When the Soviet Union Entered World Politics - Hardcover

Jacobson, Jon

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0520083326 ISBN 13: 9780520083325

Publisher: University of California Press, 1994

Synopsis

The dissolution of the Soviet Union has aroused much interest in the USSR's role in world politics during its 74-year history and in how the international relations of the twentieth century were shaped by the Soviet Union. Jon Jacobson examines Soviet foreign relations during the period from the end of the Civil War to the beginning of the first Five-Year Plan, focusing on the problems confronting the Bolsheviks as they sought to promote national security and economic development. He demonstrates the central importance of foreign relations to the political imagination of Soviet leaders, both in their plans for industrialization and in the struggle for supremacy among Lenin's successors.

Jacobson adopts a post-Cold War interpretative stance, incorporating glasnost and perestroika-era revelations. He also considers Soviet relations with both Europe and Asia from a global perspective, integrating the two modes of early Soviet foreign relations―revolution and diplomacy―into a coherent discussion. Most significantly, he synthesizes the wealth of information that became available to scholars since the 1960s. The result is a stimulating work of international history that interfaces with the sophisticated existing body of scholarship on early Soviet history.

About this title

About the Author

Jon Jacobson is Professor of History at the University of California, Irvine.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

When the Soviet Union Entered World Politics

By Jon Jacobson

University of California Press

Copyright © 1994 Jon Jacobson
All right reserved.
ISBN: 0520083326


Introduction

In the late 1950s, George E Kennan set out to explain to his fellow Americans how Soviet Russia's place in world politics had been transformed, as he stated it, from "the initial weakness of 1921 to the pinnacle of power and success it occupies in the wake of World War II." In doing so, he gave a major share of the credit for that transformation to the effectiveness of Soviet diplomacy and to what he termed "Soviet resourcefulness and single-mindedness of purpose."1 In this work, I examine the beginnings of the Soviet Union's historic rise to world power in the twentieth century and explore the role that diplomacy and other instruments of foreign relations played in that ascent. I consider the formative years of Soviet foreign relations, from the time Soviet Russia first entered world politics in 1920-21-following the Russian Revolution, the Paris Peace Conference, and the Civil War—to "the great turning point" in Soviet history in 1928-29, when the economy, politics, and foreign relations of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) were cast in the form they were to retain for decades. The 1920s take us from Lenin's domination of Soviet politics up to Stalin's emergence as the new leader with increasingly dictatorial powers. It is in these years that the foreign relations of the USSR took on their characteristic features. In examining this period, I hope to clarify the terms on which the USSR entered world politics, to contribute to an understanding of how Soviet foreign relations were originally formulated and conducted, to estimate how much credit can be assigned to diplomacy in making the USSR a world power, and to identify some of the fundamental tendencies of Soviet foreign relations.

Within Euro-American scholarship, the interpretation of early Soviet foreign relations began with Louis Fischer's The Soviets in World Affairs (1930), the work of a historian with direct knowledge of the events of the

time, with personal access to important Soviet diplomats, and with strong sympathy for Georgii Chicherin, the people's commissar for foreign affairs (1918-30), and his efforts to find for the USSR a place of equality, respect, and stability among the major world powers. Interpretation continued with three monumental achievements of perceptive and thoughtful scholarship completed at various stages of the Cold War—Theodore von Laue's "Soviet Diplomacy: G. V. Chicherin, Peoples Commissar for Foreign Affairs" (1953), George E Kennan's Russia and the West under Lenin and Stalin (1961), and Adam Ulam's Expansion and Coexistence (1968).2 It was further advanced following the déente of the 1970s by Teddy J. Uldricks in his article "Russia and Europe: Diplomacy, Revolution, and Economic Development in the 1920s" (1979), which analytically integrated early Soviet politics, foreign relations, and strategies of economic development, and which transcended the "totalitarian" and "Communist ideology" models of Soviet foreign relations that had prevailed since the 1950s.3 Each of these works considered the foreign relations of the 1920s comprehensively and within a framework of concepts. Each advanced the analysis of policy to a new level of sophistication.

The concept of early Soviet foreign relations informed by the totalitarian and Communist ideology models was highly complex and nuanced; specific aspects of it varied with time, circumstance, and proponent; however, it also had a basic logic, consistency, and coherence. As synthesized briefly, it included the following concepts: (1) the USSR's foreign relations were driven primarily by revolutionary ideology during this period; (2) the destruction of capitalism by direct insurrectionary offensive was the central intention of the first Soviet leadership cohort and the ultimate aim of their regime; (3) the conduct of normalized political and commercial relations was not genuinely representative of Soviet foreign policy and amounted to no more than a facade and a temporary expedient to be adopted only until proletarian revolution (aided by the Red Army if necessary) destroyed democracy and capitalism everywhere; (4) Soviet foreign relations were completely coherent and under the highly centralized control of the Politburo, which directed them by means of a coordinated set of foreign policy instruments; (5) the diplomats of the Foreign Affairs Commissariat played no influential role in the actual formulation of policy; and (6) the Bolsheviks, their mentality, and their diplomacy were exceptional in the history of world politics, not readily comprehended by observers untrained in the ways of the Kremlin and not to be analyzed in the same categories and terminology as were the foreign relations of the liberal democracies of the free world.

By the late 1970s the explanatory power of these hypotheses had sharply

diminished. The totalitarian and Communist ideology models did not stand up well to the close investigations and the changed perspectives that had been incorporated into historical scholarship since the 1960s. Beginning at that time, an ever-increasing body of documentation available from government, business, and personal archives in Germany, England, France, the United States, and Eastern Europe enabled scholars to reconstruct some of the contacts made between the diplomats, politicians, and trade representatives of these nations and their Soviet counterparts during the 1920s.4 By utilizing these records, often in conjunction with published sources from the USSR, diplomatic historians in Canada, the United States, Europe, the United Kingdom, and Israel defined and analyzed the policies of the governments of Europe and America toward the USSR. Along with some Soviet historians, they arrived at a more complete understanding of early Soviet diplomacy itself and of Russia's role in the international relations of the pre-Stalin era. Much of this scholarship was based on primary research. It assiduously avoided overinterpretation and eschewed the assumptions of Cold War history writing. Meanwhile, other scholars working primarily in the United Kingdom and America undertook a reevaluation of the economy, society, politics, and culture of the USSR during the 1920s.5 Much of this scholarship depended on a continually increasing flow of documentation from the USSR. Together with work done by Soviet historians during the period of "the Khrushchev thaw" (1956-1964),6 it transformed the interpretation of early Soviet history. These two research endeavors—one directed to foreign relations, the other to early Soviet society—developed simultaneously. For the most part, however, they were undertaken without reference to one another, a condition which by the late 1980s had come to be deplored by experts in the field, Soviet and non-Soviet alike.7

From the advances made in the study of early Soviet foreign relations, the outlines of an interpretation that differs significantly from the one influenced by the totalitarian and Communist ideology models can be discerned and defined. The assumption that a revolutionary offensive in Europe remained the distinguishing characteristic of Soviet foreign policy after the end of the Civil War is giving way to three closely related notions: (1) that the survival and consolidation of the revolution in Russia became the paramount concern of Lenin's foreign relations sometime between 1917 and 1921; (2) that the security of the early Soviet state depended on preserving the status quo in Europe that had been established by 1921; and (3) that Soviet foreign policy was based on this precept. The view that post-Civil War foreign policy was ideologically driven is being replaced by a picture of Lenin as a political realist second to none and by a discussion of foreign relations conceived in terms of power politics and conducted by

conventional means. The notion that the formulation of policy was completely centralized in the hands of a monolithic elite and guided by an all-encompassing and unifying purpose is giving way to a view of policy as initiated from a diversity of sources and to a picture of Lenin's associates and successors as people who disagreed widely over policy objectives and whose conduct of foreign relations was frequently improvised, disjointed, and incoherent. Their haphazard efforts to inspire, to supply, and to advise revolutions in Germany, England, and China during the 1920s, rather than being seen as posing a serious threat to capitalist Europe and its dependencies, are increasingly regarded as a series of disasters for both international Communism and Soviet foreign relations.

Glasnost and perestroika (1985-91) evoked a largely conservative response from the Soviet historical establishment. In an article entitled "The History of the USSR's Foreign Policy; the Search for New Approaches" (1990), L. N. Nezhinskii, the department head of the Institute for Russian History of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, stated that the "tremendous and arduous job of working out a new balanced view of history requires much caution, responsibility, and competence," and that the effort to do so "may not be done in a hasty and sensationalist-media-manner." "The time-tempered practical recommendations and approaches of V. I. Lenin," he added, remained the solid basis for a correct interpretation of foreign policy issues.8 Important work that had been in preparation for some years was published at this time—Zinovii Sheinis's biography of Maksim Litvinov being one example9 —and there were some important "revelations." However, much of the discussion of "new approaches" was limited to upgrading the reputations of some figures from the past and downgrading others. As A. A. Galkin stated during a discussion of the future of the historical study of the Comintern held at the Institute of Marxism-Leninism in June 1988, "We are still at the stage of giving marks to historical personalities and events, not analyzing them."10 On the other hand, not all the scholarship published in the USSR before 1985 can be dismissed as valueless because of the constraints imposed by "party line" conformity; some remarkable works were published during the era of the Khrushchev thaw. The findings of Soviet scholarship from both the Khrushchev and the Gorbachev eras are essential to this study. They have influenced significantly the discussion of matters ranging from Soviet policy toward the Saudis of Arabia, to policy options available at "the great turning point," to the covert military collaboration between Soviet Russia and Weimar Germany.

The historic events of 1989-91 have transformed both the task of writing Soviet history and the methods by which it is researched. The dissolution of the Soviet Union into its component republics, the end of Russian

hegemony in Eastern Europe, and the demise of Communism on an international scale require new assessments both of the foreign relations the USSR conducted for more than seventy years and of how the international history of this period was shaped by Soviet Russia. As the USSR recedes into the past and as the twentieth century comes to an end, the task of historians becomes one of estimating its place in the world politics of the century. The end of the Cold War gives to scholars on both sides of the former Iron Curtain perspectives on the past that lie outside the framework of East-West antagonism. Access to the records of bodies such as the Central Committee's Foreign Office (subsequently International Department), the Comintern's Presidium and Political Secretariat, and the Collegium of the Foreign Commissariat (subsequently Foreign Ministry), if made available fully, can form the evidentiary basis of this project.

These developments offer historic opportunities, and the study of the formative period of Soviet foreign relations is a project that is likely to occupy graduate students and their dissertation directors for years to come. They also present challenges. For example, during perestroika Soviet scholars recognized that one of the major problems with the histories of foreign relations written in the USSR up to that time was the "depersonalization," obezlichivanie , of both the formulation and the execution of foreign policy.11 In its most extreme form this meant that Soviet achievements in international relations were credited without differentiation to "Lenin," to "the followers of Lenin," to "the Central Committee," and to "the Comintern." Other leading Bolsheviks—except for Trotsky, who was always wrong—were not mentioned, and failures were not discussed. Under conditions of open investigation and access to archival material, the repersonalization of historical writing on Soviet foreign relations can flourish, and the many "blank spots" in the record can be filled in.

Archive-based studies of Soviet foreign policy will continue the project of writing the international history of the period between the two world wars that began when the records of the German Foreign Ministry, captured by the Allies at the end of the Second World War, were made generally accessible to scholars in the early 1960s. It continued later in the decade when the British adopted a thirty-year rule for their state papers, and the Americans, the French, and other nationalities subsequently followed suit. With each new stage of access, there were exciting revelations, important articles and monographs, revisions of earlier interpretations, and new rounds of debates among scholars. Predictably, research in the archives of the former Soviet Union will open a new stage in the historical study of interwar international relations. Will this stage follow a pattern similar to previous ones? What do Russian archives hold? Did Soviet diplomats of the

interwar years make carbon copies of everything and carefully file them in several different places, as did their German counterparts? Did they record revealingly candid statements, as did British politicians and Crown servants, never suspecting that historians would be reading them only thirty years later? Were papers of importance intentionally burned with the advance of the Wehrmacht on Moscow in 1941, as happened in Paris a year earlier? Will copies of Politburo minutes be available on microfilm for sale to any library with the funds to purchase them, thereby permitting intricate studies of policy making, or will the study of Soviet foreign relations remain a history of grand strategies for some time to come? What is certain is that research at each stage has facilitated that which followed. Earlier research has raised questions to which subsequent projects have responded, and it has served as a springboard for the conception of new projects and as a basis of comparison for the new results yielded. One purpose of this book is to give focus and direction to further investigation by defining significant interpretative issues in the study of early Soviet foreign relations and by assessing the status of research and writing in the field up to 1991.

My interest in the early history of the Soviet Union is that of an international historian. This work is premised on the assumption that Soviet studies can contribute to an understanding of international history and that international history also has something to say to Soviet studies. To that end, I explore here the territory where research into Soviet diplomacy and foreign relations borders the reevaluation of early Soviet society, economics, and politics undertaken by scholars since the 1960s, and I integrate these heretofore largely separate projects into a unified discussion. In doing so, I hope to clarify not only the international relations of the 1920s but also some of the central interpretative issues of early Soviet history. In particular, I stress the problems and dilemmas confronting the Bolsheviks as they sought to promote the national security and economic development of the USSR while at the same time internationalizing the October Revolution in Asia and institutionalizing it in Europe. And I aim to show the significance of the international situation both for the formulation of their plans to industrialize the USSR and build socialism there and for the struggle among them to succeed Lenin in the leadership of the party and the state.

The task of international history, as I have suggested elsewhere, is to combine an expanded conception of the politics and economics of international relations with an integrated analysis of policy and to do so within an international context.12 In this work the imperatives and strategies of national security, of economic development, and of socialist revolution, both within and beyond the frontiers of the USSR, are treated as the

materials from which foreign policy was constructed during the years between the Civil War and the First Five-Year Plan. Along with the statements and actions of diplomats and the contacts between the Soviet government and the governments of other countries, both the strategies of the Communist International and the high politics of the Russian/Soviet Communist Party are taken as material for study. The two modes of early Soviet foreign relations—revolution and diplomacy—are integrated into a coherent discussion. The project of repersonalizing early Soviet history is advanced by giving agency, whenever possible, to individual members of the party/state leadership, to Comintern figures, and to diplomats of all ranks. In that relations between the USSR and Europe, Asia, and America are all included in my field of view, preparation of this work has involved an investigation of both primary sources and the scholarship of historians and political scientists emanating from the United States, Canada, Europe, the United Kingdom, and Russia.

I argue that foreign relations were central to the political imagination of the Bolsheviks and to their actual political behavior from the day they came to power—even during the era of "socialism in one country." Party and Comintern congresses began with an assessment of the international situation and of Russia's world position. Geopolitical estimates and even diplomatic considerations influenced what manner of revolution the Soviet leadership promoted in Europe or Asia. Sponsoring revolution abroad could both augment Soviet national security or, to the contrary, put it at risk. Soviet Russia's integration into the world economy or isolation from it mandated one or another strategy of socialist industrialization. In turn, the choice between integrationist and autarchic economic foreign policies had repercussions on the internal political development of the USSR and on the outcome of the leadership struggle. The crisis which resulted in "the great turn" in Soviet history toward the administrative-command economy and the advent of Stalinism had its inception in the diplomatic crisis and war scare of 1927. No full scheme of early Soviet history can be set forth without accounting for the interrelationships among the economic and political development of the USSR, world politics and economy, and the continuation of the revolution in Russia, Europe, and Asia.

The reason international relations occupied a position of such importance was that the challenges confronting the Bolsheviks in the twelve years following the October Revolution were international in dimension. The first such challenge was posed during the years 1917-21 when, contrary to their expectations, successful proletarian revolutions in Central and Western Europe did not follow forthwith from the revolution in Russia. Soviet Russia was left in a relatively isolated position as the first

and only socialist state in an international system dominated by capitalist powers whose governments pursued policies toward the USSR ranging from strict nonrecognition, to willingness to deal with the USSR only on terms that undermined the results of the revolution there, to acceptance of the Soviet regime as a legitimate government despite its persistent encouragement and support for revolutions in Europe and Asia. Only slowly and unevenly did these governments establish normal relations with Soviet Russia. Not until 1929, when the government of Great Britain renewed diplomatic relations with the USSR after a two-year break-and exchanged representation at the ambassadorial level for the first time—did the Soviet Union have functioning diplomatic relations with all the major countries of Europe.

The second challenge came in the years 1924-1926, when the capitalist powers of Europe and America stabilized their relations with each other with a series of agreements on military security, intergovernmental indebtedness, international trade, and transnational inter-industrial relations that did not include the USSR. By means of these arrangements, the governments of England and France reconciled their most outstanding differences over how to implement the Treaty of Versailles; Germany managed a rapprochement with the victors of the World War; and the United States underwrote this Western European stabilization with considerable international lending. By this time the USSR, in contrast, had achieved favorable and stable diplomatic and commercial relations only with Germany. The evolution of this "international capitalist stabilization," as it was termed in the language of the Comintern, posed a fundamental challenge to the very basis on which Lenin had premised Soviet foreign relations in 1917, namely, that conflicts among the "imperialist powers" could be counted on to keep Soviet Russia safe from the numerous and various dangers feared from a united coalition of capitalist powers.

The third challenge became evident by late 1926. By this time the economies of the industrialized nations of Europe had recovered from the devastation of the World War and from the dislocations of the postwar inflation. Industrial production in the United States had greatly expanded through the extensive introduction of new technologies. Both Europe and America had surpassed their prewar production levels. Russian industry by the same date had barely recovered to its 1913 levels of production.

The implications of these three challenges for Soviet foreign relations were directly pertinent. How long could a revolutionary socialist country be safe in a world dominated by powerful capitalist states that were not being transformed by proletarian revolution, that were becoming both relatively and absolutely more prosperous and powerful, that were being

integrated into an increasingly stable international system, and that were not forming relations with the USSR of the kind that were vital to its security and its economic development alike? It was in this uncertain environment that the basic assumptions, precepts, and institutions of Soviet national security were formed. The sources of the most durable features of Soviet foreign relations are found in the international experience of the Soviet regime during the years between the Bolshevik and Stalinist revolutions as the Soviet Union entered the order of world politics that emerged from the wars, revolutions, and treaties of 1914-21.

The position of Soviet Russia in that order was an anomalous one. The Bolsheviks ruled an empire covering one-sixth of the globe, but the prewar Triple Entente that tsarist Russia had formed with the imperial governments seated in London and Paris could not be reconstituted following the revolution, the Civil War, and the abeyance of the current German threat. Although Lenin and Wilson each proclaimed a new world order in 1916-17, neither they nor their successors found a common purpose. While Russia and Germany shared a "community of fate" as nations against which the World War peace settlement was made, the "special relationship" they formed expired as each found a broader range of diplomatic options. In this situation of relative isolation, one which they termed "capitalist encirclement," those who had made the October Revolution sought security not only in conventional diplomacy, but also in distinctive measures of ideological certitude, economic self-sufficiency, and military preparedness. The shield formed of these components remained in place until the advent of "the new political thinking" of Eduard Shevardnadze and Mikhail Gorbachev in the late 1980s. By that time, however, the shield could be lowered, and the foreign relations with which Soviet Russia had entered world politics in the 1920s relinquished only at the expense of the Union itself.

In the account that follows, the role of ideology in both the formulation of Soviet foreign policy and the methods by which it was conducted is examined in Chapter 1. The "revolutionary" mode of Soviet foreign relations, as opposed to the "diplomacy" mode, is treated in Chapter 2. Chapters 3, 5, and 8 focus on Russian relations with Asia, and Soviet policy there is analyzed in global terms and in relation to crucial diplomatic developments in other regions. In Chapters 4, 6, and 7, the strategies and tribulations of the Commissariat for Foreign Affairs as it strove to secure a place for Soviet Russia among the world powers are discussed. The succession of crises during the years 1927-1929, which decisively shaped the future of Soviet foreign relations, politics, economy, and society, are examined in Chapters 9 through 11.

Continues...

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Edition details

• Publisher: University of California Press
• Publication date: 1994
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0520083326
• ISBN 13: 9780520083325
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 400