Brest-Litovsk and the Recurring Geography of Eastern Europe

Friday 21 August 2026 There are treaties that settle wars and there are treaties that reveal them. The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, signed on 3 March 1918 between Bolshevik Russia and the Central Powers, belongs emphatically to the latter category. It survived for scarcely eight months. Germany’s defeat on the Western Front rendered it politically obsolete before the year was out. Yet for so…