Page:Georgy Vasilyevich Chicherin - Two Years of Foreign Policy (1920).pdf/5



UR much suffering Soviet Republic has lived through so much during the past two years that within the space of a brief newspaper review one can only point out the most important milestones of this period. The political history of the foreign relations of Soviet Russia for these two years is a tragic story of ceaseless struggle, inspired by innumerable enemies who have literally allowed no respite to the young workers' and peasants' regime. Born at a moment of wide-spread distress and general ruin, caused by the destruction of three years of war, the Soviet Republic entered upon the difficult, thorny road to which it still holds and gradually matured and increased its strength a hundred fold in the midst of trials and tribulations.

The November revolution, the first act of the world social revolution, at once placed the Russian Soviet Government at the front of the revolutionary movement of the world as the herald and inspiration of the proletarian revolution. The first three months of its existence was the period of revolutionary political offensive, when the Soviet Government freely sent forth its revolutionary slogans to the toiling masses of the whole world, when it called upon the agonized peoples to put an end to the war, when it proclaimed, and carried out by actions and not merely on paper the self-determination of the toilers of every nationality, and when by deed and not by word it abolished secret diplomacy, breaking at