*In fulfillment of the peace terms, in mid-April Moscow proposed to the Ukrainian Government the opening of negotiations leading to mutual recognition. For various reasons having to do with internal Ukrainian politics, these negotiations got underway only on May 23. On June 14, 1918, the governments of Soviet Russia and the Ukrainian Republic signed a provisional peace treaty, which was to be followed by final peace negotiations, but these never took place:
14
The Revolution Internationalized
To obtain an armistice now means to
Although in time the Russian Revolution would exert an even greater influence on world history than the French, initially it attracted much less attention. This can be explained by two factors: the greater prominence of France and the different timing of the two events.
In the late eighteenth century, France was politically and culturally the leading power in Europe: the Bourbons were the premier dynasty on the Continent, the embodiment of royal absolutism, and French was the language of cultured society. At first, the great powers were delighted with the way the Revolution destabilized France, but they soon came to realize that it posed a threat also to their own stability. The arrest of the King, the September 1792 massacres, and the appeals of the Girondins to foreign nations to overthrow their tyrants left no doubt that the Revolution was more than a mere change of government. There followed a cycle of wars which lasted for nearly a quarter of a century, ending in a Bourbon restoration. The concern of European monarchs for the fate of the imprisoned French king is understandable given that their authority rested on the principle of legitimacy and that once this principle was abandoned in favor of popular sovereignty none of them could feel safe. True, the American colonies had proclaimed democracy earlier, but the United States was an overseas territory, not the leading continental power.
Since Russia lay on its periphery, half in Asia, and was overwhelmingly agrarian, Europe never considered her internal developments relevant to its own concerns. The turmoil of 1917 was generally interpreted to mark Russia’s belated entry into the modern age rather than a threat to the established order.
This indifference was enhanced by the fact that the Russian Revolution, having occurred in the midst of the greatest, most destructive war in history, struck contemporaries as an episode in that war rather than as an event in its own right. Such excitement as the Russian Revolution generated in the West had to do almost exclusively with its potential effect on military operations. The Allies and the Central Powers both welcomed the February Revolution, although for different reasons: the former hoped that the removal of an unpopular tsar would make it possible to reinvigorate Russia’s war effort, while the latter hoped it would take Russia out of the war. The October coup was, of course, jubilantly welcomed in Germany. Among the Allies it had a mixed reception, but it certainly caused no alarm. Lenin and his party were unknown quantities whose Utopian plans and declarations no one took seriously. The tendency, especially after Brest-Litovsk, was to view Bolshevism as a creation of Germany which would vanish from the scene with the termination of hostilities. All European cabinets without exception vastly underestimated both the viability of the Bolshevik regime and the threat it posed to the European order.
For these reasons, neither in the closing year of World War I nor following the Armistice, were attempts made to rid Russia of the Bolsheviks. Until November 1918 the great powers were too busy fighting each other to worry about developments in remote Russia. Here and there, voices were raised that Bolshevism represented a mortal threat to Western civilization: these were especially loud in the German army, which had the most direct experience with Bolshevik propaganda and agitation. But even the Germans in the end subordinated concern with the possible long-term threat to considerations of immediate interest. Lenin was absolutely convinced that after making peace the belligerents would join forces and launch an international crusade against his regime. His fears proved groundless. Only the British intervened actively on the side of the anti-Bolshevik forces, and they did so in a halfhearted manner, largely at the initiative of one man, Winston Churchill. The effort was never seriously pursued, because the forces of accommodation in the West were stronger than those calling for intervention, and by the early 1920s the European powers made their peace with Communist Russia.
