[Marxism] Lenin on the invasion of Poland? (Revolutionary Expansionism through arms?)

Adam Berg arbetarpolitik at yahoo.com
Mon Jan 7 06:34:13 MST 2008


Can anyone help me?
 
 I' m looking for documents and texts by Lenin and/or the RCP(b) commenting the Soviet invasion of, and war against, Poland during the Polish-Soviet war 1919-1921.
 
 I´d like to know and see for myself if there are comments on this war that are not defensive, relating to the defense of Bolshevik Russia, but rather offensive, relating to "the spreading of socialism".
 
 Is it possible to talk of a kind of "socialist expansionism" aided by arms, troops and military means?
 
 According to anti-communist Richard Pipes, Lenin referred to "offensive war" with "a poking about with bayonets" to aid the spread of socialism:
 
 "We faced a new task...We could and should take advantage of the military situation to begin an offensive war...This we formulated not in the official resolution recorded in the protocols of the Central Committee... but among ourselves we said that we should poke about with bayonets to see whether the socialist revolution of the proletariat had not ripened in Poland."
 http://web.ku. edu/~eceurope/ hist557/lect11. htm
 
 In a document unpublished until 1992.
 
 There are also some interesting statements by Lenin in the text that was published ( http://www.marxists .org/archive/ lenin/works/ 1920/sep/ 22.htm ):
 
 "..our       advance on Warsaw has had such a powerful effect on Western Europe and on the entire world situation that it has profoundly changed the alignment of the struggling internal and external political forces. Our army’s close approach to Warsaw has incontestably shown that the centre of world imperialism’s entire system, which rests on the Treaty of Versailles, lies somewhere very close to the Polish capital. Poland, the last       anti-Bolshevik stronghold fully controlled by the Entente, is such an important element in that system that when the Red Army threatened that stronghold the entire structure was shaken.
 /.../
 All Germany began to seethe when our forces approached       Warsaw.
 /.../
  Our presence at the walls of Warsaw has had .. a powerful effect on the revolutionary movement in       Europe .."
 
 I believe there could be some material on this in Al Richardson's "In Defence of the Russian Revolution: A Selection of Bolshevik Writings, 1917 - 23" as well.
 http://www.revoluti onary-history. co.uk/otherstu/ porcupin. htm
 I haven´t read it, unfortunately.
 
 Review by JJ Plant ( http://www.revoluti onary-history. co.uk/otherstu/ defence.htm ):
 
 "By far the most interesting documents are two speeches by Lenin to the 9th Party Congress, in 1920 on the Soviet invasion of Poland. Lenin himself instructed that delegates should not take notes on these speeches, and the unedited verbatim notes vanished into the Party archives, until they resurfaced in Moscow in 1992. (The editors of the journal "Historical Archives", report that a large number of documents by Lenin remain unpublished, previously considered "inexpedient to publish" !) Lenin reports frankly to the Congress on the failure of the invasion. Here we see the leader of the Soviet state making one of his most determined attempts to make use of the strength of the state to push the revolution westwards into Europe. In Lenin's phrase, the bolsheviks decided to "probe with bayonets to discover whether the social revolution of the proletariat was ripe in Poland"." 

The magazine JJ Plant mentions, Historical Archives, is this one?:
http://www.eastview.com/xq/ASP/sku=P1227/Istoricheskii/arkhiv/Moskva/Russia/Russian/qx/russian/periodicals/product.asp
http://shop.russia-on-line.com/periodicals/item.php?id=34071&PHPSESSID=933eb14acef16148b8f1bb239a3263ea

It´s too bad many of the "previously unpublished" texts are primarily made known to a "Western audience" through reactionary scholars like Pipes. It would be much better if all of these texts were quickly published in English at marxists.org or at similar Leftist sites.
 
 (Is the book by Al Richardson available online, by the way? If not, perhaps someone could scan and upload it to make it available on e.g. marxists.org? )
 
 /Adam
 
       
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