ABSTRACT
The belief that the socialist state required a centralized administration was common to both wings of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party, as indeed it was to European Marxism in general. The integration into a single state of the borderlands conquered in the course of the Civil War began in 1918 and terminated in 1923 with the establishment of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). Wherever the Communists came into power they simply proclaimed the laws issued by the government of the Russian Soviet Federated Republic (RSFSR) valid on their territory and announced the establishment of a "union" with the Russian Soviet republic. Conversely, the officials of the government of the RSFSR, accustomed to treating all the territories of the old empire as one, had neither the experience nor the mental habits required to show respect for the intricacies of federal relations.
