ABSTRACT
One of the fascinating aspects of Russia’s policy in this period was its dawning perception of the Peace Movement as a novel and, hopefully, decisive factor in world politics. Here was a target of opportunity — at its outset a spontaneous expression of liberal and pacifist sentiment, regarded with suspicious disdain by the Communists. Yet, within a year of its birth, it was to be brought under Communist control, emptied of its social content, and so broadened in its base of mass support that it became, for a time, a more significant instrument of Soviet policy than the foreign Communist parties themselves.
