Soviet and Imperial Russia in the French Perception during the Period of Non-Recognition

Abstract

The article aims to examine how the French diplomats and the military evaluated the similarities and differences between the Soviet state and the former Imperial Russia at the beginning of the 1920s. The author focuses on the discussions about the processes of traditionalization and “normalization” of the Soviet regime; about the degree of continuity between the aims of the Soviet foreign policy and those of the Russian state; and on the correlation between the social, economic and political development of the country before and after 1917. The article is based on the published French and Soviet diplomatic documents, as well on the archival evidence from the French diplomatic and military archives and from the Historical service of the French Ministry of Defence. The author concludes that the French perception was controversial. Some analysts and political leaders shared the idea about the traditionalization and “normalization” of the Soviet state; they thought that the Bolsheviks would move away from the revolutionary radicalism of the first post-October years. In these circles, they believed in a certain continuity between the foreign policy interests of the Soviet and Imperial Russia and hoped that the Russian state — whatever the ruling group was inside it — could be an “Eastern counterbalance” to Germany. Nevertheless, there was an alternative discourse. Other French analysts and political leaders underlined the radical differences between the Soviet and Imperial Russia and thought that it was impossible to separate Bolshevism from its revolutionary “nucleus” (propaganda and struggle for colonial liberation).