The Russians reached Brest on March 1 and two days later, without further discussion, signed the German treaty.
The terms were exceedingly onerous. They give an idea of the kind of peace treaty that awaited the Allies had they lost the war, and demonstrate how baseless were German complaints about the Versailles
Russia was required to make major territorial concessions which cost her most of the conquests made since the middle of the seventeenth century: in the west, northwest, and southwest her borders now shrank to those of the Muscovite state. She had to give up Poland and Finland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, as well as Transcaucasia, all of which either became sovereign states under a German protectorate or were incorporated into Germany. Moscow also had to recognize the Ukraine as an independent republic* These provisions called for the surrender of 750,000 square kilometers, an area nearly twice that of the German Empire: by virtue of Brest, Germany tripled in size.77
The ceded territories, which Russia had conquered from Sweden and Poland, contained her richest and most populous lands. Here lived 26 percent of her inhabitants, including more than one-third of the urban population. By contemporary estimates,78 these areas accounted for 37 percent of Russia’s agricultural harvest. Here were located 28 percent of her industrial enterprises, 26 percent of her railway tracks, and three-quarters of her coal and iron deposits.
But even more galling to most Russians were the economic clauses spelled out in the appendices which granted Germans exceptional status in Soviet Russia.79 Many Russians believed that the Germans intended to avail themselves of these rights not only to gain economic benefits but to strangle Russian socialism. In theory, these rights were reciprocal, but Russia was in no position to claim her share.
Citizens and corporations of the Central Powers received de facto exemption from the nationalization decrees which the Bolshevik authorities had passed since coming to power, being allowed to hold in Soviet Russia movable and immovable property as well as to pursue on her territory commercial, industrial, and professional activities. They could repatriate assets from Soviet Russia without paying punitive taxes. The ruling was retroactive: the real estate and the rights to exploit land and mines requisitioned from citizens of the signatory powers during the war were to be restored to their owners; if nationalized, the owners were to be adequately compensated. The same rule applied to the holders of securities of the nationalized enterprises. Provisions were made for the free transit of commercial goods from one country to the other, each of which also granted the other most favored nation status. Setting aside the January 1918 decree which repudiated Russian public and private debts, the Soviet Government acknowledged the obligation to honor such debts in regard to the Central Powers and to resume payments of interest on them, the terms to be determined by separate accords.
These provisions gave the Central Powers—in effect, Germany—unprecedented extraterritorial privileges in Soviet Russia, exempting them from her economic regime and allowing them to engage in private enterprise in what was increasingly becoming a socialized economy. The Germans, in effect, became co-proprietors of Russia; they were in a position to take over the private sector, while the Russian Government was left to manage the nationalized sector. Under the terms of the treaty it was possible for owners of Russian industrial enterprises, banks, and securities to sell their holdings to Germans, in this manner removing them from Communist control. As we shall see, to foreclose this possibility, in June 1918 the Bolsheviks nationalized all large Soviet industries.
Elsewhere in the treaty the Russians committed themselves to demobilize their army and navy—in other words, to remain defenseless; to desist from agitation and propaganda against the governments, public institutions, and armed forces of the other signatories; and to respect the sovereignty of Afghanistan and Persia.
When the Soviet Government made the terms of the Brest Treaty known to its citizens—and it did that with some delay, so fearful was it of the public reaction—there was outrage from the entire political spectrum, from the extreme left to the extreme right. According to John Wheeler-Bennett, Lenin became the most vilified man in Europe.80 Count Mirbach, the first German Ambassador to Soviet Russia, cabled the Foreign Office in May that the Russians to a man rejected the treaty, finding it even more repugnant than the Bolshevik dictatorship:
