ABSTRACT
The Bolsheviks came to power at a time when European colonialism shaped the world. According to Marxist-Leninist ideology, imperialism was one of the poisoned fruits of capitalism. The promise of ‘national self-determination’ for the diverse peoples who had been absorbed into the Tsarist Empire in the nineteenth century, articulated by the new Bolshevik government in Moscow, was confounded by the Civil War’s legacy of a substantial colonial inheritance.
