The famine showed the new government's stability, the determining factor behind which was the party, its ranks hardened by the awareness of their total isolation within the country, by the elitist character of their organization, and by a feeling of total omnipotence. If the party was the skeleton of the state, the Cheka gave it muscle. The party was the source of the Idea: that everything is permitted because the party is doing the work of History. The Cheka provided the hands to put this great, all-permitting Idea into practice. Gorky made the categorical assertion that "the cruelty of the forms taken by the revolution is explained, in my opinion, by the exceptional cruelty of the Russian people."30 He called the charges of brutality against the leaders of the revolution "lies and slander." In this he expressed the naivet6 common to many of his contemporaries, who failed to understand the true nature of the system then coming into existence, a system in which the repressive bodies played a vital role. Their omnipresence and omnipotence created a paralyzing atmosphere of fear in Soviet society. Along with fear, the enticements of hope contributed in a very important way to stability. The New Economic Policy embodied a promise of improvement in the situation. Soviet citizens began to assume—as they would many times thereafter—that since things couldn't get worse, they were bound to get better. Finally, the absence of any alternative contributed to stability. The program of the Whites had been defeated, and the socialist opponents of bolshevism were robbed of their arguments by the introduction of the NEP. The people had nothing left but to hope for the future.
Leonid Krasin, invited to London by Lloyd George to discuss the normalization of Anglo-Soviet relations, gave an interview to the London Observer, which was printed with the headline, "How the Famine Is Helping the Soviet Government." The attitude of the West toward starving Russia seems to have opened Lenin's eyes. He saw that the capitalist world did not understand the goals of the revolution. Ignorant of the danger, the capitalists preferred to make their profits today rather than think about tomorrow.
The lifting of the blockade by the Allies in January 1920 meant the end of their war against Soviet Russia. This action was followed by peace treaties between the Soviet Republic and three neighboring countries, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. In May 1920 Krasin began negotiations for a trade treaty. In July the Soviet government accepted Britain's three conditions: an end to hostilities and to propaganda warfare; repatriation of prisoners of war; and recognition in principle of debts to private individuals. At the height of the Polish—Soviet war the trade treaty was signed. Upon his return home, Krasin told the Communists of Petrograd how he had applied pressure to the British government:
We did everything we could to attract the British business community. When the honest burghers of the commercial establishment declined, we turned to the semi-speculator elements. We signed an agreement with the Armstrong Gun Factory for the repair of 1,500 locomotives. Armstrong put pressure on his workers, who in turn pressured Lloyd George by pointing out that orders from Russia would reduce unemployment. The British bourgeoisie began to have apprehensions about competition from Germany, and the trade agreement was signed.
Krasin also announced forthcoming agreements with Norway and Italy. Around the same time Sweden agreed to accept Soviet gold, the first country to do so. "At present," the people's commissar of foreign trade boasted, "we are very close to obtaining a major loan, and this big loan will be given by none other than France."31 When Lenin was warned in the summer of 1921 by opponents of his harsh policy toward the Famine Relief Committee that the arrest of its members might affect relations with France, formerly the chief supporter of the White movement, Lenin replied with full self- assurance: "Our policy will not undercut [trade] relations with France; it will speed them up. ... We are on the way to achieving trade talks with France."32 The agreement with the ARA convinced Lenin once and for all that it was possible to establish normal trade and diplomatic relations with the capitalist world by using the industrial and commercial interests against the diplomats and, conversely, using the diplomats against the industrial and commercial interests. Above all, the Soviet leaders concluded that it was possible to have normal relations with the capitalists without abandoning the goal of world revolution.
A BI-LEVEL FOREIGN POLICY
In the spring of 1919 an unofficial diplomatic mission sent by Lloyd George and Woodrow Wilson and headed by the American William Bullitt arrived in Moscow. Bullitt inquired into the Bolsheviks9 attitude toward a possible armistice between the Red and White armies, but in his detailed reports from Moscow he failed to mention the First Congress of the Third, or Communist, International (the Comintern). The congress was in session in the Soviet Republic's capital during Bullitt's visit and Pravda wrote about it at length, but the news seemed to have no interest for the Allied representative.
Of the thirty-four "delegates" to the First Congress of the Comintern, thirty lived in Moscow and worked for the People's Commissariat of Foreign Affairs, two were chance visitors (from Norway and Sweden, where there were no Communist parties), and only two were actually mandated by foreign Communist parties. One of them, Hugo Eberlein, represented the German Communist party (KPD), which had been founded two months earlier. He had come to Moscow to express his party's disagreement with the idea of founding the Comintern. Rosa Luxemburg, the moving spirit behind the KPD, was opposed to the formation of a new international as long as "the relative backwardness of the Western revolutionary parties leaves all the initiative in the hands of the Bolsheviks." Despite Eberlein's objections, Lenin insisted that the birth of the Third International be proclaimed in March 1919.