The Revolutions of 1917 and the Civil War
War and hunger bring down the tsar in February 1917; in October the Bolsheviks seize power and win a brutal civil war, founding the Soviet Union in 1922.
- Russia in Revolution: An Empire in Crisis, 1890 to 1928 — S. A. Smith, Oxford University Press (2017)
- A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution, 1891–1924 — Orlando Figes, Jonathan Cape (1996)
- A History of Russia — Nicholas V. Riasanovsky and Mark D. Steinberg, Oxford University Press
By early 1917 Russia had lost millions of men in the First World War, its cities were short of bread and its government had lost credibility, damaged further by the influence of the mystic Grigory Rasputin over the imperial family. When women queuing for bread in Petrograd (St Petersburg) began protesting on International Women’s Day, 23 February (8 March in the Western calendar), workers joined them and soldiers refused to fire. Within days Nicholas II abdicated, ending three centuries of Romanov rule.
- Russia in Revolution: An Empire in Crisis, 1890 to 1928 — S. A. Smith, Oxford University Press (2017)
- A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution, 1891–1924 — Orlando Figes, Jonathan Cape (1996)
Two kinds of power
A liberal Provisional Government took office, alongside the Petrograd Soviet, a council of workers’ and soldiers’ deputies. This “dual power” could not solve the three demands that mattered most: peace, land and bread. The government kept fighting the war, and peasants began seizing land themselves.
- Russia in Revolution: An Empire in Crisis, 1890 to 1928 — S. A. Smith, Oxford University Press (2017)
- A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution, 1891–1924 — Orlando Figes, Jonathan Cape (1996)
Vladimir Lenin, back from exile in Switzerland in April with German help, offered a simple programme: “Peace, land, bread” and “All power to the Soviets”. On the night of 24–25 October (6–7 November) 1917 the Bolsheviks, coordinated by Leon Trotsky, took over Petrograd almost bloodlessly and arrested the government in the Winter Palace. When the elected Constituent Assembly met in January 1918 with the Bolsheviks in a minority, they shut it down after a single day.
- Russia in Revolution: An Empire in Crisis, 1890 to 1928 — S. A. Smith, Oxford University Press (2017)
- A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution, 1891–1924 — Orlando Figes, Jonathan Cape (1996)
War, terror and a new state
The Bolsheviks made a punitive peace with Germany at Brest-Litovsk in March 1918, giving up huge territories, and set up the Cheka, the secret police. Civil war followed between the Reds, the anti-Bolshevik Whites, peasant armies, nationalist movements in Ukraine, the Caucasus and elsewhere, and foreign interventions. Both sides used terror. In July 1918 the Bolsheviks shot Nicholas II, his wife, their five children and four servants in Yekaterinburg.
- A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution, 1891–1924 — Orlando Figes, Jonathan Cape (1996)
- Russia in Revolution: An Empire in Crisis, 1890 to 1928 — S. A. Smith, Oxford University Press (2017)
By 1921 the Reds had won, but war, terror, epidemics and the famine of 1921–22 had killed millions, and some one to two million people, the so-called “White émigrés”, had fled abroad to Paris, Berlin, Prague, Belgrade and Harbin, taking much of Russia’s old culture with them.
- A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution, 1891–1924 — Orlando Figes, Jonathan Cape (1996)
- Russia in Revolution: An Empire in Crisis, 1890 to 1928 — S. A. Smith, Oxford University Press (2017)
- A History of Russia — Nicholas V. Riasanovsky and Mark D. Steinberg, Oxford University Press
Why it still matters
The revolution created a new kind of state: one-party, atheist, run by a secret police and committed to remaking human beings. It also spread literacy, opened education and careers to millions of peasants and workers, and promised equality for women and non-Russian nationalities, at least on paper. That mixture of hope and violence is why Russians argue about it. On the centenary in 2017, the state held no grand celebration; official messaging stressed reconciliation and the dangers of upheaval.
- Russia in Revolution: An Empire in Crisis, 1890 to 1928 — S. A. Smith, Oxford University Press (2017)
- A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution, 1891–1924 — Orlando Figes, Jonathan Cape (1996)
The Great October Socialist Revolution was a workers' and peasants' revolution led by Lenin's party, which freed Russia from tsarism and capitalism and opened a new era for humanity.
- Russia in Revolution: An Empire in Crisis, 1890 to 1928 — S. A. Smith, Oxford University Press (2017)
A seizure of power by a small, ruthless party, often seen as foreign-funded, that murdered the royal family, persecuted the Church and plunged the country into civil war and terror. The Church canonised Nicholas II and his family in 2000.
- A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution, 1891–1924 — Orlando Figes, Jonathan Cape (1996)
- Russia in Revolution: An Empire in Crisis, 1890 to 1928 — S. A. Smith, Oxford University Press (2017)
A genuine popular revolution in February, driven by war, hunger and land hunger, was followed by a Bolshevik coup in October that had real support among soldiers and workers in the cities but became a dictatorship within months.
- Russia in Revolution: An Empire in Crisis, 1890 to 1928 — S. A. Smith, Oxford University Press (2017)
- A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution, 1891–1924 — Orlando Figes, Jonathan Cape (1996)
Why it matters today
1917 still divides Russians. Few now celebrate it, and the 7 November holiday was abolished in 2005. For some it was a crime that destroyed the old Russia; for others it brought literacy, industry and a superpower. The modern Russian state prefers to stress unity and to treat revolution itself as a danger to be avoided.