Russia's war ended at Brest-Litovsk, not in Berlin
World War I's Eastern Front stretched along the Russian and Romanian frontiers with Austria-Hungary and Germany. Early Russian lunges into East Prussia failed; the 1916 Brusilov offensive stunned Austria, yet revolution and the March 1918 Brest-Litovsk treaty pulled Russia out after Faustschlag.
At full extent this theatre ran from the Baltic to the Black Sea, pitting Russia and Romania against Austria-Hungary, Germany, Bulgaria and the Ottomans. Its roots lay in the Balkans. Over seven million South Slavs lived inside the Habsburg empire and three million outside, and the pull toward union with Serbia alarmed Vienna. After Gavrilo Princip killed Archduke Franz Ferdinand on 28 June 1914, Austria-Hungary, backed by Berlin, sent Serbia an ultimatum on 23 July and declared war five days later. Russia had already resolved to defend Serbia; Vienna ordered full mobilisation on 31 July, and Berlin's declaration of war against Russia followed on 1 August.
Both sides had planned for this. Russia's Schedule 19, approved by Nicholas II in 1910, was initially defensive, but after French pressure from 1911 to strike quickly and so relieve Paris, a 1912 variant sent two armies into East Prussia and four into Galicia, giving neither thrust a decisive edge. Germany relied on Schlieffen's scheme to crush France before turning east, a plan Moltke the Younger retained and the government adopted fully in 1913.
Russia's opening offensives aimed at a quick victory. The push into East Prussia was routed and the drive into Austria-Hungary bogged down in the Carpathians, and Central Powers attacks in 1915 wiped out its gains. To ease pressure on Verdun, Russia attacked near Lake Naroch in early 1916 and was quickly beaten, yet that summer's Brusilov offensive became the Entente's greatest victory, costing Austria-Hungary over a million casualties and forcing Germany to pull divisions from the west.
After Nicholas II abdicated, the Provisional Government kept fighting for its allies, but its final offensive collapsed in July 1917, and in September German troops took Riga, edging toward the capital. The Bolsheviks then signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk in March 1918, following the German advance code-named Faustschlag, which took Russia out of the war. The treaty was voided by the armistice of 11 November 1918 once the western Allies defeated the Central Powers.
Source: Eastern Front (World War I)
