Lenin’s ‘Eastern Policy’ and Communism in Turkey and Greece, 1918-1923

Examining Lenin’s strategy towards colonial and semi-colonial periphery is crucial in understanding the way in which early Soviet policy was shaped and implemented towards the crucial conflict in Anatolia between Greece—Britain’s proxy—and Turkish national resistance movement based in Ankara. We show that, Soviet state interests kept a firm hand on—albeit in different ways—the development of communism both in Greece and Turkey and, for most of the period, it undermined the movement, especially in Turkey when they directly assisted Kemal’s nationalism against the Greek campaign in Asia Minor while Kemal’s movement was exterminating leading Turkish communists.