TREATY OF BREST-LITOVSK

TREATIES 419

TREATY AT A GLANCE

CompletedMarch 3, 1918, at Brest-Litovsk, Russia (present-day Brest, Belarus)

SignatoriesGermany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and Turkey and

the Russian Federal Soviet Republic

OverviewThe Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, concluded between the Central Pow-ers and the new Soviet government of Russia, ended Russian par-ticipation in World War I, with the Soviets agreeing to hugeterritorial losses. The treaty freed Germany from its two-front war,allowing the transfer of troops to the Western Front and a prolon-gation of the. conflict, while presenting the Allies with the difficultquestion of how to handle Soviet Russia in peacetime, a questionthat was the haunt most of the 20th century.

Historical BackgroundWorld War I had begun in August 1914 with a spectac-ular German push to the west, toward Paris. When theGerman armies failed to reach the French capital, how-ever, the war settled into a long, grinding stasis, astrench-bound forces killed one another without achiev-ing any major strategic objectives. With the approach of1917, all of the belligerents were nearing exhaustion.

England, France, Germany, Austria-Hungary, andTurkey, however, would survive their 1917 crises;Romanov Russia would not. From the beginning, thewar had gone very badly for Russia. Its army was enor-mous: Russia had mobilized roughly 10 percent of itspopulation, putting in excess of 15 million citizensunder arms. But they were poorly equipped and evenmore poorly led. By 1917 the Russian army had been"turned over" three times, its losses estimated at nearly8 million men, half those mobilized. Morale was so badthat officers refused to lead their troops into battle forfear of being shot in the back. Desertions assumedoverwhelming proportions, and whole regiments-often on orders from their officers-surrendered enmasse to the Germans.

The man in charge of the disaster, Nicholas II,announced he was leaving his government in thehands of his wife, the emotionally distraught EmpressAlexandra, to go to the front and direct the fightinghimself. Alexandra turned the reins of power over to

the "debauched monk" Rasputin, who wrecked whatlittle chance the czarist regime had of surviving, muchless winning, the war, before he was assassinated byGrand Duke Dmitry, Nicholas's nephew, and PrinceYusupov, the husband of the czar's niece. Meanwhile,industrial mobilization had thrown the economy com-pletely out of whack; farmers could not export theirproduce and refused to sell food on the open market;the ruble was nearly worthless, and there was preciouslittle room for barter; the railway system had collapsed,and what few supplies existed could get through nei-ther to the front nor to the towns; and Russia's indus-trial cities, including Petrograd (the Russian name theczar decreed in 1914 to replace the Germanic "St.Petersburg"), were threatened by famine.

It was no accident, as the marxists would say, that1917 became the year the great Russian Empire heavedone final huge sigh-and vanished. But during the so-called February Revolution, when workers pouredspontaneously onto the boulevards from every factoryin Petro grad and Moscow, no one seemed to under-stand what was going on-not the czar at the front, notthe liberal and aristocratic Cadets who had been agi-tating for reform, not the revolutionary leaders exiledin Siberia. Only Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov-a.k.a."Lenin," the acerbic leader of a splinter from the marx-ist revolutionary Union of Russian Socialist DemocratsAbroad, called the Bolshevik Party, who was coolinghis heels in Switzerland-seemed to notice that power

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lay in the frozen streets of Petrograd that winter, justwaiting for somebody to pick it up. And he said so,doing everything in his power to book passage for Pet-rograd's Finland Station.

On February 22, 1917, there were mass demonstra-tions in Petrograd. Two days later, the leaderless work-ers of the city went out on general strike, fightingbloody battles in the street with the czar's police. ByFebruary 27 the army had gone over to the proletariat,and the powerful Petrograd Soviet of Workers' and Sol-diers' Deputies was formed. A day later Moscow createdits own soviet. Even icholas II realized the matter washopeless. He abdicated-officially-on March 3.

The Russian parliament, or Duma, formed a provi-sional government. Prince Gyorgy Lvov was appointedprime minister, but the two leading figures in the gov-ernment were Aleksandr Kerensky and PavelMilyukov. As political liberals they valued Russia's tiesto Britain and France, and-Russia having been prom-ised Constantinople by the Allies as an enticement tocontinue fighting-they looked forward to capturingthe Turkish capital as a means of legitimizing theirregime. Kerensky reassured the entente powers in mid-March that his government would fight "unswervinglyand indefatigably" till victory was achieved. The wordsbitterly disappointed German foreign service officers,who had long dabbled in various revolutionaryintrigues, hoping to shatter Russia from within andthus force it out of the conflict. Now, so it appeared,the czar's regime had indeed been shattered, but Russiaremained a belligerent.

Germany did not give up. Since 1914 the foreignoffice had both collaborated with nationalist agitatorsamong Russia's Baltic, Finnish, Georgian, Polish, andUkrainian peoples and supported the conspiracies ofRussian social revolutionaries. One of these was Lenin.Living in Krakow when the war erupted, he was imme-diately arrested. Then an Austrian Social Democratnamed Victor Adler persuaded Austria's minister of theinterior that Lenin, as leader of the most militant of theRussian marxists, could be an asset in the fight againstthe Romanov Empire. The minister saw to Lenin'srelease and deportation to Switzerland, where he con-tinued his insurrectionary correspondence with theBolshevik underground back home. Meanwhile, inConstantinople another Russian emigre socialist,Alexander Helphand, had caught the eye of Germany'sambassador to Turkey. Impressed with Helphand's revo-lutionary credentials and connections, the ambassadorhad him shipped off to Berlin to brief the foreign office.

In March 1915 the foreign office set aside 2 millionmarks to spend on subversion in Russia. By 1917 theamount had swelled to 41 million marks, much of itgoing to Helphand's seditious organization, whichsowed revolutionary and pacifist ideas among Russian

soldiers, workers, and peasants. Then came the fall ofthe czar's government and Kerenskys declaration ofsupport for the Allied war effort, and the German for-eign office figured it needed more radical help thanHelphand could offer. Germany decided to facilitateLenin's return to Russia. On April 9, 1917, the Ger-mans placed Lenin and his comrades, Leon Trotskyamong them, on a sealed train in Zurich and clearedthe tracks for a night run across Germany. A boatwaited in Sweden to whisk the group to the FinlandStation at Petrograd.

Once landed, Lenin lost no time. He began push-ing the Bolsheviks steadily toward a takeover from hisvery first speech, which called for all power to the sovi-ets and for social revolution. The Germans loathedLenin's ultimate goal-he wanted to transform theEuropean war of nations into an international classwar-but they loved his current program for a revolu-tionary Russia: an immediate armistice, an end tosecret diplomacy, and the negotiation of a peace involv-ing, so his slogan said, "no annexations, no indemni-ties." Such brilliant sloganeering-"Peace, Bread andLand" was another Bolshevik cry-caught the imagi-nation of the masses, of the common soldiers, urbanworkers, and poor peasants to whom the Bolshevikspitched their message. Scarcely a month after Lenin'sarrival, Prince Lvov was forced to accept as officialRussian foreign policy the revolutionary no-annexa-tion-no-indemnities formula. On May 15 Milyukov, indisgust, resigned as foreign minister; in short order,Prince Lvovs government collapsed.

The Petrograd soviet called for the abolition of theofficer corps, and the new provisional government abol-ished courts-martial and issued a Declaration of Sol-dier's Rights. Nevertheless, this government too failed.Indeed, throughout the spring and summer and on intoautumn, no fewer than four more governments-allwith Kerensky's backing-would form and fall, at therate of nearly one a month. The hungry and toilingmasses moved further and further left, further left thanLenin, who warned them against anarchy. Theydemanded food and freedom from want, a living wage,and an eight-hour workday, but' most often and mostloudly they called for an end to the senseless slaughterof World War 1. And because it was the one demandKerensky would not accept, everything seemed up forgrabs that summer. As Bolshevik propaganda penetrateddeep into the ranks of the ordinary soldiers, the Russianhigh command came to consider its own army a huge,weary, shabby, and ill-fed mob of angry men.

Suddenly Russian politics swung to the right afterthe Bolsheviks failed to take charge of the country dur-ing violent antigovernment demonstrations on July 3and 4. In reaction, a coalition government was formedthat banned the party, sent Lenin into hiding under

threat of arrest, threw Trotsky in jail, and appointedright-wing general Lavr Kornilov commander-in-chiefof the Russian army. Kornilov had been urging a num-ber of reforms to restore the army to fighting trim.Kerensky was sympathetic, but the old general wassurrounded by conspirators who wanted to make himmilitary dictator. Reactionary skulduggery abounded,and Kerensky, aware of the danger of a coup, outlawedtroop movements in the capital. When Kornilovattempted to lead an army into town to institute hisreforms, the troops simply walked off the job behindhis ramrod-straight back. Kerensky had Kornilovarrested, and the counter-revolution, if that's what itwas, fizzled. In any case, yet another government hadcollapsed, and the Duma seemed bereft of both willand authority. On September 24 Kerensky formed onelast coalition. Figuring he could beat the Bolsheviks atthe ballot box, he hoped to hold out until the electionsfor a Constituent Assembly scheduled in December.

Exactly a month later, Lenin took control of Russiain a bloodless coup d'etat. The Bolsheviks themselvesdoubted they would last long. On October 25 promi-nent party member Zinoviev, admittedly a notoriouspessimist, gave the new regime two weeks because ofthe Bolsheviks' incompetence and the strength of theirenemies. On October 28 Lenin declared a state of siegein Petrograd. Antirevolutionary Cor, at least, anti-Bel-shevik) "Whites" had taken the Kremlin, and civil warwas under way. Come November, nothing much wassettled: power and peace yet lay in the balance, the Bol-shevik Party was deeply divided, civil servants engagedin systematic sabotage, bankers kept their doors lockedto the new government, municipal services ground toa halt, and the White Army was on its way from thecountryside.

Clearly, Lenin needed to be free of the Europeanwar in order to consolidate Bolshevik power. OnDecember 15 the regime signed an armistice with theCentral Powers. That same month, Lenin created theAll-Russian Extraordinary Commission for the Strug-gle against Sabotage and Counterrevolution. Arrestsbegan immediately, even as Trotsky headed off to thepeace conference convening on December 22 at Brest-Litovsk. But it took several months for the terror to getinto full swing and for the commission's acronym,CHEKA, to send chills down the spine of anyone witha bank account, not coincidentally about the sameamount of time it took Trotsky to give away half ofEuropean Russia to the Germans.

TermsImmediately, the German imperialists and the Russiantotalitarians-in-the-making began to bicker about the

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definition of "national self-determination," an under-standably touchy point since Lenin, Trotsky, and KarlRadek had in the first days of Bolshevik power organ-ized the apparatus to spread revolution abroad.Although the expected uprisings had nowhereoccurred when Trotsky sat down across the table fromthe Germans, Lenin continued to fear that the Bolshe-vik Revolution would not survive without them, andTrotsky believed in the necessity of international revo-lution until his dying day. Recognizing how far apartthe two sides were, Trotsky promptly asked for anadjournment in hopes that the tide of revolution mightyet sweep throughout central Europe. A mutiny didflare up in the Austrian fleet, and a general strikeerupted in Berlin, but both outbreaks were quicklysuppressed, and the Russians returned to the talks onJanuary 7, 1918.

As Trotsky saw it, the Bolsheviks faced threechoices, all bad. They could continue to defy the Ger-mans, risking the almost certain conquest of Russianlands and the overthrow of their government; theycould relent and cede to the Germans virtually all ofRussia's western territories; or they could pursue whatTrotsky called "neither war nor peace" while awaitingthe revolution in Germany. The Germans suspectedTrotsky of using the peace talks themselves to do justthat, although he was more likely dragging out the pro-ceeding to avoid any question that he was working incollusion with the German military. Such caution waswise, given the means by which he and Lenin hadarrived back in Russian from their foreign exile. TheBolsheviks were always a suspicious lot, shrewd andruthless, none more so than the head of the CHEKA,Feliks Dzerzhinsky, perhaps at the time the most ruth-less of them all. It was folly to give such a man, search-ing for subversives and seeing sedition everywhere, theslightest cause for doubt.

Meanwhile, as Trotsky bode his time, the Germansand Austrians concluded the Brotfrieden, or "breadpeace," with representatives of the Ukraine, a hotbedof White Army activity. When the Red Army fought itsway into the region, the German high command, wearyin any case of Trotsky's long-winded rhetoric, broke offthe conference and resumed hostilities against Russiaon February 18, 1918. The French ambassador imme-diately offered the Bolsheviks all the aid they could useif they would fight the Germans.

But Lenin-his country's economy in tatters, hisparty menaced by factionalism, his people engaged incivil war-ordered an immediate capitulation. TheGermans now pressed even harsher terms on the Bol-sheviks, but Lenin's government yielded to the newdemands et alia. On March 3 the Bolsheviks signed.The Romanians, always under Russian domination,made peace on the 5th. The newly independent Fin-

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land signed a separate treaty with Germany on the7th.

By the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, Russia deliveredPoland, Lithuania, the Baltic Provinces, Finland, andthe Ukraine to Germany, either to occupation or intothe hands of puppet governments. The Bolshevikssigned away 34 percent of Russia's population, 32 per-cent of Russia's farmland, 54 percent of Russia's indus-trial plant, 89 percent of Russia's coal mines, andvirtually all of Russia's cotton and oil. Article 1 of thetreaty established the cessation of the "state of war,"and Article 2, without naming names, quickly soughtto neutralize the spread of revolution:

ARTICLE IIThe contracting parties will refrain from any agitationor propaganda against the Government or the publicand military institutions of the other party. In so far asthis obligation devolves upon Russia, it holds goodalso for the territories occupied by the Powers of theQuadruple Alliance.

Article 3 summarily proclaimed the redrawn mapof eastern Europe:

ARTICLE IIIThe territories lying to the west of the line agreedupon by the contracting parties which formerlybelonged to Russia, will no longer be subject to Russ-ian sovereignty; the line agreed upon is traced on themap submitted as an essential part of this treaty ofpeace (Annex 1). The exact fixation of the line will beestablished by a Russo-German commission.

o obligations whatever toward Russia shalldevolve upon the territories referred to, arising fromthe fact that they formerly belonged to Russia.

Russia refrains from all interference in the internalrelations of these territories. Germany and Austria-Hungary propose to determine the future status ofthese territories in agreement with their population.

Appendix 1 to the treaty spelled out the new geog-raphy in detail:

APPENDIX I, PROVIDED FOR IN ARTICLE III OFTHE TREATY OF PEACE BETWEEN RUSSIA AND

THE CENTRAL POWERS, OF 3 MARCH, 1918

The line prescribed in Article III of the peace treatywith Russia, which in the west runs along Russian sov-ereignty, passes through the islands of Dago andWorms, between Mohn and the mainland, between theislands Runo and Kuno, and in segmental curve passingthrough the bay of Riga, reaches the mainland slightlyto the northwest, [northeast] of the mouth of theLivonian Aa, then in continuation of the curve itpasses around Riga and to the east of Uxkull (OgerGalle), crosses the Duna (Dvina). Then it follows thecourse of the Duna to the east of Dwinsk (Dunaberg)to the place where ended the former Courland fron-tier, almost to Druja, and from this place it extends in

a straight line southwest crossing Strusty Lake to thesouthern part of Lake Driswjary, leaving the localityDriswjaty itself to the east of the line.

From here the line bends in a south-southwestdirection close to Mjelengjany on the German side. Thelocalities Widsy and Tweretsch remain east of the line.It crosses the railway line from Swenziany to Lyntupyupon midway. The line then passes along a stream bythe localities Michalischki and Gerwjany, both ofwhich are left to the west of the line, along the riversOschmjanka and Loscha. The line itself in manifoldwindings reaches the railway from Wilna to Smorgon,which it crosses somewhat west of Slobodka. Here theline bends, running straight to Klewisa on the Germanside, by Oschmjany and Dsewenischki on the east, andGeranony on the west, along the rivers Opita andGawja to the Niemen.

The line now follows the downward course of theNiemen to a point above Mosty, and here it bendsdirectly to the south into the river course of the Sel-wianka, which it follows to Roshany, which remains tothe east of the line. From here it passes in a southwestdirection (along the Temra) to the Ukrainian borderwhere Prushany is reached. From here it passes betweenBorowiri and Szolzhentiza, between Koski and Dobr-uschin, and west of the road from Prushany to Vidom,passes in straight line the bends of the river Liesna, leav-ing Vidoml on the Russian side. The line ends on the riverLiesna north of Brest-Litovsk, Szmolienitza and Bobr-uschin remain to the east of the line, Riga, Jacobstadt,Dwinsk, Sven~any, Vilna, Lida, Wolkowysk, and Kon-stantinow on the German side

An absolutely exact determination of the line willbe established through a Russo-German Commission.

Mutual evacuation of one another's territories wasestablished in Article 4, and Article 5 mandated imme-diate Russian demobilization:

ARTICLE VRussia will, without delay, carry out the full demobi-lization of her army inclusive of those units recentlyorganized by the present Government.

Furthermore, Russia will either bring her warshipsinto Russian ports and there detain them until the dayof the conclusion of a general peace, or disarm themforthwith. Warships of the States which continue inthe state of war with the Powers of the QuadrupleAlliance, in so far as they are within Russian sover-eignty, will be treated as Russian warships.

The barred zone in the Arctic Ocean continues assuch until the conclusion of a general peace. In theBaltic Sea, and, as far as Russian power extends withinthe Black Sea, removal of the mines will be proceededwith at once. Merchant navigation within these mar-itime regions is free and will be resumed at once.Mixed commissions will be organized to formulate themore detailed regulations, especially to inform mer-chant ships with regard to restricted lanes. The navi-gation lanes are always to be kept free from floatingmines.

Brest-Litovsk also obligated Russia to concludepeace with the Ukrainian People's Republic (withwhich Austria and Germany had concluded a treaty inFebruary), and by Article 9, all signatories renounced"compensation for their war expenses." A complexseries of appendixes and subappendixes defined virtu-ally all aspects of relations between Germany and Rus-sia, ranging from commerce to "quarantine regulationsagainst epidemic diseases" (a pressing concern in1918, when the great influenza pandemic was justbeginning to sweep Europe). The two nations had lit-tle time in which to exercise their new relations, how-ever, before the armistice that ended World War Ispecifically nullified the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk.

ConsequencesWith Russia out of the war, the Central Powers were nolonger fighting on two fronts, and Germany was free toconcentrate all of its forces in the west. Both the eco-nomic gains in the east realized by the treaty and thenew maneuverability it afforded cheered the Germansto believe they might achieve victory before the Amer-icans arrived on the Continent in force. But in theevent, the Germans did not take full advantage ofBrest-Litovsk. They left roughly a million men, some60 divisions, in the east in order to intimidate theUkrainians into relinquishing foodstuffs, to pursue theGerman political agenda in the Baltic, and to makesure the Bolsheviks complied with the agreement.

Still, Brest-Litovsk almost certainly would havechanged the outcome of the war, had the United Statesnot become an "associated" power of the Allies andspent so freely of its money, material, and men. Even asit was, the treaty enabled Germany to unleash a massiveoffensive during 1918, which put American forces inthe thick of some of the most savage fighting of the war.

If the Germans did not trust the Bolsheviks, nei-ther did Russia's former allies. Not a few on the left inLondon, Paris, and Washington sympathized with theBolshevik cause or believed Lenin would bring someefficiency to his troubled country, at least compared tothe czar. There was talk among the French and theEnglish of supporting various of the factions formingwithin the party. Then the German advance into Rus-sia in February (after it had called off the conferencewith Trotsky in midsentence) caused the Allied diplo-matic missions to panic and flee Petrograd for remoteVologada.

There they waited to see which direction Leninand Trotsky would take, and Brest-Litovsk gave themtheir answer. News of Brest-Litovsk was received as anunparalleled disaster by the beleaguered Allies, whofelt they now had to consider intervention in Russia. Ifthey could hook up with the White nationalists, they

TREATIES 423

reasoned, they might be able to reopen the easternfront and thus save their own disgruntled troops thefull wrath of the German army in the west. Then therewas all the Allied materiel stacked up in Russianports-nearly 20 tons of supplies in Archangel alone-just waiting for seizure by the Germans or the Bolshe-viks. The Allied plans were to take those supplies anddistribute them to any Russians they could find stillwilling to fight Germans.

In short, when Bolshevik Russia signed a separatepeace with Germany at Brest-Litovsk, the Allies senttroops to invade Russia from the east in support of theWhites. In March, "themonth the treaty was signed, anAnglo-French expedition docked at Murmansk. InApril the Japanese, seeking an imperial foothold on theAsian mainland, used the treaty as an excuse to seizeand occupy Vladivostok. In June an American cruiserand 150 marines joined the English and French forcesat Murmansk. In August another Anglo-French expe-ditionary force occupied Archangel, this one also to bejoined by the Americans, five thousand of them underBritish command arriving in September.

Hitherto, Comrade Lenin had gone out of his wayto check-and even punish-Dzerzhinsky-inspiredexcesses. That did not mean there was no CHEKAbru-tality, no summary executions, but as of Brest-Litovskthe Bolshevik tribunals had yet to deliver a death sen-tence. That changed with the Allied invasions. On june18, 1918, the Bolsheviks handed down their first deathsentence. A month later to the day, the local soviet inEkaterinburg took the czar, his empress, and his heirsdown into a dingy basement and shot them dead. Thatsame month, August, the CHEKA arrested two hun-dred British and French residents of Moscow, stormedtheir consulates, and murdered the British navalattache.

.In Paris and in London, the Bolsheviks were nowconsidered thugs or bandits or German agents, but inthe Balkans their revolution had become an inspira-tion. Even moderates were won over to the cause ofindependence from the Great Powers. As men like theCzechs' Tomas Masaryk, the Slovaks' Edvard Benes,the Poles' jozef Pilsudski set up rump national govern-ments, they joined for the time being the side offeringthem the best deal, but they had their eyes on thefuture. As soon as Hapsburg authority collapsed or thewar ended, these de facto governments would be readyto assume control of successor states, which wouldgreatly increase the headaches at the Paris Peace Con-ference. When the armistice came, Germany played theother side of the Bolshevik card in order to gain betterpeace terms, raising the specter of international revo-lution-"Bolshevism"-against which it might serve asa bulwark. The Germans won only minor concessions,but the Armistice, signed on November 11, 1918, did

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renounce the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk and the TREATY OF

BUCHAREST.

Nullifying Brest-Litovsk was not the same asnegating the Bolshevik Revolution, however, nor did itsolve the problem the Bolsheviks represented for theentente Great Powers at Versailles. For them, Wilson'sviews on national determination constituted a trulyrevolutionary idea with global, if unpredictable, impli-cations. Lenin's ideas, embraced as an alternative toWilsonianism by some of the lesser participants, weresimply off the map. France's paranoia at the conferenceabout a future German threat sprang in no small meas-ure from the erasing of Romanov Russia as a player inthe European balance of power. After Brest-Litovsk,Anglo-French policy had turned vehemently anti-Bol-shevik, and now Georges Clemenceau negotiated for acordon sanitaire in eastern Europe intended to checkthe potential of both German and Bolshevik expan-sion. Lenin, still in need of nothing so much as time toconsolidate Bolshevik power, delayed his summons toEuropean Socialists to form a Third International (theComintern) in hopes of opening negotiations with theWest in Paris and relieving Allied pressure on the Russ-ian civil war. Thus, at the conference, dealing with theRussian question became at least as important as pun-ishing Germany.

Just as the peace conference participants decidedamongst themselves to make some initiative towardRussia, Lenin-disheartened by the snarled diplomacythat was clearly widening the gap between the twosides-finally issued his call on January IS, 1919, foran international meeting of communists. To the Alliesthe move made Lenin seem intent on remaining aninternational outlaw, calling for the utter destruction of

those very powers with which he claimed he wanted tonormalize relations. The Bolshevik reputation for devi-ousness was only made worse by the Comintern itself,founded on March 2, 1919. Imposing rigorous com-munist discipline and subordinating local parties to thewill of Moscow, it created a schism between Europeansocialists, with the majority rejecting Bolshevik tacticsand Lenin's dictatorship.

The peace conference's inability to frame a com-mon policy toward Lenin's regime meant that the civilwar continued and that Russia's future was a military,and not a diplomatic, matter. The civil conflict wasa grand, protean struggle stretching over five majortheaters. When the Reds defeated General FeliksKolchaks White Army in the summer of 1919, theAllies gave up the battle in north Russia and evacuatedArchangel and Murmansk-after several clashes withBolshevik forces-on September 30 and October 12,1919, respectively. In October 1920 Lenin came toterms with the Poles, fixing the Russian-Polish borderwest of Minsk (which was far east of the Curzon Lineproposed at the Paris peace talks) and freeing the RedArmy to turn south and eliminate the last pockets ofWhite resistance.

On October 25,1922, the Japanese, under pressurefrom the United States, withdrew from Vladivostok,bringing all foreign intervention in Russia to a close.For 'Russia, five years after signing its separate peacewith Germany, World War I was finally over. In thefinal count, Russia had lost Poland, Finland, the Balticstates, and Bessarabia, but the Bolsheviks had survivedto inherit the remaining, and still vast, Russian Empire.

On December 30, 1922, they created the Union ofSoviet Socialist Republics.