"Wilson VS. Lenin" revisited: The contending ideas of a new world order

Abstract

The Great War brought destruction and death when it got unleashed with the bullet of an assassin in 1914. Yet, this was also the beginning of a New Order as much as being the end of the Old Order. The forerunners of this New Era carne from two distinct corners of the world, namely America and Russia when Thomas Woodrow Wilson and Vladimir Ilyich "Lenin" Ulyanov proposed their peace formulae with the Fourteen Points of January 1918 and the Soviet Peace Decree of October 1917. This study provides an analysis of the differences and parallels between these formulae. In order to meet this objective, the individual biographies of Wilson and Lenin, and the histories of the United States and Russia are examined in detail as it is argued that the given features of these declarations were the consequences of the different personal experiences and cultural backgrounds of these two leaders as well as the domestic issues and histories of their countries. The study is structured around the main argument that Wilson and Lenin recognized the Great War as the ultimate crisis of the Old World with their parallel arguments. They saw the end of the Imperial Era, and in this matter, they offered new military, diplomatic and economic norms of the New World. Nevertheless, Wilson and Lenin had very different reasons, methods and designs for the New Order. These different discourses were the origins of both order and disorder of the New Era.