Abstract <p>This paper examines how Soviet anti-Versailles rhetoric was actively used in foreign and internal policy to legitimize Bolshevik power, train party cadres, and mobilize the masses politically. It explains that criticism of the Versailles order was an important feature of Bolshevik postrevolutionary discourse on the Great War. Soviet Russia portrayed the settlement as unjust, unstable, and leading to feverish rearmament amongst the imperialist powers. Such reproach was not only due to Soviet Russia’s exclusion from the international community, which considered the new regime to be a pariah, much like Germany; it also hoped to mobilize dissatisfaction with treaty’s terms to gain support both at home and abroad.</p>