Treaties of Brest-Litovsk (1918)

The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was a separate peace treaty signed on 3 March 1918 between Soviet Russia and the Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, and Bulgaria), by which Russia withdrew from World War I. The treaty, which followed months of negotiations after the armistice on the Eastern Front in December 1917, was signed at Brest-Litovsk (now Brest, Belarus). The Soviet delegation was initially headed by Adolph Joffe, and key figures from the Central Powers included Max Hoffmann and Richard von Kühlmann of Germany, Ottokar Czernin of Austria-Hungary, and Talaat Pasha of the Ottoman Empire. In January 1918, the Central Powers demanded secession of all occupied territories of the former Russian Empire. The Soviets sent a new peace delegation led by Leon Trotsky, which aimed to stall the negotiations while awaiting revolutions in Central Europe. A renewed Central Powers offensive launched on February 18 captured large territories in the Baltic region, Belarus, and Ukraine and forced the Soviet side to sue for peace. Under the terms of the treaty, Russia lost control of Ukraine, Poland, Belarus, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, and its Caucasus provinces of Kars and Batum. The lands comprised 34% of the former empire's population, 54% of its industrial land, 89% of its coalfields, and 26% of its railways. The Soviet government also confirmed the independence of Finland, which it had recognized in January 1918, and pledged to end its war with the Ukrainian People's Republic, which the Central Powers had recognized under the prior Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (9 February 1918). A supplementary protocol signed in August 1918 required Russia to pay Germany war reparations of six billion marks. The treaty was controversial in Russia, giving a unifying cause to the White movement and opening a rift between the Bolsheviks and the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries, whose representatives withdrew from the Council of People's Commissars after its signing and later rebelled in the Left SR Uprising. The treaty was annulled by the Armistice of 11 November 1918, in which Germany surrendered to the western Allied Powers. Subsequent attempts by the Soviets to restore power in the lost territories during the Russian Civil War (1917–1922) had mixed results, with the Red Army being defeated in the independence wars of the three Baltic countries and in the Polish–Soviet War, but achieving victory in its invasions of Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Georgia and in the Ukrainian–Soviet War. The border with Turkey established by the treaty was largely affirmed by the Treaty of Kars (1921). Under the Treaty of Rapallo (1922), Russia and Germany renounced all territorial and financial claims against each other. The Russian borders established by the treaty bear an almost exact similarity to the post-1991 borders established after the fall of the Soviet Union.