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Russian Revolution, a fundamental political and social upheaval that erupted in the Russian empire in 1917. It began with the collapse of the centuries-old czarist regime in February and led to the overthrow of the Western-style Provisional Government and the establishment of the first national communist political system in October. (Dates of events that precede Russia's adoption of the Gregorian calendar on Feb. 14, 1918, are given in Old Style or in both Old Style and New Style.) The Russian Revolution was followed by a bitter, devastating civil war (1918–1921), during which the Bolsheviks (renamed Communists in March 1918) defeated a variety of hostile military and political forces and consolidated their authority throughout much of the former Russian empire.

Origins of the Revolution

The roots of the Russian Revolution are to be sought in the arbitrary, autocratic, and repressive czarist political and social system that evolved in the 16th–18th century, in the course of Russia's massive territorial expansion and rise into the ranks of the great European powers. Russia's geographical and often self-imposed cultural isolation from the West helped to shield Russia from the liberalizing influences of the French Revolution. Consequently, absolutism and the existing organization of Russian society survived virtually intact during the political convulsions of the late 18th and 19th centuries that shattered the traditional order throughout much of the European continent.

After Russia's defeat in the Crimean War in 1856, Czar Alexander II fostered significant reforms, among the most important being the abolition of serfdom and the creation of elected zemstvos, which provided limited self-government. But the terms of the emancipation severely restricted opportunities for modernizing agriculture. At the same time, the economic plight of most peasants—the bulk of the Russian population—worsened, and their discontent grew.

A further weakness of the so-called Great Reforms was that no provision was made for any sort of representative body at the national level. In the last quarter of the 19th century, provision of a constitution and of a popularly elected parliament to complete the Great Reforms became the rallying cry of liberally inclined nobles, members of the intelligentsia, and articulate representatives of the numerically still very small urban business and professional classes.

Other factors contributed to political and social tensions in Russia around 1900. In addition to Great Russians, a host of religious and ethnic minorities lived within Russia's boundaries. The czarist government's policies of discrimination and persecution of non-Orthodox religious groups and its efforts to repress and to Russify ethnic minorities stimulated discontent among the former and greatly intensified aspirations for independence among the latter.

At the same time, Russia was in the throes of the industrial revolution that Britain had experienced a century earlier. An important side effect of Russia's rapid economic expansion was the creation both of an indigenous working class and of new industrial centers. The Russian industrial revolution brought into being the same appalling living and working conditions that had existed during the early phases of the industrial revolution in Britain. Owing to these conditions, the rebelliousness of the Russian peasantry, hungry for more land, was quickly matched by the alienation and restlessness of the workers, a group whose ranks were constantly growing.

Alarmed by signs of popular discontent, the czarist government resorted to a variety of extraordinary measures aimed at molding an obedient citizenry and at preventing revolutionary activity. Nonetheless, by the first years of the 20th century, the more important opposition movements destined to play major roles in the Revolution had been formed. These included the Marxist Social Democratic labor movement, the peasant-oriented Socialist Revolutionary movement, and the largely middle-class liberal movement. These three groups had significantly different aspirations for the future of Russia. Even within each movement there was little unanimity as to how the Revolution would come about and what it would achieve. Thus by 1905 Russian Social Democrats were split into the more moderate Mensheviks and the more radically inclined Bolsheviks, the latter led by Vladimir Ilich Lenin. Nevertheless, one common element united these diverse groups and subgroups: antipathy to the autocracy.

In the wake of a disastrous war with Japan that began in 1904, opposition groups joined forces for the first time with peasants and factory workers in a concerted attack on the government. However, the resulting Revolution of 1905 did not end in a clear victory for either the government or the Russian public. Although the revised Fundamental Laws granted by Nicholas II in April 1906 transformed the Russian political system into a limited constitutional monarchy with a popularly elected legislature (Duma), the arbitrary power of the czar remained vast. In the first two Dumas, elected on a broad but unequal and indirect franchise, the Constitutional Democratic (Kadet) party, the leading liberal political organization, sought to establish genuine parliamentary government on the Western model. However, the Kadets' efforts ended in failure. In June 1907 the Russian premier, Pyotr Stolypin, dissolved the Second Duma and enacted illegal electoral restrictions that severely narrowed the franchise and produced a Third Duma more attuned to the conservative attitudes of the monarchy and the upper classes.

In light of these factors, there is no easy answer to the central, often-debated question: Would post-1905 Russia have been able to modernize without the violent political and social upheaval that erupted in 1917 if it had not suffered the additional strain of military defeats in World War I? In the past, most Western historians of Russia tended toward an optimistic view of late czarist Russia's prospects for survival and relatively peaceful modernization. They pointed to such measures as the granting of broad civil liberties, the legalization and generally free functioning of political parties and trade unions, the liberalization of regulations affecting higher education and the press, and the Duma's passage of important education and agrarian reforms (the Stolypin reforms) as evidence that meaningful and enduring change was taking place and, more generally, that prior to the outbreak of the war Russian politics and society were becoming more, not less, stable.

But a new generation of professional scholars, scrutinizing all aspects of Russian politics and society at that time, concluded, among other things, that the Stolypin reforms were not a viable, long-term solution to Russia's agrarian problems and, more basically, that on the eve of World War I the government again faced a steadily mounting political and social crisis. The findings of these historians strongly suggest that in 1914 the czarist order was close to bankruptcy and that the war crisis, far from being the primary cause of the Revolution, postponed a political confrontation and a popular explosion that otherwise might have occurred sooner.

Initially, the Russian mobilization effort proceeded more quickly than the Central Powers had expected or the government had dared hope. Within two months of Russia's entry into the war in July 1914, however, the czarist army was dealt devastating defeats in the battles of Tannenberg and the Masurian Lakes. In the following spring the Austro-German armies launched a massive offensive that ended in the autumn with the Russian front pushed back hundreds of miles. By 1916 the willingness of Russia's frontline soldiers to fight was largely spent, and the disintegration of Russia's armed forces everywhere was well advanced.

Acute demoralization was by no means peculiar to Russia's armed forces during World War I. But in Russia's case, the sinking morale among troops was accompanied by a growing political paralysis and government mismanagement of the war effort at home. Tending to view all expressions of public initiative as subversive, the wartime government endeavored to stifle such worthwhile civilian defense efforts as those by the zemstvos to mobilize industry and to reorganize medical services. As the staggering reverses at the front in 1915 and the disintegration in the rear became widely recognized, the government of Nicholas II was subjected to open criticism not only by the old political opposition but by conservative deputies in the Duma as well.

In an effort to bolster the military situation, Nicholas II took personal command of frontline troops in August 1915, leaving administrative matters at home in the hands of archreactionaries, headed by Empress Alexandra and her closest adviser, the notorious faith healer Rasputin. The resulting scandalous political situation was coupled with rapidly deteriorating economic conditions, which grew particularly acute in the last months of 1916. By then, the urgent need for immediate political change was broadly acknowledged—in the court, the Duma, and the command of the army. Indeed, the regime of Nicholas II was so thoroughly discredited that the essential question was not whether it would survive but whether it would be overthrown by a palace coup or a revolution from below. For a more detailed account of the history of Russia before the Revolution, see Russia.

The February Revolution

A popular revolt in Petrograd (St. Petersburg), the Russian capital, forced Nicholas II from the throne. Preceded by a rising wave of antigovernment strikes, food riots, and street demonstrations, the overturn itself was neither planned nor directed by an organized political group. On February 22 (March 7, New Style) a lockout of indefinite duration was announced at the giant Putilov metalworking plant. On the following day, disturbances broke out among housewives who were waiting in long lines for bread, often in vain. These developed into spontaneous street demonstrations calling for the overthrow of the monarchy and an end to the war. By February 25 the popular explosion in Petrograd had become general. Cossacks sent to quell the disturbances demonstrated sympathy for rebelling workers, and units of the Petrograd garrison joined what had become a full-blown revolution.

By February 28 Petrograd was in the hands of insurgents, and the pattern was roughly similar throughout the empire. The czarist regime had become so thoroughly bankrupt that meaningful resistance to the overthrow of the old order failed to emerge. On March 2 (March 15, New Style) Nicholas II abdicated the imperial throne in favor of his brother, Grand Duke Mikhail. Mikhail, in turn, rejected the crown, at least until the convocation of a constituent assembly, and the more than 300-year reign of the Romanovs came to an abrupt end.

The Struggle for Power

Two potential national governments emerged in the first days after the February Revolution. One of these was the Provisional Government, created by a committee of Duma deputies and immediately acknowledged as the legal national authority; the other was the Petrograd Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies, a revolutionary council formed spontaneously by socialist leaders and representatives of Petrograd factories and military units.

The Provisional Government at first was headed by Georgi Lvov (March 2–July 7) and subsequently by a brilliant trial lawyer and outspoken leftist Duma deputy, Aleksandr Kerensky (July 7–October 25). The political figures who initially accepted cabinet posts in the Provisional Government were, by and large, westernized liberals, joined belatedly by centrist or right-moderate socialists. Members of the new cabinet were mainly intellectuals who admired Western political and economic institutions and, in the case of the liberals, possessed great concern for legality and the preservation of private property. Many of these men were also patriotic and nationalistic. Consequently, they strove to delay fundamental political decisions, such as land reform and independence for minority nationalities, until the convocation of a properly elected constituent assembly, long a basic demand of all Russian revolutionary groups. In the meantime, the Provisional Government concentrated its efforts on reestablishing order and bolstering the defense effort.

The Petrograd Soviet and the other local soviets that quickly sprang up in urban and rural areas around the country were made up of socialist leaders and rank-and-file representatives elected by workers, peasants, and military personnel. In May and June, national conventions of workers', soldiers', and peasants' soviets formed permanent All-Russian Executive Committees. Taken together, these were not only numerically more representative but, by virtue of the loyalty they commanded among their constituents, also potentially more powerful than the Provisional Government.

Until October 1917, when the executive bodies of the All-Russian Soviets became dominated by Bolsheviks, these institutions were effectively controlled by moderate socialists. Under their leadership the soviets recognized the authority of the Provisional Government and restricted their role to guardians of the interests of the lower classes. Indeed, in early May, when the Provisional Government appeared to be on the verge of collapse, several key moderate socialist leaders from the Petrograd Soviet accepted ministerial posts.

The moderate socialists' support of the Provisional Government was, at least in part, the result of doctrinal considerations. The Mensheviks remained committed to the orthodox Marxist assumption that a "bourgeois revolution," which the overthrow of the autocracy appeared to represent, had to be followed by an indefinite period of bourgeois-democratic rule. It followed that an underdeveloped Russia was not yet ripe for a socialist revolution. The Socialist Revolutionaries in the executive committees of the soviets, while not prevented by ideology from taking power into their own hands, shared with many Mensheviks the conviction that collaboration with military commanders and commercial and industrial groups was essential for Russia's survival in the war and as a bulwark against possible counterrevolution.

The postponement of fundamental political and social reforms until careful decisions could be made in peacetime doubtless seemed the only just course to the prominent liberals most responsible for shaping the Provisional Government's policies. But to hundreds of thousands of common soldiers, workers, and peasants who had little commitment to the war effort and who resented the fact that the February Revolution had brought them only meager social and economic gains, the prospect of postponing further reforms until peacetime made no sense at all.

By the late spring, growing segments of the lower classes viewed the Provisional Government as an instrument of the propertied classes, opposed to fundamental political and social change and unconcerned about the needs of common citizens. Among the working classes the moderate socialists were increasingly criticized for their support of the government and the war effort, whereas the soviets were viewed as genuinely democratic institutions of popular self-rule.

Of the major Russian political groups competing for power and influence in 1917, only the Bolshevik party remained unfettered by association with the government and was therefore free to encourage its supporters to oppose it. On the eve of World War I, the Bolsheviks had achieved considerable success in attracting factory workers away from the more moderate Mensheviks. Much of this gain in support may have been lost during the war, when large numbers of these workers were shipped to the front and when local Bolshevik organizations were frequently decimated by arrests. But the party made a rapid recovery following the February Revolution.

In April Lenin returned to Russia from exile abroad and pointed the Bolshevik party toward an early socialist revolution. Subsequently, "Peace, Land, and Bread!" and "All Power to the Soviets!" became the party's key slogans. By tacit consent, Lenin's prerevolutionary conception of a small, united, centralized party was discarded. Decision making became more democratic and decentralized; the relatively free exchange of opinion was tolerated, if not encouraged; and tens of thousands of new members were welcomed into the party.

The fundamental weakness of the Provisional Government and the increasing strength of the Bolsheviks and other groups of the extreme left became strikingly apparent during the July days (July 3–5; July 16–18, New Style), when the government was at the mercy of crowds of armed workers, soldiers, and Baltic fleet sailors demanding the creation of an exclusively socialist, soviet government. But the moderately inclined Menshevik–Socialist Revolutionary soviet leadership steadfastly refused to assume power. Bolshevik leaders hung back from the decisive step of trying to overthrow the government. After the minister of justice released documents purporting to prove that Lenin was an agent of enemy Germany and it was announced that loyalist troops were on their way to Petrograd from the front, the rebellion fizzled.

Non-Soviet historians have tended to view the July uprising as an abortive Leninist attempt to seize power. While it is true that the movement was in part an outgrowth of months of Bolshevik propaganda, it appears that local Bolshevik organizations in the capital, responsive to their ultramilitant constituencies, encouraged the insurrection against the wishes of Lenin and a majority of the Central Committee. These leaders considered such action premature because it would be opposed by peasants in the provinces and soldiers at the front. The July uprising ended in an apparently decisive defeat for the Bolshevik party. The Bolsheviks were momentarily discredited even with the Left, both because of the party's apparent role in organizing the uprising and because of the German-agent charges against Lenin, who now went into hiding.

By the end of the July days, an initially successful Russian offensive had been turned by the Germans into another terrible rout of the Russian army. Kerensky became premier, heading a coalition government of liberals and moderate socialists who were most immediately concerned with restoring political authority and order at home and somehow shoring up the collapsing front. It appeared that a lull had been reached in the workers' movement, and public opinion seemed to have shifted decisively to the right. Yet despite a constant barrage of rhetoric by Kerensky, echoed by a host of resurgent civil and military rightist groups, none of the repressive measures proclaimed by the government at this time were fully implemented, nor did they achieve their objectives. Moreover, the apparently increasing danger of counterrevolution heightened popular suspicions that the Kerensky government itself was part of the movement to stifle the Revolution and helped to dispel much of the bitterness and hostility toward the Bolsheviks that had developed among workers in the wake of the July uprising. By early August the party, with its apparatus intact, was embarked on a new period of growth.

For liberals and conservatives who had prematurely celebrated the demise of Bolshevism in July, the party's quick recovery and the numerous indications of deepening political and social crisis were shattering. Each day brought fresh reports of expanding anarchy among impatient, land-hungry peasants in the countryside; disorder in the cities; increasing militancy of the country's factory workers; the government's inability to resist movements toward complete autonomy by the Finns and Ukrainians; the continuing radicalization of soldiers at the front and rear; catastrophic breakdowns in the production and distribution of essential supplies; and skyrocketing prices.

Under the weight of this news, many industrial and business figures, representatives of the landed class, military officers—in short, a broad spectrum of liberal as well as conservative opinion—and even Allied representatives in Russia lost faith in Kerensky's capacity to stem the revolutionary tide. For some, the sole hope of restoring order at the front and arresting chaos at home seemed to lie in the establishment of a strong military dictatorship. At the end of August, they supported a rightist coup by Gen. Lavr Kornilov, commander in chief of the Russian army. For a brief time, it appeared that Kornilov's troops would occupy the capital and that the Provisional Government would be overthrown. However, all political organizations to the left of the Kadets—the Mensheviks, Socialist Revolutionaries, anarchists, Bolsheviks, every labor organization of importance, and soldier and sailor committees at all levels—immediately banded together in defense of the Revolution. Kornilov was forced to surrender without a shot fired.

The failure of Kornilov's coup demoralized the Kadets. The Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries were weakened by interparty disputes over the nature and makeup of a future government. The big winners in the Kornilov affair were the Bolsheviks, whose increasing political strength was reflected in their newly won majorities in the Petrograd and Moscow soviets. In late September, Leon Trotsky, a Bolshevik, secured the key post of president of the Petrograd Soviet.

Kornilov's defeat testified anew to the great potential power of the Left. The flood of political resolutions adopted after the Kornilov affair demonstrated that there was a similarity between the professed Bolshevik program and the aspirations of the Russian lower classes. To be sure, the popular mood did not specifically reflect a desire for a Bolshevik government. Bolshevism was perceived at this time to stand for soviet power, for a strong but democratic government, genuinely representative of all socialist groups and ruling in the interests of ordinary citizens. Whether the Bolsheviks would ultimately translate this popular aspiration into a successful bid for exclusive power was still very much an open question.

Overthrow of the Provisional Government

Two weeks after Kornilov's defeat, Lenin, then still hiding in Finland, concluded that the moment was favorable for overthrowing the Provisional Government. He sent a series of frantic appeals to the Bolshevik Central Committee in Petrograd for the immediate organization of a popular armed uprising.

Lenin's impatience at this time was based on optimistic assessments of current political developments in Russia and of the prospects for revolutionary explosions abroad. He also seems to have feared that if the existing situation was not immediately exploited, another opportunity might not come again soon. Nonetheless, his insistent urgings were ignored by his party. This rejection was due partly to the stubborn efforts of such influential right-wing Bolsheviks as Lev Kamenev and Grigori Zinoviev, who objected to Lenin's appeals on basic, ideological grounds. But of even greater significance was the opposition of many militantly inclined Bolshevik leaders, such as Trotsky, who shared in full Lenin's assumptions regarding the necessity and feasibility of an early socialist revolution in Russia. These leaders doubted that popular support for the "immediate bayonet charge" advocated by Lenin could be successfully mobilized. Because of their continuing interaction with workers and soldiers, they had a more realistic appreciation than did Lenin of the limits of the party's political authority among the masses and of the acceptance by the masses of the soviets as legitimate democratic institutions.

A second national Congress of Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies was due to convene in Petrograd in October. Party leaders who were on the spot were ultimately forced to recognize that if the Bolsheviks usurped the prerogatives of the congress to act on the government issue, the party risked losing much of its hard-won popular support and, in all probability, would suffer as devastating a defeat as it had in July. At the same time, there was every hope that if the Bolsheviks continued to expand the party's political and military strength at the government's expense, and if it waited for the government to attack before actually launching an open insurrection, the prospects for success would be greatly enhanced.

The danger of such a course was that it might lead to the creation of a socialist coalition government, including moderates, rather than one of the extreme Left. It appears that Lenin was one of very few Bolshevik leaders to whom the enormous risk of a premature, independent, ultraradical course was outweighed by the desire to create an exclusively leftist regime at once.

Although with considerable wavering, caused largely by pressure for bolder action from Lenin, who by then had secretly returned to Petrograd, the Bolsheviks pursued precisely the course advocated by Trotsky and others. In mid-October, taking advantage of a counterrevolutionary scare generated by the government's announced intention to transfer the bulk of the radicalized Petrograd garrison to the front, the party superintended the creation of an ostensibly nonparty defense institution, the Military Revolutionary Committee of the Petrograd Soviet. Under the guise of defending the Revolution and the coming Congress of Soviets, which was scheduled to open on October 25, the Military Revolutionary Committee secured the allegiance of virtually the entire Petrograd garrison, thus effectively disarming the government.

At dawn on October 24 (November 6, New Style), Kerensky responded to the Military Revolutionary Committee's usurpation of his command authority by initiating steps to suppress the Left, thereby ensuring the success of the armed action against the government that Lenin had been demanding for more than a month. In the prevailing circumstances, only very meager and constantly dwindling numbers of cossacks, military school cadets, and women soldiers were willing to side with the government.

Beginning on the afternoon of October 24, Bolshevik-led soldiers, sailors, and Red Guard detachments easily took control of key Petrograd bridges, transport and communications facilities, main public buildings, and munitions stores. On the following night, October 25 (November 7, New Style), revolutionary forces invaded the Winter Palace and arrested most of the cabinet. An exception was Kerensky, who earlier that day had fled to the front in a largely futile search for loyal troops. Later that same night, deputies to the Congress of Soviets approved a historic public manifesto, drafted by Lenin, announcing the Provisional Government's demise and proclaiming the congress's intention of immediately forming a revolutionary soviet, socialist government. Subsequently, the new administration was named the Soviet of People's Commissars. The congress approved Lenin's decrees on peace and land, promising Russia's prompt withdrawal from World War I (a peace treaty with the Central Powers was signed at Brest-Litovsk in March 1918) and transferring private and church lands to the soviets for distribution among the peasants.