As tensions with the United States continued to rise because of the hostage crisis at the US embassy in Tehran, leading some observers to speculate that a war was on the cards, it became apparent that the world would not punish Baghdad for Iraqi forces' use of weapons of mass destruction.

 

Khomeini was not a man who loathed war. And this war, which had been instigated by Saddam Hussein, allowed him to consolidate a nascent Islamic regime riddled with contradictions. However, when the losses came to outweigh the gains, and as the toll it had been taking on the regime’s constituency grew and its willingness to carry on dwindled, he decided to agree to a ceasefire - a decision as repulsive to him as drinking poison.

 

Another radical actor, albeit one that adopted a different ideology and path, had, precisely 70 years earlier, been compelled to drink a different poison.

 

Just a few months after the 1917 Bolshevik October Revolution, Russia and the German-led “Central Powers” signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk that ended the conflict between the two sides. However, the treaty brought a lot of pain to the new Bolshevik rulers: it stipulated that their country fully relinquish all “its possessions” in the Baltics, Ukraine, and Poland, allowing Germany to annex a large swath of “Russian territory.” On top of that, Moscow ceded southeastern territories to the Ottoman Empire, Germany’s ally.

 

That is, the peace agreement was evidently highly punitive for the Russians, humiliating them and depriving them of dominion over industrial cities, vast agricultural land, and densely populated regions.

 

As for Russia’s former war-time allies (Britain, France, the United States, Italy, and Japan), they saw its decision to make peace with Germany as a betrayal, as the country had reneged on its deposed Tsar’s pledge to fight alongside them against the Germans. Their ire had severe military and economic repercussions for the new regime: the Allies ramped up their support for the “White Army” in the civil war and withdrew their substantial investments in Russia. The Bolshevik leadership was accused of surrender and abandonment of rightful claims across the political spectrum, from the nationalist right-wing factions to the most radical elements of the left.

 

Even the party leadership did not unanimously agree to the treaty, compelling Vladimir Lenin to threaten that he would resign in the event that it was rejected.

 

Bolshevik Russia signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk for many reasons, two of which were particularly crucial:

 

The first was Russia’s military defeats and soldiers’ refusal to remain in the trenches. The Bolsheviks had, since 1914, been presenting themselves as the party of immediate and unconditional withdrawal from this “imperialist war.” Their propaganda appealed to the Russian soldiers who sided with the party, with some even fighting among its ranks.

 

The second reason, which might have carried more weight, was that Lenin and his comrades were pursuing a project that demanded their full attention: building their socialist regime in Russia. Peace served this end and created an environment suitable for achieving it to the same extent that remaining mired in conflict undermined it.

 

One could argue, rightly, that these historical episodes are not analogous to what is unfolding in Lebanon, making the comparison tenuous and largely unconvincing. Nevertheless, it is useful to point back to the intellectual and political climate in which these concessions, which translated and recognized the worrier’s defeat, were made, especially since both episodes saw a radical actor with a belligerent consciousness acknowledge its defeat.

 

Hezbollah did not compare its approval of the ceasefire agreement to “drinking poison”; indeed, its narrative of the agreement was essentially that the party had compelled Israel to drink poison. This distortion of reality is a reflection of Hezbollah’s peculiar relationship with its supporters; it suggests that this relationship is founded on its assumption that it enjoys the blind allegiance of a base and an absolute mandate that exempts it from scrutiny over its decisions or demands for accountability, even when the bitter, disastrous consequences were and remain difficult to conceal or obscure.

 

Moreover, Hezbollah does not intend to build anything. There is nothing it is keen to safeguard and for which it could justify major concessions. Unlike Khomeini, it does not have a state of its own, of course; it controls a state for which it bears no responsibility. Furthermore, it does not have a project like Lenin’s either. The state it fights for, and whose interests shape its actions, is not its own, while armament, as such, is its only project - arms are an end in themselves and the only end.

 

Accordingly, the party has maintained a narrative and policy that refuses to recognize its defeat, and to build on this recognition a stance like Khomeini which adopted when he drank the poison, or like Lenin’s when he tasked Leon Trotsky with signing the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk.