The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, signed on 3 March 1918, outlined the harsh conditions under which the crumbling Russian Empire withdrew from the First World War (1914-18). Negotiated by Vladimir Lenin (1870-1924), the leader of Soviet Russia after the Russian Revolution of 1917, and the German Kaiser Wilhelm II (reign 1888-1918) and his Central Powers allies, the treaty stripped away most of the non-Russian territories that the tsars had conquered in the previous 200 years.
The decision to accept the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk split the Communist hierarchy in Russia and led to the outraged Allies supporting the monarchists in the Russian Civil War (1917-22). Nevertheless, Lenin remained adamant that the agreement, no matter its harshness, was necessary to preserve the achievements of the Bolshevik Revolution and to buy time for further worker-led revolutions to occur in Western Europe, a hope that was never realised.
Russia's Catastrophic War
Tsar Nicholas II (reign 1894-1917) ruled the Russian Empire as an absolute monarch. Already unpopular because of his unwillingness to reform Russia's political system and economy, the tsar only just survived the Russian Revolution of 1905. When Russia entered the First World War, things immediately went badly due to a poorly trained and equipped army and navy. WWI was fought between the Allies (Britain, France, Italy, Japan, and the United States) and the Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, and Bulgaria). Russia joined the Allies.
Russian imperial armies faced Germany on two fronts and Austria-Hungary on four fronts. Calamitous defeats included the Battle of Tannenburg in August 1914 and the First Battle of the Masurian Lakes the following September. The Russian army lost 1.2 million men in the first five months of the war. Nicholas had been reluctant to enter the conflict, but he made things far worse when he assumed the role of commander-in-chief in September 1915. Some gains were made against the Austro-Hungarian armies in September 1916 (the Brusilov Offensive), but casualties reached over one million men. Discipline was poor, and some soldiers supported the Communist revolutionaries, who launched an attack on the state in March 1917. The war severely disrupted the Russian agricultural sector and economy in general; food shortages were a particular problem. Indeed, the Bolshevik Revolution was kicked off by bread riots in Petrograd (St. Petersburg). Desertions were so high in the army that it was no longer an effective fighting force in many areas. As Vladimir Lenin memorably remarked, the soldiers had "voted for peace with their feet" (Keegan, 342).
The unrest and poor state of the army led to Russia's high command persuading Nicholas that the best thing to do was to abdicate. Following the abdication in March, a Provisional Government was established, but this was overthrown by the Bolshevik Revolution of November 1917, which established a new republic, Soviet Russia. The new leader was the Bolshevik Communist Vladimir Lenin, and he was determined to withdraw Russia from WWI. Indeed, the Bolsheviks had always protested Russia's involvement in the conflict, and it was one of the main sources of dissatisfaction with the tsar's rule. In addition, Lenin considered an armistice essential to preserving the Bolsheviks' rather loose grip on power. Lenin had brutally commented that the Russian "bourgeoisie has to be throttled and for that we need both hands free" (Beevor, 148). The return of what was left of the army would be a very useful tool in an anticipated civil war against Bolshevik rule. Lenin outlined his motivations to the Communist Central Committee on 9 January:
Undoubtedly the peace that we are currently compelled to conclude is an obscene peace; but if war begins, our government will be swept aside and peace will be concluded by another government…Those who stand on the side of revolutionary war point out that by this very step we will be engaged in a civil war with German imperialism and that thereby we'll awaken revolution in Germany. But look! Germany is only pregnant with revolution, and a completely healthy baby has been born to us: the baby that is the socialist republic, which we shall be killing if we begin a war.
(Service, 339)
Negotiations began with the Central Powers at the end of 1917, Lenin having secured a temporary armistice on 15 December. The question now was what terms would Russia have to accept in order to fully withdraw from the conflict. Lenin wanted a general armistice, but this idea was rejected by the Allies. Instead, Lenin next sought to negotiate with Germany alone. Kaiser Wilhelm was delighted to eliminate his Eastern Front and so be able to concentrate his armed forces in the terrible war of attrition on the Western Front.
Meeting at Brest-Litovsk
On 3 March, all parties met in a series of discussions held at Brest-Litovsk, a fortress located in modern-day Belarus but then in eastern Poland and behind the German lines. The Russian delegation was headed first by the senior Bolshevik intellectual Adolph Joffe (1883-1927), and then, from 22 December, by Leon Trotsky (1879-1940), effectively Lenin's second-in-command. The Central Powers delegation was headed by Germany's foreign minister, Baron Richard von Kühlmann (1873-1948), and the German chief of staff, General Max Hoffmann (1869-1927). A Ukrainian delegation of nationalists also attended some of the talks, and they managed to gain an independent peace deal in January 1918.
The Bolsheviks were aware of workers' strikes in both Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and they hoped that a similar revolution might develop there as it had in Russia. Consequently, Trotsky did his best to delay the negotiations, taking a stance of 'neither peace nor war'. Long and rather pointless speeches prevented the delegates from getting down to the nitty-gritty of the peace deal. As the historian A. Beevor notes, "Trotsky was a brilliant speaker who could argue any issue inside out and back to front, in German and several other languages" (147). Lenin would have preferred to simply accept the treaty terms, but the Communists were deeply divided over the issue.
The problem for the Russians was that Germany was still fighting the war and doing well. It already occupied several of the disputed territories in the negotiations, and German troops were pressing for more. The Kaiser intended to establish puppet regimes wherever he could get away with it. In particular, access to Ukraine gave Germany and Austria-Hungary a much-needed boost in foodstuffs when their populations were suffering severe shortages.
The Kaiser eventually tired of the Russian delay tactics. In February 1918, a German army of 70,000 men made virtually unopposed advances in the east, even threatening Petrograd. Trotsky was now obliged to accept Germany's dictated terms. By 23 February, Germany was able to insist on even harsher treaty terms. Lenin, in a speech at the Bolshevik party congress of 6 March, recognised that Soviet Russia should have agreed to the first set of terms from the Kaiser:
A period has set in of severe defeats, inflicted by imperialism, armed to the teeth, upon a country which has demobilized its army, which had to demobilize. What I foretold has come to pass; instead of the [original] Brest-Litovsk peace we have received a much more humiliating peace, and the blame for this rests upon those who refused to accept the former peace.
(Wood, 85)
Terms & Consequences
Under the terms of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, Soviet Russia was obliged to give up Ukraine, eastern Poland, Finland, the Baltic provinces (Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia), Belorussia (Belarus), and other territories to Germany, while the Caucasus went to Turkey. In any case, the Bolsheviks had already lost or were struggling to keep control of the crumbling Russian Empire. In short, the territory the Romanov tsars had gained over two centuries of imperialism was lost, some 290,000 square miles (750,000 square kilometres). Apart from the prestige and land, much wealth in natural resources was lost, too. As the historian F. McDonough notes, the Russian Empire lost "64 per cent of pig-iron production, 40 per cent of coal and 24 per cent of steel" (45). The Russian Empire lost 34 per cent of its population and 32 per cent of its agricultural land (Wood, 51). As German forces threatened Petrograd, Lenin moved the seat of government further east to Moscow on 10 March 1918. The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was indeed harsh, far harsher than the Treaty of Versailles of 1918, which the German government would be obliged to accept (amongst much lasting complaint) when WWI finally ended.
Nicholas II considered the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk a form of national suicide, but the ex-tsar could still not grasp that he had been partly responsible for the debacle in the war. Neither did the ex-tsar understand that the revolutionaries did not care at all what his opinion was on the matter. Many Russian nationalists and even some Communists – notably the Left Communists (the Socialist Revolutionaries) led by Nikolai Bukharin (1888-1938) – also saw the peace treaty as a betrayal of Russia's national interests. Some even called for a resumption of the war, an entirely impractical idea given the poor state of Russia's army. Only Lenin's threat to resign and Trotsky's move from sitting on the fence to the side of the peace-backers ensured the Left Communists were defeated in the argument. The Left Communists left the ruling Soviet council as a result, which effectively meant Russia had a one-party government, with the Bolsheviks henceforth simply calling themselves the Communist Party.
The Allies of WWI were furious at Russia's withdrawal, and they were determined to make Russia rejoin the conflict, vital for keeping Germany and Austria-Hungary busy on two fronts, east and west. The Allies supported the Whites – the pro-monarchists – in a bloody civil war for control of Russia. The Russian Civil War lasted until 1922 and ended in a Bolshevik victory.
When Germany signed the armistice in November 1918, which effectively ended WWI, the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was viewed by the Allies as being null and void. However, most of the new frontiers agreed upon in the treaty, with the exception of Ukraine, were respected by the victorious Allies. Many of the former territories of the Russian Empire subsequently saw revolutionary or nationalist uprisings as Central and Eastern Europe became highly unstable, a situation which ultimately added to the long list of causes of WWII (1939-45).
