Finally, on the morning of February 23, the German response to the Bolshevik capitulation arrived by courier: It took the form of an ultimatum whose terms were far more onerous than before Trotsky’s posturing of neither war, nor peace. That same afternoon the Central Committee grimly assembled. Sverdlov detailed the German conditions: Soviet Russia would also have to recognize the independence—under German occupation—of the breadbasket of Ukraine, as well as the oil of the Caspian Sea and the strategic Baltic ports of Finland and Estonia, all to be dominated by Germany. Further, the Bolsheviks
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