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p There is need specifically to stress that Lenin totally discredited the theory of spreading revolution thiough conquest.

p The proletariat, once it has taken over, must of course by prepared to safeguard its gains by force of arms against any intervention by reactionary international forces. That is what Lenin said. Revolutionary wars, he pointed out, “may be waged to defend the conquests of the proletariat victorious in its struggle against the bourgeoisie".  [232•10 

p Replying to a question about what the proletarian party would do if the revolution put it in power in that war, Lenin said: “...we would propose peace to all the belligerents on the condition that freedom is given to the colonies and all peoples that are dependent, oppressed and deprived of rights.”   [232•11  To the threat of the military suppression of the revolution, the working class, holding power, would respond with a revolutionary war, rousing to that war colonies, dependent countries and the proletariat of Europe. In September 1917, Lenin stressed that “it is impossible to arouse popular heroism without breaking with imperialism, without proposing a democratic peace to all nations, and without thus turning the war from a criminal war of conquest and plunder into a just, 233 revolutionary war of defence".  [233•12  The proletarian state can wage only a war that is defensive, just and revolutionary.

p Consequently, when Lenin spoke about revolutionary war, he meant defence of the socialist fatherland, which the working people had won by taking power into their own hands.

p The meaning of Lenin’s statements in 1915 and 1916 about the proletariat’s revolutionary wars comes to the following. Lenin had no illusions about how the capitalist world would respond to a victorious socialist revolution. He believed that only the capitalist world could start a war, because imperialism was inclined to “rule” history with the aid of machine-guns.

p Socialism, which had won out in one or several countries, would still be weak; imperialism, with its characteristic policy of unbridled militarism, would seek to use armed force to put down socialism. Elaborating his idea, Lenin wrote: “It would be sheer folly to repudiate ’defence of the fatherland’ on the part of oppressed nations in their wars against the imperialist Great Powers, or on the part of a victorious proletariat in its war against some Galliffet or a bourgeois state."   [233•13  After all, some Galliffet could be found in one or several capitalist countries with the urge to use arms to impose his rule and to crush victorious socialism. The working people would respond to such attempts with revolutionary war. Such is Lenin’s view of revolutionary war, for which the working class and all the working people of a country that has thrown off the capitalist yoke, should prepare.

p Lenin attached much importance to the historical fact that the Soviet power took over under the slogan of peace. In his article entitled “Can the Bolsheviks Retain State Power?" he wrote: “Take the question of peace, the crucial issue of today.... On this issue the proletariat truly represents the whole nation, all live and honest people in all classes, the vast majority of the petty bourgeoisie; because only the proletariat, on achieving power, will immediately offer a just peace to all the belligerent nations, because only the proletariat will dare take genuinely revolutionary measures (publication of the secret treaties, and so forth) to achieve the speediest and most just peace possible.” "  [233•14  Lenin also dealt with this point a little earlier, when he wrote: “...no power on earth would be able to overthrow a government of peace, a government of an honest, sincere, just peace, after all the horrors of more than three years’ butchery of the peoples.”   [233•15  Lenin held that the slogan of peace, together with the slogans on the agrarian question, was the Bolsheviks’ key slogan, which roused the masses to socialist revolution.

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p Lenin and the Party never took the view that communism needed wars, or that the victory of communism had to be ushered in by military disaster, with the Communists for that reason trying to mount various armed conflicts and wars. This is an idea which is alien to communism, and which was accepted only by those who, like Bukharin, had abandoned its principles. Criticising the loud-mouthed “Leftists” in 1918, Lenin asked: “Perhaps the authors believe that the interests of the world revolution require that it should be given a push, and that such a push can be given only by war, never by peace, which might give the people the impression that imperialism was being ‘legitimised’?"   [234•16  The answer was: “Such a ‘theory’ would be completely at variance with Marxism, for Marxism has always been opposed to ‘pushing’ revolutions, which develop with the growing acuteness of the class antagonisms that engender revolutions.”  [234•17  Only those who used “Leftist” catchwords could invent the idea that the peace policy pursued by the socialist states with respect to the capitalist countries could mean a “legitimisation” of imperialism, and that peace was allegedly harmful for the development of the world revolutionary process. The “Left Communists" first took the wrong turn by claiming that peace was tantamount to a “reconciliation” with the capitalists, while struggle against capitalism meant war and armed uprising. In this way they grossly distorted the meaning of the world revolutionary process and its motive forces. The October Revolution exerted a tremendous influence on the world revolutionary process, but this cannot be interpreted in any sense as meaning a “pushing” of the revolution in other countries by means of the arms of the socialist state.

p In 1918, criticising the harmful ideas propounded by “Left Communists”, Lenin asked: “Perhaps the authors believe that the interests of the world revolution forbid making any peace at all with imperialists?"   [234•18  Lenin firmly replied to these men who were confusing the issue: “A socialist republic surrounded by imperialist powers could not, from this point of view, conclude any economic treaties, and could not exist at all, without flying to the moon."  [234•19 

p Socialism and capitalism exist on one planet, and their coexistence is historically inevitable.

p But imperialism is known to have ignored the call to peaceful coexistence and good-neighbour relations in the hope of correcting the course of history by brute force, so as to return it to the old, pre-October line.

p In the arduous years of the Civil War, when the Soviet people were carrying on their hard fight against the whiteguards and foreign invaders, 235 in defending their life and the independence of the world’s first socialist state, Lenin said that they were engaged in fighting a war for peace, and that that war was yielding magnificent results.

p Lenin told the Seventh Congress of the Party in 1918 that the country was then only at the first, transitional stage from capitalism to socialism in Russia, and added: “History has not provided us with that peaceful situation that was theoretically assumed for a certain time, and which is desirable for us, and which would enable us to pass through these stages of transition speedily. We see immediately that the civil war has made many things difficult in Russia, and that the civil war is interwoven with a whole series of wars. Marxists have never forgotten that violence must inevitably accompany the collapse of capitalism in its entirety and the birth of socialist society. That violence will constitute a period of world history, a whole era of various kinds of wars, imperialist wars, civil wars inside countries, the intermingling of the two, national wars liberating the nationalities oppressed by the imperialists and by various combinations of imperialist powers that will inevitably enter into various alliances in the epoch of tremendous state-capitalist and military trusts and syndicates. This epoch, an epoch of gigantic cataclysms, of mass decisions forcibly imposed by war, of crises, has begun—that we can see clearly—and it is only the beginning."  [235•20 

p History has shown that Lenin was right in assessing the period that had then just begun. But did he believe that this period of the most diverse wars would never give way to a period of peaceful conditions, which are desirable for socialist construction? No, he did not. Did Lenin believe that wars and armed conflicts were desirable for socialism? No, he did not.

p Lenin assessed the achievements of Soviet foreign policy during the Civil War in the light of the struggle for peace, stressing the vast importance of winning public opinion in the capitalist countries over to the side of peace. Thanks to the Soviet Government’s correct foreign policy, a number of bourgeois countries took up a neutralist stand, important changes took place in the attitudes of the workers and peasants and then of the petty-bourgeois circles in the capitalist countries, and this impelled them to act against intervention in the affairs of the Soviet Republic.

p Lenin, the author of the brilliant work, Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, did not regard the imperialist camp as a monolithic entity without any cracks. In his “Report on Foreign Policy" in 1918, Lenin formulated the idea that there were two tendencies in the foreign policy of imperialism. He observed that the capitalist world was dominated by contradictions, conflicts, struggles, and bitter clashes verging on wars 236 between the imperialist powers, and added: “Owing to these contradictions, it has come about that the general alliance of the imperialists of all countries, forming the basis of the economic alliance of capitalism, an alliance whose natural and inevitable aim is to defend capital, which recognises no fatherland, and which has proved in the course of many major and important episodes in world history that capital places the safeguarding of the alliance of the capitalists of all countries against the working people above the interests of the fatherland, of the people or of what you will—that this alliance is not the moving force of politics."  [236•21  But Lenin warned that this alliance continued to be the basic tendency of imperialism, while the other tendency—the division of the imperialists into hostile groups and coalitions—was also expressed. This made more difficult and virtually impossible any alliance between the major imperialist powers against the Soviet Republic, which in the first six months of its existence had won the warmest sympathies and undivided support of all the class-conscious workers throughout the world. Lenin’s general conclusion was that in world politics “two trends exist; one, which makes an alliance of all the imperialists inevitable; the other, which places the imperialists in opposition to each other—two trends, neither of which has any firm foundation".  [236•22  One of these tendencies may gain the upper hand, but that does not mean that the other has disappeared. The struggle between the two tendencies is the content of international relations, which opens up the possibility of neutralising a number of countries, which cannot and will not follow in the wake of the imperialist powers’ policy of war.

p An active foreign policy aimed to maintain and consolidate peace has a real basis in the development of international relations, in the growing strength of the socialist system itself and in the sympathies which it commands among a vast majority of the population of the globe.

p But in the Civil War period the question was being decided on the battlefield. The Soviet Republic had to defend its very existence. Either the one or the other side had to win. In these conditions, Lenin said, a number of the most terrible clashes between the Soviet Republic and the bourgeois states, taking the path of war, was inevitable. But even at the height of the fighting against the Denikin bands in 1919, Lenin was already considering the possibility of “attracting into Russia, during the period of the coexistence side by side of socialist and capitalist states, the technical help of the countries which are more advanced in this respect".  [236•23  Through the storms of the Civil War Lenin clearly discerned the outlines of the historical period that was bound to come.

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p Lenin’s doctrine of peaceful coexistence is a remarkable example of creative Marxism. Lenin elaborated his doctrine on the strength of the experience of revolutionary struggle and construction of the new society. Life kept presenting fresh problems and Lenin provided profound and theoretically well-grounded answers based on the solid principles of Marxism. Lenin’s ideas have always helped the Party and the state confidently to advance, to overcome their foreign-policy difficulties and clearly to see the basic trends in the development of world affairs. In our own day, the Central Committee of the CPSU takes the same Leninist, creative approach in developing Marxism, providing Marxist answers to the questions posed by life.

p Summing up the results of the victorious Civil War, Lenin said: “...we are in a position of having won conditions enabling us to exist side by side with capitalist powers, who are now compelled to enter into trade relations with us."  [237•24  The period of peaceful coexistence was not a historical windfall, but the result of active and selfless efforts on the part of the men and women engaged in socialist construction, the Communist Party, the Soviet state and millions of working people in foreign countries. Back in November 1917, Lenin had warned: “It is highly naive to think that peace can be easily attained, and that the bourgeoisie will hand it to us on a platter as soon as we mention it."  [237•25  Efforts had to be made to secure a period of peace. Once the direct armed attack by capitalism had been beaten back, Lenin stressed that “we have something more than a breathing-space: we have entered a new period, in which we have won the right to our fundamental international existence in the network of capitalist states".  [237•26 

p At the time, Lenin formulated the basic principle of Soviet foreign policy aimed to secure peaceful coexistence in a draft resolution which he wrote and which was adopted by the Eighth All-Russia Conference of the Party and the Seventh Congress of the Soviets: “The Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic wishes to live in peace with all peoples and devote all its efforts to internal development so as to put production, transport and government affairs in order on the basis of the Soviet system ; this has so far been prevented by the intervention of the Entente and the starvation blockade."  [237•27  The Conference and the Congress authorised the Soviet Government “to continue this peace policy systematically”.

p But Lenin urged the Soviet people to bear in mind that they were surrounded by men, classes and governments openly voicing the greatest hatred for them.

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p The masters of the capitalist world were inclined to see the new period only as a breathing-space and not as a historical period, despite the fact that the way was open for the peaceful coexistence on the globe of two different social systems.

p Even in Lenin’s lifetime, the rulers of the capitalist world were forced to negotiate with the Soviet state. An international conference meeting at Genoa in 1922 saw a Soviet delegation take its place at the same table with representatives of the capitalist states of Western Europe. At the opening ceremony, the Soviet delegation declared: “While maintaining the standpoint of the principles of communism, the delegation of Russia recognises that in the present historical epoch, which makes it possible for the old and the emergent new social system to exist parallel with each other, economic cooperation between states representing these two systems of property is an imperative for general economic rehabilitation."  [238•28  Let us recall that all the preparations for the Genoa Conference were carried out under Lenin’s direct guidance.

p The question of peaceful coexistence in political, military and also economic terms was posed by history. In 1921, Lenin analysed and broadly elaborated this question: “But is the existence of a socialist republic in a capitalist environment at all conceivable? It seemed inconceivable from the political and military aspects. That it is possible both politically and militarily has now been proved; it is a fact. But what about trade? What about economic relations?"  [238•29  Lenin gave a positive answer and made this highly important point: “There is a force more powerful than the wishes, the will and the decisions of any of the governments or classes that are hostile to us. That force is world general economic relations, which compel them to make contact with us."  [238•30  It is hard to overestimate the methodological importance of this idea of Lenin’s.

p Petty-bourgeois revolutionaries considering the world revolutionary process and seeking to estimate the opponents’ strength very characteristically either altogether underestimate the will and urges among the capitalist classes or overestimate them just as grossly, in both instances ignoring the objective regularities of social development, and displaying lack of skill in assessing the real strength of the subjective factor. The petty-bourgeois revolutionary keeps vacillating in his assessment of the world revolutionary process, now taking the passive attitude and believing that it will work of itself, independently of the subjective factor, now taking the voluntarist approach.

p By contrast, Lenin urged his associates to make a distinction between the will, urges and decisions of hostile classes and governments, and the 239 objective course of history. He emphasised that the peaceful coexistence policy was not based on any subjective desires but on objective tendencies, which could overcome the resisting forces with men’s vigorous activity and the correct foreign policy of the socialist state.

p This policy, aimed at maintaining and consolidating peace cannot run counter to the interests of any people anywhere on the globe. On the contrary, it meets the vital interests of all nations and all the working people, who reject the policy of aggression and war. Lenin said that “our peace policy is approved by the vast majority of people all over the world".  [239•31 

p A peaceful foreign policy is an instrument to win over for communism the vast majority of the population of the globe. It helps communist ideas to reach the minds of the masses, without which there can be no successful world revolutionary process.

p This policy, far from producing conflicts, is in effect designed to eliminate the very ground on which conflicts between nations arise. Lenin elaborated this idea in detail in 1922, when he wrote: “Our experience has left us with the firm conviction that only exclusive attention to the interests of various nations can remove grounds for conflicts, can remove mutual mistrust, can remove the fear of any intrigues, and create that confidence, especially on the part of workers and peasants speaking different languages, without which there absolutely cannot be peaceful relations between peoples or anything like a successful development of everything that is of value in present-day civilisation."  [239•32  There is no doubt that imperialism seeks to intensify this mistrust and to push it to a point where it erupts in armed conflict. This policy is resisted by socialist foreign policy. A new state of affairs is produced in world politics: the socialist state works to eliminate mutual mistrust between nations, generated and fostered by capitalism, and seeks to eliminate the ground for conflicts between nations, thereby paving the way for the successful development of what is most valuable in modern civilisation. That is one of the key aspects of socialist foreign policy.

p The peace policy, once a demand coming only from the working class and the other working people, became the state policy of a great socialist power wielding all the instruments of foreign policy, and providing real support in the world arena for the urge for peace among millions and millions of working people all over the world. Therein lies the importance of the great turning point in the history of the struggle for peace which came with the October Revolution.

p On November 8, 1917, the day after the socialist revolution, Lenin addressed the Second All-Russia Congress of Soviets and set out the 240 foreign policy of the Soviet state. In concluding his first foreign-policy speech on behalf of the young Soviet state, in which he dealt with the key issue of world politics—the issue of war and peace—he declared: “Everywhere there are differences between the governments and the peoples, and we must therefore help the peoples to intervene in questions of war and peace. We will, of course, insist upon the whole of our programme for a peace without annexations and indemnities. We shall not retreat from it; but we must not give our enemies an opportunity to say that their conditions are different from ours and that therefore it is useless to start negotiations with us. No, we must deprive them of that advantageous position and not present our terms in the form of an ultimatum."  [240•33 

p In those words the great strategist of the revolution formulated the key principle of revolutionary foreign policy pursued by the Soviet state. One of the most important tasks of the Soviet state’s foreign policy, as Lenin saw it, was to wean away the masses from the imperialists and to win them over to its side. Its task was to deprive the enemy of any opportunity of using Soviet foreign policy to dupe the masses and of keeping them in the wake of the bourgeoisie.

p At this point, one cannot help recalling that by the early 1950s the imperialists had managed, by means of lying propaganda, to persuade sizable masses of the population in the capitalist countries that there was no need to enter into negotiations with the Soviet Union because that was allegedly hopeless, considering that the wheels of history inexorably rolled along the path to war. The Communist Party and the Soviet Government debunked this false idea of the imperialists and worked to win over for socialism broad sections of the population in the capitalist countries. With the signing of the Austrian Treaty (1955), with the establishment and development of normal good-neighbour relations with a number of capitalist countries, including the USA, step by step, including the Moscow Treaty banning nuclear-weapons tests in the three environments—air, water and outer space (1963)—they worked to bring about that swing in public opinion among broad sections of the population in the capitalist countries, destroying the wall of lies and slanders which the imperialists had erected along the boundaries of the socialist world. It is hard to exaggerate the importance of this change in the minds of the masses in the capitalist countries. It paralysed bourgeois propaganda efforts of many years and deprived the imperialists of the advantageous position, which they had artificially sought to create for themselves in the late 1940s and early 1950s in their fight against communist ideas, accusing the Soviet Union of aggressiveness and unwillingness to maintain good-neighbour and peaceful relations.

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p On various occasions opposition-minded and confused people issued statements to the effect that the revolutionary character of Soviet foreign policy should consist in the peremptory approach, in constant intransigence and loud phrase-mongering. Replying to these loudmouthed “Leftists”, Lenin stressed: “We should not and must not give the governments an opportunity of taking refuge behind our uncompromising attitude and of concealing from the peoples the reason why they are being sent to the shambles. This is a tiny drop, but we should not and must not reject this drop, which will wear away the stone of bourgeois conquest. An ultimatum would make the position of our opponents easier. But we shall make all the terms known to the people. We shall confront all the governments with our terms, and let them give an answer to their people."  [241•34 

p By now the drops that kept wearing away the stone of bourgeois aggressiveness have merged in the mighty tide of Soviet foreign policy based on Leninist principles. What Lenin said adds up to skilful formulation and implementation of a real foreign-policy programme which meets the interests of the peoples, rallies and unites the democratic forces, hampers the moves by reactionary imperialist circles and forces them to succumb to the people’s aspirations. Consistent implementation of this kind of programme in international affairs in effect means helping the peoples to intervene in the questions of war and peace, and facilitating the democratic forces’ efforts in exerting an influence on the solution of key international problems.

p In our day, every world issue of any importance is scrutinised by public opinion. Even imperialist politicians have been forced bitterly to admit that the age of secret diplomacy has gone for good. The various machinations by the imperialist governments are resisted by the foreign policy of the Soviet Union and other socialist countries. There are inevitably two lines on every world issue; that is why public opinion must weigh and evaluate the views of the socialist countries and compare them with the line pursued by the imperialists. Lenin’s plan was to confront all the governments with Soviet proposals, with Soviet projects for tackling international problems, and this plan is being consistently fulfilled and has yielded abundant fruit. The Soviet Government has made wide use of the UN rostrum for that purpose.

p Lenin began his fight against secret diplomacy, believing that it was necessary to help the peoples to intervene in the solution of key world issues. At the same time, addressing the Second Congress of Soviets, Lenin indicated the general line of Soviet diplomacy: “There is still another point, comrades, to which you must pay the most careful attention. The secret treaties must be published. The clauses dealing with 242 annexations and indemnities must be annulled. There are various clauses, comrades—the predatory governments, you know, not only made agreements between themselves on plunder, but among them they also included economic agreements and various other clauses on good-neighbourly relations."  [242•35  He emphasised in conclusion: “We reject all clauses on plunder and violence, but we shall welcome all clauses containing provisions for good-neighbourly relations and all economic agreements; we cannot reject these."  [242•36  Soviet foreign policy marks a new watershed in international relations, rejecting all agreements on plunder and violence, carrying on a purposeful struggle against such agreements, and holding up in contrast agreements on good-neighbour and economic relations. That indicates a genuine revolution in international relations.

p These propositions of Lenin’s bear on the fundamentals of Soviet foreign policy. On the other hand, the policy of preparing for war and creating sharp international conflicts, in which armed force could be used or threats could be issued of the use of such force to achieve self-seeking aims—that is what the “normal” foreign policy of the imperialist bourgeoisie amounts to.

With the emergence of the Soviet socialist state, the bourgeois view of the strength of states and their foreign-policy prestige was undermined, the very foundations of the bourgeois policy “from positions of strength" were subjected to withering criticism. This policy of imperialism was contrasted with the principles of the foreign policy of the socialist state.