The Brest-Litovsk peace conference and its treaties have been interpreted mainly as a draconian German “diktat” imposed on a militarily impotent Russia still reeling from revolution, and on a Bolshevik-led regime with a tenuous hold on power. Yet, the short duration of the settlements because of the defeat of the Quadruple Alliance in World War I would soon render Brest-Litovsk “a forgotten peace”—the very words that frame the title of British historian John W. Wheeler-Bennett's influential account published in 1939 (The Forgotten Peace: Brest-Litovsk, March 1918), as well as Borislav Chernev's introduction to his new monograph. Chernev's intention, however, is to complicate the picture of an unequal duel between no-nonsense German militarists and inexperienced Bolshevik revolutionaries by examining the “interdependence of diplomatic negotiations at Brest-Litovsk and domestic developments” (4), on the one hand, and by exploring the fissures that severely tested the Quadruple Alliance at Brest-Litovsk, on the other. Unlike Wheeler-Bennett, Chernev pays close attention to the role of other actors in the negotiations, especially to that of Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and a fledgling Ukrainian state, though he is not the first to do so. Chernev's main goal, however, is to rescue from obscurity the “Brest-Litovsk system” established by separate treaties between the Quadruple Alliance and Ukraine, and then with Soviet Russia. Marking the “twilight of empire,” Brest-Litovsk, as interpreted by Chernev, was not only an important point in a process of decolonization that transformed the entire region of East-Central Europe into one of nation-states, but also one that “ushered in an era of unparalleled ideological struggle which dominated Europe's twentieth century” (11).
For the most part, Chernev is successful in this endeavor. He is able to demonstrate that, in “the clash of mutually exclusive Weltanshauungen (world views)” (40), the Bolsheviks had their own strong hand to play when they gained Central Power agreement in December 1917 to open negotiations for an armistice and eventually a peace treaty on a basis excluding “annexations” and guided by the principle of “self-determination.” The latter notion then entered the political lexicon of David Lloyd George and Woodrow Wilson even as the Allied states refused to join the talks, which enabled the Quadruple Alliance to circumvent its earlier commitment as actual peace negotiations began. Their first phase was quickly marked by trouble, as much within the Quadruple Alliance as between that alliance and the Russians. For their part, the Bulgarians threatened to destroy the integrity of the Quadruple Alliance in their unwavering pursuit of “regional hegemony as the only secure form possible of nation-state consolidation” (173), which amounted to an attempt to have their annexationist cake covered by the frosting of self-determination. Because of the acute food crisis and domestic unrest in the Austrian half of the Dual Monarchy, the delegation led by Count Ottokar von Czernin was so desperate for an end to the war in the East that it threatened its German ally with a separate peace early in the negotiations, when the Russians threatened a walkout over the future of Poland, Courland, and Lithuania.
Back in Berlin, the military faction led by Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg and Quartermaster General Erich Ludendorff sought to force the issue by delivering an ultimatum to the Russians, sparking within the Imperial War Council “a constitutional crisis” in early January 1918. For the time being, however, the civilian government retained control over the negotiations at Brest-Litovsk. Moreover, the German military representative at the talks, Major-General Max von Hoffmann, often agreed with the diplomats. The perspective provided by Chernev's analysis flies in the face of the commonly-held view of the ascendancy of the German High Command (Oberste Heeresleitung, OHL) over the civilian government following the forced resignation of Imperial Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann-Holweg in July 1917.
The stage was thus set for a second round of negotiations featuring lengthy debates between the German and Russian foreign ministers, Baron Richard von Kühlmann and Leon Trotsky, over the definition and application of “self-determination.” Kühlmann hoped to use self-determination as a tool to attach Courland, Estonia, and Livonia to Imperial Germany, whereas Trotsky used the rhetorical duel with his German counterpart to stall for time in anticipation of the spread of revolution—aided by Bolshevik propaganda, for which Brest-Litovsk provided an open public stage. The Great January Strike in Austria during the second adjournment in the negotiations appeared to justify Trotsky's tactics. The ensuing crisis shook the Habsburg Empire and may have anticipated the Central European revolutions that took place nearly a year later, but disintegration and collapse were avoided for the time being. It would most certainly lead Czernin to seek resolution of the related crises of bread and peace through an agreement territorially favorable to the Ukrainian delegation, which the Central Powers had invited to Brest-Litovsk, but at the considerable expense of the Habsburg position in occupied Russian Poland and western Galicia, where Polish elites would come to view Brest-Litovsk as yet another partition.
Chernev provides few new insights into internal debates during the second adjournment in Petrograd, where Bolshevik leader and head of the Council of People's Commissars Vladimir Lenin forcefully argued for acceptance of the enemy's terms, but hesitantly consented to Trotsky's famous “no war, no peace” formula to deflect the “revolutionary war” faction led by Nikolai Bukharin. Even as German forces swept through Livonia and Estonia following the Soviet delegation's walkout, Lenin faced considerable opposition before his pragmatic assessment of the situation ultimately prevailed. This ground has been covered by earlier scholarship. And, as much attention as Chernev pays to Bulgaria's role at the conference, the Ottoman Empire receives relatively short shrift, other than as a principal foil to the Bulgarian “dream of Byzantium.”
Moreover, Chernev's discussion of the significance of the first peace treaty of the Great War between the Quadruple Alliance and the Ukrainian People's Republic on February 10, 1918, is only partially convincing. One can easily accept that this agreement played “an important role in the origins and early stages of modern Ukrainian statehood” (120). But to suggest that the treaty initiated “the dual process of Imperial collapse and nation-state formation in East-Central Europe” (120) ignores, for starters, the impact of the Russian Empire's 1915 loss of much of Poland to Central Power occupation, as well as the devastating consequences of the first year of the war in Galicia. Second, reconfigured empires (the Soviet Union) and mini-empires (Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Romania), more so than “nation states,” emerged out of “Imperial collapse” in East-Central Europe. Empire was far from dead in this “post-Imperial space.”
Finally, Chernev's references to a Brest-Litovsk “system,” for which the Ukrainian treaty supposedly served as a “legal basis” somehow unaffected by the change of regime in Kiev and joint Central Power occupation of “Ukrainian territory,” seem far-fetched. With so much instability, so much violence, and so many moving parts over a period of less than nine months, it is hard to take seriously the contention that Central Power evacuation of Ukraine in late October and early November 1918 “precipitated the dissolution of the Brest-Litovsk system” (151) when one cannot detect any “system” at all. These criticisms aside, Chernev's study contributes in important ways to a rethinking of “the end of the war” on the Eastern Front and of how Brest-Litovsk prepared the ground for future conflict. Above all, it demonstrates that Brest-Litovsk was anything but a German dictated peace imposed by the OHL on a prostrate Bolshevik Russia, in which Imperial Germany's civilian government and wartime allies had negligible roles.
