ABSTRACT
The capacity in which the Red Army would or could support the external revolutionary aspirations of the Russian Communist Party had begun to occupy the minds of the military-political leadership over the question of Hungary and possibly Rumania. In 1920 this issue occupied even more attention on the part of Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin and the Red Army leadership. The connections between the military and political offensive were far from being clear. The absence of definite limits and firm conditions rendered this speculation not so much unrealistic as especially removed, as it were, from the more orthodox relationship of military factors to foreign policy planning. In the Soviet view, war brought in its wake social eruptions which favoured revolution. The general post-war ferment was sufficiently advanced in the winter of 1919-20 for this issue to be argued optimistically. Eastern and Central Europe had been flung into a post-Versailles turmoil in which the traditional order wavered and all but collapsed. Germany showed brilliant revolutionary promise. In the east, colonialism roused and stirred bitter passions, which the Russian Communists hoped to turn to their advantage. The Komintern, dedicated to the cause of organising revolution on a world-wide scale, flourished in cosmopolitan hands.
