How eager the Bolsheviks were for normal relations with Germany is seen from the fact that immediately after the cease-fire they welcomed to Petrograd a German delegation under Count Wilhelm von Mirbach. The delegation was to arrange for an exchange of civilian prisoners of war and the resumption of economic and cultural ties. Lenin received Mirbach on December 15/28. It is from this delegation that Berlin received the first eyewitness accounts of conditions in Soviet Russia.† The Germans first learned from Mirbach that the Bolsheviks were about to default on Russia’s foreign debts. On receipt of this information, the German State Bank drafted memoranda indicating how this could be done with the least harm to German interests and the greatest to those of the Allies. A proposal to this effect was outlined by V. V. Vorovskii, Lenin’s old associate and now Soviet diplomatic representative in Stockholm, who proposed that the Russian Government annul only debts incurred after 1905: since most German loans to Russia had been made before 1905, the major burden of such a default would fall on the Allies.22 *
86. The Russian delegation arrives at Brest-Litovsk. In front, Kamenev. Speaking to German officer, A. Ioffe.
81. The signing of the Armistice at Brest (November 23’December 6, 1917). Sitting on the right, Kamenev and behind him (concealed), Ioffe. On the German side sitting fourth from left, General Hoffmann.
The talks at Brest resumed on December 9/22. Kühlmann again headed the German delegation. The Austrian mission was chaired by Count Czernin, the Minister of Foreign Affairs; present were also the foreign ministers of Turkey and Bulgaria. The German peace proposals called for the separation from Russia of Poland as well as Courland and Lithuania, all of which at the time were under German military occupation. The Germans must have thought these terms reasonable, for they had come to Brest in a hopeful and conciliatory mood, expecting to reach agreement in principle by Christmas. They were quickly disappointed. Ioffe, under instructions to drag out the talks, made vague and unrealistic counterproposals (they had been drafted by Lenin) calling for peace “without annexations and indemnities” and “national self-determination” for the European nations as well as the colonies.23 In effect, the Russian delegation, behaving as if Russia had won the war, asked the Central Powers to give up all their wartime conquests. This behavior raised among the Germans first doubts about Russian intentions.
The peace talks were carried out in an atmosphere of unreality:
The scene in the Council Chamber at Brest-Litovsk was worthy of the art of some great historical painter. On one side sat the bland and alert representatives of the Central Powers, black-coated or much beribboned and bestarred, exquisitely polite.… Among them could be noted the narrow face and alert eyes of Kühlmann, whose courtesy in debate never failed; the handsome presence of Czernin, who was put up to fly the wilder sort of kite, because of his artless bonhomie; and the chubby Pickwickian countenance of General Hoffmann, who now and then grew scarlet and combative when he felt that some military pronouncement was called for. Behind the Teutonic delegates was an immense band of staff officers and civil servants and spectacled professorial experts. Each delegation used its own tongue, and the discussions were apt to be lengthy. Opposite the ranks of Teutondom sat the Russians, mostly dirty and ill-clad, who smoked their large pipes placidly through the debates. Much of the discussion seemed not to interest them, and they intervened in monosyllables, save when an incursion into the ethos of politics let loose a flood of confused metaphysics. The Conference had the air partly of an assembly of well-mannered employers trying to deal with a specially obtuse delegation of workmen, partly of urbane hosts presiding at a village school treat.24
On Christmas Day, carried away by the spirit of the occasion, Count Czernin, to the great irritation of the Germans, offered to surrender all the territories Austria had conquered during the war if the Allies would join in the peace negotiations: he was under instructions to avoid at all costs a breakdown of the armistice and to be prepared, if necessary, to sign a separate treaty.25 The Germans felt in a stronger position, since they were counting on the coming spring offensive in the West to bring them victory. In response to the Russian demand that the Central Powers give the inhabitants of Poland and other Russian areas occupied by them the right to self-determination, Kühlmann tartly responded that these areas had already exercised this right by separating themselves from Russia.
Having reached a stalemate, the talks were adjourned on December 15/28, but the less publicized negotiations between “expert” legal and economic commissions went on.
Assessing the results, some Germans began to wonder whether the Russians desired peace or were merely playing for time to unleash social unrest in Western Europe. Certain Russian actions lent support to the skeptics. German intelligence intercepted a letter from Trotsky to a Swedish collaborator in which the Commissar of Foreign Affairs wrote that “a separate peace involving Russia is inconceivable; all that matters is to prolong the negotiations so as to screen the mobilization of international Social-Democratic forces promoting general peace.”26 As if to demonstrate that such indeed was its intention, on December 26, in an action without precedent in international relations, the Soviet Government officially allocated 2 million rubles to foreign groups supporting the Zimmerwald-Kiental platform.* Nor were German suspicions assuaged by Ioffe’s demand that the German Government emulate the Soviet example by publishing the stenographic records of the political talks at Brest, which were designed, on the Russian side, to carry Bolshevik propaganda to German workers.
At this point, the German military stepped in. In a letter to the Kaiser on January 7 (December 25), which was to exert on him a strong influence, Hindenburg complained that the “weak” and “conciliatory” tactics pursued by the German diplomats at Brest had given the Russians the impression that Germany needed peace as badly as they did. This had a detrimental effect on army morale. Without spelling out what he had in mind, Hindenburg was alluding to the alarming effects of the policy of “fraternization” of Russian and German troops, promoted by the Bolsheviks along the armistice front. It was time to act forcefully: if Germany did not show determination in the east, how could she expect to impose on the Western Allies the kind of peace that her world position required? Germany should redraw the borders in the east in a manner that would prevent wars in the future.27
The Kaiser, who was also losing patience with the diplomatic shillyshallying at Brest, agreed. As a result, the German position appreciably hardened: the pretense of a negotiated peace was given up in favor of a dictated one.
82. Russian and German troops fraternizing: Winter 1917–18.
The Brest talks resumed on December 27/January 9. This time Trotsky headed the Russian delegation: he came with the intention of continuing to play for time and broadcasting propaganda. Lenin agreed to this strategy only reluctantly. Trotsky had to promise that if the Germans saw through it and presented an ultimatum, the Russian delegation would capitulate.28