ABSTRACT
Lenin's past overshadowed the crucial problem of conducting peace negotiations with Germany. The severity of the peace agreement made at Brest-Litovsk has been exaggerated by those who fail to see that this arrangement, in most respects, conformed to the nationality principle. The practical problem was that by eliminating Russia from the war and arranging for trade, Germany could improve her acute raw material and food scarcity and mass her military power against the Western front. The concept of a conference of parliamentarians was put forward by the moderate parties in Germany which authorized the Catholic deputy Mathias Erzberger to negotiate on this basis with the Bolsheviks. The Social Democrats favoured a more revolutionary but similar concept postulated by Parvus. He argued that, since the German socialists had helped Lenin to power, Lenin should now be in a position to assist the German socialists. Naturally, the Imperial Foreign Office refused to participate in such a scheme.
