Litvinov and Kamenev—Ambassadors Extraordinary: The Problem of Soviet Representation Abroad
In November 1917, the Bolshevik Party came to power in Russia with a foreign policy based on “proletarian internationalism” and the aim of spreading the socialist revolution to all parts of Europe. Developed by V. I. Lenin and Leon Trotsky this policy sought to take advantage of the disruption of European society caused by World War I to transform that conflict of state against state into a vast international civil war of class against class. Believing that the peoples of Europe were weary of war and ripe for revolution the Bolsheviks called for the negotiation of a “just and democratic peace” based on the principles of no annexations, no indemnifications and the liberation of all colonial, dependent and oppressed nations. The Bolsheviks hoped that bourgeois governments would be unable to accept these principles and that their failure to do so would generate sufficient popular unrest to ignite revolution everywhere in Europe.