some sixty years after its occurrence, the Russo-Poksh War of 1920 still is something of an enigma. Despite the recent work of Norman Davies in clarifying its origins, it can be asserted that the war's true source lay in the conflict between Polish nationalism and the imperatives of Soviet nationality policy dating back to 19 17. Indeed, much of early Soviet foreign policy was an attempt to fuse both domestic and foreign policy in order to resolve its own nationality problems and expand its frontiers. Poland and the contested territories along its border with Russia were the first case-histories of this foreign policy, and today this fusion of tactics is still being followed by the Soviets along their borders, for example, in Afghanistan. Thus, the 1920 war is not only a part of the past but a vital example for our times. From the onset of the First World War, Bolshevik leaders thought that the solution to the problems of nationalities in Russia and Eastern Europe generally, was an explicitly international one. Lenin in 19 14 wrote, 'The proletariat must not participate in the defence of the old framework of bourgeois states, but must create a new framework of socialist republics ... It is as impossible to pass from capitalism to socialism without breaking national frameworks as it was impossible to pass from feudalism to capitalism without adopting the idea of a nation.51 Stalin, in 1920, echoed the same view by observing that since proletarian revolution was only possible internationally, the national question manifestly became one of struggle for the general liberation of nations, colonies, and so on.2 And in our own time, the Soviet philosopher, E.V. Tadevosian, has written that because Soviet statehood unites the workers