Bread queues and a women's demonstration on International Women's Day that became a rising (1917)
23 February Old Style, 8 March by the Western calendar, in Petrograd
History · The 20th century
The Russian Revolution
1917 (February and October, Old Style)
Revolution — the fall of the Romanovs and the Bolshevik seizure of power
Two upheavals in a single year. In February 1917 (March by the Western calendar) bread queues and strikes in Petrograd turned into a mutiny of the garrison, and Tsar Nicholas II abdicated on 15 March, ending three centuries of Romanov rule. A Provisional Government, eventually led by Alexander Kerensky, shared uneasy authority with the Petrograd Soviet while keeping Russia in the war. Lenin returned from Swiss exile in April, promising peace, land and bread, and on the night of 25–26 October (7–8 November) Bolshevik forces and the Military Revolutionary Committee under Trotsky took the key points of the capital and the Winter Palace. The new government left the war at Brest-Litovsk in March 1918, and a civil war between Reds and Whites ran until 1922, ending in the creation of the Soviet Union.
How to spot them
- ▸Two risings in one year, dated February and October in the old calendar but March and November in the new
- ▸A tsar's abdication after strikes in the capital and the mutiny of its garrison
- ▸A sealed train carrying an exile home across Germany
- ▸Dual power: a provisional government beside a workers' and soldiers' council
- ▸The slogans 'Peace, Land and Bread' and 'All power to the Soviets'
What happened
The abdication of the last Romanov, first for himself and then for his haemophiliac son (1917)
Nicholas II abdicated on 15 March 1917; his brother Michael refused the throne the next day
A sealed train from Zurich through Germany to the Finland Station (1917)
Lenin arrived in April and at once issued the April Theses, rejecting support for the Provisional Government
A blank shot from the cruiser Aurora as the signal to move on the Winter Palace (1917)
The night of 25–26 October Old Style; Eisenstein's film later invented the heroic storming
The peace at Brest-Litovsk that surrendered Poland, the Baltic lands and Ukraine (1918)
Signed 3 March 1918; Trotsky's 'no war, no peace' stance collapsed when the Germans advanced
The killing of the imperial family in a cellar at Yekaterinburg (1918)
The night of 16–17 July 1918, as White and Czechoslovak forces closed on the city
Quick-fire facts
- •Petrograd was the capital, renamed from St Petersburg in 1914 and renamed Leningrad in 1924
- •Russia used the Julian calendar until February 1918, which is why the same events carry two dates thirteen days apart
- •Alexander Kerensky led the Provisional Government from July 1917 and escaped after October; he died in New York in 1970
- •Trotsky chaired the Petrograd Soviet's Military Revolutionary Committee, which ran the October seizure
- •Grigori Rasputin, whose hold over the Tsarina damaged the dynasty's standing, had been murdered in December 1916
- •Kornilov's abortive march on Petrograd in August 1917 discredited the government and armed the Bolsheviks
- •The Constituent Assembly, elected in November 1917 with a Socialist Revolutionary majority, met once in January 1918 and was dispersed
- •John Reed's eyewitness account 'Ten Days That Shook the World' was published in 1919
- •The Russian Civil War of 1917–1922 pitted the Red Army against the Whites, with Allied intervention at Archangel, Murmansk and Vladivostok
- •The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was formally created in December 1922
Drill it — 10 cards
1 / 10new card
Sources
- Orlando Figes — A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution 1891–1924
- Sheila Fitzpatrick — The Russian Revolution
- Marxists Internet Archive — Soviet History Archive