Abstract
Early Soviet foreign policy was based upon the assumption that two social orders representing the interests of different and antagonistic classes could not long coexist, and that in the struggle between them socialism would be triumphant. Soviet diplomatic activity, accordingly, devoted rather more attention to appeals to the ‘working class of all countries’ than to the governments which, at least formally, represented them.1 There was indeed some doubt as to whether it was proper to speak at all of a ‘Soviet foreign policy’ as distinct from the revolutionary policy of a socialist party in power. ‘What? Are we going to have foreign relations?’, Lenin is reported to have remarked. Trotsky, on his appointment as the first People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs, announced simply that he would ‘issue some revolutionary proclamations to the peoples and then close up shop’.2
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Notes
L. Trotsky, Moya Zhizn’ (Berlin 1930), vol. 2, p. 64.
V. A. Bystriansky, Imperialisticheskaya Angliya protiv Sotsialisticheskoi Rossii (Petrograd 1919), pp. 7–8;
M. N. Pavlovich, Sovetskaya Rossiya i Kapitalis-ticheskaya Angliya (Moscow 1925), p. 3.
M. N. Roy, Memoirs (Bombay 1964), p. 305.
G. V. Chicherin, Vneshnyaya Politika Sovetskoi Rossii za Dva Goda (Moscow 1920), p. 29;
L. B. Kamenev, Tretii Internatsional: popularnyi ocherk (Prague 1920), p. 27; Izvestiya, 7 November 1922.
G. Z. Besedovsky, Na Putiakh k Termidoru (Paris 1931), p. 48.
G. Zinoviev, Tretii Kommunisticheskii Internatsional (Petrograd 1919), p. 17; Odinnadtsatyi S”ezd RKP, p. 186.
G. Zinoviev, Report to the Second World Congress (Amsterdam 1920), p. 376.
Treaty of Friendship with the Finnish Socialist Workers’ Republic, 1 March 1918, in Yu. V. Klyuchnikov and A. Sabanin, (eds.), Mezhdunarod-naya Politika Noveishego Vremeni v Dogovorakh, Notakh i Deklaratsiakh (Moscow 1925–8), vol. 2, p. 120 (not printed in DVP).
P. Stuchka, Konstitutsiya Rossiiskoi Sotsialisticheskoi Federativnoi Sovetskoi Respubliki v Voprosakh i Otvetakh (Moscow 1919), pp. 74–5, 89 and 19.
Quoted in Jane Degras, ‘United Front Tactics in the Comintern’, St Antony’s Papers, no. 9, (London 1960), p. 10.
N. Bukharin, Ekonomika Perekhodnogo Perioda (Moscow 1920), ch. 1, p. 155.
Ibid., pp. 101 and 27; Lenin, PSS, vol. 41, p. 247. The debate on the national and colonial question is considered in detail in A. S. Whiting, Soviet Policies in China 1917–1924 (Stanford 1954), ch. 3;
J. P. Haithcox, ‘The Roy-Lenin debate on colonial policy’, Journal of Asian Studies, vol. 23, no. 1, November 1962, pp. 93–101; and in N. E. Korolev, ‘Razrabotka Leninym politiki Kominterna po natsional’ nomu i kolonial’ nomu vop-rosam’, in K. E. Shirinya, (ed.), Vtoroi Kongress Kominterna (Moscow 1972), pp. 152–93.
G. Z. Sorkin, Pervyi S”ezd Narodov Vostoka (Moscow 1961), p. 15;
A. I. Mikoyan, Dorogoi Bor’by (Moscow 1971) p. 581;
A. Rosmer, Moscou sous Lénine (Paris 1970), vol. 1, p. 144.
Detailed accounts are available in M. N. Ivanova, Natsional’no-osvoboditel’noe Dvizhenie v Irane v 1918–22 gg. (Moscow 1961)
and A. N. Kheifets, Sovetskaya Rossiya i Sopredel’nye Strany Vostoka 1918–20 (Moscow 1964).
G. Safarov, Problemy Vostoka (Petrograd 1922), pp. 171 and 176.
Novyi Vostok, 1927, no. 2, p. 286; A. G. Park, Bolshevism in Turkestan 1917–1927 (New York 1957), pp. 52–4;
I. V. Stalin, Sochineniya, vol. 5, (Moscow 1947), p. 41.
G. Safarov, Kolonial’naya Revolyutsiya (Moscow 1921), p. 97; Desyatyi S”ezd RKP(B). Stenograficheskii otchet (Moscow 1921), p. 105.
S. Usmani, From Peshawar to Moscow (Benares 1927), p. 168;
Jawaharlal Nehru, An Autobiography (London 1942), p. 363. See also more generally Zafar Iman, ‘The effects of the Russian revolution in India, 1917–1920’, St Antony’s Papers, no. 9 (London 1960) and ‘The rise of Soviet Russia and socialism in India’, in B. R. Nanda, (ed.), Socialism in India (Delhi 1972).
L. P. Sinha, The Left-Wing in India, 1919–1947 (Muzaffarpur 1965), p. 58;
M. Ahmad, Myself and the Communist Party of India (Calcutta 1970), p. 81.
Roy, Memoirs, p. 489; A. Gupta, (ed.), Lenin and India (Delhi 1960), pp. 28–30.
Gene Windmiller and Marshall Overstreet, Communism in India (Berkeley 1960), chs. 2–4.
Communist International, Fourth Congress: abridged report (London 1923), pp. 222 and 224; Ezhegodnik Kominterna (Moscow—Petrograd 1923), p. 682.
Philip Spratt, Blowing up India (Calcutta 1955), pp. 34 and 37;
Zafar Iman, Colonialism in East-West Relations (Delhi 1969), p. 190.
G. Zinoviev, Kommunisticheskii Internatsional za Rabotoi (Moscow 1922), p. 66.
Kommunisticheskii Internatsional, Tretii Vsemirnyi Kongress: Stenografiche-skii otchet (Petrograd 1922), p. 6; Zhizn’ NatsionaVnostei, no. 12(147), 15 June 1922.
S. Zabih, The Communist Movement in Iran (Berkeley 1966), p. 52.
M. N. Pavlovich, Revolyutsionnaya Turtsiya (Moscow 1921), p. 90; Mezh-dunarodnaya Zhizn’, no. 15(133), 7 November 1922, p. 15.
Quoted in B. Lazitch and M. Drachkovitch, Lenin and the Comintern, vol. 1 (Stanford 1972), p. 411.
Zinoviev, Kommunisticheskii Internatsional za Rabotoi, p. 74; I. V. Stalin, Sochineniya, vol. 6 (Moscow 1947), p. 144.
Soviet archival source, cited in A. N. Kheifets, Sovetskaya Diplomatiya i Strany Vostoka 1921–1927 (Moscow 1968), p. 229.
See further I. A. Yusupov, Ustanovlenie i Razvitie Sovetsko-Iranskikh Otnoshenii 1917–1927 (Tashkent 1969) and
R. A. Tuzmukhamedov, Sovetsko-Iranskie Otnosheniya (1917–1921) (Moscow 1960).
B. Z. Shumiatsky, Na Postu Sovetskoi Diplomatu (Moscow 1960), pp. 40–1.
L. B. Teplinsky, 50 Let Sovetsko-Afghanskikh Otnoshenii 1919–1969 (Moscow 1971), p. 41.
Soviet archival source, cited in A. N. Kheifets, VelikiiOktyabr’ i Ugnetennye Narody Vostoka (Moscow 1959), pp. 51–2.
3 January 1921, quoted in Kommunisticheskii Internatsional, 1927, no. 24, p. 34. See further P. Moiseev and Yu. Rozaliev, K Istorii Sovetsko-Turetskikh Otnoshenii (Moscow 1958)
and S. E. Kuznetsova, Istoriya Sovetsko-Turetskikh Otnoshenii (Moscow 1961).
Zhizn’ Natsional’nostei, 14 May 1921 ; G. S. Harris, The Origins of Communism in Turkey (Stanford 1967), p. 91.
R. P. Kornienko, Rabochee Dvizhenie v Turtsii 1918–1963 gg. (Moscow 1965), pp. 40–3.
Jane Degras, (ed.), The Communist International 1919–1943, vol. 2 (London 1960), p. 159.
M. A. Cheshkov, ‘Analiz sotsial’noi struktury kolonial’nkh obshchestv v dokumentakh Kominterna (1920–1927)’, in R. A. Ulyanovsky et al., (eds.), Komintern i Vostok (Moscow 1969), p. 193.
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White, S. (1979). Soviet Russia and Revolution. In: Britain and the Bolshevik Revolution. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-04299-9_5
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