes and its failures—which began from the premise that Lenin never formulated "a system of Soviet foreign policy."^[51] Thus by 1991 "peaceful coexistence" was regarded no longer as a well-developed feature of a Leninist theory of international relations nor was it a special form of the class struggle; it was something improvised by Lenin and Chicherin in response to the events of the years 1917-1921.

Among Western scholars, Barrington Moore, Jr., writing in the 1950s, put forth the view that a significant change took place in Soviet politics in 1921, once the majority of the leadership of the RCP(B) acknowledged that the socialist revolution that had broken imperialism's weakest link in Russia would not sweep to victory in Central and Western Europe in a unitary movement. Thereafter, according to Moore, thoughts of global proletarian revolution ceased to play a motivating role in Bolshevik foreign relations, and the security of the state became the exclusive goal of their foreign politics. The primary means to that end, Moore added, were traditional power politics and normal diplomatic relations that were conducted with considerable skill.^[52] Although this thesis found considerable support among American and European scholars, it has also been subjected to significant qualification.

One qualification is found in that body of historical scholarship which, questioning how homogeneously ideological Bolshevik foreign relations were prior to 1921, has discovered a diversity of foreign policy opinion among the party leadership. The Bolsheviks disagreed with each other from the day they came to power, and they altered their views, sometimes from week to week, as the vicissitudes of proletarian revolution in Europe encouraged or discouraged them, and as they responded to the requirements of national security under ever-changing international circumstances. By the spring of 1921 the practice of foreign relations had become a synthesis of Leninist realism, power politics, and ideology.^[53]

The second qualification is made by those who have argued that ideology played a more vital and creative role in the politics and foreign policy of the USSR during the twelve years following the October Revolution than the Barrington Moore thesis suggests.^[54] Marxism, they have contended, was central to the worldview of the Bolsheviks; it structured their orientation to social questions; and they made a serious effort to state their most

important operational political beliefs in theoretical form. In the formulation of policy, Leninist Marxism—although it offered no direct answers to political questions—outlined the broad principles from which a diversity of positions on issues under consideration were generated. This was particularly true of the vigorous debates over strategies of economic development and foreign relations that took place during the 1920s. Paradoxically, however, it was this very conflict among the party/state elite over these alternative strategies that, by 1929-30, finally put an end to open discussion of policy and to free ideological development, and installed in its place an orthodoxy of Stalinist Leninism defined by the leader and those who did not disagree with him.^[55]

That those who made the October Revolution did not eradicate ideology from their concept of international relations as Soviet Russia entered world politics is evident in their post-1921 conception of foreign relations.^[56] They continued to believe that the entire system of imperialist interstate relations would inevitably disappear, to be replaced by a global community of socialist proletarians, probably within their lifetimes. The violence, the conflict, and the disequilibrium of the postwar order indicated its eventual collapse. Until then, socialist Russia and capitalist Europe would remain antagonistic. Relations between them were a zero-sum game; any benefit to one side disadvantaged the other; there could be no permanent compromises with imperialist states. Because capitalism sought profits, the imperialists could be enticed into a mutually beneficial cooperation with Soviet Russia. However, this peaceful interrelationship was possible only during a defined historical period. Capitalism was innately aggressive; in its imperialist phase it was inevitably warlike; "peaceful coexistence" would end with the resumption of interimperialist warfare. The imperialist oligarchy strove to dominate the world; capitalist governments were presumptively hostile; the paramount objective of bourgeois statesmanship was to defeat proletarian revolution by defeating the first socialist republic. Proletarian movements and worker organizations could play a decisive role in international politics, and in particular, the world proletariat could and should protect the first socialist republic from the aggressions of its enemies. Because the interests of Soviet national security were identical with those of world revolution, the resources of foreign communist parties could be expended as the survival and consolidation of the regime in Russia required it. All politics were connected and were determined by social relations. Changes in the terms of international relations could take place only as a result of a shift in class relations; diplomacy and decision making had a limited capability to change international conditions.

Thus, ideology played a demonstrably significant role in the conception

of Soviet foreign policy during the 1920s, and the influence of the ideological formations of the early Soviet period was lasting. As was the case with the American republic, which also took on a project of creating a new world order in 1917, the foreign relations doctrine of the Soviet regime was expressed in terms of a global mission. The idea of "the anti-imperialist struggle" as the most fundamental doctrine of Soviet foreign relations was born in the Civil War and came of age in the crucial years of relative isolation during the 1920s. It remained fundamental to the conception of Soviet foreign policy until 1986, when, for the first time, the influence of "the world revolutionary process" on international relations went unaffirmed at a party congress. Until then the terminology of "the anti-imperialist struggle" was the language in which foreign policy was promulgated, even during efforts at détente with the West. The doctrine served as the means by which "the exploited proletariat" of Europe, "the oppressed nations" of Asia, and "the peoples of the USSR" were identified with the revolution in Russia, the Soviet regime, and the leadership of the RCP(B)/ CPSU. It was the regime's primary measure of political integration, of "solidarity" in Leninist terms, and it gave purpose to policy and justified the regime itself. At the same time, "the anti-imperialist struggle" limited accommodation with the capitalist camp to the ideological and diplomatic stalemate termed "peaceful coexistence."

Ideology also complicated policy making significantly during the 1920s. The Bolshevik doctrine of war introduced one such complication.^[57] In various works written between the outbreak of World War I and the February Revolution, Lenin catalogued three types of warfare, each an inevitable feature of international relations during the imperialist phase of capitalist development: interimperialist military conflict over the distribution and redistribution of colonies; wars of national liberation occurring as colonies resisted imperialism; and wars between capitalism and socialism. The latter might take two forms, Lenin thought, although he did not elaborate on either of them. One form was wars of revolution occurring as the proletariat, victorious in one state, rose up, attracted to itself the oppressed of other countries, and employed armed force against the exploiters on an international scale. The other was counterrevolutionary attacks by the capitalist states on the socialist republic(s) taking place as the international bourgeoisie attempted to crush the proletarian revolution. The Civil War and the intervention of the Allies only confirmed Lenin and other Bolsheviks in their belief in the inevitability of socialist-capitalist warfare. And even after 1921, while Narkomindel proclaimed the doctrine of "peaceful coexistence" and pledged Soviet Russia to "the struggle for peace," statements about the inevitability of war continued to occupy a place of impor-

tance in resolutions on the international situation adopted by congresses of the RCP(B) and the Communist International.

In doctrinal terms, the contradictory relationship between peaceful coexistence and inevitable war could be resolved: Capitalism was inherently aggressive; in its imperialist phase it was inevitably warlike. "Peaceful coexistence" defined the international situation during a specific historical period distinguished by an impermanent peace among the imperialist powers and by unfavorable prospects both for proletarian revolution and for counterrevolutionary wars of intervention. "The struggle for peace and disarmament" guided Soviet policy toward Europe and America during that period. In the actual conduct of foreign relations, however, "the inevitability of war," "peaceful coexistence," and "the struggle for peace and disarmament" created significant problems for the presentation and reception of foreign policy. How could representatives of the capitalist powers respect the integrity of Soviet policy, and of those who formulated and conducted it, when the latter stated simultaneously that peaceful coexistence was possible but that war was inevitable? This contradiction between the ideological foundations of foreign relations and the conduct of diplomacy continually complicated Soviet foreign affairs during the 1920s. At the same time, the creation of a permanent institution for perpetuating and internationalizing the Bolshevik Revolution and extending it to Asia frustrated the efforts of the NKID to normalize relations with the capitalist powers. Why and how that happened is discussed in the next two chapters.