The portion of the Brest-Litovsk settlement pertaining to Transcaucasia and Western Armenia vitally conditioned subsequent events in those territories. Article IV included two important provisions: "Russia will do within here power to insure the immediate evacuation of the provinces of Eastern Anatolia and their lawful return to Turkey. The districts [sanjaks] of Ardahan, Kars, and Batum will likewise and without delay be cleared of Russian troops. Russia will not interfere in the reorganisation of the national and international relations of these districts, but leave it to the population of these districts to carry out this reorganisation in agreement with the neighbouring states, especially Turkey." 45
One needs only to compare the decree "About Western Armenia" with Article IV to comprehend the wrath of the political leaders and populace of Western (Turkish) Armenia and Transcaucasia.
But Article IV was not the full extent of the injury. The Brest-Litovsk treaty made provision for additional separate conventions between Russia and each of the Central Powers. The first two articles of the Russo-Turkish bilateral agreement detailed the time limit and procedure for Russian evacuation from Western Armenia, Kars, Ardahan, and Batum. The Soviet government pledged that within eight weeks no Russian soldier would be found in these districts, and that no vengeance would be taken on the land or populace during the withdrawal. Not more than one Russian division was to remain in the entire Caucasus and, in the event internal security demanded more than that number, the Central Powers were to be informed in advance. 46 The Armenians who, despite the Brest negotiations and Russian desertion, had endeavoured to man the front, were especially stung by Article I, paragraph 5 of the additional treaty: "The Russian Republic assumes the responsibility to demobilise and dissolve the Armenian bands, composed of Russian and Turkish subjects, which are found in Russia as well as in the occupied Turkish provinces, and will completely disperse these bands." 47
Other clauses provided for the establishment of commissions to determine the pre-war boundary and the territorial limits of Kars, Ardahan, and Batum.
The Fourth All-Russian Congress of Soviets, meeting in Moscow, 48 ratified the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk on March 15. The breathing spell gained by signing this "Tilsit Peace" cost Russia over two million square kilometres and sixty million people. 49 According to Leninist logic, the inevitable communist revolution would soon engulf Germany and the West and thus automatically nullify the humiliation of Brest. Lenin expounded this view at the Russian Social Democrat Bolshevik Seventh Congress, which, besides condoning the government's policy at Brest, adopted Lenin's proposal to rename the organisation the Russian Communist Party (RKP). 50
The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk humbled and weakened Russia, but it crushed Transcaucasia, where a temporary anti-Bolshevik administration had been formed. On the day before the treaty was signed, Lev M. Karakhan, secretary of the Soviet delegation at Brest, enumerated in a wire to the Tiflis government the latest Russian concessions to Turkey. The information left Transcaucasia dumbfounded.
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