WI:Georgy Lvov makes an early peace with Germany in WWI?

Just after the February Revolution after the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II, Lvov was made head of the Russian Provisional Government. As we know part of the reason why the Reds had such a huge support was because they promised to end the war.

What would happen if Lvov seeing the unpopularity of the war and the support this is giving to the Reds manages to make peace with Germany in 1917? Would this butterfly away the USSR? How would this impact WWI as this would allow Germans to transfer even more troops to the West? Would the Nazis still rise to power?
 
Just after the February Revolution after the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II, Lvov was made head of the Russian Provisional Government. As we know part of the reason why the Reds had such a huge support was because they promised to end the war.

What would happen if Lvov seeing the unpopularity of the war and the support this is giving to the Reds manages to make peace with Germany in 1917? Would this butterfly away the USSR? How would this impact WWI as this would allow Germans to transfer even more troops to the West? Would the Nazis still rise to power?


You have to distinguish between the popular mood just after the February Revolution--when Lvov took office--with the mood in the second half of 1917 after the failed summer offensive. Sukhanov, a left-wing "Zimmerwaldist" Menshevik wrote with regret that "During the first weeks the soldiers of Petrograd not only would not listen, but would not permit any talk of peace. They were ready to lift up on their bayonets any uncautious 'traitor' or exponent of 'opening the front to the enemy.'" (Quoted in Adam Ulam, *The Bolsheviks* [New York: Macmillan 1965], p. 325. https://books.google.com/books?id=TdCK1WkconkC&pg=PA325 (See https://books.google.com/books?id=6-D_AwAAQBAJ&pg=PA202 for a slightly different translation.)

As for the Bolsheviks before Lenin's arrival, read Stalin's *Pravda* article of March 28: "The mere slogan 'Down with the war' is absolutely impractical. As long as the German Army obeys the orders of the Kaiser, the Russian soldier most stand firmly at his post, answering bullet with bullet and shell with shell. ... Our slogan is pressure on the Provisional Government with the aim of compelling it to ... attempt to induce all the warring countries to open immediate negotiations ... Until then every man remains at his fighting post." https://books.google.com/books?id=vUYwDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT118&lpg=PT118

Even when the Bolsheviks abandoned "defensism" they did not advocate a separate peace with the German government, let alone one which looked anything like the later Brest-Litovsk Treaty. Rather they argued that a true socialist revolution in Russia would soon spread to Germany, making a peace possible not with the Kaiser but with the "German workers and soldiers." If Lvov had tried to negotiate anything like Brest-Litovsk, he would have not only alienated his own party (the Kadets) and the moderate socialist parties (SR's and Mensheviks) who then dominated the soviets, and on whose support his government depended--but the Bolsheviks would have been the first to scream "treason" and "sell-out to German imperialism."

On the subject of the moderate socialists and their extraordinary tenacity on the war, I'll recycle something I wrote some time ago:

"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?

"If there was anyone who just might have filled this role, it could have been Victor Chernov, leader of the left-center of the SRs, a man who had resigned from the PG protesting its dilatoriness on the issues of peace and land reform, and a man who was very popular in the Russian village. If only Chernov's faction of the SRs had either gained control of the party or formed their own party; if the Constituent Assembly elections had been held months earlier; if Chernov's backers had won; and if the Assembly had made Chernov Prime Minister of Russia, the country would at least have had a leader of greater legitimacy than Kerensky and perhaps more willing to confront the Allies. Chernov later claimed that while he had opposed a separate peace in 1917 he would have been willing to consider one as a last resort if the struggle for a general settlement had meant the immolation of Russia on the altar of the Allied cause. Unfortunately, Chernov's actual conduct during 1917--including during the Fourth Congress--was marked by constant compromising with the pro-war right-center of his party, and as Radkey remarks "if he could not see signs of immolation in the situation of December, 1917, then he would never see them." (p. 190)"

All this tenacity against a separate peace by the liberals and moderate socialists can be easily explained. They all assumed that such a peace would mean that Germany would win the War in the West long before the Americans could make a difference. Once it did that, it would be the master of Europe and (an argument especially persuasive to the socialists) could establish a reactionary puppet regime in Russia, open the country up to unlimited exploitation by German capital, and destroy whatever gains the people had made through the Revolution.

In all likelihood, only the Bolsheviks could make peace with the Germans--and even they were deeply split by Brest-Litovsk, many of them favoring a "revolutionary war."
 
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IOTL the Bolsheviks jerked the Germans around for a couple of months, culminating in the final German-AH offensive Op Fist Punch and increasing the severity of German demands once it finished and making the Russians totally unable to resist these demands. At the very least this final kicking and tightening of the noose wouldn't happen and most likely the German demands in early 1917 would be even lighter than those of late 1917 let alone those of early 1918.

In the wider war the defeat of Russia will allow the Germans to fight far more effectively in the west in 1917, they might go on the offensive in the west in 1917 rather than withdrawing to the Hindenburg Line.
 
An Feb/March 1917 armistice would help the Turks a bunch too. A trickle of trade resumed would also help.

Really the Germans should offer a 1913 boundaries peace to help this process out. The Austrians already crushed the Serbs, Bulgaria is an ally. Romania is crushed. Austria and Germany "won" the Balkans. Get out now and claim victory
 
The Russians suffered from bad leadership and a corrupt system, its citizenry was loyal but frustrated, the soldiers did not wish to be defeated or to have fought for nothing, it was easy to blame the Czar, the humiliating lack of victory was his doing, so I think you need the failed offensive(s) under a new leadership to prove that for Russia the war was unwinnable. That is part of why the Bolshevik success is possible, the PG needs to keep the war going until it is hopeless and the last ones to take the reins can make a peace. Lenin is least likely to get to power early enough to be swept out, yet even the Bolsheviks attempt to carry on once in power. The war seems to need a clear defeat to make it end.

So I wonder if a peace initiative under the Czar could be the catalyst for his downfall, the PG attempts to win a battle and an honorable peace, fails and sues for peace early enough that German demands are quite moderate, giving the PG enough legitimacy to forge ahead as a democracy in the making?
 
The Russians suffered from bad leadership and a corrupt system, its citizenry was loyal but frustrated, the soldiers did not wish to be defeated or to have fought for nothing, it was easy to blame the Czar, the humiliating lack of victory was his doing, so I think you need the failed offensive(s) under a new leadership to prove that for Russia the war was unwinnable. That is part of why the Bolshevik success is possible, the PG needs to keep the war going until it is hopeless and the last ones to take the reins can make a peace. Lenin is least likely to get to power early enough to be swept out, yet even the Bolsheviks attempt to carry on once in power. The war seems to need a clear defeat to make it end.

So I wonder if a peace initiative under the Czar could be the catalyst for his downfall, the PG attempts to win a battle and an honorable peace, fails and sues for peace early enough that German demands are quite moderate, giving the PG enough legitimacy to forge ahead as a democracy in the making?
Perhaps a failed Brusilov Offensive in the year prior could do the trick?
 
Perhaps a failed Brusilov Offensive in the year prior could do the trick?

I gave the Germans a better war in the East to let them defeat the Russians in battle a little more and be able to force a peace on the Czar by about 1917, something I guess pushes Russia into anarchy and collapses his rule even if Germany is uninterested in the destruction of the Russian monarchy. Beyond that I sit staring into a fog. I assume the Czar is forced to abdicate by his side rather than Germany, I assume something like the PG takes over, I assume it looks rather like the early Socialist led government post-war in Germany. But I hate stringing such assumptions together.
 
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