Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (1918): Soviet Russia Leaves the War

The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, signed on 3 March 1918, took Soviet Russia out of the First World War. Under its terms the new Bolshevik government gave up Poland, the Baltic provinces, Finland and Ukraine to German and Austro-Hungarian control or nominal independence, losing a huge share of the old Russian Empire’s population and resources. It was one of the harshest peace settlements of modern times, although it lasted only eight months.

Background: the Bolsheviks and the war

By 1917 Russia’s war effort was collapsing. After the October Revolution brought Lenin’s Bolsheviks to power on 7 November 1917 (25 October in the old calendar), their first act was a Decree on Peace calling for an immediate end to the war without annexations or indemnities. The Allies ignored it.

The Bolsheviks needed peace to survive. Millions of soldiers were deserting, the economy was in ruins, and opposition was growing at home. An armistice between Russia and the Central Powers was signed at Brest-Litovsk, the German eastern headquarters in a fortress town in what is now Belarus, on 15 December 1917.

The negotiations

Peace talks opened on 22 December 1917. The German side was led by the foreign secretary Richard von Kuhlmann, with General Max Hoffmann representing the army; Austria-Hungary was represented by its foreign minister, Count Ottokar Czernin. The Soviet delegation was at first led by Adolph Joffe and from January 1918 by the commissar for foreign affairs, Leon Trotsky.

Trotsky used the talks as a stage for revolutionary propaganda and played for time, hoping that strikes in Germany and Austria would turn into revolution. The Central Powers, meanwhile, demanded that Russia give up its western borderlands. On 9 February 1918 they signed a separate treaty with the Ukrainian People’s Republic, which promised them grain and was nicknamed the “bread peace”.

“Neither war nor peace”

On 10 February Trotsky announced a policy of “neither war nor peace”: Soviet Russia declared the war over and demobilised its army, but refused to sign the terms. The Bolshevik leadership was bitterly divided. Lenin wanted to accept peace at once; Nikolai Bukharin and the “Left Communists” wanted a revolutionary war; Trotsky’s formula was a compromise between them.

Germany called the bluff. On 18 February 1918 it resumed its advance in Operation Faustschlag (“Fist Punch”), meeting almost no resistance. German troops took Dvinsk, Minsk and much of Estonia within days, and Petrograd itself appeared threatened. On 23 February Lenin, threatening to resign, persuaded the Bolshevik Central Committee to accept the new and harsher German terms by a narrow vote, with several members abstaining.

Signing and terms

The treaty was signed on 3 March 1918 by Grigori Sokolnikov for Soviet Russia, who declared that it was being signed under duress. Its main terms were:

• Russia renounced sovereignty over Poland, Lithuania and Courland, whose future was left to Germany and Austria-Hungary; Livonia and Estonia were to be occupied by German “police” forces.
• Russia agreed to make peace with the Ukrainian People’s Republic, recognising its treaty with the Central Powers, and to withdraw its forces from Ukraine and from Finland, whose independence the Bolsheviks had already recognised in December 1917.
• The districts of Kars, Ardahan and Batumi in the Caucasus were ceded to the Ottoman Empire.
• Russia was to demobilise its army and stop revolutionary propaganda in the Central Powers.

A supplementary agreement on 27 August 1918 added payments of 6 billion marks. Fearing that Petrograd was too exposed, the Bolsheviks moved their capital to Moscow in March 1918, and the Fourth All-Russian Congress of Soviets ratified the treaty on 15 March.

By the numbers

Figures vary between sources depending on how the territories are counted; many of these lands had already been occupied or had declared independence before the treaty.

Consequences

The treaty allowed Germany to move dozens of divisions to the Western Front for the German Spring Offensive of March 1918, its last bid for victory. Yet Germany also kept around a million troops in the East to occupy and exploit the new territories, and Ukraine delivered far less grain than hoped.

Inside Russia the treaty deepened the political crisis. The Left Socialist Revolutionaries left the government in protest and, in July 1918, assassinated the German ambassador Count Wilhelm von Mirbach in Moscow. The Allies, angered by Russia’s exit, landed troops in northern Russia and the Far East, helping turn the conflict into a full Russian Civil War.

Germany’s defeat in November 1918 reversed the outcome. The Armistice of 11 November 1918 required Germany to renounce the treaty, and the Soviet government annulled it on 13 November. Much of the lost territory, however, did not return: Poland, Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania became independent states after the war.

Legacy and historical debate

Historians have long seen Brest-Litovsk as a guide to the aims of Imperial Germany. The lands Germany took or controlled in the East, from the Baltic to the Black Sea, pointed to a vast sphere of influence built on client states and economic exploitation. The German historian Fritz Fischer, in his influential 1961 study of German war aims, used the treaty as evidence that Germany’s leaders sought domination of Europe.

The treaty also shaped Allied attitudes to peacemaking. When Germany complained about the terms of the Treaty of Versailles in 1919, Allied leaders pointed to Brest-Litovsk as proof of the kind of peace Germany had imposed when it was the victor.

Inside Soviet Russia, Lenin’s decision became part of Bolshevik legend. He openly called the treaty a shameful peace, but argued that a breathing space was worth almost any price. His gamble paid off when Germany collapsed within the year, and Soviet historians later presented the episode as proof of his realism. Critics, then and since, have argued that the treaty abandoned millions of people to foreign occupation and pushed Russia further towards civil war.

For the peoples of the borderlands, the experience was mixed. German occupation brought requisitions, forced labour and harsh controls, but it also ended Russian rule and gave national movements in Finland, the Baltic lands, Poland and Ukraine room to organise. Several of the states recognised in 1918 survived, although Ukraine’s independence was soon lost amid civil war and Soviet invasion.

Key people

• Vladimir Lenin, Bolshevik leader, who insisted on accepting peace to save the revolution.
• Leon Trotsky, commissar for foreign affairs, author of the “neither war nor peace” policy.
• Richard von Kuhlmann, German foreign secretary and chief negotiator.
• Max Hoffmann, German chief of staff in the East, who pressed for hard terms.
• Ottokar Czernin, Austro-Hungarian foreign minister, whose country was desperate for Ukrainian grain.

Timeline

• 1917, 7 November: The Bolsheviks seize power in Petrograd.
• 1917, 15 December: Armistice signed between Russia and the Central Powers at Brest-Litovsk.
• 1917, 22 December: Peace negotiations open.
• 1918, 9 February: The Central Powers sign a separate peace with Ukraine.
• 1918, 10 February: Trotsky announces “neither war nor peace”.
• 1918, 18 February: Germany resumes its offensive.
• 1918, 3 March: The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk is signed.
• 1918, 15 March: The Congress of Soviets ratifies the treaty.
• 1918, 13 November: The Soviet government annuls the treaty.

Why it matters

Brest-Litovsk showed what a German victory might have meant for Eastern Europe and helped persuade the Allies to fight on to complete victory. It saved the Bolshevik regime at a moment of weakness, and the brief German occupation of the borderlands helped shape the new nations that emerged there after 1918.