AQA 7042 · 2N · R08 - Foreign relations and attitudes of foreign powers: foreign intervention in the Civil War
Learn how the Bolshevik state survived foreign intervention, pursued revolution through Comintern and the war with Poland, and bargained for trade and recognition. Use Rapallo and the 'Zinoviev letter' affair to judge how far Lenin's foreign policy had secured the regime by 1924.
Foreign intervention and Bolshevik survival
Foreign intervention began in 1918, but it was not one invasion directed by one agreed plan. Before Germany’s defeat in November, Allied governments feared that war stores in Russian ports might fall into German hands, wanted to assist the Czechoslovak Legion and still hoped to rebuild pressure against Germany in the east. They also distrusted the Bolsheviks, who had taken Russia out of the First World War through the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk.
British, French, American and Japanese forces entered at different points. Allied troops occupied Murmansk and Arkhangelsk in the north and Vladivostok in the east; French forces also operated in the south, while Allied governments supplied advisers, arms and money to anti-Bolshevik forces. After the November 1918 armistice removed the anti-German purpose, support for White armies became more openly counter-revolutionary. Even then, the intervening powers did not agree about the scale or purpose of action. American forces in Siberia had restricted orders, Japan pursued its own regional interests, and Britain and France were trying to demobilise war-weary armies.
This gave intervention a double effect:
| Effect on the Civil War | Why it mattered |
|---|---|
| Real help for Bolshevik enemies | Foreign supplies, advisers, naval power and troops prolonged resistance and made the new regime feel encircled. The Bolsheviks did face an international as well as a domestic danger. |
| No united anti-Bolshevik strategy | Forces were dispersed around distant ports and separate White fronts. Differing aims, limited domestic support for another war and rapid demobilisation prevented a sustained common campaign against Moscow. |
| A political gift to the Bolsheviks | Lenin’s government could present itself as defending Russia against foreign intrusion. White dependence on Allied help made it easier to depict anti-Bolshevik leaders as servants of outsiders. |
The main Civil War fighting was effectively over by November 1920, although Japanese troops remained in the Russian Far East until 1922. Intervention therefore increased the danger and cost of Bolshevik survival, but it did not create a force able to overthrow the regime. Nor did intervention alone cause Bolshevik victory: control of the central heartland and the political weaknesses of the Whites also mattered. Its distinctive significance was that a military threat could be turned into a claim of patriotic legitimacy.
Comintern and the problem of dual policy
The Bolsheviks did not regard the Russian Revolution as a purely national event. They expected or hoped that revolutions in more industrialised countries would end Russia’s isolation and help socialism survive. In March 1919 they helped found the Communist International, usually called the Comintern or Third International, in Moscow. Grigory Zinoviev chaired its Executive Committee from 1919.
Comintern
An international organisation of Communist parties, founded in Moscow in 1919 to coordinate revolutionary strategy and support the spread of Communist rule beyond Soviet Russia.
At its Second Congress in 1920, the Comintern’s Twenty-One Conditions demanded tight organisational and ideological discipline from parties seeking membership. Affiliated parties were not simply a loose discussion group: they were expected to break with reformist socialism, build disciplined Communist organisations and follow decisions made through the International. This increased Moscow’s influence over Communist movements abroad.
Comintern activity served two connected purposes. First, it promoted world revolution: capitalist governments and empires were to be challenged from within. Second, it could serve Soviet security. Encouraging resistance among invading troops, weakening hostile governments or creating friendly revolutionary movements could reduce pressure on the isolated Bolshevik state. Revolutionary offence and national defence were therefore not always separate in Bolshevik thinking.
Yet Soviet diplomacy also needed trade, peace and recognition from the same capitalist states. The People’s Commissariat for Foreign Affairs, led by Georgy Chicherin, negotiated with governments as governments. Comintern cultivated parties seeking to change or overthrow them. Foreign ministers could therefore hear promises of peaceful coexistence from Soviet diplomats while seeing Comintern activity as interference in their domestic politics.
This was not simply hypocrisy. Lenin could believe both that the world revolution remained the long-term goal and that the Soviet state required immediate deals to survive. The contradiction lay in the effect on foreign opinion: the more closely Comintern appeared directed from Moscow, the harder it was for another government to separate diplomatic relations with the Soviet state from fear of Communist subversion.
The Russo-Polish War and the limits of advance
The Russo-Polish War grew from overlapping conflicts after the collapse of the Russian, German and Austro-Hungarian empires. Poland’s eastern frontier was unsettled. Józef Piłsudski sought a Polish-led federation in eastern Europe, while his Ukrainian ally Symon Petliura sought an independent Ukraine. The Bolsheviks wanted to recover authority in former imperial borderlands, secure Soviet rule and—especially when the Red Army advanced—open a possible route towards revolution in Germany. Poland was not merely an Allied puppet, and the war cannot be reduced to another phase of Western intervention.
The military sequence changed expectations rapidly:
- 1919: Polish and Bolshevik forces clashed across Lithuania and Belarus while the Bolsheviks were still fighting the White armies.
- April–May 1920: Polish and Ukrainian forces attacked into Ukraine and captured Kyiv in early May, but they failed to establish secure control before a Red counter-offensive.
- June–early August 1920: Red forces drove the Polish armies back and advanced towards Warsaw. Military success encouraged hopes that the campaign might carry revolution westwards.
- Mid-August 1920: Polish forces stopped and broke the Soviet northern front in the Battle of Warsaw, then won again at the Neman in September.
- October 1920–March 1921: an armistice ended the main fighting; the definitive Treaty of Riga was signed on 18 March 1921.
Riga required a substantial Soviet concession. The frontier lay well east of the proposed Curzon Line, placing East Galicia and much of western Ukraine and western Belarus within Poland. Poland recognised Soviet Ukraine and Soviet Belarus and ended support for Petliura; both sides promised not to support organisations seeking to overthrow the other. The settlement divided Ukrainian and Belarusian lands, ended the immediate Polish-Soviet conflict and closed the direct military route to Germany.
The outcome mattered more than a simple change on a map. Victory before Warsaw might have seemed to confirm that Red military advance and European revolution reinforced each other. Defeat showed the limits of that assumption. Lenin’s government accepted an unfavourable border because peace released it from a dangerous war and allowed consolidation at home. Riga therefore marked neither the abandonment of revolution nor a friendly relationship with Poland. It was a pragmatic recognition that the survival of the existing Soviet state had to take priority over an immediate westward advance.
Rapallo and the recognition breakthrough
Peace with Poland did not end Soviet isolation. Foreign governments still disputed tsarist debts, compensation for nationalised foreign property and the risk of Communist interference. Britain gave the Soviet government de facto recognition and signed a Trade Agreement in 1921, reopening trade while leaving most claims unresolved. De facto recognition treated the government as an authority that had to be dealt with; de jure recognition accepted it as the lawful government for full formal relations.
The 1922 Genoa Conference was meant to help reconstruct European economic relations. Georgy Chicherin’s Soviet delegation wanted recognition, trade and credit without accepting the full burden of tsarist debts. Western creditor governments wanted acknowledgement of debts and compensation for property taken after the revolution. The multilateral discussions deadlocked.
That failure created the setting for a separate bargain. Germany and Soviet Russia were both treated as outsiders in the post-war order: Germany was constrained by Versailles, while Soviet Russia remained excluded and short of credit. German and Soviet representatives opened separate talks near Genoa. On 16 April 1922, Foreign Ministers Walther Rathenau and Georgy Chicherin signed the Treaty of Rapallo.
Continue this lesson.
You’re previewing NovaLearn without an account. Create a free account to read the rest.
Create free account