So what really were the platform differences between the Bolsheviks and all the other Parties and Provisional Government on War and Peace matters?
Because they seem somewhat narrower than advertised. Or, for its existence, the PG and parties in it paid the costs of war and took the blame for being in, while the Bolsheviks could be all things to be all people, promising peace, but never the wrong kind of peace with the wrong kind of imperialist reactionary Germans.
The Bolsheviks used the Slogans: "Peace, Land, Bread"
No responsible member of the PG Cabinet or the non-Bolshevik members of the Duma, and hardly any non-Bolshevik members of the Petrograd Soviets or any of the other Soviets, including military Soviets, for most of the period between the February and October revolutions favored the propositions of either a "separate peace" from the other Allies or peace with an unreformed, "undemocratic, militaristic, reactionary" Germany, rather than a democratic Germany run by the workers, or the proposition of a peace at any price including giving up lands or tributes. However, non-Bolshevik members of the Petrograd and other Soviets and non-Bolshevik Socialist parties, including parties represented in the Duma, and possibly some members of the larger PG Cabinet were not against Russia, and its Allies accepting a peace where they would take "no annexations or indemnities" and many angrily criticized any politician, in Russia or any Allied country, whom they suspected was prolonging the war for purposes other than pure national defense, in the hopes of gaining such annexations or indemnities.
The Bolsheviks and the non-Bolshevik Socialists were making substantively similar arguments, with subtle differences, while accusing each other of bad faith. What seemed the most different was Bolshevik preparedness to proceed with talking and acting on a real ceasefire and proceeding with negotiations, starting with or without the Allies, but while inviting everyone to join, whereas the non-Bolsheviks insisted on the Three Musketeers principle, of no armistices or peace talks without Allied consensus first.
The Bolsheviks succeeded in their takeover, and soon agreed to an armistice. But even within their new regime, of Bolshevik-controlled and monopolized Soviets, with some Left SR support, there was no consensus for a separate peace treaty with the existing, reactionary, militaristic Germany. Instead there was a hope that now that the Russian proletariat had shown the way, the German proletariat would follow suit, overthrow their government and the two proletariats could make a peace of equals, leading to a chain reaction of revolutions elsewhere and mutual peace.
When the Germans sought to convert the armistice into the formal treaty with formal terms, the Bolsheviks at first simply stalled for time, trying to avoid specific terms or specific concessions and even the "taint" of a treaty or concrete bargain with Imperial Germany, despite their pre-takeover peace promises, waiting and hoping on a German revolution to make for a German regime and peace offer they could find palatable.
The Bolsheviks were caught flat-footed when this did not materialize, and they were not prepared for resumed fighting. The Germans quickly restarted offensive action, steamrolled their feeble attempts at resistance, and Lenin forced through the separate peace treaty of Brest-Litovsk, now on much worse terms than the December armistice and the peace terms first offered by the Germans around then. That Bolshevik acceptance of the Brest-Litovsk treaty, which was even in the ended controversial among Bolsheviks, did earn peace and mercy from the Germans outside the occupied/puppeted areas. But at the cost of the SRs defecting from Bolshevik allegiance and the Whites rallying forth for Civil War. =
