G V Chicherin
Two years of Soviet Russia's foreign policy - November 1919
(excerpts)
The history of Soviet Russia's foreign policy over the past two years is a tale of constant, unremitting struggle against innumerable enemies. The tale is tragic, yet at the same time full of inexhaustible courage and radiant hope...
During the first three months of its existence, the Soviet government was on a revolutionary and political offensive. It proclaimed its revolutionary slogans to the working masses of the whole world. It called on the war-weary nations to struggle against war. It not only proclaimed, but actually implemented the principle of self-determination for the toilers of any nationality. It abolished secret diplomacy, breaking sharply with imperialist tradition both by publishing secret treaties and by renouncing all those agreements which expressed the imperialist policies of tsarism. This opened a new page in the historical development of the peoples of the East...
This first period of intoxicating successes was destined not to last, as Western imperialism, first and foremost Germany, immediately took up arms against Soviet Russia...
The first six months after the conclusion of the Brest peace were marked by a struggle to neutralise its grievous consequences and the opportunities it gave for further military and economic offensives by German imperialism... Day by day, hour by hour, we were struggling to place obstacles in the way of that advance or to deflect it into channels which did not threaten the existence of Soviet Russia...
As our relations with Germany slowly but surely became more stable, a danger quickly arose from another quarter. On 5 April [1918] the Japanese landed at Vladivostok, followed by a small British detachment. This was the beginning of the intervention...
V I Lenin's declaration at a closed session that the English and French were in fact waging war against Soviet Russia served as a pretext for the Entente representatives in Moscow to demand an explanation and clarification as to whether it was possible for them to remain any longer in Soviet Russia. On 2 August we declared in a note to the American consul Poole that we did not consider it possible to give a public explanation of what was said at a closed meeting. In connection with this, on 5 August we sent another note to Poole, the first in a long series of peace proposals. It showed that the incursions onto our territory had not been provoked from our side, that the working masses of Russia want to live in peace with all nations, and that they have not declared war on anybody...
The German government started to shower us with complaints about our alleged violation of the paragraph of the second Brest treaty, which forbade both governments to agitate against the institutions of the other side. At this time both foreign coalitions were beginning to unite in a single diplomatic move against the proletarian revolution. When all the local foreign representatives appeared in Petrograd to present a protest against the "red terror"... the German consul Breithor took part in this protest demonstration along with the other representatives. But the days of German imperialism were numbered...
In response to a letter from Comrade Lenin, on 3 October [1918] the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of Soviets made an epoch-making declaration which resounded around the world. It stated that in view of the anticipated attack by Anglo-French imperialism on the German working class after its emancipation, [Soviet Russia] undertook to assist the latter... The policy of mutual assistance of revolutionary workers' states against external imperialist attack was internationally formalised...
Gradually the storm-clouds of Entente intervention blew over. It was followed by a process of immuring Russia, isolating it by means of an Entente blockade - the so-called "encirclement" or "cordon sanitaire"...
Alongside all this, we were putting forward a whole series of peace proposals. In our well-known note to President Wilson of 24 October [1918]... we posed a definite question: what price would the Entente powers ask to cease hostilities against us? On 3 November the Soviet government proposed, through all the representatives of neutral powers present in Moscow, that the Entente governments should begin talks... An invitation to all de facto governments in Russia to meet for a conference on the Islands of Prinkipo was broadcast on the radio from Paris. In its note of 4 February [1919] the Soviet government expressed its willingness to honour Russia's foreign debts, to grant concessions and export goods to cover its obligations, to recognise the secession of any territories and to refrain from revolutionary propaganda in the Entente countries. Similarly detailed conditions for a peace treaty were set out by us jointly with Bullitt, who had come on behalf of Wilson with the knowledge of Lloyd-George...
However, our efforts came to nought. Immediately after the arrival of Bullitt, Kolchak's offensive began, and the Entente began to place their hopes in him...
A most important historical event, which has been reflected in our foreign policy during this year, has been the foundation of the Third International...
1919 has been a year of general counterrevolutionary offensive. Entente imperialism has set a whole series of border states against us. It has provided external support for the restoration of bourgeois governments in those peripheral states, where workers' and peasants' power had predominated as the Germans departed...
[Translator's note: Georgiy Vasil'evich Chicherin (1872 - 1936) was Soviet People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs from May 1918 until his retirement through ill-health in 1930. He was born into the nobility, became intesested in revolutionary ideas when working for the archive of the Russian Foreign Ministry. He lived in Western Europe from 1904 to 1918, and became active in the Russian Social-Democratic Workers' Party and in western socialist organisations. During World War 1 he lived in London, where he was active in the British Socialist Party, a Marxist organisation with a strong internationalist element. He was arrested in August 1917 by the British authorities for his anti-war activities, and held in Brixton prison. The Soviet authorities secured his release on 3 January 1918. By 8 January 1918 he was working at the People's Commissariat of Foreign Affairs, standin in for Trotsky, then People's Commissar, who was negotiating with the Germans at Brest-Litovsk.
This document consists of excerpts from Chicherin's Stat'i i rechi po voprosam mezhdunarodnoy politiki, Moscow, 1961, pp. 98 - 125. The passages used for this translation can be found on the Khronos site. - FK]