Конфликты и компромиссы: заключение советско-германского соглашения об обмене военнопленных 24 июня 1918 г. Документальный очерк
Conflicts and compromises: signing of the Soviet-German agreement about exchange of prisoners of war 24-th June, 1918. Documents and comments

Summary/Abstract: The Soviet diplomacy just coming into being faced a lot of problems that seemed to be insoluble because of the signing Brest peace treaty. One of them was the returning of about a million and a half military men being in the German captivity. The documents from the Foreign Affairs Archive RF give the basis for reconstruction of prehistory and signing of the agreement (protocol) about exchange of prisoners of war on the 24-th of June 1918. After failure of bilateral talks in Moscow the problem was transferred into Berlin. The Soviet diplomat A. Ioffe, who had good contacts with the representatives of German Foreign Affairs Office, got down to business. At a decisive moment of the talks he lost the connection with Moscow that made him act at his own risk. Having accepted the German proposals he refused from the formula “everything or nothing” that provided the beginning of the mass exchange of the war prisoners. His unauthorized decision provoked the conflict with People’s commissar for Foreign Affairs V. Chicherin and V. Lenin was involved too. The solution of this conflict became the example of finding mutually acceptable decisions that took into account not only political factors but also personal traits of the two most influential figures of the Soviet Foreign policy in 1918.

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