The Germans reacted as the Russian opposition had hoped. They demanded further humiliating concessions, including the deployment to Petrograd of a full battalion of 650 German infantry as embassy guards. This threw even Lenin into a rare bout of depression. To agree to such demands would confirm the accusations that the Bolsheviks were reducing Russia to the status of a ‘little oriental state’, where Western embassies could demand the protection of their own legation guards.27 As a concession, the Germans agreed to send the troops to Moscow unarmed and in plain clothes. Meanwhile the
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