Russian Revolution

The Russian Revolution, also called the Russian Revolution of 1917, consisted of two revolutions in that year.

Corruption and inefficiency were widespread in the imperial government, and ethnic minorities were eager to escape Russian domination, while peasants, workers and soldiers finally rose up after the enormous and largely pointless slaughter of World War I destroyed Russia's economy as well as its prestige as a European power. The February Revolution of 1917 was the second revolution in the Russian Empire after the Revolution of 1905.

For more than three centuries the Romanov dynasty ruled Russia. Nicholas II, born May 6 [May 18, New Style] 1868 at Tsarskoye Selo, reigned as the last Russian emperor from 1894 to 1917. In 1894 he married Alexandra, a granddaughter of Queen Victoria; the couple had four daughters — Olga, Tatiana, Maria and Anastasia — and one son, Alexis. In 1913 the tsar celebrated the tercentenary of Romanov rule over an empire stretching from central Europe to the Pacific Ocean and from the Arctic to the borders of Afghanistan.

The First World War placed the autocracy under strains it could not contain, and the Russian Revolution stands among the most influential events to emerge from that conflict. Russia suffered a disastrous defeat at the Battle of Tannenberg in the first weeks of the war, with 78,000 Russian soldiers killed and wounded and 92,000 captured by the Germans. On September 5 1915 the emperor dismissed Grand Duke Nicholas and assumed supreme command himself; since he had no experience of war, almost all his ministers protested against the step as likely to impair the army's morale. The power vacuum left by the emperor's departure for the army was filled by Alexandra, who elevated unqualified favourites like Rasputin and disregarded signs of impending revolution.

On the night of December 16–17 (December 29–30, New Style) 1916, conservative nobles murdered Rasputin. The arch-monarchist chairman of the Council of Ministers, Ivan Goremykin, persuaded the tsar to reject the proposals of the Progressive Bloc; Goremykin and Nicholas II instead agreed to disband the Duma and institute more autocratic rule.

The February Revolution unfolded between 22 February and 3 March 1917 by the Julian reckoning, corresponding to 8 through 16 March 1917 in the Gregorian calendar. Its setting was Petrograd, then the capital of the Russian Empire. The upheaval drew in the Bolsheviks, the Petrograd Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies, the Provisional Government, and the Russian Army.

The collapse began amid declining wages and severe food shortages, which drove the populace of the capital into strikes and street demonstrations. On 22 February 1917 metal workers in Petrograd went on strike. The turning point came on 26 February, when troops sided with the crowds and fired on the police.

By 27 February, with Petrograd at a virtual standstill, key military units went over to the side of the crowds and seized arsenals of weapons, and the following day placed the tsarist ministers under arrest.

• 22 February 1917
  Metal workers strike
  Metal workers in Petrograd went on strike ^{8The February Revolution in Russia in 1917 · Imperial War Museums ↗}.
• 23 February 1917
  International Women's Day protests
  Female protesters marched against food rationing, and around 200,000 people filled the streets demanding the replacement of the tsar and an end to the war ^{8The February Revolution in Russia in 1917 · Imperial War Museums ↗}.
• 26 February 1917
  Troops side with the crowds
  The turning point came when troops sided with the crowds and fired on the police ^{5Revolutions (Russian Empire) · 1914-1918-online. International Encyclopedia of the First World War (Freie Universitat Berlin) ↗}.
• 27 February 1917
  Key military units defect
  Key military units went over to the side of the crowds and seized arsenals of weapons ^{9February Revolution · Seventeen Moments in Soviet History, Michigan State University ↗}.

The first cabinet appointed by the Provisional Committee was led by Prince George E. L'vov as prime minister and minister of the interior, with Miliukov at foreign affairs, Guchkov at war and marine, and Kerenskii at justice. Its programme began with an immediate general amnesty for all political and religious offenses and with freedom of speech and press, extended to the army so far as war conditions permitted. The new government promised immediate preparation for a Constituent Assembly elected by universal and secret vote, which was to determine the form of government and draw up the constitution.

The Provisional Government had to share power with the Petrograd Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies, an assembly of over 500 elected by ordinary people. Real power in Russia after the February Revolution lay with the socialist leaders of that Soviet, who were elected by popular mandate unlike the ministers of the Provisional Government.

Shortly after the February Revolution employers were forced to concede the eight-hour day and substantial wage rises. War production and inflation soon swallowed up the gains, leading to a new round of strikes.

Vladimir Lenin was born on April 10 (April 22, New Style) 1870 at Simbirsk and died on January 21, 1924, at Gorki. He was the founder of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks), the leader of the Bolshevik Revolution, and the first head of the Soviet state, an office he held from 1917 until his death. As founder of the All-Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) and leader of the Bolshevik coup d'état of 1917, he created the Soviet Union and, along with Karl Marx, the communist worldview. He adopted the pseudonym Lenin in 1901, during his clandestine party work after exile in Siberia.

In the April Theses Lenin argued that the war under the new provisional government of Lvov unquestionably remained on Russia's part a predatory imperialist war. He held that not the slightest concession to revolutionary defencism was permissible. He further maintained that the masses must be made to see that the Soviets of Workers' Deputies were the only possible form of revolutionary government, and that state power should be transferred entirely to the Soviets.

In September 1917 Lenin wrote to the Central Committee that the Bolsheviks, having obtained a majority in the Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies of both capitals, could and must take state power into their own hands. He argued that it would be naive to wait for a formal majority for the Bolsheviks, since no revolution ever waits for that.

Lenin's party broke with democracy by ignoring the vote cast by 41 million Russians that gave a majority to the socialist revolutionaries in the Constituent Assembly — 370 out of 707 deputies against only 175 elected Bolsheviks.

The events occurred in Petrograd, then the capital of the Russian Empire. The seizure of power came at the expense of more moderate social democrats, the Mensheviks, and of the conservative Whites.

The actual seizure of power was largely conducted by the Petrograd Soviet through its improvised Military Revolutionary Committee. Kerensky's ill-conceived decision to shut down the Bolsheviks' printing press turned out to be the impetus for the uprising, and on October 24 Red Guards and soldiers began to occupy key points in the city. On 24 October government troops took over the Bolshevik press in Petrograd, provoking Soviet countermeasures; later, on the evening of 25 October, Soviet forces infiltrated the Winter Palace and arrested the ministers. The battleship Aurora bombarded the Winter Palace with blank shells, the palace was stormed by Red Guards, and most of the Provisional Government's ministers waited there in anxious expectation.

A proclamation issued at 10 a.m. on October 25 1917 announced that the Provisional Government had been deposed and that state power had passed into the hands of the Revolutionary Military Committee, which headed the Petrograd proletariat and the garrison. In the early hours of October 26 1917 the rump Second Congress of Soviets adopted a proclamation drafted by Lenin which laid out the new government's program. The Congress approved a new governing body, the Council of People's Commissars (Sovnarkom), consisting of all Bolsheviks, with Lenin as chairman and head of the government. As the Menshevik and Socialist Revolutionary delegates stormed out of the soviet congress in protest, Trotsky, the congress president, told them to join the rubbish heap of history. Lenin, Trotsky and their compatriots launched a successful coup that overthrew the Provisional Government, a coup which, remarkably, had been advertised ahead of time by the Bolsheviks' own newspaper.

• 24 October 1917
  The Bolshevik press is seized
  Government troops took over the Bolshevik press in Petrograd, provoking Soviet countermeasures ^{5Revolutions (Russian Empire) · 1914-1918-online. International Encyclopedia of the First World War (Freie Universitat Berlin) ↗}. Kerensky's decision to shut down the printing press turned out to be the impetus for the uprising, and Red Guards and soldiers began to occupy key points in the city ^{15The October Revolution · Seventeen Moments in Soviet History, Michigan State University ↗}.
• 25 October 1917
  The Winter Palace is infiltrated
  On the evening of 25 October, Soviet forces infiltrated the Winter Palace and arrested the ministers ^{5Revolutions (Russian Empire) · 1914-1918-online. International Encyclopedia of the First World War (Freie Universitat Berlin) ↗}.
• 26 October 1917
  The Second Congress of Soviets acts
  In the early hours of October 26 the rump Second Congress of Soviets adopted a proclamation drafted by Lenin which declared the Provisional Government overthrown and laid out the new government's program ^{17First Bolshevik Decrees: The Formation of the Soviet Government and Its First Acts · Seventeen Moments in Soviet History, Michigan State University ↗}. The Congress approved the Council of People's Commissars, with Lenin as chairman and head of the government ^{17First Bolshevik Decrees: The Formation of the Soviet Government and Its First Acts · Seventeen Moments in Soviet History, Michigan State University ↗}.

Among the initial measures, the decree on peace called on the belligerent powers to cease hostilities and commit to no annexations or indemnities, appealing to workers in Britain, France and Germany to press their governments toward negotiations for a just peace. The land decree proclaimed that private ownership of land shall be abolished forever.

At Brest-Litovsk, from 22 December 1917 to 10 February 1918 (Julian calendar: 9 December to 28 January), Soviet representatives and the Central Powers negotiated a separate peace. The Soviet government's initial strategy, articulated by Trotsky, was neither war nor peace: he argued that the negotiations should be used for propaganda purposes. An armistice was signed on December 2 1917; a formal treaty followed only on March 3 (New Style) 1918 while military action continued for several months as the German army pushed into territories nominally under Soviet control. After the Germans resumed military operations on February 18 and presented stiffer demands that included an end to the Soviet presence in Ukraine and the Baltic provinces, Lenin achieved a majority in the Central Committee in favor of accepting the enemy's terms.

On 3 March 1918 — following the breakdown of the talks and a new German offensive — Lenin accepted the dictated peace that deprived Russia of eighteen provinces and nearly 30 percent of its pre-war population. The treaty was executed in quintuplicate at Brest-Litovsk on 3 March 1918 by the plenipotentiaries of both sides. The treaty's first article declared that the state of war between Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria and Turkey on the one part and Russia on the other had ceased. Within a few days of the German victory Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Ukraine and Belarus gained independence, and British and American troops landed in northern Russia.

The Russian Civil War ran from June 1918 to 1920, a confrontation between the proponents of restoring the deposed old regime, known as the Whites, and those who defended the new socialist regime that emerged from the October Revolution, the Reds. It was a conflict in which the Red Army successfully defended the newly formed Bolshevik government led by Lenin against various Russian and interventionist anti-Bolshevik armies. Opponents of the Bolsheviks ranged from the Social Revolutionaries and Mensheviks to the rightist Whites, whose main asset was the Volunteer Army in the Kuban steppes, placed under General Denikin's command in April 1918 and turned into a fine fighting force. The Czechoslovak Legion, composed of Czech and Slovak deserters from the Austro-Hungarian army, was ordered by Trotsky in May 1918 to surrender its arms during its evacuation from Russia.

The ranks of the Red Army swelled from 360,000 men in July to 800,000 in November, 1.5 million in May 1919 and 5.5 million by late 1920, while desertion remained a big problem. In early 1921 the sailors of Kronstadt mutinied and joined workers and peasants in calling for an end to the Bolshevik dictatorship, free elections, freedom of speech and equality in rationing.

The Cheka's military detachments, tribunals and special prisons had begun to unleash the Red Terror on 31 August 1918, and many high-ranking Bolsheviks were strongly opposed to this state within the state.

The abdication left Russia without a sovereign for the first time since 1613, the year the Time of Troubles preceded the accession of Michael, founder of the Romanov dynasty. The tsar, his family and their loyal retainers were then detained by the provisional government and moved to Yekaterinburg. On 17 July 1918, when White army forces approached the area, the tsar and his entire family were slaughtered on Bolshevik orders to prevent their rescue.

Nicholas inserted a provision to leave the throne to his younger brother, Grand Duke Mikhail, but the soviets demanded "No more Romanovs! We want a Republic!". Mikhail was technically czar for a day before issuing his own abdication manifesto.