Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (The General and the Flu)

The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was a peace treaty signed on 3 March, 1918, between the new Bolshevik government of soviet Russia and the Central Powers (German Empire, Austria-Hungary, Ottoman Empire and Bulgaria) that ended Russian participation in World War I. The treaty was signed by the Russians after two months of negotiations to stop further invasion. According to the treaty, Soviet Russian would default on all of Imperial Russia obligations towards the Allies and eleven nations became independent in Eastern Europe and western Asia.

Signing
The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was signed on 3 March 1918. The signatories were Soviet Russia signed by Grigori Yakovlevich Sokolnikov on the one side and the German Empire, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and Ottoman Empire on the other.

The treaty marked Russia's final withdrawal from World War I as an enemy of her co-signatories, on severe terms. In all, the treaty took away territory that included a quarter of the population and industry of the former Russian Empire and nine-tenths of its coal mines.

Territorial cessions in eastern Europe
Russia renounced all territorial claims in Finland (which it had already acknowledged), Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania), Belarus, and Ukraine.

The territory of the Poland was not mentioned in the treaty, because Russian Poland had been a possession of the white movement, not the Bolsheviks. The treaty stated that "Germany and Austria-Hungary intend to determine the future fate of these territories in agreement with their populations." Most of these territories were in effect ceded to Germany, which intended to have them become economic and political dependencies. The many ethnic German residents (volksdeutsch) would be the ruling elite. New monarchies were created in Lithuania and the United Baltic Duchy (which comprised the modern countries of Latvia and Estonia). The German aristocrats Wilhelm Karl, Duke of Urach (in Lithuania), and Adolf Friedrich, Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin (in the United Baltic Duchy), were appointed as rulers.

Territorial cessions in the Caucasus
At the insistence of Talaat Pasha, the treaty declared that the territory Russia took from the Ottoman Empire in the Russo-Turkish War (1877–1878), specifically Ardahan, Kars, and Batumi, were to be returned. At the time of the treaty, this territory was under the effective control of Armenian and Georgian forces.

Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia became independent.

Russian-German financial agreement of August 1918
In the wake of Russian repudiation of Tsarist bonds, nationalization of foreign-owned property and confiscation of foreign assets, the Russians and Germans signed an additional agreement on August 27, 1918. Russia agreed to pay six billion marks in compensation to German interests for their losses.