CaliGuy
Banned
I think that you are overestimating how pro-peace the Russian public was during this time:It's not selling out it's accepting that you are getting ass handed to you and making a prompt exit with minimal losses ie not being stubborn.
Besides the thread is about a surviving Russian republic, it doesn't say anything about who's in charge and with an early exit in the war the Russians are less likely to fall to an extreme political wing.
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!s.../soc.history.what-if/WznPulAWWzo/Om7_VTHXIOAJ
"In December 1917 the Party of Socialist Revolutionaries held its Fourth
Congress. The extreme left of the party had already defected to form the
Left SR Party but there were still people of quite left-wing views at the
Congress. One of them, Kogan-Bernstein, proposed that the forthcoming
Constituent Assembly summon the Allies to begin peace talks without delay,
and in the event of their refusal or failure to reply within a specified
time limit, Russia would have a free hand. The resolution did not say how
this freedom would be used, but it did at least imply separate action if not
a separate peace. The resolution was voted down 72-52 with 32 abstentions.
(Oliver Radkey, *The Sickle under the Hammer: the Russian Socialist
Revolutionaries in the Early Months of Soviet Rule*, p. 192.) And this was
after not only the disastrous summer offensive but the October insurrection!
Yet *even then*, only one-third of the mainstream SRs were willing to demand
tangible progress toward peace, even at the cost of breaking with the Allies.
So how likely were they (or their similarly-minded Menshevik comrades) to do
so several months earlier?"