National communism and world revolution: The political consequences of German military withdrawal from the Baltic area in 1918–19

Abstract

ITHE WITHDRAWAL OF THE GERMAN ARMIES from the occupied territories of the former Russian Empire at the end of World War I was a process which re-drew the political map of Eastern Europe and transformed the political environment in which the Russian Civil War was fought. It allowed the creation of new nation states on Russia's western and southern borders in areas hitherto occupied by German and Austro-Hungarian troops. But as well as aiding the emergence of these states, the character of the German withdrawal served to influence their relations with each other and their attitude towards Soviet Russia. In particular, the conflicts leading to the Russo-Polish war of 1920 made their appearance at this time. The departure of the German armies, moreover, opened up the possibility of the spread of the Russian revolution into Western Europe. The attempt to bring this about was actively pursued by the Soviet leaders, who established organisations for this purpose both before and after the German withdrawal. That the attempt was unsuccessful is to some extent connected with the new set of circumstances created by the departure of the German and Austro-Hungarian armies from Russia's borderlands. Although the withdrawal of the Central Powers' armies from the occupied territories is a process which links together the Civil War in Russia, the Soviet-Polish war, the emergence of the Baltic states and the origins of the Comintern, it has not hitherto been treated as an integral subject for special study. In so far as it has been written about at all, it has invariably been in the context of individual national histories of, for example, Poland, Latvia or Lithuania. The aim of the present article is to reconstruct the events surrounding the departure of the German armies from the territories of the Russian Empire which they had occupied, and to examine the implications of the German withdrawal for Soviet Russia's attempts at spreading revolution through the new border states to Western Europe.