Vladimir Lenin, the founder of the Soviet state, provided the ideological underpinning for Soviet Third world policy. Be believed that the developing nations, most of which were still part of European colonial empires, were the "weakest link in the capitalist empires and that revolution along these nations would undermine the military and economic power of the West- In 1920, he called on all Communist parties to support these revolutions, but Soviet Russia at that time vas involved in its own civil war and too weak to sake many inroads in the Third World.