The International Situation in 1918 Seen by the Bolsheviks: Short and Long Perspective

Abstract

The theme of my paper concerns the subjective side of this “aufbruch in die Moderne” which we are speaking about. I would like to explore how the complicated and very unstable international global situation in 1918 was seen and perceived by the leading Bolshevik decision-makers in the field of the foreign policy: Vladimir I. Lenin, Georgy V. Chicherin, and Leon D. Trotsky. Mentioning the short and long perspectives in the title of my paper, I aim to stress its two-sided approach. However briefly it could be done, it seems important to include the Bolshevik views in 1918 (so-called “short perspective”) in the more extended frame of time and to analyse the heritage of this first year of the Bolshevik rule in the following Soviet foreign policy and subsequent perceptions of the world realities (what is called “long perspective” in this paper). The choice of sources which this paper is based on, was governed by the desire to explore the three main questions: first, how the analysis of the international politics was elaborated inside the Bolshevik leadership (hence the interest to interior official and private correspondence of the Soviet officials); second, how it was presented to the party members and to the outside world (hence the attention paid to the speeches and articles of Lenin and other Bolsheviks, and to the materials of the Party and All-Russia Central Executive Committee congresses); and, finally, how this vision was translated into interaction with other states (hence the interest to the diplomatic documents concerning, especially, the Soviet-German, Soviet-Polish and the Soviet-Chinese relations). I will begin by reviewing what was distinct in the situation of 1918 for Bolshevik perception of world realities, then I’ll pass to the particular traits of the Soviet analysis of global “balance of power” and the Soviet view on trends of international developments. As a conclusion, some general thoughts on the question of continuity and change in the Soviet foreign policy between 1918 and 1945 are proposed.