Programme or improvisation? Ideas of foreign policy of the Soviet State Cover Image

Program czy improwizacja? Idee polityki zagranicznej państwa sowieckiego
Programme or improvisation? Ideas of foreign policy of the Soviet State

Author(s): Marek Kornat
Subject(s): Diplomatic history, Political history, Recent History (1900 till today), Pre-WW I & WW I (1900 -1919)
Published by: Instytut Historii im. Tadeusza Manteuffla Polskiej Akademii Nauk
Keywords: Soviet Russia;Bolsheviks;Poland; Poland foreign policy, Soviet foreign policy

Summary/Abstract: The article is a contribution to the problem of foreign policy programme of the Soviet State, although it is not devoted to the question about the role of communist ideology (in Lenin’s version) in the internal policy of the Soviet Russia. Of course, the dispute among Sovietologists whether the Bolshevik ideology created its own concepts of that policy has a long history and is has often been questioned by adherents of the “revisionist school” according to which such opinions are characteristic of the allegedly outdated concept of the Soviet system regarded as totalitarian. In the author’s opinion, there can be no doubt that the Bolsheviks had a programme of their state policy, and it was a long-term strategy of using diplomatic means and force alternatively, and from this stemmed concrete principles and premises. Among the most important Bolshevik ideas of the foreign policy of the “proletarian state” were: the concept of exploiting contradictions between capitalist countries; the thesis of the need for a “second imperialist war” to bring about the final collapse of world capitalism; the theory of bourgeois states which were “satiated” and dissatisfied with their territorial boundaries within the Versailles order; the demand to exploit German revisionism as a driving force behind territorial changes in Europe; and – last but not least – the recognition of Poland as the “keystone” of the Versailles order and a “stumbling block” on Russia’s territorial way to Germany. All those concepts were based on Lenin’s thesis about an unavoidable development of the internal contradictions in the capitalist system, and equally inescapable confrontation between socialism and capitalism in the near or distant future.

  • Issue Year: 49/2017
  • Issue No: 4
  • Page Range: 97-112
  • Page Count: 16
  • Language: Polish