Bingo. The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was decades away in 1917.
No, it was a year away: Treaty of Brest-Litovsk - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was a peace treaty signed on March 3, 1918, at Brest-Litovsk (now Brest, Belarus) between the Russian SFSR and the Central Powers, marking Russia's exit from World War I.
This created a rather small Russia:
I was wrong however about how it was abolished: Treaty of Brest-Litovsk - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk lasted only eight and a half months. Germany renounced the treaty and broke diplomatic relations with RSFSR on November 5, 1918 because of Soviet revolutionary propaganda. The Ottoman Empire broke the treaty after just two months by invading the newly created Democratic Republic of Armenia in May of 1918. Following the German capitulation, the Bolshevik government (VTsIK) annulled the treaty on November 13, 1918 (the text of the VTsIK Decision was printed in Pravda the next day). In the year after the armistice, the German Army withdrew its occupying units from the lands gained in the treaty, leaving behind a power vacuum which various forces subsequently attempted to fill. In the April 1922 Treaty of Rapallo, Germany accepted the Treaty's nullification, the two powers agreeing to abandon all war-related territorial and financial claims against each other.
But the point remains, a victorious Germany would have created less space for Soviet Russia, not more. I doubt that even Ukraine would have ended up in the Soviet Union considering the earlier treaty of Brest-Litovsk, and its establishment of an independant Ukraine with German bases and grain supplies to the Central powers. A vote for PES is a vote for EPP! A vote for EPP is a vote for PES! Support the coalition, vote EPP-PES in 2009!
I think the conditions in Germany during winter 1918-1919 would have severely limited any efforts on the eastern front, had Germany not have been victorious on the western front. Not that the Soviets were in much better shape. France was bled dry. By one account, don't remember the date, a French unit being sent to the front started bleating like sheep, in unison. The French high command was so freaked they marched them off into a field and called in artillery on them. England and the Commonwealth might have supplied more troops, but civilian and military morale had dropped greatly.
I suspect that without the American Expeditionary Force a negotiated peace would have been more likely. The Ottomans were doomed either way. Probably the same for the Austro-Hungarian Empire. One thing is certain--it would have been a very different Europe.
As the Dutch said while fighting the Spanish: "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."
