Exporting the revolution

The territorial expansion of communism was confined, at least for some time, to the conquest of independent states in the Caucasus (Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan) and the Far East (Mongolia), as well as to the suppression of independence movements in Asia Minor. The scenario was very similar for each country. First, the Bolsheviks made instrumental use of animosities and territorial or ethnic conflicts between their neighbours to prevent them from reaching a common understanding against the “Homeland of the World Proletariat” into which Russia had transformed. Later, a process of internal destabilisation took place, the reaction to which was the emergence of a new authority, most often the Soviet one, fully controlled by the Bolsheviks. The latter asked for the intervention of the Red Army, a labour-peasant army, to restore order and abolish the rule of the bourgeoisie. This request of course did not go unanswered and the Red Army entered the territory of formally independent states, becoming a guarantee that the new Soviet authorities would make another appeal, this time to join the group of “happy families of Soviet nations”. The scenario was also more or less repeated during the later conquests, both in the 1940s and 1980s. The Red Army has always posed in them as a liberating force, or at least a stabilising, never aggressive force.