Part IV¶
Core Argument¶
At the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets, the Peace Decree was adopted, though many dismissed it as mere political theatre. On 20th November, the Soviet government wirelessed peace proposals to both Allied and enemy powers. The Allied governments protested through their military agents, threatening serious consequences. Undeterred, the Soviet reply on 24th November took the form of a manifesto to workers, soldiers, and peasants, refusing to shed further blood for any foreign bourgeoisie. Secret treaties were published and repudiated. A ceasefire was signed on 5th December, with renewed appeals to the Allies, which went unanswered.
Peace negotiations opened at Brest-Litovsk on 22nd December. Three days later, the Quadruple Alliance hypocritically adhered to democratic formulae of peace without annexations; within two days, their predatory demands were laid bare. The Russian delegation had hoped that strike movements in Austria-Hungary and Berlin, sparked by the negotiations, would strengthen their position. However, the German ruling classes, alarmed by this proletarian upsurge, closed ranks and grew more intransigent once the strikes were suppressed.
The negotiations were further complicated by the Kiev Rada. Initially, its delegation defined Ukraine as part of the Russian Federation, but later, under Austro-German dictation, declared it an independent republic. The Bolsheviks offered the Rada an agreement on condition it opposed Kaledin and Kornilov. As the Rada’s popular support waned, it became more willing to make a separate peace with the Central Powers. On 9th February, the Rada signed a treaty with them, even as it lost control of Ukraine. The Bolsheviks informed the Central Powers that the Rada no longer existed, but the Germans proceeded regardless.
Facing a disintegrating army and unable to continue the war, the Russian delegation refused to sign the annexationist peace terms, declaring them a product of violence. Germany denounced the armistice with only two days’ notice and launched a new offensive. Within the Bolshevik Party, a heated debate ensued. Lenin argued for accepting a new, harsher treaty to gain a breathing space for internal consolidation and rebuilding the army, overruling those who opposed capitulation. The second Brest-Litovsk treaty was signed and ratified.
The Soviet regime faced immense difficulties: economic exhaustion, administrative collapse, a demoralised peasantry, and civil war. Its only alternative to colonial subjugation was socialist transformation, based on a planned economy and labour discipline, sustained by the conviction that proletarian revolution in Europe and America would ultimately break the imperialist encirclement. The question of Russia’s survival had become inseparable from the prospect of European revolution.