Russia’s withdrawal from the war

The events of 1917 meant that World War I was no longer a two-sided contest. Rather, four visions of the future competed for the allegiance of governments and peoples. Germany fought on in hope of victory and domination of the Continent. The Allies fought on to frustrate Germany and realize their own ambitious war aims. Wilson’s America fought as an “associated power” for a liberal internationalist agenda opposed to German and Allied imperialism alike. Finally, Lenin’s Russia raised a second challenge to the old diplomacy in the name of socialist internationalism. German, Allied, Wilsonian, and Bolshevik images of the peace differed so radically that the war was now as much ideological as it was military.

Lloyd George and Wilson replied to Lenin’s peace initiatives with speeches of their own to reassure their peoples, contrast their liberal goals with those of the Germans, and perhaps persuade Russia to remain in the field. Lloyd George insisted before the Trades Union Congress (January 5, 1918) that “we are not fighting a war of aggression against the German people,” and he stressed autonomous development for all peoples, including those of Austria-Hungary. Wilson’s Fourteen Points speech (January 8, 1918) called for (1) open covenants, openly arrived at; (2) freedom of the seas; (3) lowering of economic barriers; (4) reduction of armaments; (5) colonial arrangements respecting the will of the peoples involved; (6) national self-determination for the peoples of Russia; (7) restoration of Belgium; (8) return of all invaded territory plus Alsace-Lorraine to France; (9) Italian recovery of her irredente; (10) autonomy for the nationalities of Austria-Hungary; (11) restoration of the Balkan states and access to the sea for Serbia; (12) autonomy for the peoples of the Ottoman Empire and free navigation through the Dardanelles; (13) an independent Poland with access to the sea; and (14) a “general association of nations” offering “mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity.” In his Four Principles (February 11) and Five Particulars (September 27) speeches Wilson elaborated his views on national self-determination, a truly revolutionary idea with global, but unpredictable, implications.

Allied assurances failed to dissuade the Bolsheviks from exiting the alliance. Lenin took power on the slogan “Peace, Bread, and Land,” and he needed to be free of the war in order to consolidate Bolshevik power. A peace conference convened at Brest-Litovsk on December 22, 1917, but it proceeded slowly while the two sides—one imperialist, the other incipiently totalitarian—bickered about the definition of “national self-determination.” On January 7, 1918, Trotsky asked for adjournment, still hoping for revolutionary outbreaks abroad. In fact, a mutiny in the Austrian fleet and a general strike movement in Berlin did occur but were easily suppressed. The Bolshevik leadership now faced three bad choices: to defy the Germans and risk conquest and overthrow; to relent and sign over half of European Russia to German control; or to pursue what Trotsky called “neither war nor peace” while awaiting the revolution in Germany. He also wished to avoid any sign of collusion with the German military, lest the Bolsheviks appear to be collaborationists. In the meantime the Germans and Austrians concluded the Brotfrieden (“bread peace”) with representatives of wheat-rich Ukraine. When, however, Bolshevik forces began to penetrate Ukraine—and the German high command tired of Trotsky’s rhetoric—the Germans broke off talks and ordered the army to resume its advance. The French ambassador immediately offered the Bolsheviks all aid if they would fight the Germans, but Lenin ordered an immediate capitulation. Germany now presented even harsher peace terms, and on March 3 the Bolsheviks signed. The Romanians then made peace on the 5th, and newly independent Finland signed a treaty with Germany on the 7th.

In the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk the Bolshevik regime turned over to Germany 34 percent of Russia’s population, 32 percent of Russia’s farmland, 54 percent of Russia’s industrial plant, 89 percent of Russia’s coal mines, and virtually all of its cotton and oil. These economic gains in the east, plus the release of troops who could now be shifted to the Western Front, revived German hopes that victory was achievable before the Americans arrived in force.

Negative views of the Bolshevik Revolution predominated from the start in Western capitals, although some people on the left in London, Paris, and Washington sympathized with it or thought it would bring much needed “efficiency” to Russia. The French and British had talked of supporting this or that Russian faction with arms or cash and had agreed on a tentative division of southern Russia into areas of responsibility. The German advance of February then caused the Allied missions to flee Petrograd and reassemble in remote Vologda, where they waited to see what direction the Bolsheviks would take. The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk answered the question. It was an unparalleled disaster for the beleaguered Allies, who now had to consider intervention in Russia. First, if they could link up with nationalist Russians and reopen the Eastern Front, they might save their exhausted armies in France from facing the full might of the Central Powers. Second, it would be most helpful if they could save Allied war matériel that had stacked up in Russian ports (some 162,495 tons of supplies in Arkhangelsk alone) from seizure by the Germans or Bolsheviks and distribute it to Russians still willing to fight Germans.

When the German onslaught on the Western Front opened in March, the French and British became desperate for a diversion in the East. In March 1918 an Anglo-French expedition docked at Murmansk, followed in June by an American cruiser and 150 marines. An Anglo-French force occupied Arkhangelsk in August, and 4,500 U.S. soldiers under British command joined them in September. These tiny contingents, totaling about 28,000 men, were never meant to overthrow the Bolshevik regime, although the British hoped they might serve as magnets for White Russian forces opposing the Bolsheviks.

The Japanese, seeking an imperial foothold on the Asian mainland, used Brest-Litovsk as pretext to occupy Vladivostok in April. Wilson then committed U.S. troops to Siberia in order to keep an eye on the Japanese and to make contact with 30,000 Czechoslovak legionnaires, mostly former prisoners of war from the Habsburg armies seeking to escape Russia to fight for an independent Czech state. The Czechoslovak Legion, released and armed by the Kerensky government, at first declared neutrality toward Russian politics, but when the Bolsheviks tried to disarm them, skirmishes ensued, and the legion became strung out along the 6,000-mile-long Trans-Siberian Railway. The Allied interventions also became entangled in the erupting Russian Civil War. Bolsheviks controlled Petrograd, Moscow, and the core regions of Russia, while White governments were established by Admiral Aleksandr Kolchak in Omsk and General Anton Denikin in Odessa.