To negotiate with Russia, one must first understand the foundations of the Kremlin’s national interest—principles that still draw heavily from the political lessons written by the Bolsheviks nearly a century ago. Lenin once said: “History tells us that peace is a period of respite before war, and war is a means of securing a somewhat better or worse peace.” And further: “(…) it is possible that tomorrow we may even surrender Moscow, and then move on to the offensive.” In short, for Moscow—living in the reality of perpetual war and conflict—every discussion and dialogue serves above all to strengthen its position for a future attack.
Negotiations with Russia, the Master of War
One of the most important works studied in all military and intelligence schools of both the Soviet Union and modern Russia is The Art of War by the ancient Chinese general Sun Tzu. In it, he wrote: “He who can win without fighting is the true master of war,” and also, “The true master of war subdues enemy armies without battle, captures cities without siege, overthrows states without long wars,” as well as, “It is best to capture a state intact; destroying it is a lesser option.” Following this logic, if Vladimir Putin manages in negotiations with Donald Trump to gain control of Donbas without fighting, he will become, in Sun Tzu’s view, a “true master of war.”
The Russian Federation attacked Ukraine on February 24, 2022—on the 100th anniversary of the founding of the USSR. Given Russia’s fondness for symbolic dates, this appears far from accidental. To truly understand what has been happening since then, one must look to the past. More than once in Russian media and in statements by Kremlin officials, we have heard that the war in Ukraine marks the beginning of a new global balance of power. The roots of this claim can also be traced to Lenin’s writings. As Sovietologist Prof. Marek Kornat, head of the Department of the History of Diplomacy and Totalitarian Systems at the Institute of History of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw, aptly notes: “The first and most important element in Lenin’s thought is his concept of war as a shock intended to ruin the capitalist world, or at least one of the states that forms part of it.”
Set Them All Against Each Other – Advised the Chinese General
Lenin believed that once a revolutionary coup had taken place in “one country,” capitalism in the remaining states would become merely a “temporary” system. He was convinced that World War I was only the beginning of a global revolution that would utterly destroy the “bourgeoisie.” Speaking at the 7th Congress of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) on March 7, 1918, he stated that there was no doubt “we will see an international world revolution, but for now, the world revolution is a very beautiful fairy tale” and that everything still lay ahead.
The experience of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, signed in 1918 between the German Empire, Austria-Hungary, and their allies—the Tsardom of Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire—on one side, and Soviet Russia on the other, demonstrated, in the view of John Wheeler-Bennett, that the Soviet state was adept at exploiting divisions among bourgeois states, making peace with one to buy time for itself. The revolutionary state did not wage war against the entire world; rather, it pursued a dual strategy of expansion and coexistence. This coexistence served survival, enabling the acquisition of new positions and territories—analyzed Prof. Marek Kornat in his essay “Program or Improvisation? The Ideas of the Soviet State’s Foreign Policy.” According to him, Lenin’s remarkable skill lay in his ability to exploit contradictions among “bourgeois” (i.e., Western) states for his own ends.
“The Brest peace was concluded with a strong enemy who surpassed us militarily, and this matter even caused divisions within our own ranks—but such had to be the first step of a proletarian state, surrounded on all sides by imperialist predators,” Lenin declared at a meeting of the Petrograd Soviet on March 12, 1919.
The signing of the peace treaty, the proclamation of the Tsar’s overthrow, and even the adoption of the “Declaration of the Rights of the Peoples of Russia”—which granted the non-Russian peoples of the former Russian Empire the right to “self-determination”—did not prevent the Bolshevik army, under the cover of a war of liberation, from marching into Ukraine, forcibly dispersing the Belarusian National Congress, and attempting to disrupt the rebirth of the Polish state.
Poland and Ukraine Together – The Kremlin’s Nightmare
For the Soviet state, war with Poland represented a clash with the existing geopolitical order—the Versailles system. In 1920, Lenin asserted: “By defeating the Polish army, we overthrow the order established by the Treaty of Versailles, upon which the entire current arrangement of international relations rests. If Poland were to become Soviet, the Versailles Peace would be annihilated, and with it the whole international system shaped by the victory over Germany. The Versailles Peace oppresses hundreds of millions of people,” claimed one of the founders of the USSR.
This was the backdrop for the outbreak of the Polish–Bolshevik War in 1920, a conflict aimed at conquering European states and transforming them into Soviet republics, in line with the doctrine and declared political objectives (“revolution from the outside”) of the Russian Bolshevik Party. In that war, Poles and Ukrainians fought side by side and managed to resist Moscow. The westward advance was stopped on the banks of the Vistula.
The memory of that event has never faded in the Kremlin, which for decades has sought to undermine Polish–Ukrainian relations in every possible way. This was done systematically before 2022, and continued after the invasion of Ukraine—through efforts to discourage Poles from supporting Ukraine, foster hostility toward war refugees, and inflame historical disputes, particularly those connected to the Volhynia Massacre.
The very same ideas guided Lenin in 1920. He called the creation of the Polish state an “evil,” yet he also recognized the “positive sides” of this “evil” from the perspective of the great-power interests of Bolshevik Russia. For him, a beneficial function of Poland’s existence was that Russia could be certain that Germany would never accept the Polish state’s existence. In September 1920, the Bolshevik leader stated that “the attempts to create a Greater Poland are water flowing into our mill, because as long as Poland lays claim to it, Germany will be on our side. The stronger Poland becomes, the more Germany will hate it, and we know how to use their indestructible hatred.” Doesn’t this sound alarmingly similar to the Russian narrative about today’s relations between Poland and Ukraine?
Unfortunately, it seems that neither back then nor today has the West—or Poland itself—been able to draw the appropriate conclusions from Moscow’s maneuvers, a fact lamented by Józef Piłsudski. “The Soviets, ruling over millions dying of hunger, throw their last reserves of gold into armaments and propaganda. Because the Germans and Russians pursue bold, goal-conscious policies, while Poland pursues none.”
It is worth noting Poland’s role in the current conflict. The year 2022 gave the peoples of Poland and Ukraine a chance to rebuild good relations, something Russia naturally could not allow. Warsaw therefore became one of the key battlegrounds in the information war. Poland’s geopolitical role had to be downgraded once again, because for the first time in 100 years, there reemerged a threat that this “unnecessary land” might have a part in organizing a new Eastern Europe and even the chance to build a new sphere of influence in the form of the Intermarium (an idea also championed by Józef Piłsudski).
That is why sidelining Poland from negotiations, stirring unrest among its society, and turning Warsaw’s policies against Ukraine—while simultaneously intensifying antagonisms toward Kyiv—is once again Russia’s national interest today.
Peace Is War
A key element of Soviet foreign policy, as understood by the Bolsheviks, was the maneuver of offering a peace proposal to the adversary—aimed at temporarily neutralizing them so that they could be defeated later, tomorrow or the day after.
This makes it significant how important the concept of the “second imperialist war” was in the Soviet vision of international politics. According to Bolshevik propaganda, the first imperialist war was World War I. The second was expected to erupt from escalating rivalries among capitalist states, especially over control of resources and markets. Both Lenin and Stalin were convinced that armed confrontation between bourgeois powers was only a matter of time. The Soviets planned to join this conflict last, at the right moment, having beforehand fueled “anti-Versailles” sentiments in Germany.
In his speech at the 17th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) on January 26, 1934, Stalin emphasized that neither the rapprochement with France nor the non-aggression pact with Poland meant any change in the USSR’s foreign policy direction. “We had no orientation toward Germany, just as we do not have one toward Poland or France,” he declared. According to him, if the interests of the Soviet Union required closer relations with countries not seeking to violate peace, the Kremlin would make that decision without hesitation. In reality, however, the goal of these actions was to induce Germany to change its policies—according to Prof. Kornat. He adds that both Lenin and especially Stalin aimed to exploit conflicts among European states and destabilize the situation on the continent. “We have no objection to them fighting each other thoroughly and weakening one another,” claimed the Soviet leader.
See also: Necro-Imperialism: The Core of Modern Russia [Dictionary of War]
Soviet foreign policy, rooted in Lenin’s conviction about the inevitable deepening contradictions within the capitalist system and the equally unavoidable confrontation between “socialism and the bourgeois order,” was pursued by Stalin with iron consistency. Today, the heir and evolver of these same methods appears to be Vladimir Putin, who skillfully sows discord among European countries, exploits their divisions, and plays on Donald Trump’s business roots—showing him how much he could gain from a weakened European Union and postwar cooperation amid the ruins of Ukraine. In fact, as history shows, this may never have to happen. If Russia already achieves its goals, why would it continue a “peaceful” alliance?
