Decree on Peace

Background

The decree responded to a war crisis. After the February 1917 revolution the Provisional Government issued a note reaffirming expansionist war aims, which reignited unrest in Petrograd, and the Soviet's policy of 'Revolutionary Defencism', peace and defence, fell into disarray by September 1917, resisted by Allied governments and socialists alike. Lenin's April Theses proposed replacing the government with a socialist dictatorship through soviets and sparking European-wide proletarian seizures of power.

Adoption and content

The decree was published in Izvestiya no. 208 on 9 November [O.S. 27 October] 1917. It proposed Russia's immediate withdrawal from World War I, proposed an immediate armistice to all belligerents, and stated that an armistice of not less than three months was desirable to allow peace negotiations with all peoples and ratification by popular assemblies. Lenin explained that the appeal had to be addressed both to governments and to peoples: the people's government could not ignore governments without delaying peace, but had no right not to appeal to the peoples at the same time.

Examples

The decree appealed directly to the class-conscious workers of Great Britain, France and Germany, invoking the Chartist movement, the revolutions of the French proletariat, and the German workers' struggle against the Anti-Socialist Law and their mass proletarian organisations. Fighting on the Eastern Front was instantly suspended after the decree and Russian forces evaporated. The timing of that disintegration is disputed in the historiography: many historians say it was endemic from around May 1917, while Marc Ferro claims the mass exodus from the front began only in October 1917.

Impact and distinctions

Despite the decree, no European-wide revolution occurred. The new regime became embroiled in negotiations with Berlin and Vienna, Trotsky's 'neither peace nor war' stance failed, and Germany resumed operations in February 1918. In March 1918 the Fourth All-Russian Congress of Soviets ratified the punitive separate peace at Brest-Litovsk, prompting the Left Communist Bolsheviks and Left SRs to withdraw from Sovnarkom. Under that peace Russia lost 34 per cent of its population, 54 per cent of its industrial land, 89 per cent of its coalfields and 26 per cent of its railways, creating conditions for nationalist revolutions in Ukraine, Poland, Finland and the Baltic provinces.

The decree itself is distinct from the punitive peace it led to at Brest-Litovsk. The Russian government also explicitly did not present its peace terms as an ultimatum: it declared readiness to consider any other peace terms provided they were advanced speedily and with absolute clarity, with no ambiguity or secrecy. The Decree on Land, passed by the same Second All-Russian Congress, abolished landed proprietorship without compensation and transferred estates to peasant committees, whereas the Decree on Peace addressed war aims, annexations and secret diplomacy. Wilson's Fourteen Points of January 1918 were largely a response to this decree and translated progressive domestic ideas, free trade, open agreements, democracy and self-determination, into a separate foreign-policy programme.