Council of People's Commissars (Kolegayev, Spiridonova, Proshyan and Steinberg). However, this agreement lasted only until the signing of the Peace of Brest-Litovsk and the formation of the Poor Peasants Committees, when a deep cleavage took place among the peasantry. At this point the Left SRs sided with the more affluent peasants and initiated a revolt against Soviet power. The revolt was suppressed by the Soviet Government. Brest-Litovsk peace However, Russia was still at war with the Central Powers of Germany and Austria-Hungary. In the view of the Bolsheviks, the war had to be ended in order to consolidate Soviet power. The Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic called upon 'all the belligerent peoples and their governments to start immediate negotiations for a just, democratic peace'. But the former allies of Russia—the United Kingdom and France—refused to accept the proposal of the Soviet Government. In view of this refusal, the Soviet Government decided to start negotiations with Germany and Austria-Hungary. The negotiations began on December 3 in Brest-Litovsk. On December 5 an armistice was signed. Large sectors of the Russian political spectrum, from the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries to the Whiteguards, opposed the negotiation policy of the Soviet Government. Moreover, a sector within the party had their doubts about the line of negotiations. Trotsky on one hand and the 'Left Communists' (led by Bukharin, a grouping also including Radek and Pyatakov) argued that the war should have been continued. On February 10, 1918, the peace negotiations in Brest-Litovsk were broken off. Although Lenin and Stalin had argued that peace be signed, Trotsky, who was chairman of the Soviet delegation at Brest-Litovsk, won the vote at the party's Executive Committee on 22 January 1918 and on 10 February 1918 promulgated his "no peace, no war" policy: the Soviet negotiators left the negotiations in the hope that pro-peace factions in the German Reichstag would ensure that Germany did not resume the conflict. Fighting resumed, and the German forces made rapid advances into Russian territory. At this juncture the RSDLP(b) and the Soviet Government issued the call– 'The Socialist fatherland is in danger!', urging the working class to join the Red Army. On February 18, 1918, the Central Committee of the party approved Lenin's proposal to send a telegram to the German government offering to conclude an immediate peace. However, the German offensive was maintained for a few days. The German government expressed its willingness to