Renouncing Imperialism: Bolsheviks’ Approach to Neighboring Countries

When the Bolsheviks seized power in Russia in October 1917, they inherited not just a country in turmoil but also an empire built on conquest, unequal treaties, and spheres of influence carved out of weaker neighbours. What they did next surprised the world. Instead of holding onto these gains, the new Soviet government publicly renounced the special privileges that Tsarist Russia had extracted from countries like Iran, Turkey, China, and Afghanistan. This was not a minor diplomatic adjustment. It was a deliberate attempt to redraw the rules of international relations around equality and sovereignty rather than domination. Understanding why and how the Bolsheviks did this reveals a great deal about both the ideology of the revolution and its lasting impact on anti-colonial movements across Asia.

The ideological roots of renunciation 🔗

The renunciation of imperial privileges did not happen by accident. It flowed directly from the core principles the Bolsheviks announced almost immediately after taking power. On the very first days of the new government, Lenin issued the Decree on Peace, which called for an end to the First World War on the basis of a peace “without annexations” and without indemnities. The decree defined annexation clearly as the seizure of foreign territory and the forcible incorporation of foreign nationalities. This was a direct rejection of the imperialist logic that had governed European diplomacy for centuries.

Closely tied to this was the principle of self-determination of peoples. The Bolsheviks argued that every nation had the right to decide its own future free from outside coercion. They also abolished secret diplomacy and began publishing the secret treaties that Tsarist Russia had signed with its imperialist allies, exposing how the great powers had quietly agreed to divide up territory among themselves. By making these documents public, the new government embarrassed the old order and signalled that it would operate on entirely different terms.

Why this mattered for neighbouring countries 🔗

For the countries on Russia’s southern and eastern borders, these were not abstract ideas. For decades they had lived under the shadow of Russian expansion. The Tsars had extracted territory, trade monopolies, loans, and military rights through coercion. When the Bolsheviks declared that they would no longer assert such claims, it offered these nations a genuine chance to reclaim their independence. The renunciation thus served two purposes at once. It was a moral statement about how nations should treat one another, and it was a practical strategy to win allies among peoples who resented Western and Russian imperialism alike.

Iran: cancelling the legacy of unequal treaties 🔗

Iran, then known as Persia, felt the change immediately. Throughout the nineteenth century, Russia had reduced Iran to a state of semi-dependence. The Treaty of Turkmenchay of 1828 had stripped Iran of territory and granted Russia extensive commercial and legal privileges. Later, the Anglo-Russian Convention of 1907 divided Iran into spheres of influence, with the north falling under Russian control. Russian banks, debts, and concessions tied the Iranian economy to St. Petersburg.

The Bolsheviks dismantled this structure. Britannica notes that the new Soviet government unilaterally cancelled the Tsarist concessions in Iran, an action that generated tremendous goodwill toward the young Soviet state. This was formalised in the Russo-Persian Treaty of Friendship, signed on 26 February 1921.

What the 1921 treaty actually gave back 🔗

The terms were striking for their generosity. According to the Encyclopaedia Iranica, the Soviet government annulled all previous Tsarist treaties concluded against Iranian interests and surrendered the rights to Tsarist loans and concessions. The earlier Treaty of Turkmenchay was among the agreements cancelled. Iran also received full and equal shipping rights in the Caspian Sea, ending Russia’s previous monopoly there.

The handover went beyond paper agreements. Russia transferred to Iran the roads, railways, ports, telegraph and telephone lines, and ships that Tsarist enterprises had built and operated. The Russian-owned bank in Iran was handed over to local authorities, and outstanding loans were cancelled. In effect, decades of accumulated imperial property and debt were wiped away. Many historians describe this as the first genuinely equitable treaty Iran had signed with a great power, and one that was arguably more favourable to Tehran than to Moscow.

It is worth being honest about the full picture. The treaty also included articles 5 and 6, which allowed Soviet forces to enter Iranian territory if a third power used Iran as a base to threaten Russia. These clauses did limit Iranian sovereignty in practice and were invoked decades later. The renunciation was therefore real and substantial, but it also served Soviet security interests by keeping hostile White Russian forces and rival powers away from its borders.

Turkey: from adversary to ally 🔗

The relationship with Turkey followed a similar logic but with a stronger element of active partnership. With the October Revolution, Russia withdrew from the First World War and ceased hostilities against the Ottoman Empire. The Soviet regime soon found common ground with the Turkish nationalists led by Mustafa Kemal, who were fighting against both Western occupation and the old Ottoman government that had surrendered to the Allies.

This shared opposition to Western imperialism produced the Treaty of Moscow, signed on 16 March 1921. Britannica records that the pact fixed Turkey’s northeastern frontier and established friendly relations between the two nations. Crucially, the Soviets recognised the nationalist government in Ankara as the only legitimate government of Turkey, at a time when the internationally recognised Sultan’s regime in Istanbul was under Allied control.

Material support for the nationalist struggle 🔗

The Bolsheviks did not stop at diplomatic recognition. They provided concrete economic and military assistance to Kemal’s movement during its war of liberation. Soviet shipments of gold and arms helped sustain the Turkish nationalist forces at a moment when they were diplomatically isolated and short of resources. This aid was not charity. It reflected a calculation that a strong, independent Turkey resisting Western domination served the Soviet anti-imperialist agenda and protected Russia’s own southern flank.

The Treaty of Moscow, along with the closely related Treaty of Kars signed in October 1921, settled the borders between Turkey and the Soviet republics of the Caucasus. These frontiers have largely remained in place to this day, a sign of how durable the settlement was. For Turkey, Soviet recognition and support arrived at a decisive moment and strengthened its position against the Allied powers attempting to partition it under the Treaty of Sèvres.

A wider pattern across Asia 🔗

Iran and Turkey were the most prominent cases, but the policy extended further. Soviet diplomacy aimed to present the new state as a champion of oppressed nations across the colonial world.

China and the Karakhan Manifesto 🔗

In July 1919, the Soviet government issued the Karakhan Manifesto, a statement of policy toward China. It offered to give up various rights Russia had obtained in China, including territories seized under Tsarism, extraterritoriality, economic concessions, and Russia’s share of the Boxer indemnity. Chinese nationalists had long denounced these arrangements as “unequal treaties.” The manifesto created a favourable impression of Soviet Russia and of Marxism among many educated Chinese and is widely credited with encouraging the intellectual currents that led to the founding of the Chinese Communist Party in 1921.

The China case also illustrates the gap that could open between principle and practice. Some of the rights offered up in the manifesto, including control of the Chinese Eastern Railway, were quietly reaffirmed in later agreements. This reminds us that Soviet foreign policy combined genuine ideological commitment with hard calculations of state interest.

Afghanistan and the eastern frontier 🔗

Afghanistan was another neighbour that benefited from the new approach. Soviet Russia recognised Afghan independence and concluded a treaty of friendship with Kabul in 1921, providing diplomatic backing and assistance at a time when Afghanistan was asserting its full sovereignty against British influence. For Afghanistan, which had just fought Britain to secure control over its own foreign affairs, Soviet recognition offered useful diplomatic leverage between the two great powers on its borders.

The significance for anti-imperialist struggles 🔗

Why does this episode matter so much in the study of international relations? The answer lies in its broader effect on the colonial and semi-colonial world. The Russian Revolution helped break what one analysis calls the mystique of imperialist invincibility and inspired rebellion across Asia and beyond. By voluntarily surrendering privileges that other great powers clung to, the Bolsheviks positioned the Soviet Union as a different kind of power, one that claimed solidarity with oppressed nations rather than mastery over them.

This had a powerful demonstration effect. When colonised peoples saw that Russia had returned ports, railways, banks, and cancelled debts in Iran, it strengthened their conviction that imperial domination was neither permanent nor inevitable. The contrast with Britain and France, which were busy expanding their mandates across the Middle East after the war, was hard to miss. Even the Soviet renunciation of Tsarist secret treaties handed anti-colonial movements a propaganda gift by exposing how the great powers operated.

Reality alongside the ideal 🔗

A balanced assessment must hold two truths together. On one hand, the renunciation of imperial privileges was real, far-reaching, and unprecedented among great powers of the era. It returned tangible assets and sovereignty to neighbouring states. On the other hand, the policy was never purely altruistic. Securing friendly, stable borders during the chaotic Russian Civil War, denying bases to hostile White and Western forces, and building goodwill among potential revolutionary allies all aligned neatly with Soviet survival and strategic interests. The clauses permitting troop entry into Iran and the later reaffirmation of rights in China show that state interest never disappeared. The most accurate reading is that ideology and interest reinforced one another rather than competing.

For students of international relations, this is precisely what makes the episode so instructive. It demonstrates how a revolutionary state attempted to translate a new ideology into foreign policy, and how that idealism interacted with the enduring pressures of geography, security, and power. The Bolshevik renunciation of special privileges was a rare moment when a great power chose, at least in significant part, to act against the imperial habits of its predecessor and reshape its relationships with weaker neighbours on the language of equality.

What do you think? Was the Bolshevik renunciation of imperial privileges primarily a sincere ideological commitment to anti-imperialism, or a pragmatic survival strategy dressed in revolutionary language? And how might world history have unfolded differently if the major Western powers had followed a similar path toward their own colonies after the First World War?

References

1. https://soviethistory.msu.edu/1917/treaty-of-brest-litovsk/treaty-of-brest-litovsk-texts/decree-on-peace/
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russo-Persian_Treaty_of_Friendship_(1921)
3. https://www.britannica.com/place/Iran/Rise-of-Reza-Khan
4. https://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/russia-ii-iranian-soviet-relations-1917-1991/
5. https://www.britannica.com/event/Treaty-of-Moscow-1921
6. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karakhan_Manifesto
7. https://againstthecurrent.org/atc194/marx6/