No estimate of Soviet Foreign policy would be worthy of consideration which did not take into account the world-wide hatred of the capitalists for the new socialist government—the first socialist government in history. Whereas, for example, the British Government of that time took just one week to recognize the Provisional Government which followed the collapse of the Czarist regime, nearly seven years had to pass from the day the Bolsheviks came to power before a British ambassador was appointed to Moscow. Not one Government in 1917 gave the Bolshevik Government formal recognition. It was denounced on every hand, not because of anything the new Soviet Government had done, but only because of what the capitalist governments feared it might do.
There was no lack of effort on the part of the Soviet Government to come to terms with these governments. It stood for peace with no territorial claims and no indemnities. It asked for a general peace, but a separate peace was forced upon it. The Allies were invited to the negotiations and promptly refused. Nevertheless it is clearly on record that Lenin himself said to Britain’s representative: ‘So long, therefore, as the German danger exists, I am prepared to risk co-operation with the Allies, which should be temporarily advantageous to both of us. In the event of German aggression, I am willing to accept military support. At the same time I am quite convinced that your government will never see things in this light. It is a reactionary government. It will co-operate with the Russian reactionaries.’ (See Memoirs of a British Agent, by Bruce Lockhart.)
The Bolsheviks were prepared to make great concessions in order to secure normal relations with the outside world. They were prepared ‘to recognize Russian debts, make concessions in minerals, timber, and the like and to include in a general agreement with the Entente Powers the obligation not to interfere in their internal affairs’. (See Six weeks in Russia in 1919, by Arthur Ransome.) These offers proved of no avail. No other course was open to the Bolsheviks but to appeal to the masses.
The first declaration of the Soviet Government on Foreign policy was an appeal for an immediate general peace ‘without annexations of foreign territory, without the forcible annexation of foreign nationalities and without indemnities.’ The declaration continued: ‘The Government of Russia proposes to all warring peoples immediately to conclude such a peace. It expresses its readiness at once and without the slightest delay to take the necessary steps toward the final confirmation of the terms of such a peace by the plenipotentiary conventions of the representatives of all countries and all nations. . . .’ (Armed Intervention in Russia, by W. P. and Zelma Coates.)
On 22nd November, 1917, two weeks after this declaration, Trotsky, then Foreign Secretary of Soviet Russia, sent a similar communication to all the neutral governments, in which he said: ‘The Soviet Government firmly hopes. . . .to find the most whole-hearted support in the struggle for peace from the labouring masses of the neutral countries, and requests you, Mr. Minister, to accept our assurances of the readiness of the Russian democracy to strengthen and develop most friendly relations with the democracies of all countries.’ (Ibid.)
The German Government alone was prepared to enter into negotiations, but not as one seeking a general peace of the kind described by the Soviet Government. It sought and secured a victor’s peace of the most violent kind. The Soviet Government had no option but to accept the German terms or endeavour to renew a war without the material resources with which to wage it and which the Allies refused to give. Hence, while the Brest-Litovsk negotiations represent the first formal negotiations between the Soviet State and a foreign State, there was nothing peaceful about them. They represent the continuation of the war by other means—the dismembering of Russia by the victorious power.
There could, therefore, be no change in the principal policy of the Soviet Government. The negotiations were used as the means of continuing its appeal to the masses. Brest-Litovsk was the tribune from which the Russian leaders sought to rouse the working people of Germany to revolutionary action. They deliberately prolonged the negotiations, confident that the revolutionary tide was rising and hoping against hope that it would come quickly and transform the Russian Revolution into a European Revolution.
The revolution never rose to those heights and it was the intense realism of Lenin that saved Russia from perishing in the flames of a romantic revolutionary war when he insisted upon the Soviet Government signing the ‘Tilsit’ peace of the Germans. The Bolsheviks thus snatched a ‘breathing space’ in which to gather strength until the slowly developing revolution came to their aid. But the breathing space was to prove all too short. While these negotiations were taking place the ground was being prepared for Allied intervention for the restoration of Czarism. Allied troops were landed at Murmansk ostensibly to fight the Germans. Events proved they were part of the forces of counter-revolution directed against the Soviets.
During February and March of 1918, before the negotiations were completed at Brest-Litovsk, British naval forces were landed at Murmansk. On 31st March more troops were landed at Murmansk from the Allied forces. By June 29th further Allied forces landed in Northern Russia and Vladivostok. On 8th July the port of Kem was occupied. Every counterrevolutionary force of the ‘Whites’, the Poles, the Czecho-Slovaks, Denekin, Kolchak, and the rest were given war materials. The Order of the Bath was conferred upon General Denekin on 7th June, 1919. When Yudenitch occupied Gatchina at the gates of Petrograd on 16th October, 1919, he was able to do so only by the aid of the British Navy and Army.
During this period, as early as March, 1918, Finland, which had been granted independence by the Soviet Government, invited the German Government to send troops into its territory in order to crush the revolutionary movement. Germany promptly accepted and General Von der Goetz joined with General Mannerheim. No exception to this course was taken by the Allied Governments. German forces marched into the Ukraine, occupying Kiev and Odessa.
It is hardly surprising, in the circumstances, that the Bolsheviks should have regarded all the capitalist Powers as their enemies bent on their destruction. It is impossible to understand Russian policy without taking into account the incalculable amount of suffering and devastation inflicted upon the Russian people, already more exhausted than any other by the war. Between them the Allies and the Central Powers dismembered Russia, cut off the Baltic States which were previously provinces of the Russian Empire, tore Bessarabia out of Russia and patched it on to Rumania, established a blockade, made foreign trade impossible and wrought havoc in all directions.
Only one course was open to the Soviets—an appeal to the masses everywhere to rise against their governments. The Council of People’s Commissars issued such an appeal to the working population of France, England, America, Italy, and Japan. They issued another appeal to the workers of the Central Powers denouncing the Brest-Litovsk Treaty and appealing to them also to rise against their governments.
The Bolsheviks would have preferred to come to terms with the capitalist Powers. With their efforts to secure such a compromise I will deal in a moment. Meanwhile it should be observed that their estimate of the imminence of revolutionary developments in Europe were not unwarranted, although they were slower in coming than they hoped would be the case. Nor can it be denied, indeed it is generally admitted, that the appeals of the Bolsheviks played no small part in stirring the workers of Europe to revolutionary action. By the end of 1918 the fabric of the German and Austrian Empires was in ruins and Soviets of workers and soldiers appeared in a great part of Europe.
With the termination of the war all Europe, including this country, was seized with ‘social unrest’ in which the workers everywhere looked to socialism for a solution of their difficulties. It was in the midst of this great wave of revolution that the Bolsheviks gathered strength to fight the interventionists with their newly created Red Army and won great support especially among the working population in the countries outside Russia. Their aim was, on the one hand, to defeat the wars of intervention and, on the other hand, to help the world revolution which they were confident the Russian Revolution had begun.
Lenin was not a romantic. It had been his life’s work to create a party of revolution in Russia which would be capable of seizing the right moment in history to lead the Russian people to socialism. He was convinced that a prerequisite of victorious socialism in other countries was the creation of similar parties within them. From the moment of the collapse of the Socialist International, commonly referred to as the Second International, at the outbreak of war in 1914, he had urged the necessity of creating a Third (Communist) International, governed by the principles of the Bolsheviks. But he had received insufficient support for his proposal to bring it into being. The Russian Revolution, and now the surging waves of social revolution and unrest, provided the material basis for his project. In March, 1919, a few representative socialists of other countries, together with representatives of the Bolsheviks led by Lenin, formed the Third International and launched an appeal for a World Congress which would establish it on the wide foundation of parties of revolutionary socialism in the countries of capitalism.
It has been argued, and there is considerable force in the argument, that the Communist International was created for the specific purpose of aiding Soviet foreign policy. This is not the case, although it has from time to time served this purpose. Its first declarations announced that the World Revolution had begun. Its leaders estimated that within a year or two soviets would be formed all over Europe. They therefore appealed for insurrectionary action on the part of the workers. The policy of the Soviet Government and the Communist International were at this stage the same. The International was formed to promote world revolution, and so long as this was in the immediate interests of Soviet Russia they marched together. But as soon as the Soviet Government effected a compromise peace, and the wave of revolution in Europe began to ebb, the agitation for world revolution became the business of the Communist International alone, while the Foreign Office of the Soviet Government confined itself to the task of guiding state relations with foreign Powers.
The advent of Chitcherin to the post of Foreign Secretary, and the transfer of Trotsky to the Commissariat for War, marks the transition to this new state of affairs in international relations. For it was a transition over several years, and not a sudden change. The period begins with the first negotiations with the Allied Governments. It was more or less completed when the ‘Whites’ had been defeated and the Allies were compelled by pressure from within their own countries as well as the victories of the Red Army, to end the wars of intervention.
Lenin and his colleagues did not regard the formation of the new International as sufficient in itself. Having rallied to their banner a large section of the socialist movement of almost all countries they proceeded with an attempt to rally the Trade Unions in similar fashion and formed the Red International of Labour Unions. This was to be the new revolutionary organization of industrial workers under Bolshevik leadership. But as the Red tide in Europe ebbed this Trade Union International declined and finally ceased to exist.
Other organizations were also created as means whereby the Russian workers identified themselves with the struggles of the working class in other countries. Each phase of the struggle had its own organization, such as the ‘Workers’ International Relief’, ‘Class War Prisoners’ Aid’, ‘Friends of Soviet Russia’, the ‘Anti-Imperialist League’, etc. It was through these organizations that the Bolsheviks maintained their identity with and assisted the revolutionary process in other countries.
Although these organizations were international in their character it is indisputable that the Russian Communists led and directed them. The course of their development, and frequently their very nature, reveals what so many people do not realize, that it is contrary to the policy of the Bolsheviks to try to make a revolution when circumstances do not permit. They show, too, how they adapt themselves to changing circumstances by confining themselves to the immediate problems of the workers.
While it was thus dissociating itself from revolutionary activity, the Soviet Foreign Office seized every opportunity to negotiate with foreign governments. After its first efforts to get the support of the Allies against Germany, to which the Allies did not respond, the next event of importance was the invitation of the Supreme Council of the Allies to all Russian ‘Governments’ to take part in a peace conference at Prinkipo. This was sent on 22nd January, 1919. The Soviet Government agreed to participate. The rest refused. The Allies continued their support of the ‘Whites’ and the conference was not held. On 4th December, 1919, the Soviet Government and the Estonians began peace negotiations which resulted in a peace treaty on 2nd February, 1920. On 11th May, 1920, London dockers refused to load munitions for Poland. The British Labour Movement threatened a general strike to stop the war of intervention. On 31st July, 1920, the Russian-Polish peace conference opened at Barshovitchi. The Peace Treaty between the two states was signed on 18th March, 1921. Two days earlier an Anglo-Soviet Trade Agreement had been signed, but this did not carry with it the establishment of normal relations between the two countries. The intervention of the Allied Powers continued. It was not until October, 1922, that the Japanese evacuated Vladivostok and the fighting ceased.
Meanwhile in January, 1922, the Supreme Council of the Allies decided to summon a world conference at Genoa. To this conference both Soviet Russia and Germany were invited and both accepted the invitation. Chitcherin represented the Soviet Government. He was met with demands that his government annul most of its socialist legislation, pay the Czarist government’s debts, and accept some financial control by the Allies. Chitcherin refused. He left the conference and met the Germans at Rapallo, where the representatives of the two countries established full diplomatic relations and worked out an agreement for mutual trade and friendly relations.
The signing of this treaty and the failure of the Genoa Conference changed the European situation. Intervention was defeated. The Allies could not renew the undeclared war and the ‘Whites’ were defeated on all fronts. The Bolsheviks had demonstrated the elasticity of their foreign policy, and their ability to profit by the conflict of interests between the capitalist states in order to strengthen their own position. Another ‘breathing space’ had been secured in the struggle for the life of the Soviet Republics. How long this peace would endure no one could know. But a temporary basis had been secured, and the policy embodied in the Rapallo Treaty superseded that of the mass appeal for insurrection. The change had not been that the Bolsheviks had ceased to be Bolsheviks and abandoned their aim of world revolution. It simply demonstrated their recognition of the fact that revolutions are the product of historical conditions and not the artificial creation of propagandists.
Next: 4. The Peace and Trade Policy