TY - BOOK ID - 78072622 TI - Survival and consolidation PY - 1992 SN - 0773562850 9780773562851 9780773508286 0773508287 PB - Montreal Buffalo McGill-Queen's University Press DB - UniCat KW - Soviet Union KW - Foreign relations KW - History KW - Annals KW - Auxiliary sciences of history KW - HISTORY / General. UR - https://www.unicat.be/uniCat?func=search&query=sysid:78072622 AB - With victory in sight, the Bolsheviks turned their attention to the consolidation of power within the former Russian empire. When they took power in 1917, the Bolsheviks believed their revolution had to spread beyond Russia or perish. Neither happened, and in the spring of 1921, at the end of hostilities, they stood alone in the wreckage of the former Tsarist empire. The Bolsheviks had, in Lenin's words, "won the right to an independent existence." This entirely unforseen situation surprised both them and their enemies. Debo shows, however, that nothing predetermined that Soviet Russia would, at the end of the civil war, enjoy an "independent existence" -- or even exist at all. He suggests that a wide range of circumstances contributed to the eventual outcome of the war and that it could have ended indecisively. In his evaluation of the Soviet diplomatic achievement, Debo describes their successes with Britain, Poland, and Germany, their continuing difficulties with Romania, France, and the United States, and the threat from the Far East. This diplomatic success, he maintains, was the result of Soviet victory in the civil war and the patient pursuit of realizable objectives. ER -