promise to support revolutions to overthrow governments everywhere. U.S. Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby stated: It is their [Bolshevik] understanding that the very existence of Bolshevism in Russia, the maintenance of their own rule, depends, and must continue to depend, upon the occurrence of revolutions in all other great civilized nations, including the United States, which will overthrow and destroy their governments and set up Bolshevist rule in their stead. They have made it quite plain that they intend to use every means, including, of course, diplomatic agencies, to promote such revolutionary movements in other countries. After Germany was defeated in November 1918 and the Whites were repulsed, the first priority for Moscow was instigating revolutions across Western Europe, above all Germany. It was the country that Lenin most admired and assumed to be most ready for revolution. Lenin also encouraged revolutions that failed in Germany, Bavaria and Hungary from 1918 to 1920 - this support was solely political and economic, and the Red Army did not participate in these revolutions. In 1920 the newly formed state of Poland expanded eastwards into the Russian territories of Ukraine and Belarus. The Red Army retaliated, but was defeated outside Warsaw in August 1920. Shortly afterwards, the RSFSR sued for peace, which was signed at the Peace of Riga on 18 March 1921. The RSFSR recompensed 30 million roubles, as well as sizeable territory in Belarus and Ukraine. Independent revolutions had failed to overthrow capitalism. Moscow pulled back from military action and set up the Comintern, designed to foster local communist parties under Kremlin control. Success in Central Asia and the Caucasus Lenin's plans failed, although Russia did manage to hold onto the Central Asian and Caucasian domains that had been part of the Russian Empire. The revolutionary stage ended after the Soviet defeat in the Battle of Warsaw during the Soviet-Polish War of 1920-21. As Europe's revolutions were crushed and revolutionary zeal dwindled, the Bolsheviks shifted their ideological focus from the world revolution and building socialism around the globe to building socialism inside the Soviet Union, while keeping some of the rhetoric and operations of the Comintern continuing. In the mid-1920s, a policy of peaceful co-existence began to emerge, with Soviet diplomats attempting to end the country's isolation, and concluding bilateral arrangements with capitalist governments. An agreement was reached with Germany, Europe's other pariah, in the Treaty of Rapallo in 1922. At