To transform Russia into a German client state, two things had to be done. The Russian Empire had to be broken up and reduced to territories populated by Great Russians. This entailed pushing Russia’s frontiers eastward through the annexation by Germany of the Baltic provinces and the creation of a cordon sanitaire of nominally sovereign but in fact German-controlled protectorates: Poland, the Ukraine, and Georgia. This program, advocated before and during the war by the publicist Paul Rohrbach,14 had a strong appeal, especially to the military. Hindenburg wrote the Kaiser in January 1918 that Germany’s interests required Russia’s borders to be shifted to the East, and her western provinces, rich in population and economic capacity, to be annexed.15 Essentially this meant Russia’s expulsion from continental Europe. In the words of Rohrbach, the issue was whether “if our future is to be secure, Russia is to be allowed to remain a European power in the sense that she had been until now, or is she not to be allowed to be such?”16
Second, Russia had to grant Germany all kinds of economic concessions and privileges that would leave her open to German penetration and, ultimately, hegemony. German businessmen during the war importuned their government to annex Russia’s western provinces and subject Russia to economic exploitation.17
From this perspective, nothing suited Germany better than a Bolshevik Government in Russia. German internal communications from 1918 were replete with arguments that the Bolsheviks should be helped to stay in power as the only Russian party prepared to make far-reaching territorial and economic concessions and because their incompetence and unpopularity kept Russia in a state of permanent crisis. State Secretary Admiral Paul von Hintze expressed the consensus when in the fall of 1918 he stood up to those Germans who wanted to topple the Bolsheviks as unreliable and dangerous partners: eliminating the Bolsheviks “would subvert the whole work of our war leadership and our policy in the East, which strives for the military paralysis of Russia.”18 Paul Rohrbach argued in a similar vein:
The Bolsheviks are ruining Great Russia, the source of any potential Russian future danger, root and branch. They have already lifted most of that anxiety which we might have felt about Great Russia, and we should do all we can to keep them as long as possible carrying on their work, so useful to us.19
If Berlin and Vienna agreed on the desirability of quickly coming to terms with Russia, in Petrograd opinions were sharply divided. Setting nuances aside, the division pitted those Bolsheviks who wanted peace at once, on almost any terms, against those who wanted to use the peace negotiations as a means for unleashing a European revolution.
Lenin, the leading advocate of the first course, found himself usually in a minority, sometimes a minority of one. He proceeded from a pessimistic estimate of the international “correlation of forces.” While he, too, counted on revolutions in the West, he had a much higher opinion than his adversaries of the ability of “bourgeois” governments to crush them. At the same time, he was less sanguine than his colleagues about the staying power of the Bolsheviks: during one of the debates that accompanied the peace talks, he caustically observed that while there was as yet no civil war in Europe there was already one in Russia. From the perspective of time, Lenin can be faulted for underestimating the internal difficulties of the Central Powers and their need for a quick settlement: Russia’s position in this respect was stronger than he realized. But his assessment of the internal situation in Russia was perfectly sound. He knew that by continuing in the war he risked being toppled from power either by his domestic opponents or by the Germans. He also knew that he desperately needed a respite to transform his claim to power into reality. This called for an organized political, economic, and military effort, possible only under conditions of peace, no matter how onerous and humiliating. True, this entailed sacrificing, for the time being, the interests of the Western “proletariat,” but in his eyes, until the Revolution had fully succeeded in Russia, Russia’s interests came first.
The position of the majority opposed to him, headed by Bukharin and joined by Trotsky, has been summarized as follows:
The central powers would not permit Lenin so to use the respite: they would cut off Russia from the grain and coal of the Ukraine and the petrol of the Caucasus; they would bring under their control half the Russian population; they would sponsor and support counterrevolutionary movements and throttle the revolution. Nor would the Soviets be able to build up a new army during any respite. They had to create their armed strength in the very process of the fighting; and only so could they create it. True, the Soviets might be forced to evacuate Petrograd and even Moscow; but they had enough space into which to retreat and gather strength. Even if the people were to prove as unwilling to fight for the revolution as they were to fight for the old regime—and the leaders of the war faction refused to take this for granted—then every German advance, with all the accompanying terror and pillage, would shake the people from weariness and torpor, force them to resist, and finally generate a broad and truly popular enthusiasm for revolutionary war. On the tide of this enthusiasm a new and formidable army would rise. The revolution, unshamed by sordid surrender, would achieve its renaissance; it would stir the souls of the working classes abroad; and it would finally dispel the nightmare of imperialism.20
This division of opinion led in the early months of 1918 to the worst crisis in the history of the Bolshevik Party.
On November 15/28, 1917, the Bolsheviks again called on the belligerents to open negotiations. The appeal stated that since the “ruling classes” of Allied countries have failed to respond to the Peace Decree, Russia was prepared to open immediate talks on a cease-fire with the Germans and Austrians, who had responded positively. The Germans accepted the Bolshevik offer immediately. On November 18/December 1, a Russian delegation departed for Brest-Litovsk, the headquarters of the German High Command on the Eastern Front. It was headed by A. A. Ioffe, an ex-Menshevik and close friend of Trotsky’s. It also included Kamenev and, as a symbolic gesture, representatives of the “toiling masses” in the persons of a soldier, sailor, worker, peasant, and one woman. Even as the train carrying the Russian delegation was en route to Brest, Petrograd called on German troops to mutiny.
The armistice talks opened on November 20/December 3, in what used to be a Russian officers’ club. The German delegation was headed by Kühlmann, who regarded himself as something of an expert in Russian affairs and in 1917 had played a key role in making arrangements with Lenin. The parties agreed on a cease-fire to begin on November 23/December 6 and remain in force for eleven days. Before it expired, however, it was extended, by mutual agreement, to January 1/14, 1918. The ostensible purpose of this extension was to give the Allies an opportunity to reconsider and join the talks. Both sides knew, however, that there was no danger of the Allies complying: as Kühlmann advised his Chancellor, the German conditions for an armistice were so onerous the Allies could not possibly accept them.21 The true purpose of the extension was to allow both sides to work out their positions for the coming peace talks. Even before these got underway, the Germans violated the terms of the cease-fire by transferring six divisions to the Western Front.*