Repudiation of debt at the Russian Revolution

The repudiation of debt at the Russian revolution was the 1918 rejection of all sovereign debt and other financial obligations by the Bolshevik government upon attaining power.

In February 1918, after the Russian Revolution, the repudiation of the debt by the Soviet government shocked international finance and triggered unanimous condemnation by the governments of the great powers. The British, and especially the French, had lost millions of pounds of foreign investment in Russia.

Revolutionary Russia completely fell out of the world economy and sealed itself up in isolation, which would not be disturbed until the hostilities with other nations during the Second World War.