What If: Grimm's seperate WW1 peace deal between Germany and Russia

[Hvalrossen]

In 1917 Switzerland's neutrality came into question when the Grimm–Hoffmann Affair erupted. Robert Grimm, a Swiss socialist politician, travelled to Russia as an activist to negotiate a separate peace between Russia and Germany, in order to end the war on the Eastern Front in the interests of socialism and pacifism. Misrepresenting himself as a diplomat and an actual representative of the Swiss government, he made progress but had to admit to fraud and return home when the Allies found out about the proposed peace deal. Neutrality was restored by the resignation of Arthur Hoffmann, the Swiss Federal Councillor who had supported Grimm but had not consulted his colleagues on the initiative.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grimm–Hoffmann_affair

What if the Grimm-Hoffmann affair had succeeded in crafting a peace deal?
- Could Russia avoid the revolution?
- How would the western theater of WW1 be affected by this peace deal?
- What would this peace deal possibly or likely decide? (as in concessions or white peace)

 

[mianfei]

I am not sure Russia could have avoided a revolution to overthrow the Tsar. For one thing, the winter of 1916/1917 was extremely long and cold, and it would not have been easy for the Tsar to ward off protests before the economy recovered.

More likely, however, Russia would have been able to maintain its provisional government and perhaps make a transition towards a more democratic system as Kerensky and his allies planned. However, I possess no belief that Russia would have stayed democratic very long. Working class support for Communism was widespread, even general in pre-World War I Europe, and if Germany and Austria-Hungary had been directing their efforts to the Western and Italian Fronts to a much greater degree than they could, the risk of a revolution in one of the belligerents ending the war could only increase. More than that, Russia had both a powerful large landowning class, and a powerful class of mining capitalists – the two classes most intractably opposed to democratisation. It’s easy to imagine that the Tsar would have been restored to the throne after being overthrown and attempted to rule in the traditional manner as he did before 1905, and that he (or his heirs) would have joined the anti-colonial struggles of other European nations.