New episode of Revolutions Podcast out: 10.77- Brest Litovsk: Dance dance revolution.

I had vaguely known about Brest Litovsk and the disastrous peace agreement before listening to this episode.  I think it's one of those things that's commonly covered in survey history classes, so I remember hearing about it in college.

But, this episode was really interesting for getting into the details of the negotiation.  And once again, Mike Duncan did a wonderful job of using his storytelling abilities to make a narrative out of what was going on in the negotiations.

A few random thoughts:

* There are a lot of really interesting little stories in this episode.  Like the fact that the Bolsheviks brought an SR assassin with them to the negotiations.  Or when the Bolsheviks pick up a peasant delegate off of the street on their way to the negotiations, and the old man doesn't want to be part of the peace negotiations, but gets bribed into it anyway. 

Or Trotsky getting the keys to the safe, and publishing all the correspondence between the Tsar and France and England which showed that the private reasons for World War I were completely different from the public reasons for World War I.  (It sounds like it was that era's version of the Pentagon Papers.)  

* I'm liking Trotsky a lot.  He really comes off as a fascinating figure in this episode.  But I know that once he gets around to brutally putting down opposition to the Bolsheviks (which is no doubt coming up in later episodes), I'll lose that affection.  

* Trotsky especially, and the Bolsheviks in particular, are still coming off like idealists in the early days.  Not necessarily democratic idealists, but idealists.  They seem to genuinely believe that they are ushering in a new era with no more great power imperialist wars.  

Of course, with hindsight we now know that there was no new era--just a brief disruption to the status quo, and then the normal trends of human nature re-asserted themselves, and the USSR went back to behaving as an imperialistic power.  Which is the story of all of these idealistic revolutions.  It seems that it's always folly to try to believe that human nature can be changed.  And yet, for all that, my sympathy is always for the idealists, even though I know they are bound to fail.

* On a completely different note: If memory serves, in her autobiography, Emma Goldman includes the disgraceful peace at Brest Litovsk as one of the crimes of Trotsky when she's listing off all the reasons that she doesn't like him.  But based on Mike Duncan's telling, Trotsky and the Bolsheviks didn't really have much of a choice here.  

* But that being said... ever since my college days, I've been a little bit confused by exactly who had leverage at Brest Litovsk.  I mean, I get that the Germans had beaten the Russians, but the Germans were also on the verge of getting creamed by the other allied powers in World War I.  (This was 1917-1918 already.)  Why did they still have so much leverage over the Bolsheviks?  Mike Duncan explains this a bit, but I'm still slightly confused why the Germans didn't just accept the peace with the Bolsheviks, and then immediately bring all their troops over to the Western Front.

* Some reference in this episode to unrest back in Germany.  I hope that will be explored more later.