Brest-Litovsk: forgotten peace in East
Treaty signifies to Putin’s Russia what they can expect from the West in Ukraine
IT BECAME all quiet on the Eastern Front during the World War I when a peace treaty was signed on March 3, 1918. Outside the citadel housing the signatories, the former Polish town of Brest-Litovsk, today known as Brest in Belarus, lay in blackened ruins after it had been razed to the ground.
The war-torn town grimly mirrored the cold winter landscape, where the delegates of the belligerent nations intermingled amiably. As this year marks the 100th anniversary of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, it is significant to reflect on an armistice that ended hostilities between the Central Powers of Germany, Austro-Hungary, the Turkish Ottoman Empire and Russia.
Historian John Wheeler-Bennett emphasised that while the Treaty of Versailles was to steer post-war relations at the end of the war in November 1918, the treaty signed eight months before at BrestLitovsk became largely forgotten despite its geopolitical importance.
According to him it demonstrated “the apparent complete victory of German arms in the East, and the greatest diplomatic and military humiliation which Russia had ever sustained had consequences more vitally important than any other peace settlement”.
In comparison to the stalemate of the trench war on the Western Front, the tremendous loss of Russian lives brought their forces to the verge of disintegration. For four years, they had faced mass slaughter against German guns, and it was reported that “the army is drowning in its own blood”. Secretly conspiring with the Germans, the exiled Vladimir Lenin was transported by train into Russia like “a plague bacillus”, as Winston Churchill noted, to instil unrest and to press for Russia’s withdrawal from the war.
After the successful Bolshevik revolution of October 1917, Lenin immediately started with peace negotiations. He desperately needed a “breathing space” for consolidating his forces against pro-Tsarist “White” forces.
Furthermore, what prompted Lenin to sue for peace was his conviction that the revolutionary upheaval would spark a similar revolution in Germany. Apart from negligible protest by metalworkers on strike in Berlin, it was rather illusionary.
Differences of opinion between Trotsky, who argued against signing, Kamenev who believed that German workers would rise up irrespectively, and Lenin’s standpoint of retreating from the war led to frustrating procrastination.
After receiving a Russian peace delegation on December 15, 1917 at Best-Litovsk the German high command under Erich Ludendorff became impatient and their demands draconian.
During the negotiations German general Max Hoffman banged the negotiating table with his fist, demanding that the Baltic states come under German “protection”. The Germans issued an ultimatum and on February 18, having received no answer, advanced on the near-deserted Russian trenches as far as Bessarabia. Lenin instructed the central committee that “you must sign this shameful peace to save the world revolution”. The treaty was drawn up in haste. The Russians bowed to the inevitable for a peace which “Russia, grinding its teeth, is forced to accept”.
On Sunday, March 3, 1918, the signing ceremony was concluded. The repercussions of the treaty were far-reaching. Russia had lost 90% of its coal reserves, half of its industry and finest agricultural lands and 30% of its population. The treaty severed Russia from its territorial claims on Finland, the Ukraine, Lithuania, Courland, Belarus and Poland. Austro-Hungarian claims were ceded to the Germans and the Turks reclaimed Ardahan, Kars and Batumi.
Germans occupied Kiev and established a “puppet” Ukrainian state, though this proved unsuccessful as Cossack rebels would increasingly become antagonistic towards them.
Although the control over the Russian territory gave provisioning of grain and raw materials for the German war economy, the sluggishness of its delivery made it worthless overall. Neither material supplies, nor the imposition of 3 000 million roubles of gold from Russia could make any difference to the central powers’ war effort. Jaroslav Valenta argued that it was not Russia, but Germany was the real loser, as aggrandisement against Russia meant that Ludendorff stationed more than a million men in an area posing no military threat.
The releasing of German prisoners, some of who had witnessed the Russian revolution and returned to Germany with anti-imperialist beliefs, served as a source of infection. For Lenin the treaty gave a respite before the ensuing Russian Civil War. For Russo-German relations the treaty remained psychologically long-lasting and later manifested in Nazi expansionist ambitions over Eastern Europe.
A hundred years ago, the Treaty of BrestLitovsk was overshadowed by the armistice of November 11, 1918, when the treaty was declared void.
But for its legacy the treaty “had left too sour a taste behind it to serve as a suitable psychological model for future policy”, Valenta concluded.
Even today with the tensions between Vladimir Putin and the West over the Ukrainian crisis, Brest-Litovsk will be remembered as a bitter peace and signifies to Russia the treatment they might expect from Western countries once defeated.