The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (March 3, 1918)

The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, signed between Soviet Russia and the Central Powers, marked Russian defeat and the end of her participation in World War I.

The Bolshevik government had come to power in Russia after the October Revolution, but was in a desperate situation a few months later. The revolutionary government, as a first step in foreign affairs, released a decree about peace during the second All-Russian Congress of the Soviets on October 26, 1917. The decree, authored by Vladimir Lenin, proposed all belligerent countries to start negotiations to create a “fair democratic world.”



The Entente (Great Britain, France, United States, and Italy) rejected the decree and Soviet Russia went forward to sign a separate peace with the Central Powers. The negotiations started in Brest-Litosvk on December 9, with the participation of Russia, Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and the Ottoman Empire. The Soviet delegation, headed by Adolph Joffe, brought as conditions the evacuation of troops from occupied territories, freedom to nations enslaved during the war, relinquishing to all war compensations and penalties, et cetera.

The German delegation countered with its own plan, which included the annexation of the Baltic region to Germany and the division of Poland. Germany, besides, wanted to keep the Russian occupied regions in order to exploit their resources.

The Allies did not agree to negotiate peace, and Soviet Russia started separate negotiations with Germany on December 27. One month later, the Central Powers came to an agreement with the Central Rada (the all-Ukrainian revolutionary parliament) to obtain food from Ukraine in exchange for military aid. On the same night, Germany submitted an ultimatum to Russia to comply with German conditions, which entailed to take the German border to Narva, Pskov, and Dvinya. The next day, Lev Trotsky, who had taken over the Soviet delegation, answered that Russia would not sign the agreement, ceased the hostilities, and evacuated its troops. The Central Powers went on the offensive on February 18 in the entire Eastern front. The Russian armies could not resist and consented to an agreement on February 19. However, the Germans continued their offense and only stopped on February 22, dictating even harsher conditions.

The Central Committee of the Communist Party agreed to the signature of a peace treaty. The Treaty of Brest-Litosvk was signed on March 3, 1918. The harsh conditions of the treaty were humiliating. Russia lost the Baltic lands and part of Belorussia; Ukraine and Finland were declared autonomous republics, with the subsequent evacuation of the Red Army. More importantly, it also ceded to the Ottoman Empire the regions of Kars and Ardahan, which were Armenian territories, and Batum (Georgian territory) in the Caucasus. It is important to remember that, after the October Revolution and the retreat of the Russian troops, Turkey had gone on the offense and reoccupied the territories of Western Armenia lost to Russia in 1916, later invading the Caucasus. Interestingly, Russia no longer had effective presence in the region, and maintained a purely nominal attachment after the revolution.

The end of the hostilities allowed Germany to concentrate its forces on the southern front and start an offense from March 21 to June 17, 1918, but this was unsuccessful, as the Allied forces countered with a tactic of continuous attacks that finally ended in German defeat.

It is important to note that the Bolsheviks were not the legal and recognized authority of Russia in 1918, and therefore had no legal right to sign a treaty on behalf of the country. However, this signature allowed the Bolshevik government to keep the power and dismiss their opponents, particularly the Socialist Revolutionaries. In the end, this would also become a motive for the beginning of the bloody civil war in Russia that would last four years.

A supplementary agreement signed in Berlin on August 27 established the payment of six billion German marks by Russia to Germany as war compensation. However, the Treaty of Brest Litovsk was declared null and void by Russia on September 20 and after the end of the war, by Turkey on October 30, and by Germany on November 13.

September 20, 1918: Execution of the 26 Baku Commissars

In the history and the mythology of the October Revolution and the Soviet civil war, the 26 Baku Commissars have played a role similar to the 300 Spartans in the history of ancient Greece. Their death would be immortalized in Soviet times through movies, books, artwork, stamps, and public works, and even cities and towns would be named after some of them.

After the Bolshevik revolution of October/November 1917, a Soviet (council) of workers, villagers, and soldiers was created in Baku. This council came to power from April 13 to July 25, 1918 and created an executive organ, the Council of Popular Commissars, formed by an alliance of Bolsheviks and leftist Socialist Revolutionaries, and presided by a famous Bolshevik revolutionary, the Armenian Stepan Shahumian. It was known as the Commune of Baku.

The Commune faced various problems, from the shortage of food and supplies to the threat posed by the invading Turks. The Red Army units hurriedly organized by the Commune were defeated by the Islamic Army of the Caucasus, an Ottoman army unit organized by order of Minister of War Enver Pasha on the basis of the local Tatar (Azerbaijani) population, and retreated to Baku in July 1918.

The military defeat provoked the rise of a coalition of rightist Socialist Revolutionaries, Social Democrats, and Armenian Revolutionary Federation members, which asked help from British forces stationed in Persia to counterbalance the Ottoman advance. The Commune transferred power to the new provisional government formed by the coalition, called the Centro-Caspian Dictatorship, and left Baku for Astrakhan, which was under Bolshevik control. However, the new authorities arrested the members of the Commune under charges of embezzlement and treason.

However, a new attack of the Ottoman forces over Baku prevented the trial of the military tribunal, and, according to Soviet historiography, on 14 September 1918, during the fall of Baku to the Turks, Red Army soldiers broke into their prison and freed the 26 prisoners; they then boarded a ship to Astrakhan, which changed its destination to Krasnovodsk, on the other side of the Caspian Sea. They were promptly arrested by local authorities of the Transcaspian provisional government, also anti-Soviet, on September 17, and three days later executed by a firing squad between the stations of Pereval and Akhcha-Kuyma on the Transcaspian Railway, apparently under British pressure.

Isaak Brodsky's The Execution of the Twenty Six Baku Commissars (1925) depicting the Soviet view of the execution.

Although they have been named as “commissars,” not all of them were officials and not all of them were Bolsheviks. Among the executed men, there were Russians, Jews, Armenians, Georgians, Azerbaijanis, Greeks, and Latvians.

Along with Shahumian, there were five other Armenians: Baghdasar Avagian, military commander of Baku; Aram Kostandian, deputy commissar for Agriculture; Suren Osipian, chief editor of the newspaper Izvestia of the Baku Commune; Arsen Amirian, chief editor of the newspaper Bakinski rabochi; and Tadeos Amirian, commander of a cavalry unit. Arsen and Tadeos Amirian were brothers, and this explains why the latter, a member of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation, had fought on the side of the Commune.

After the establishment of the Soviet regime, the authorities of Azerbaijan exhumed the bodies of the 26 victims and reburied them in Baku, at the square named after them, where a pantheon was built in 1968. The anti-Armenian hysteria in Azerbaijan has reached the point that, in January 2009 the pantheon was demolished, since the activity of the Baku Commune is considered an “Armenian conspiracy,” and the remnants were reburied at the Hovsan cemetery, reportedly “with the participation of Muslim, Christian, and Jewish clergy, and the corresponding rituals” (ironically, most of the commissars were atheists). Monuments and streets devoted to the commissars, whether Armenian, Russian, Georgian, or Azerbaijani, have also been demolished or renamed.

Meanwhile, the cities of Stepanakert (in Gharabagh) and Stepanavan (in Lori) continue to carry the name of Stepan Shahumian, whose statue in the proximities of Republic Square, in Yerevan, has been maintained. Amirian Street, an important street originating from the same square, has also kept its name.