The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk

MAR 03 1918 · 12:00

Arrival of the Soviet delegation at the peace conference in Brest-Litovsk, January 1918. Place: Brest-Litovsk, German-occupied Belarus Figures: Leon Trotsky, then Grigori Sokolnikov for Soviet Russia · Richard von Kühlmann, German Foreign Minister · Ottokar Czernin, Austro-Hungarian Foreign Minister · Lenin, in Petrograd, insisting on signature Peace at Any Price The Bolsheviks seize power in November 1917 on the explicit promise of immediate peace. Trotsky opens negotiations at Brest-Litovsk in December with the slogan no annexations, no indemnities, then walks out in February 1918 with the formula no peace, no war. Germany resumes its advance the next day, taking 240,000 square kilometres in eleven days against no resistance. Lenin overrules the party majority and orders signature on any terms available, on the argument that the Soviet republic must survive long enough for revolution to come to Germany. Sokolnikov signs on 3 March without reading the text, declaring it a dictated peace to be denounced at the first opportunity. A Sovereign State Made to Pay Russia loses Poland, the Baltic states, Ukraine, Finland, Belarus: 26 percent of population, 27 percent of cultivated land, 33 percent of railway track, 73 percent of iron, 89 percent of coal. The territories are detached as nominally independent buffer states under German military oversight. It is the first major Westphalian peace dictated to a sovereign state that has just had a revolution, and the first treaty to test whether the new system applies to a regime its signatories regard as illegitimate. The answer is given when Germany capitulates in the West eight months later. Article XV of the Versailles armistice annuls Brest-Litovsk in November 1918; the territorial settlement collapses; the successor states reappear in different shapes (see [[treaty-of-versailles-1919]] and [[league-of-nations-founded-1920]]). The Bolshevik regime survives, and remembers. Video: Indy Neidell on the 3 March 1918 treaty that ended Russia's war and transferred a third of the empire's population to German control.