The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk takes Russia out of the war
Lenin buys peace at the price of a quarter of the empire's population and a third of its farmland.
Quick facts
- Signed
- 3 March 1918
- Territory lost
- About 290,000 square miles
- Population lost
- About 34% of the former empire
What happened
After an armistice in December 1917, negotiations between Soviet Russia and the Central Powers dragged on for months at the town of Brest-Litovsk, with Germany threatening renewed advances to force Bolshevik concessions. Lenin signed the treaty on 3 March 1918. Russia gave up Ukraine, Finland, the Baltic provinces of Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia, Belarus, and eastern Poland to Germany, while the Caucasus region went to the Ottoman Empire, a combined loss of some 290,000 square miles and roughly 34 percent of the former empire's population along with 32 percent of its farmland. The decision split the Bolshevik leadership itself; the Left Communists denounced it as a betrayal and walked out of the ruling Soviet council, leaving Russia with a one-party government by default.
Why it matters
Lenin argued the harsh terms were worth paying to buy time for the revolution to survive and, he hoped, to spread to Germany itself, a hope that never came true. Losing this treaty's terms freed roughly a million German troops for one last push on the Western Front, while inside Russia the peace outraged the Allied powers enough that they began backing anti-Bolshevik forces in the civil war that was just beginning.
How we know
World History Encyclopedia's dedicated article on the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk gives the territorial losses in detail and documents the split it caused within the Bolshevik party.
Sources
- World History Encyclopedia. Treaty of Brest-Litovsk · Reputable sourceworldhistory.org · The domain "worldhistory.org" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
- World History Encyclopedia. Treaty of Brest-Litovsk · Reputable sourceworldhistory.org · The domain "worldhistory.org" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
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Related timelines
- World War I → · See how Brest-Litovsk let Germany move troops west for the 1918 Spring Offensive.