State Emblem of the Soviet Union. When Lenin and the Bolsheviks took over Russia in 1918, they faced enormous odds against the German Empire, and then again against multiple enemies in a bitter civil war. The Kremlin-controlled the socialist states that it established in the parts of Eastern Europe its army occupied in 1945. After eliminating capitalism and its advocates, it linked them to the Russian foreign policy under stalin in terms of economics through COMECON and later the military through the Warsaw Pact.
Tensions between the Soviet Union and the United States reached an all-time high during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, in which Soviet missiles were placed on the island of Cuba well within range of US territory. This was retrospectively viewed as the closest the world ever came to a nuclear war. In 1979 a socialist government the took power in Afghanistan was hard-pressed and requested military help from Moscow. The Soviet army intervene, expel the socialists, and found itself in a major insurrection.
The presidency of Ronald Reagan in the United States was fiercely anti-Soviet, and mobilized its allies to support the guerrilla war against the Soviets in Afghanistan. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs implemented the foreign policies set by Stalin and after his death by the Politburo. According to Soviet theorists, the basic character of Soviet foreign policy was set forth in Vladimir Lenin’s Decree on Peace, adopted by the Second Congress of Soviets in November 1917. The Soviet commitment in practice to proletarian internationalism declined since the founding of the Soviet state, although this component of ideology still had some effect on later formulation and execution of Soviet foreign policy. Although these general foreign policy goals were apparently conceived in terms of priorities, the emphasis and ranking of the priorities have changed over time in response to domestic and international stimuli.
Many Western analysts have examined the way Soviet behavior in various regions and countries supported the general goals of Soviet foreign policy. These analysts have assessed Soviet behavior in the 1970s and 1980s as placing primary emphasis on relations with the United States, which was considered the foremost threat to the national security of the Soviet Union. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs–called “Narkomindel” until 1949–drafted policy papers for the approval of Stalin and the Politburo, and then sent their orders out to the Soviet embassies. Bundesarchiv Bild 102-12859A, Georgi Wassiljewitsch Tschitscherin.
There were three distinct phases in Soviet foreign policy between the conclusion of the Russian Civil War and the Nazi-Soviet Pact in 1939, determined in part by political struggles within the USSR, and in part by dynamic developments in international relations and the effect these had on Soviet security. Vladimir Lenin and the Bolsheviks, once in power, believed their October Revolution would ignite the world’s socialists and lead to a “World Revolution. Lenin wipes out kings, priests and capitalists off the globe. The Bolsheviks seized power in Russia in November 1917 but they could not stop German armies which advanced rapidly deep into Russia. The Bolsheviks saw Russia as only the first step—they planned to incite revolutions against capitalism in every western country. The immediate threat was a German conquest.
It is their understanding that the very existence of Bolshevism in Russia, the maintenance of their own rule, depends, and must continue to depend, upon the occurrence of revolutions in all other great civilized nations, including the United States, which will overthrow and destroy their governments and set up Bolshevist rule in their stead. Independent revolutions had failed to overthrow capitalism. Moscow pulled back from military action and set up the Comintern, designed to foster local communist parties under Kremlin control. Lenin’s plans failed, although Russia did manage to hold onto the Central Asian and Caucasian domains that had been part of the Russian Empire. The revolutionary stage ended after the Soviet defeat in the war with Poland in 1921.
Leon Trotsky argued for the continuation of the revolutionary process, in terms of his theory of Permanent Revolution. After Lenin’s death in 1924, Trotsky and the internationalists were defeated by Joseph Stalin and Nikolai Bukharin. Stalin’s main policy was Socialism in One Country. Expansion and wars were no longer on the agenda.
The Kremlin-sponsored the United Front policy, with foreign Communist parties ordered to enter into alliances with reformist left-wing parties and national liberation movements of all kinds. The high point of the United Front was the partnership in China between the Chinese Communist Party and the nationalist Kuomintang, a policy imposed by Stalin. He began the wholesale collectivization of Soviet agriculture, accompanied by a massive program of planned industrialization. After 1921 the main foreign policy goal was to be treated as a normal country by the major powers, and open trade relations and diplomatic recognition. There was no more crusading for world revolution, but the USSR did not seek admission to the League of Nations until 1934. The first breakthrough came in 1921 with a trade agreement with Great Britain that signified the de facto recognition of the Soviet state. Georgy Chicherin was Soviet foreign minister, from 1918 to 1930.
He worked against the League of Nations and attempted to lure Germany into an alliance with Moscow. The League made several efforts to develop better relations with Russia but were always rebuffed because the Soviets regarded the League as simply an alliance of hostile, capitalist powers. The Genoa Conference of 1922 brought the Soviet Union and Germany for the first time into negotiations with the major European powers. The conference broke down when France insisted that Germany pay more in reparations, and demanded in Moscow start paying off the czarist era debts that it had repudiated.
