At the same time that Lenin reassured the Baltic that they might stand free of Bolshevik expansionism, other countries were targeted for Sovietisation. The high point of this misplaced euphoria occurred when Poland was seemingly within grasp in late July 1920. Lenin declared 'the situation in the Comintern' to be 'superb'. Zinoviev, Bukharin and Lenin thought it the time to encourage the Italian revolution (this was the time of the factory occupations in Turin). 'My personal opinion', Lenin wrote, 'is that for this we need to Sovietise Hungary, and perhaps also Czechoslovakia and Romania . . .'[129] This bafflingly misplaced optimism was connected to the drive on Warsaw in a desperate attempt to create a bridge to the land of revolution, Germany. Even with the dramatic failure of the Polish offensive, Lenin continued to boast. 'The defensive period of the war with global imperialism has ended,' he told the Nineteenth Conference of the Russian Communist Party, 'and we can and must use the military situation for the start of an offensive war.'[130]
The voice of sanity was that of the brilliant Polish Jew, Karl Radek, who was consistently better informed about the state of the world because he moved beyond Soviet borders, and with his eyes wide open. Radek ridiculed the optimism prevalent in the Kremlin. He had no problem with the notion of offensive war; only with the assessment of the international situation. 'Now comrade Lenin is demonstrating a new method of information gathering: not knowing what is going on in a given country, he sends an army there,' he parried. It was, he agreed, entirely possible that a revolution in Italy would transform the scene. 'But in any case we must refrain from the method of sounding out the international situation with the aid of bayonets. The bayonet would be good if it were necessary to aid a particular revolution, but for seeing how the land lies in this or that country we have another weapon - Marxism, and for this we do not need to call upon Red Army soldiers.'6
The complete and humiliating collapse of the last all-out attempt at revolution made by German Communists in March 1921 overturned Comintern policy. It underlined the sorry fact that - for all the recrimination heaped upon the KPD leadership for incompetence and lack of conviction - a structural shift was under way outside Russia, reversing the tide accelerated by war from revolution to the 'stabilisation of capitalism' and, though they had yet to recognise it, counter-revolution. And if the Soviet regime was to survive, it had to take careful note and adjust tactics accordingly. Institutionally, the shift was paralleled by the transfer of talent from the Comintern and other party bodies to the diplomatic apparatus, in the form of the People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs (Narkomindel), whose hitherto precarious existence now became solidified as Soviet Russia established itself as a state in its own right.
It would, however, be wrong to see this shift of emphasis as in any sense final. The two institutions, embodying the Janus faces of the Soviet regime, fought for dominance as an extension of the fact that Comintern sponsorship of revolution inevitably created problems for the Narkomindel. Matters came to a head in mid-August 1921. The issue was to ensure 'that the international position of the RSFSR and the Comintern were not in a condition of antagonism between one another'. The institutional stance of Soviet diplomats was, of course, the 'Brest viewpoint': the Peace of Brest-Litovsk of March 1918, where fledgling Soviet Russia traded its principles, indemnities and territory for precious time against the invading Germans. Commissar for Foreign Affairs Georgii Chicherin wrote to party secretary Molotov:
I do not understand why, thanks to the Comintern, we have to fall out with Afghanistan, Persia and China.
.. .The harm is done in the inadequacy of contacts between the Narkomindel and the Comintern. The line of the Narkomindel consists in enabling the Soviet Republic, the citadel of world revolution, to overcome millions of difficulties. Only from an anti-Brest viewpoint of indifference to the existence of the Soviet Republic can this line be rejected. These difficulties can be counted in the millions; our position is extremely complex. Everyone everywhere mixes up the RSFSR with the Comintern, and an untimely step on its [the Comintern's] part could create a catastrophe for us. We have little in the way of military power. An attack on us from Afghanistan could lead to catastrophe in Turkestan. This is not a game [etim nel'zia igrat']. To consider shameful, vigilance in the face of these dangers - that is truly shameful. [131]
The clash between state interests and revolutionary interests was not so easily resolved in the East, as the revolutionary movement began to swell. In Europe, however, where revolution was effectively in retreat and where the stakes were higher for Soviet security, Comintern tactics had already moved in the direction of the 'united front'. Communist parties formed by splitting Social Democracy were now told to ally with those they believed traitors to the revolution. The parliamentary road to power, anathema months before, was now not just acceptable but also the preferred route to government. The tactical retreat from outright insurrectionism served Soviet state interests because Lenin had by then reached a point of no return in the decision to align Moscow with the pariah of Europe, Weimar Germany. And this alignment rested uneasily upon a common interest between the Right within Germany - extreme nationalists hostile to the Versailles Treaty system, heavy industry in need of markets and the military looking for allies against the Franco- Polish axis - and the Bolsheviks, whose urgent priority was to keep the rest of Europe at loggerheads to forestall any renewed attempt by a common coalition to overturn Soviet power. This alignment was prefigured by secret and unwritten understandings on military co-operation secured before the end of 1921, symbolised in the Treaty of Rapallo in April 1922.[132]
Having failed to overthrow the Bolsheviks - though with no idea just how close they had come - the British, led by Lloyd George, decided to rationalise retreat by attempting to prove a fundamental tenet of liberal doctrine: that by trading with Russia, which was now embarking on a market-based New Economic Policy, Britain could undermine its revolutionary essence as individual economic self-interest overwhelmed the spirit of collectivism. The market would thus ultimately triumph. Such a policy might have worked at that time had Lenin - well versed in liberal fundamentals and a keen reader of Maynard Keynes - not immediately blocked off that promising but elusive avenue with institution of a state monopoly of foreign trade. The Anglo-Soviet trade agreement of March 1921 was effectively used by the Bolsheviks to establish Russia as a presence on the international stage, while failing to secure for Britain a ready and peaceful means of ridding the world of Bolshevism. It fast became apparent to all that, with little if any negotiating power at his disposal and with a readiness to make tactical sacrifices as the moment demanded, Lenin had turned the balance of Europe to Russia's advantage, and not through the expected means of revolutionary expansionism but by the time-honoured practices of realpolitik and in a manner worthy of Talleyrand. In this game of deadly chess, under Lenin's skilful direction Moscow always seemed a few steps ahead, leaving the capitalist world insecure, angry and resentful, but with no means yet available of turning that into effective policy to neutralise or destroy the bases of Soviet power.
The real problem for Soviet Russia was, however, that this proved Lenin's last triumph. The assassin's bullet increasingly rendered him senseless, and there existed no one of comparable ability to succeed him. Thus Lenin's tactical moves of the moment - such as Rapallo - were, for want of greater foreign political intuition and ingenuity, fixed in concrete. Where experimentation beyond Lenin's strategy did occur, it not infrequently took place long after it could be truly effective (notably the Popular Front against Fascism) having been blocked by dogma; or it emerged as a desperate scramble to appease a foreign threat, during which every trace of principle was ditched in indecent haste (the Nazi-Soviet pact) and at considerable cost.
132
E. H. Carr,