Brest-Litovsk

CHAPTER 5 · DECEMBER 1917–MARCH 1918 · The Russian Revolution, 1905–1924

Having promised peace, the Bolsheviks had to buy it — and the price was the western third of the empire. At Brest-Litovsk, Trotsky tried a gambler’s bluff: “neither war nor peace,” declaring Russia out of the war while refusing to sign a humiliating treaty, betting that German workers would rise before German armies moved. They did not move — they marched. Operation Faustschlag (the arrows) was the easiest advance of the whole World War: in eleven days, meeting an army that had ceased to exist, German troops took Ukraine, the Baltics and Belorussia almost at walking pace. Lenin, appalled, forc

The turn: The signing at Brest-Litovsk, 3 March 1918.

This chapter is one scene of an interactive atlas: the map repaints as the dates advance, campaigns draw themselves, and every chapter argues its causes and consequences — then a field exam asks you to prove it on the map.