The Ending of World War One, and the Legacy of Peace

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• 1. Russia's exit
• 2. Knock-on effect
• 3. German disillusionment
• 4. Collapse
• 5. Hard times
• 6. The Treaty of Versailles
• 7. An uneasy peace
• 8. Find out more
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Russia's exit

Russia's exit from World War One, in 1917, must have made an eventual victory for Germany seem quite likely to German leaders, and vindicated their nurturing of Russian dissidents. From the very early months of World War One, the German government had been in touch with exiled Russian revolutionaries, many of them Bolsheviks, in the hopes that they could be used to undermine the Russian war effort against Germany.

'A sealed train passed through Germany ... with the conspirators hidden on board ...'

This didn't pay off in the first years of the war, but - although the Germans were in no way implicated - the February revolution in 1917 that eventually toppled the Russian tsarist regime raised German hopes that Russia would soon withdraw from the war. These hopes were soon dashed, as the new, provisional liberal government in Russia decided to continue to fight against Germany and the Central Powers.

Towards the end of March, however, the German foreign office and the High Command agreed to send one of the exiled Bolshevik leaders, Vladimir Lenin, plus 31 other émigrés opposed both to the tsarists and the liberals, back to Russia from Switzerland.

This was in the hopes that they would topple the Provisional Government and sue to bring an end to Russia's involvement in the war. A sealed train passed through Germany during the night of 10 to 11 April, with the conspirators hidden on board, and within a few months the policy appeared to be crowned with spectacular success.

Widespread war weariness among the general population of Russia was the major cause of the October Revolution of that year; this brought the Bolsheviks to power, and almost the first act of the new government was to publish its peace proposals on 8 November. The fighting on the Eastern Front ended within a few weeks, and a peace conference began its deliberations at Brest Litovsk on 22 December 1917.

The negotiations were lengthy and fractious and it was not until 3 March 1918 that the instruments were finally signed. Russia lost control of the Baltic States, Poland, Finland, the East Anatolian provinces, and the districts of Erdehan, Kars and Batum.

Ukraine became a theoretically independent state under German military occupation. Russia lost about one million square kilometers, and 50 million inhabitants, in a treaty negotiated on the theoretical basis of a peace without annexations and reparations.

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Published: 2003-04-03