Mustafa Kemal and Turkey in the correspondences of Soviet Bureaucrats (1918-1922)

Abstract

Capitalism and socialism has been the most common ideologies in the world history geographically. While capitalism feeding from a system based on proprietary property and colonialism caused the French Revolution of 1789, socialism putting forward collective property, economic equality, and community brought about the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. Capitalism dragged Europe into the First World War in 1914 called ‘’war of sharing the world’’. Since the most important regions which were desired to be shared by the countries which were the responsible for starting the First World War were in the borders of the Ottoman Empire, it was evaluated that early years of 20th century were years troubling for the history of Turkey. The citizens and administrators of the state became a focal point of the events of political and economic. The Treaty of Sevr 1920 , which it aggravated the situation in Turkey and affected all ideas, movements, and ideologies, was signed at this period. One of the open-minded personalities to new ideologies in the Ottoman Empire bureaucracy was Mustafa Kemal Pasha, who is the founder of the Republic of Turkey. Even if the National Struggle movement, which were similar with the French Revolution of 1789 and the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 and started by Mustafa Kemal Pasha was affected by both ideologies of that period, it was different them. Researches based on only European, which was related to the Kemalist movement has been carried out so far. However, it is undeniable that Russian archives are of great importance on Kemalist movement. Those archives consist of unpublished correspondences, and several intelligence texts of Soviet Russia related to the National Struggle movement besides. In this study, the documents related to Mustafa Kemal Pasha and Turkey contained in the various correspondences of Soviet Russia between 1918 and 1922 were investigated. Moreover, Mustafa Kemal Pasha was also compared with Lenin and Mustafa Kemal’s view against Soviet Russia and Lenin’s thoughts towards the National Struggle movement were evaluated. Lenin's ways of obtaining information and the nature of his intelligence were queried. As a result, it was seen that Soviet Russia had an accurate and in-depth knowledge about Turkey which was newly getting established and the leaders of the states of Turkey and Soviet carried out strategies in direction of national and common interests in foreign policy