Leseprobe

q 94 Jacek Tebinka However, the quick disintegration of the Russian army meant that, in the case of resuming military operations, the Bolshevik government was doomed to fail, despite the German plans to move some forces to the Western Front to start an offensive there in order to defeat the Allies before they received American reinforcements. Regardless of the many slogans of the Bolshevik delegation, Lenin did not forget the proletariat of those countries. He understood the people’s right of self-determina- tion as the workers’ right to seize power and join the world revolution. However, the position of the Central Powers, in particular the German Empire, which was a consequence of their military power, dominated the peace negotiations, as Lenin’s representatives soon found out. 8 The peace talks were conducted in the city of Brest-Litovsk, where the headquarters of the German army in the East were located in the Brest Fortress. The Chief of Staff of the Imperial German Army on the Eastern Front, General Max Hoffmann, and the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the German Empire, Richard von Kühlmann, played the leading role in the negotiations on the part of the Central Powers, trying to reconcile the sometimes-conflicting interests of Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bul- garia and Turkey. On the other hand, Bolshevik Russia’s delegation, led by Adolf Joffe and later by Lev Trotsky, tried to stall for time by postponing the acceptance of the Central Powers’ territorial demands, citing the people’s right to self-determination and peace without annexations and repara- tions. 9 However, the Bolsheviks had no chance to recapture the Russian territories already occupied by the Central Powers. It was also doubtful that they would be able to keep the Turkish territories in Transcaucasia and Anatolia occupied by the Russian army. The Polish question was treated as a means to an end by Berlin and Vienna. The earlier hopes of the Polish recruits from the Kingdom of Poland faded. In the early 1918, after the armistice with Bolshevik Russia, in the eyes of Germany and Austria-Hungary the Polish card lost its importance in the diplomatic game. The delegation of the Regent Council, created by the Central Powers as an Ersatz-Polish government in the Kingdom of Poland, was not invited to the peace talks in Brest-­ Litovsk, which started on 22 December 1917. Similarly, the Austrian delegation did not include any Polish politicians from Galicia. The Germans and the Austrians wanted to keep the Kingdom of Poland as their condominium (although the commander of the Imperial German Army, Marshal Paul von Hindenburg, and his second-in-command, General Erich Ludendorff, with the consent of Emperor Wilhelm II, planned to annex part of the Kingdom to the German Reich), putting the resolution of the Polish problem on hold. It was, evidently, concluded in Berlin and in Vienna that the Polish state did not exist. Consequently, there was no need to invite representatives of the Polish institutions established by the Central Powers to Brest-Litovsk. 10 8 Wheeler-Bennett, John W.: Brest-Litovsk. The Forgotten Peace March 1918. New York 1956, 83–95, 379–384; Cher- nev, Borislav: Twilight of Empire. The Brest-Litovsk Conference and the Remaking of East-Central Europe, 1917–1918. Toronto 2017, 50–51. 9 The Brest-Litovsk peace negotiations were the first in history to be open to the public. For the record of negotia- tions in Brest-Litovsk see Proceedings of the Brest-Litovsk Peace Conference. The Peace Negotiations between Rus- sia and the Central Powers. 21 November, 1917–3 March, 1918, Washington, 1918; for Leon Trotsky’s views on the ne- gotiations with Hoffmann and Kühlmann see Trotsky, Leon: My Life. An Attempt at an Autobiography. New York 1970, 362–378. 10 The National Archives, Kew (further: TNA), CAB 24/43, Weekly Report on Poland XXV, 22nd February 1918; But- tar, Prit: The Splintered Empires. The Eastern Front 1917–21. Oxford 2017, 257–258; Chernev, Twilight (see n. 8), 54–55,