Russian Revolutions (1917) From the end of the nineteenth century, rapid industrialization, urbanization, professionalization, the spread of literacy, as well as
Stolypin's land reforms of 1906, created rapid economic and social change which was not accompanied by sufficient political, legal, or administrative reforms, despite the 1905
Russian Revolution. The tensions inherent in Russian society were multiplied by the strains of World War I. As commander of the unsuccessful and demoralized imperial army, Tsar
Nicholas II, weakened by the unpopularity of his wife and her adviser,
Rasputin, lost any credibility.
The
February Revolution was triggered on 8 March (23 February in the old Russian Calendar), when workers in the largest armaments works of Petrograd (formerly St Petersburg) went on strike against the worsening living conditions. They were joined immediately by soldiers and workers elsewhere. Nicholas II tried to dissolve the State
Duma, but, when this failed, he abdicated. Radical workers' councils (
Soviets) formed, first in Petrograd, and then across the country. They were dominated by workers, soldiers, radical intellectuals, and (outside Petrograd) peasants' representatives. Politically, they were dominated by Socialist Revolutionaries and Mensheviks, with the former generally composing the largest single group. Meanwhile, the
Duma managed to form a provisional government, at first with the blessing of the Petrograd Soviet. Against the wishes of the latter, however, the new government under Prince Lvov continued the war, and suffered further humiliating defeats. Army desertions accelerated, and peasants began to expropriate the land, livestock, and other resources of local landlords in the summer of 1917. Against this background of chaos,
Kerensky took over the government in July 1917. However, he failed to introduce the radical measures needed to reverse the ongoing disintegration, most notably an end to the war and land reform as a visible sign of change from the Tsarist regime. The Soviets thus became radicalized further towards the direction of
Lenin, who promised peace, bread, and power to the Soviets.
The
October Revolution, however, was not the direct result of this growing popular radicalization, nor of the growing Bolshevik support in the Petrograd and Moscow Soviets. Rather, on 7 November (25 October in the Russian Calendar) Lenin's aide,
Trotsky, carried out the world's first ‘modern’, successfully planned revolution, through ordering his Bolshevik forces to occupy crucial logistic and strategic points in Petrograd such as the telegraph and telephone offices, the railway stations, newspaper offices, and the offices of the government. With minimal force, the political order had been toppled, and the
Marxist-Leninist ideal of an elite-led revolution realized. The new order, however, was established within the population only gradually, through
Cheka terror and the
Russian Civil War.
