Revolution and Survival: The Foreign Policy of Soviet Russia 1917-18

This is a highly readable and absorbing account of Bolshevik foreign policy during Lenin's first year in power. In tracing the development of that policy, the book considers both the impact it had on a world torn by war and the effect it had on the Bolsheviks themselves, now no longer engaged in clandestine struggle but in effective state control.

The book explores Lenin's relationship with the various elements of the party – his fruitful, but frequently discordant, relationship with Trotsk...