The Deluge: The Great War, America and the Remaking of the Global Order, 1916-1931

by Adam Tooze

That such a peace would mean a large loss of territory for Russia was hardly surprising. As Lenin himself had forcefully argued, if the principle of self-determination was taken seriously it trumped any claim to preserve the territorial status quo.4 By what right could the Bolsheviks, who were violently consolidating their coup in Petrograd, claim the territories conquered by the Tsar? By Lenin’s own estimates more than half the populations of eastern Europe were oppressed nationalities.5 As draconian as the final treaty was from a Russian point of view, only a very small portion of the territory removed from Russia was directly annexed by Germany. Instead, Brest gave birth to the precursors to the Baltic states in their modern form, an independent Ukraine and a Transcaucasian Republic.