The Bolshevik Revolution, also known as the October Revolution, took place in Russia. It was orchestrated by the Bolsheviks and their leader Vladimir Lenin. It took the form of an armed insurrection in Petrograd, Russia’s capital at that time. The Bolsheviks stormed the Petrograd Winter Palace, the seat of Alexander Kerensky’s government. The success of the revolution marked the beginning of peace negotiations with the Central Powers. For the next few years Russia was in a state of civil war as Russian loyalists, known as the White Guard, tried to resist communist rule, only to be defeated in the end.
The Bolsheviks organized a coup in Petrograd to seize power in the name of the Soviet. Under Lenin’s leadership, the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party agreed to launch the revolution. Leon Trotsky spread a rumor that Kerensky planned to bring troops into the city to suppress the Soviet. Thus the Soviet, including members of the Menshevik and Social Revolutionary parties, supported Trotsky in arming factory workers. Especially important was the capture of the main bastion of revolutionary authority, the Petrograd Soviet.
General elections to city and district government councils also revealed the shifting political loyalties. The Bolsheviks received a third of the votes in elections for the Petrograd city council on 20 August, despite the absence of Lenin and some other top party leaders who were in hiding. In Moscow, Bolsheviks gained an absolute majority in elections for city district councils in September. These Bolshevik successes, it should be noted, came within the context of a dramatic falling off of voting in general. This control of the Petrograd Soviet and some other soviets allowed the October Revolution to take place.
The Bolshevik Party’s success also grew in part out of its organization. The Bolshevik Party in 1917 was a unique combination of centralization and decentralization. A small Central Committee served as its top decision-making body. Below it were city and provincial committees, of which the most important was that in Petrograd, the Petersburg Committee. Further down were the district committees in large cities and the smaller regional organizations countrywide. At the bottom, at the grass-roots level, stood the party committees in factories and army units. The Bolsheviks also had a special Military Organization to work among the soldiers.
The rise of the Bolsheviks and radical lefts in the soviets paralleled an ongoing government crisis that made government restructuring a pressing issue in political life during autumn 1917. The second coalition cabinet founded with such difficulty in July collapsed during the Kornilov Affair. The parties and leaders that had championed coalition could not immediately agree on its reorganization. Therefore the Provisional Government ministers turned the running of the government over to a Council of Five, headed by Kerensky. This new government would soon collapse.
The discussion of Bolshevik plans and the calls for Soviet power took place within the context of the deepening social and economic crisis and the growing popular demand for change. By late summer the revolution had clearly failed thus far to meet the aspirations of the people of the former Russian Empire. Unsolved political, social and economic problems created a mood of anxiety and tensions that fed directly into the growing clamor for a radical change of government. The war continued to loom as a fundamental problem. The desire for peace became overwhelming by fall, among both soldiers and civilians.
Lenin realized that autumn 1917 offered a unique opportunity for a radical restructuring of political power and for a man such as himself. He believed that not only was the situation in Russia ripe for revolution, but also that in Germany and elsewhere in Europe. Like other Russian socialists in 1917, Lenin saw the Russian Revolution as a central part of a broader, sweeping world revolution. He saw it as a fundamental turning point in both Russian and world history: ‘history will not forgive us,’ he wrote, if this opportunity to take power was missed. Other party leaders, in contrast, urged caution.
At the beginning of October, Lenin returned from Finland to Petrograd. He met, for the first time since July, with the Central Committee of the party. After an all-night debate the Central Committee seemingly gave in to Lenin’s passionate demands for a seizure of power. It passed a resolution stating ‘the Central Committee recognizes that… [there follows a long list of international and domestic developments] all this places armed uprising on the order of the day.’ This resolution later became central to the myth of a carefully planned seizure of power carried out under Lenin’s direction.
The Congress of Soviets of the Northern Region (CSNR) meeting was especially important. Its organizers, mostly Bolsheviks, saw it as a vehicle for organizing the Baltic-Finnish-Petrograd region troops, sailors and soviets behind the push for Soviet power and to ensure the meeting of the forthcoming Second All-Russia Congress of Soviets. Lenin at this time was talking about an armed attack on Petrograd using troops from the Baltic fleet and northern region as the means of seizing power.
The mobilization of supporters during this period was especially important. A declaration of the transfer of power at the Congress of Soviets, however much expected, would after all be an insurrectionary action. The Bolsheviks and Left SRs could assume that Kerensky’s government would try to resist. Therefore, they worked to ensure that the Congress of Soviets could successfully take power upon itself, and launched a series of measures designed to weaken the government and deprive it of its remaining legitimacy.
Petrograd was the scene of numerous mass rallies, rumors and self-mobilizations. The 4th of November had earlier been proclaimed the ‘Day of the Petrograd Soviet’, a day for meetings and demonstrations to raise funds and to consolidate support for the Soviet. Given the tension in the air, it now took on special significance. At mass rallies around the city, the Bolsheviks and Left SRs worked to garner popular support for transfer of power to the Soviet. The aroused crowds roared their support. ‘All around me,’ wrote Nicholai Sukhanov of a meeting where Trotsky spoke of the benefits of Soviet power, ‘was a mood bordering on ecstasy.’
Kerensky, the government members, and military commanders in Petrograd finally became alarmed at the trend of events: the massive show of support for Soviet power, the activities of the MRC, the behavior of the garrison and the Red Guards, and the looming Congress of Soviets. Finally, the government decided to act. Their proposed actions were so minor and inadequate that the government obviously did not comprehend either the popularity of the idea of Soviet power or the very real discontent felt by the populace. They completely failed to anticipate the firestorm of opposition that their actions would set off.
As most of Petrograd slept, a small detachment of military cadets and militiamen sent by the Provisional Government raided the press where two Bolshevik newspapers were published. They destroyed freshly printed copies of that day’s paper, damaged the print beds, sealed the entrances and posted a guard. The Military Revolutionary Committee sent ‘Directive No. 1’ to regimental commissars and committees: ‘You are ordered to bring your regiment to fighting readiness.’ The question was what to do next. Some of those present supported starting an armed insurrection immediately. Most, however, including Trotsky, focused instead on defensive measures designed to guarantee that the Congress of Soviets opened as scheduled the next day.
The two opposing sides, each basically acting defensively, each accusing the other of betraying the revolution and each posing as its defender, tried to rally political and military support as the confrontation gradually gained momentum. Their efforts found very different responses. During the morning, Kerensky and Petrograd military authorities tried without success to find reliable armed support. In contrast the Soviet found swift and vigorous support. Although Kerensky won applause for denunciations of the Bolsheviks, after an evening of debate the Preparliament passed a resolution that effectively repudiated the Kerensky government – this in a body where most of the radical left representatives were absent.
While the politicians debated, while Kerensky sought support that would never come and while the Soviet and MRC leaders moved slowly to control key points that would be necessary to defend against a nonexistent counter-revolution, groups of armed workers and soldiers began an uncoordinated but decisive struggle for control of the city. Most actions on that day were defensive and reactive. Haphazardly and little by little, a transfer of armed power in the city took place through a series of non shooting confrontations between armed groups in which the more determined side prevailed. And determination rested with the supporters of Soviet power. By nightfall the pro-Soviet forces controlled most of the city.
Around midnight, the gathering revolution shifted from defensive to offensive action. This was connected to two events: a growing realization that the government was much weaker than thought, and the arrival of Lenin at Soviet headquarters. Lenin had not been part of the cautious defensive reaction, and he was the one leader who had consistently urged an armed seizure of power before the Congress of Soviets met. Under his pressure and the reality of their growing strength, the Bolshevik Soviet leaders shifted from a defensive posture to the offensive at about 2:00 a.m.
By the time a cold gray windy day dawned, pro-Soviet forces had extended their control to almost all of the city except the Winter Palace. There the members of the Provisional Government still sat behind a small, increasingly dispirited band of defenders, surrounded by a large but disorganized force of Red Guards and insurgent soldiers. By mid-morning the situation had progressed to the point at which, at about the same time, the Bolsheviks proclaimed the transfer of power while Kerensky fled the city in search of supporters.
Kerensky at first fled the city, then attempted to raise loyal troops. When that failed, he left the country in disguise, going into exile, first in France and later in the United States. He died there in 1970.
That afternoon Trotsky opened a meeting of the Petrograd Soviet, where he announced the overthrow of the government and steps taken to secure power in the city. Lenin then emerged, his first public appearance since the July Days, to thunderous applause. The excited deputies and others who had crowded into the hall affirmed the transfer of power.
All through the day and evening, new arrivals of Red Guards and soldiers reinforced the besiegers, some of whom left, while some of the palace’s military defenders changed their minds and marched away unhindered. Finally, during the late evening, besiegers began filtering into the palace in small numbers, rather than actually ‘storming’ it (paintings and motion pictures of a great charge on the palace were later fictional romanticizations). Toward midnight, those filtering in became a steady stream. As one defender described the process, ‘as long as the groups of Red Guards were small, we disarmed them… However, more and more Red Guards appeared, and also sailors and soldiers of the Pavlovsky Regiment. The disarming began to be reversed.’ Finally, the revolutionaries advanced to the point where they could arrest the members of the Provisional government.
With the city in the hands of the Soviet, the next day the Congress of Soviets, including representatives from outlying cities and towns, convened. Bolsheviks made up about half its membership. Most of the others, including Mensheviks and right-wing Social Revolutionaries, walked out of the meeting in protest at the high-handed Bolshevik control. The remaining members of the Congress appointed a Council of People’s Commissars, mostly Bolshevik, with a few Left Social Revolutionaries. Through such leveraging of the Bolshevik domination of the Petrograd Soviet, Lenin had in fact created a Bolshevik government.
After passing a resolution declaring that the ‘withdrawal of the Menshevik and Social Revolutionary delegates from the Congress is an impotent and criminal attempt to disrupt its work’, the truncated congress continued to meet through the night. At about dawn the congress delegates and Bolshevik leaders – some of whom had hardly slept for two nights – adjourned. The new government was, unexpectedly, made up entirely of Bolsheviks. Lenin became chairman of Sovnarkom, or Council of People's Commissars and thus head of the government, with Trotsky as People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs.
The Bolsheviks had opposed the war with Germany from the beginning, and the new government immediately undertook to end it. As foreign minister of the new regime, Trotsky proposed an armistice with the Central Powers, and fighting stopped all along the eastern front, from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Black Sea in the south. The Soviet government then offered peace terms to the Germans, and negotiations began formally near the front line, at the city of Brest Litovsk.
Voters elected delegates to a constitutional convention to be convened in January. The Bolsheviks secured only about 25 percent of the seats at these elections, and Lenin recognized that if the convention ever met, Bolshevik control of the state would be endangered by the Socialist Revolutionary majority. Then, when the Constituent Assembly convened, the guards sent by the Bolsheviks to maintain order simply closed down the meeting, turned off the lights, and locked the doors. This simple maneuver eliminated the threat to Bolshevik control.
For a long time historians ignored the Constituent Assembly, for any of several reasons: because of its brief life and failure; because they felt that a democratic outcome of the revolution was no longer possible, and because of a certain tendency to focus on Lenin and October and ignore the weeks that followed, instead jumping directly forward to the civil war. More recently, however, some historians in the West and in Russia have assigned it greater significance. They argue that both the Assembly and the events leading up to its meeting and dispersal are important topics for investigation.
The Russian Empire began to break up after the Bolsheviks seized power. The Ukrainian Rada declared independence and Germany signed a peace treaty with it, together with an economic deal for delivery of a million tons of grain to Germany and Austria-Hungary. When Soviet government forces drove the Rada from Kiev, the Germans invaded Ukraine because they needed its grain, iron ore and coal for the war. Finland declared independence, and after a short civil war became a separate state. Poland also became independent.
Attempts by the Soviet negotiating team led by Trotsky to break off negotiations were punished by a German resumption of military operations against the deserted Russian lines. As a result the Russians were forced to accept even more stringent German demands when peace was finally signed. The vast expanses of the Ukraine became an independent state, as did Finland and Estonia. Lithuania and Poland were supposed to be independent, too, but in reality were still occupied by German forces. The economic consequences for Russia were exorbitant.
Although the war formally came to an end for Russia by March 1918, the killing did not stop. White Armies, units of counter-revolutionary troops, organized in the Don River region of southern Russia, continued to fight against the Soviet regime in the Russian Civil War that continued until 1922, and attracted international intervention. The result of the war is complex: the Red Army won in what would become the Soviet Union, but pro-independence movements achieved victory in Finland, Poland and the Baltic states.