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Notes -
I’ll nitpick a bit if you don’t mind. Trotsky wasn’t exactly an idiot. The new Bolshevik regime was very far from stable in early 1918. In Brest-Litovsk they gave up the Western periphery of the collapsed Russian imperial state, areas they weren’t in effect controlling anyway, in exchange for stabilizing their dictatorship in the central areas with the approval of the German government. This was vital for their survival.
The treaty fulfilled two important roles.
The Germans were supporting the Bolshevik movement in the first place, and the only way they could repay their financier was by making a ceasefire and thus ending WW1 on the Eastern Front, and by surrendering territory, mostly farmland which the Germans (and Austrians) had a dire need of. And this is what they did.
It was also in the best interest of the Bolsheviks to give the impression to the outside world that the German imperialists forced them to sign a peace treaty at gunpoint. This is why the treaty was only signed after the Germans took the territories they wanted.
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