Lenin and Chicherin: The Beginnings of Soviet Foreign Policy and Diplomacy

This essay is based on a lecture delivered on 1 December 1973 to a Conference of History Tutors of the Department of Extra-Mural Studies of the University of London. Some of the material is drawn from an article by the author published in The Times on 24 November 1972 on the centenary of Chicherin's birth, and from a lecture delivered at the Graduate Institute of International Studies, the University of Geneva , and subsequently published as " Chicherin and the Evolution of Soviet Foreign Policy and Diplomacy," Collection "Conférences," No. X, 1973. Reference may also be made to the author's essay, " Genoa Revisited: Russia and Co-existence" Foreign Affairs, April 1972.

See Dokumenty Vneshnei Politiki SSSR (Documents of the Foreign Policy of the USSR), Moscow, 1957, vol. I, p. 12.

Quoted in S. Vygodsky , The Sources of Soviet Diplomacy, Moscow, 1965, p. 31 (in Russian).

Collected Works (in Russian), vol. XLII, p. 22.

See Reminiscences about V.I. Lenin , vol. III, Moscow, 1969, p. 483 (in Russian).

Quoted in N.N. Liubimov and A.N. Erlikh , The Genoa Conference, Moscow, 1963 (in Russian); taken from contemporary article by Keynes in The Manchester Guardian.

Foreword to I. Gorohov , L. Zamiyatin , and I. Zemskov , G. V. Chicherin: Diplomat of the Lenin School, Moscow, 1966 (in Russian).

See Reminiscences about V.I. Lenin , op. cit, pp. 483-484.

See New Times. October 1967, No. XLIV.

Quoted in G.V. Chicherin : Diplomat of the Leninist School, second edition, Moscow, 1973, p. 90 (in Russian).

See Dokumenty Vneshnei Politiki SSSR, op. cit , vols. I and II.

Ibid, vol. I, pp. 415-416, and, for further correspondence between Chicherin and Sun Yat-sen, vol. V, pp. 83-85.

See Reminiscences about V.I. Lenin , op. cit, p. 490.

See S. Zarnitsky and A. Sergeyev , Chicherin, Moscow, 1966, pp. 238-239 (in Russian).

The United Kingdom was the first Entente Power to grant such recognition (on 1 February 1924).

Dokumenty Vneshnei Politiki SSSR, op. cit, vol. II, p. 639.

International Economic Conference of Genoa, Provisional Verbatim Record, First Plenary Session, Genoa, 1922, p. 50.

Ibid.

See Liubimov and Erlikh , op. cit, Annex. I: Correspondence and Meeting of G. V. Chicherin with John Maynard Keynes.

Lenin , Complete Works, op. cit, vol. XLV, pp. 34-40.

See Speech at the all-Union Conference of Authorised Representatives of the People's Commissariat of Foreign Trade, 7 January 1924, in Articles and Speeches on Questions of Foreign Policy, Moscow, 1961, pp. 271-275.

See, for instance, Zarnitsky and Sergeyev , op. cit, p. 149, and Gorokhov, Zamiyatin , and Zemskov , op. cit, pp. 115 et seq.