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Bolshevik intellectuals on the foreign policy front: the relationship between Commissar for Foreign Affairs Georgy Chicherin and Plenipotentiary Adolf Joffe in 1918
 
PIIS013038640021232-3-1
DOI10.31857/S013038640021232-3
Publication type Article
Status Published
Authors
Alexander Vatlin 
Affiliation: Lomonosov Moscow State University
Address: Russian Federation, Moscow
Journal nameNovaia i noveishaia istoriia
EditionIssue 6
Pages108-125
Abstract

After coming to power in 1917, the Bolsheviks began to form their own system of foreign policy decision-making, rejecting the traditions and standards of bourgeois diplomacy in the Decree on Peace, and refusing to use the personnel of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The first trial of the new system, built on the principles of revolutionary Marxism, took place during the Brest negotiations and ended in defeat for Soviet Russia. The signing of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk on 3 March 1918 paved the way for the transition from war to peace between the two countries and, consequently, for the exchange of diplomatic representatives. The Soviet legation in Germany, headed by Joffe, was in fact the only 'window to Europe' for the Bolsheviks.

Because of the lack of a fine-tuned foreign policy decision-making mechanism and the highly unstable communication between Moscow and Berlin, and because Joffe was not a professional diplomat, the activities of his plenipotentiary representation were determined by his prerevolutionary political experience and personal qualities. Rejecting the hierarchy of the old regime and making no secret of his own ambitions, Joffe came into continuous conflict with his immediate superior, the People' Commissar for Foreign Affairs, Chicherin, and this conflict continued until the Soviet plenipotentiary representative was expelled from Berlin in 1918.

The author reconstructs the formation of key decisions in the sphere of Soviet-German relations at the end of the Great War on the basis of official correspondence between the People's Commissar and the Plenipotentiary, shows the role of human factor in the process and the mechanism of departmental and personal conflicts resolution, the core of which was the authority of Lenin. The author concludes that the process of shaping the Soviet foreign policy in 1918 was extremely rapid, generally in line with the pace of events, and developed by trial and error. The traditions and norms laid down in the first year of the work of the People's Commissariat largely influenced the subsequent history of Soviet diplomacy.

KeywordsWorld War I, Soviet-German relations, the Brest treaty, Bolsheviks, Germany, Russian federation, foreign policy, Commissariat for Foreign Affairs, Georgy Chicherin, Adolf Joffe, civil war, intervention
Received08.07.2022
Publication date19.12.2022
Number of characters58596
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