In five minutes: what was the Russian Revolution of 1917?
The Russian Revolution of 1917 was a chain of events in which a 300-year-old monarchy collapsed and, eight months later, a small, disciplined party took over the state. The first stage, the February Revolution, was largely unplanned: hungry workers, women in bread queues and mutinous soldiers in Petrograd (today's Saint Petersburg) forced Tsar Nicholas II to give up the throne. The second stage, the October Revolution, was a much more organised seizure of power by the Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky. It created Soviet Russia and, after a long civil war, the Soviet Union in 1922.
This page belongs to our topic on The Russian Empire (1721–1917). If you want the long background, read Causes of the Russian Revolution alongside it.
A note on dates. Until February 1918 Russia used the Julian calendar, which ran 13 days behind the Gregorian calendar used in Western Europe. That is why the "February" revolution happened in March by Western reckoning, and the "October" revolution in November. Historians give both: this page uses Gregorian dates first, with the old-style date in brackets. Soviet Russia switched to the Gregorian calendar in 1918, when 1 February (Old Style) became 14 February.
Why the monarchy was in trouble
Several pressures had been building for decades. Russia was a vast, mostly peasant empire in which serfdom had ended only in 1861 and many farmers still felt short of land (see Serfdom in Russia). Industrial cities such as Petrograd and Moscow had grown fast, with crowded housing, long hours and few legal ways to protest. The tsar still held autocratic power, even after the Russian Revolution of 1905 forced him to accept an elected Duma. The Duma had limited powers, and Nicholas often ignored or dissolved it.
The First World War turned these weaknesses into a crisis. Millions of men were drafted, the army suffered heavy defeats, and railways and farms struggled to feed both the front and the cities. Prices rose faster than wages, and by the winter of 1916–17 bread and fuel were scarce in the capital. Nicholas had taken personal command of the army in 1915 and was away at headquarters in Mogilev, so the failures of the war were increasingly blamed on him and on the court, where the influence of Grigori Rasputin was widely resented. By early 1917 even conservative politicians and generals doubted that the monarchy could win the war.
February Revolution: the tsar falls
On 8 March 1917 (23 February Old Style), International Women's Day, women textile workers in Petrograd left their factories and marched to demand bread. Other workers joined them over the next days, and the strike spread across the city. On 11 March (26 February), troops fired on demonstrators, and many people were killed. The decisive moment came the next day, 12 March (27 February): soldiers of the Volynsky Regiment refused to shoot, and other regiments mutinied. The army garrison, which was meant to keep order, joined the crowd.
Two new centres of authority appeared at once. Members of the Duma formed a Provisional Committee, which soon became the Provisional Government, first headed by Prince Georgy Lvov. At the same time, workers and soldiers elected the Petrograd Soviet, a council of delegates that issued its own orders. Generals told the tsar that he had lost the army's support. On 15 March (2 March) Nicholas II signed an abdication in his train near Pskov. He named his brother Grand Duke Michael as successor, but Michael declined the crown the next day, and the Romanov dynasty ended.
The Russian people welcomed the change, and the new government quickly promised civil liberties, an amnesty for political prisoners and a future Constituent Assembly. Its great weakness was that it chose to stay in the war.
Dual power: two governments, one capital
From March to October, Russia had what historians call "dual power". The Provisional Government held official authority but had few means to enforce it. The Petrograd Soviet, dominated at first by Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries (SRs), controlled the soldiers and the railways and telegraph. Its Order No. 1 (14 March, or 1 March Old Style) told soldiers to obey the Provisional Government only when its orders did not conflict with the Soviet's. Discipline in the army weakened quickly.
The government's problems piled up. Peasants wanted land and began to take it from landowners, while ministers said that land reform should wait for the Constituent Assembly. Workers wanted better pay and control over factories. Non-Russian regions such as Ukraine and Finland pressed for autonomy. Above all, people were tired of a war that continued to take lives and wreck the economy. A summer offensive launched in July (June Old Style) under War Minister Alexander Kerensky ended in failure and further damaged both the army and the government.
Lenin returns and the Bolsheviks grow
The Bolsheviks were a radical Marxist party, small in early 1917. Lenin, their leader, had been in exile in Switzerland. The German government, hoping to weaken Russia, allowed him to travel through Germany in a sealed train, and he reached Petrograd's Finland Station on 16 April (3 April). The next day he presented his April Theses: no support for the Provisional Government, an end to the war, and "all power to the Soviets." Even many of his own colleagues were startled, but his slogans of peace, land and bread matched what many workers, soldiers and peasants wanted.
The first big test came in the July Days, 16–20 July (3–7 July Old Style), when armed workers and soldiers demonstrated in Petrograd and the government's troops fired on crowds. The Bolsheviks were blamed, some leaders were arrested, and Lenin went into hiding in Finland. Prince Lvov resigned and Kerensky became head of the government.
The Bolsheviks recovered in September. General Lavr Kornilov, the army commander, ordered troops toward Petrograd in what Kerensky and others saw as an attempt to impose military rule. Kerensky asked for help from the Soviets, and the Bolsheviks, including their Red Guards, took part in defending the city. The attempt collapsed within days, but it discredited both Kornilov and Kerensky, and it made the Bolsheviks look like defenders of the revolution. Soon they won majorities in the Petrograd and Moscow Soviets, and Trotsky became chairman of the Petrograd Soviet in early October.
October Revolution: the seizure of power
Lenin returned secretly to Petrograd and persuaded the Bolshevik Central Committee, on 23 October (10 October), to vote for an armed uprising by ten votes to two. Lev Kamenev and Grigory Zinoviev opposed it, arguing that the party should wait for the Constituent Assembly. The plan was timed for the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets, due to meet on 7 November (25 October). The Soviet's Military Revolutionary Committee, under Trotsky's guidance, took over the garrison's loyalty.
The uprising itself was swift. On the night of 6–7 November (24–25 October), Red Guards and soldiers took bridges, railway stations, the telephone exchange and other key points with little resistance. Kerensky left the city to look for loyal troops. The cruiser Aurora, whose crew supported the Bolsheviks, is remembered for its part, and its shot is often treated as the signal for the final move. The Provisional Government's ministers were meeting in the Winter Palace. They were arrested in the early hours of 8 November (26 October). The popular picture of a massive, bloody storming of the palace comes largely from later Soviet films; the real event was far less violent, and few people died.
That evening the Congress of Soviets met at the Smolny Institute. Moderate socialists walked out in protest, leaving the Bolsheviks and their allies, the Left SRs, in control. On 8 November the Congress passed the Decree on Peace, which called for a negotiated end to the war, and the Decree on Land, which abolished private landownership. It also set up a new government, the Council of People's Commissars, with Lenin as chairman.
Consequences: peace, civil war and a new state
The Bolsheviks moved fast to consolidate power. They set up the Cheka, a security police, in December 1917 (7 December Old Style). Elections to the Constituent Assembly in November gave the SRs the largest share of the vote, with the Bolsheviks in second place at about a quarter. When the Assembly met on 18 January 1918 (5 January Old Style) it refused to accept Soviet authority, and the Bolsheviks closed it the next day. Their regime was now openly one-party rule in practice.
Lenin had promised peace, and it came at a price. An armistice with Germany was signed in December 1917, and the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk followed on 3 March 1918. Soviet Russia gave up Poland, the Baltic lands and large areas of Ukraine and Belarus. The treaty was cancelled after Germany's defeat in November 1918, but by then Russia was in a civil war.
The Civil War pitted the Red Army, built by Trotsky from early 1918, against the "Whites", a loose set of anti-Bolshevik forces including former tsarist officers, liberals and moderate socialists. Foreign powers intervened, among them Britain, France, the United States and Japan, which sent troops to Siberia from 1918 until 1922. Fighting in the west largely ended in 1920, and in the far east in 1922. Millions died in the fighting, in famine and in disease, and the Bolsheviks used terror and harsh "war communism" requisitioning to win. Nicholas II and his family were shot at Yekaterinburg in July 1918. In 1921 Lenin replaced war communism with the New Economic Policy, which allowed limited private trade, and in December 1922 the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was formally created.
What exams ask
- Two revolutions: know the February (March) and October (November) revolutions, and say which was spontaneous and which was planned.
- Causes: war losses, food shortages, the autocracy's loss of support, and the failure of the 1905 reforms.
- Dual power: the Provisional Government versus the Petrograd Soviet, and why the Provisional Government's decision to stay in the war was fatal.
- Key people: Nicholas II, Lvov, Kerensky, Kornilov, Lenin, Trotsky.
- Key documents: Order No. 1, the April Theses, the Decrees on Peace and Land, and the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk.
- Outcomes: civil war, war communism, the NEP and the creation of the USSR in 1922.
A common essay prompt asks why the Bolsheviks won. Good answers combine the weakness of the Provisional Government, Lenin's simple slogans, control of the Soviets and Red Guards, and the disunity of the Bolsheviks' enemies.
Read next
- The Russian Revolution of 1905: the earlier uprising that gave Russia its first Duma and shows how the monarchy survived one crisis.
- Causes of the Russian Revolution: a deeper look at the social, political and economic pressures behind 1917.
- Serfdom in Russia: how the peasant question shaped the demand for land.
- The Russian Empire (1721–1917): the hub for the whole topic.
