Page:Max M. Laserson - The Development of Soviet Foreign Policy in Europe, 1917-1942 (1943).pdf/11



The present collection of documents relating to Soviet foreign policy is necessarily only a selection from an abundance of material. The editor believes that it reflects fairly the development since 1917 and affords an adequate basis for understanding. Candor, nevertheless, requires that the reader should be told what standards of epitomization were employed herein.

It would be idle to pretend that this collection mirrors exactly every feature of the international relations of the Soviet Union during a quarter of a century. The view it offers is a foreshortened one of the principal aspects of Soviet foreign policy in the period 1917–1942. While a chronological form of presentation was chosen in order to avoid compulsion on the reader to arrive at the same judgment as the editor's, it is necessary to point out that the selection is intended to reveal the polarity of the foreign policy of the Soviet Union fluctuating between the dogma of a universal revolution and the need to safeguard the stability and security of the Soviet State.

Restrictions of space have made it necessary to omit matter of secondary importance even from some of the quoted texts and to cut repetitious matter which is especially frequent in speeches and similar statements. That task also inevitably invoked a measure of subjective judgment. Finally, the reader should note that the present collection includes almost no documents to illuminate the bearing of Soviet Far Eastern relations on Soviet policy in Europe.

The documents are distributed in three parts: A, B, and C.

Part A contains declarations, statements, and other unilateral diplomatic acts (notes and decisions) of the Soviet government, of its officers and of related organizations in the last twenty-five years during which the Bolshevist revolutionary régime setup after the October Revolution (A Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 10, 11, 12) was transformed into the present huge federal union. Throughout this process of metamorphosis, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (bolsheviks) has played a leading rôle in the political life of the Soviet State. The congresses of this parry