ИСТИНА

This paper seeks to explore three main questions. First, how the analysis of the international politics was elaborated inside the Bolshevik leadership (hence the interest to interior official and private correspondence of the Soviet officials). Second, how it was presented to the party members and the outside world (hence the attention paid to the speeches and articles of Lenin and other Bolsheviks, and to the materials of the Party and All-Russia Central Executive Committee congresses). Finally, how this vision was translated into interaction with other states (hence the interest to the diplomatic documents concerning, especially, the Soviet-German, Soviet-Polish and the Soviet-Chinese relations). The paper will begin by reviewing what was distinct in the situation of 1918 for Bolshevik perception of world realities, then it passes to the particular traits of the Soviet analysis of global “balance of power” and trends of international developments, concluding by some general thoughts on the question of continuity and change in the Soviet foreign policy between 1918 and 1945.