End of WWI without the October Revolution?

[Hashoosh]

So, with a certain degree of handwaving, say the Bolsheviks are either unsuccesful (somehow...) in overthrowing the Provisional Government or do not try in the first place. How this is achieved, for example not shipping Lenin by rail to St. Petersburg or having the Bolshevik Inner Circle all killed by a bomb is unimportant.

I'm more interested in the consequences to the Eastern Front and conclusion to the war in 1918 if Russia is still engaged with Germany. Essentially, Russia maintains her defensive posture post-February, with no offensive action against her enemies in the East. The Provisional Government can fall, but whoever succeeds it, be it the Mensheviks, one of the OTL White Generals, maybe even Kornilov, decides to conclude the war rather than signing a Brest-Litovsk analogue.

How would this alter the Western Front in Spring 1918? I'm assuming there's no Spring Offensive, and that the Germans are still tied down in the East. What would the OHL do in this scenario?

Launch an attack to try to knock the Russians out of the war (which seems doubtful, given the logistical implications of this and the state of Austria-Hungary)?

Adopt a defensive posture in the East, leaving minimal forces there and attempt a weaker Spring Offensive?

Something else?

And most importantly, how does a still-active Russia affect the conclusion of the war and the ensuing peace treaty? Will the other CPs give in earlier than they did in 1918? What will Versailles look like with the Russians present, I can't imagine the Poles will be too happy.

 

[Hashoosh]

Bumpity bump

 

[Alternate History]

The very fact that Russia is capitalist and anti-Bolshevik will be a blessing to the Russian state when it arrives at the negotiating table. With no need for an intervention, Russia could probably scramble together enough of a force to recover most of its empire (it very nearly did against impossible odds IOTL), unless it doesn't really wish to do so anymore (which I think might be plausible under a SR/some kind of bourgeois-republican government, but not under a reactionary military junta). However, Poland and perhaps Finland might still break free, and if the Russian government is too right-wing, revolutionary unrest (with or without the Bolsheviks) will still make it impossible to fully recover them in that case. In fact, Poland could be a real winner here. If the Russian and Polish provisional chiefs manage to be sensible and part ways on good terms, with Poland not seeking to go on grand adventures into Ukrainian-Belarussian lands, then the Polish state has only one instead of two bitter enemies to deal with after the war.

As for the Germans, I imagine they would continue their march to Petrograd, and perhaps even succeed, although they would have to withdraw following their capitulation anyways (they were already facing really bad odds in the west). This I have concluded from their RL attitude - Brest-Litovsk was a great opportunity for them to drastically reduce their commitment in the east and thus save the west, but they continued to commit an overly huge occupation force to the east, thus knocking Soviet Russia out of the war ended up bringing them less benefit than it could have. Of course, this is also a result of Germany's foreign policy logic; they didn't have much to gain in the west, their main goal was to shatter the Russian Empire and establish a lot of client states subservient to Berlin, most importantly the breadbasket Ukraine. The German junta controlling the Second Reich near its end just didn't have the foresight or humility to realize that they can't fulfill their ideal goals and should drop most or all of them.