Neither war nor peace

On 10 February 1918 (28 January in the Julian calendar), on a Sunday afternoon, the heads of the delegations to the peace conference met for the last time in Brest-Litovsk. The day before, the Central Powers had signed a peace with the Ukrainian People’s Republic, although Kiev was already in Bolshevik hands. The negotiations with Soviet Russia, resumed on 30 January, had stalled over the question of the frontier. That day the head of the Soviet delegation, Leon Trotsky, made a statement that went down in history as the formula “neither war nor peace”: Russia was ending the war and demobilising its army, but would not sign a treaty on German terms.

The last days of the negotiations

The Bolshevik Central Committee had adopted this formula back in January, after a fierce dispute which we described in connection with the break in the negotiations. Vladimir Lenin wanted to make peace even on harsh terms, Nikolai Bukharin and the Left Communists demanded a “revolutionary war”, and Trotsky proposed a middle course. He reckoned that the Germans would not dare to attack a country that had itself declared the war over, because this would provoke outrage among their own workers. According to his later memoirs, Lenin agreed to the experiment on condition that, if the Germans did advance after all, Trotsky would not support a revolutionary war.

On the eve of the decision the Germans were a step away from issuing an ultimatum. The German radio station in Königsberg had intercepted messages from Tsarskoye Selo calling on German soldiers to mutiny, kill the Kaiser and the generals, and fraternise with the Russians. The Kaiser, Wilhelm II, pressed by the Supreme Army Command, instructed the State Secretary Richard von Kühlmann on 9 February to present Trotsky with a short-term ultimatum demanding that Russia renounce not only Courland and Lithuania but also Livonia and Estonia. Kühlmann replied that the moment was badly chosen and threatened to resign. Since no reply had come from Berlin by the hour he had set, he regarded the order as withdrawn. Through his aide Rosenberg he also suggested to Trotsky that he set out in writing what Russia wanted regarding Riga and the Moon Sound islands, but Trotsky refused. On the morning of 10 February the Austrian expert Richard Schüller urged him one last time to sign the peace and warned him of a German march on Petrograd. Trotsky replied that the Germans would not dare, because it would cause a revolution in Germany.

Trotsky’s statement

In the afternoon the territorial sub-committee chaired by the Austrian delegate Gustav Gratz reported that the military experts of the two sides had failed to agree on the new frontier. Kühlmann accused the Bolsheviks of inciting German soldiers to mutiny and murder, and Trotsky denied any knowledge of such an order. Asked whether he had anything that might help resolve the dispute, he replied that the hour of decision had come. After a long attack on the imperialism of both camps, which some of his listeners took to be a prelude to capitulation, he declared:

We are taking our armies and our people out of the war. Our peasant-soldier must return to his land to cultivate in peace the fields which the revolution has taken from the landlords and given to the peasants. Our worker-soldier must return to the workshops to produce not for destruction but for creation. […] We are going out of the war, but we feel ourselves compelled to refuse to sign the peace treaty.

He then handed the delegates of the Central Powers a written declaration. In the name of the Council of People’s Commissars, the Russian Federative Republic, refusing to sign an annexationist peace, declared for its part the end of the state of war with Germany, Austria-Hungary, Turkey and Bulgaria. At the same time the Russian troops were to receive an order for general demobilisation along the whole front. The declaration was signed by Trotsky, Adolph Joffe, Anastasia Bitsenko, Vladimir Karelin, the historian Mikhail Pokrovsky, two representatives of Soviet Ukraine, Medvedev and Shakhrai, and the delegation’s secretary, Lev Karakhan.

Silence fell over the hall. According to participants’ accounts it was broken by General Max Hoffmann with the exclamation “Unerhört!” (“Unheard of!”). Kühlmann replied that in his view the Central Powers remained in a state of war with Russia. Hostilities had only been suspended by the armistice, whose purpose was the conclusion of peace. If there was to be no peace, the war would revive of itself when the armistice expired, and the demobilisation of one side changed this neither in fact nor in law. He asked where, in the Soviet government’s view, Russia’s frontiers now ran and whether it was prepared to restore diplomatic, legal and commercial relations. He proposed a plenary session the next day, at which the Central Powers would state their position. Trotsky refused: the delegation had exhausted its powers and had to return to Petrograd, and the Soviet government would send any replies by telegraph or through the representatives of the Central Powers in the capital. That same night the Soviet delegation left Brest by train, delighted at the trick they had played on the Germans.

The Germans and “neither war nor peace”

For a long time the delegates of the Central Powers did not know what to make of it. The German jurist Johannes Kriege is said to have searched and found the only precedent for a unilateral declaration of peace in a war between the Greeks and the Scythians thousands of years earlier. In the evening, at Kühlmann’s quarters, the diplomats were inclined to regard the situation as amounting to peace. Kühlmann and Count Ottokar Czernin were glad that no ultimatum had to be sent, and the representative of the Austrian Foreign Ministry, Friedrich von Wiesner, had already telegraphed Vienna that peace had been concluded, which set off joyful demonstrations there. Only Hoffmann objected. After a telephone conversation with Supreme Army Command headquarters at Kreuznach he argued that since the purpose of the armistice, namely peace, had not been achieved, Trotsky’s statement was in effect a denunciation of the armistice, and hostilities had to be resumed after seven days.

On 11 February Kühlmann formally closed the conference and left for Berlin. From the evening of 10 February Paul von Hindenburg and Erich Ludendorff bombarded the Kaiser and the Chancellor with demands for the war to be resumed. Ludendorff wanted a “short but strong blow” that would give Germany Livonia and Estonia and allow it to give armed support to Ukraine and obtain its grain. On 13 February, at a conference held by the Kaiser at Bad Homburg, the Chancellor, Georg von Hertling, and the Vice-Chancellor, Friedrich von Payer, went over to the side of the military. Kühlmann was left alone and, though opposed, did not resign. It was decided to denounce the armistice, on the assumption that the statement of 10 February had been its denunciation and that the seven-day period would expire on 17 February.

Petrograd celebrates

Meanwhile optimism reigned in Petrograd. On 10 February Trotsky demanded that the commander-in-chief, Nikolai Krylenko, issue an order ending the state of war and demobilising the army. Krylenko did so on the morning of 11 February (29 January Old Style). The demobilisation of the older age groups had in any case been under way since the beginning of January, and the disintegration of the army meant that the front was emptying anyway. According to some sources Lenin tried to stop Krylenko’s order, but his instruction got no further than Stavka. On 11 February the Petrograd Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies, with one vote against and 23 abstentions, adopted a resolution by Grigory Zinoviev approving the delegation’s conduct. A few days later, after a lengthy report by Trotsky, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee endorsed it unanimously. Trotsky admitted that a new German offensive could not be ruled out, but believed that the delegation’s stance would make it very difficult.

Lenin did not share this joy. According to Trotsky, he asked him repeatedly whether the Germans would not deceive them, and consoled himself with the thought that under the armistice they had to give seven days’ notice before resuming hostilities. On 16 February Hoffmann informed General Aleksandr Samoylo, who had been left behind in Brest, that the armistice would expire at noon on 18 February. The formula “neither war nor peace” had lasted a week.