TraductionAnti-communism : Formation of the “Cordon sanitaire” against Bolchevism
In his message to Congress of 8 January 1918, President Wilson announced his Fourteen Points fixing the terms of peace. Wilson’s Fourteen points served as the basis for the peace settlement and the Versailles Treaty of 1919. Chronologically, Wilson’s Fourteen Points came immediately after the victory of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia two months ago, in November 1917. When Wilson announced his Fourteen Points, he and his European partners, France and Great Britain didn’t have a clear picture of the nature and the development of the new upheaval taking place in the former tsarist empire as one can observe for example Point 6 of the Fourteen Points, claiming “the evacuation of the Russian territory and the independent determination by Russia of her own political development and national policy”. It would be interesting to mention other assertions included in Wilson Fourteen Points announcing the redrawing of new map in Europe and the organization of the new states whose creation could only be justified by their role as bulwark against Bolshevism. We can observe this hidden motive through the points 10 to 14. For example Point 10 claims the self determination for the peoples of Austria Hungary ; point 11 calls for a redrawing of the boundaries of the Balkan states along historically established lines of nationality ; point 12 asserts the self-determination for the people under Turkish rule and freedom; point 13 claims the Independence of Poland with free access to the sea guaranteed by international covenant and finally point 14 appeals to the formation of a general association of nations for the purpose of affording mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity to great and small states alike.
The first forma session of the peace conference took place on 18 January 1919, A Peace conference dominated by the “Big Four” England, France, Italy and the United States. Russia was not represented since the Allies hoped that the new Soviet government would shortly collapse. The main preoccupation of Wilson, Clemenceau, Lloyd George and Orlando was less the sort of peace with vanquished Germany than this new menace henceforth haunting Europe, Bolshevism “that hung over Paris like a dark cloud” Everyone was thinking of it many were talking of it. Rumors and false flag circulated and widespread about Hungary going Bolshevik with Bela Kun, that Germany and Italy the next before invading the entire bourgeois capitalist world. For this reason, Wilson who planned to return to home was forced to stay in Paris in order to thwart Bolshevism reaping the profit.
In order to fight Bolshevism in Russia, The treaty of Versailles had erected a bulwark knowing as the “cordon sanitaire” a ring of anti-communist states to isolate the Soviet Union and formed from pseudo and proxy states created from nothing by the only will of three imperialist victors, the united states, England and France. The first piece of the “cordon sanitaire” was Germany wrested only from her colonies and commercial rights in Africa and the Far East, from Alsace-Lorraine, Posen and parts of Schleswig and Silesia. For United States, Germany was the principal bulwark against Bolshevism and that is why Wilson resisted the Allies to charge Germany with the whole cost of the war, and opposed Clemenceau claim over Rhineland, the Polish demand for East Prussia. From Austria-Hungary and Tsarist Russia came the newly independent states of Austria, Hungary, Yugoslavia, The other pieces of the Cordon sanitaire created by other treaties were Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Finland and a new Poland created from the historic Polish territories that had been parts of three empire with a corridor to the sea according to Wilson willingness. Wilson and his European colleagues also built a cordon sanitaire (buffer zone) of new westward-proxy nations(Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithonia) around Russia to quarantaine the Bolchevik contagion.
