The October Revolution

spiral into chaos.

A fragile, provisional government headed by Alexander Kerensky took over.

Lenin returns

After more than a decade of selfimposed exile in western Europe, revolutionary leader Vladimir Ulyanov -- alias Lenin -- returned to Russia on April 3, 2017.

Although Russia was at war with Germany at the time, the German authorities allowed Lenin and other dissidents to cross Germany on their way to Petrograd, in the hope it would undermine the Russian war effort.

Upon his arrival, Lenin addressed Bolshevik supporters, denouncing the provisional government and those calling for reconciliation with the monarchists.

In July, Bolshevik organizations were outlawed by the provisional government and Lenin fled to Finland, returning to Russia later that year to lead the October Revolution.

Leon Trotsky, head of the Bolsheviks’ Military Revolutionary Committee, prepared the coup, styling himself as the army chief.

- gotiate immediate peace terms with Germany and the AustroHungarian empire.

Attack on the Winter Palace

Overnight on October 25-26, the Aurora cruiser ship, staffed with mutineers, fired a blank shot from the Neva River at the Winter Palace, signalling the start of an assault on what had become the seat of the provisional government.

Led by Trotsky, Bolshevik forces took control of Petrograd’s key infrastructure and government buildings before seizing the Winter Palace, which was guarded by a disorientated motley crew of a thousand, almost without resistance.

Kerensky’s attempts to organize resistance failed and he escaped.

Power had changed hands.

Lenin’s government

On October 27, Lenin formed a body known as the Council of People’s Commissars -- or “Sovnarkom” -- that laid the foundation of the Soviet Union.

Future Soviet leader Joseph Stalin and Trotsky were council members.

Lenin refused to share power with moderate leftists who had resisted the Bolshevik coup, leading him to create security forces that executed and imprisoned those he viewed as enemies.

The ex- tsar and his family, who had been moved to Yekaterinburg in the Urals after the abdication, were killed by the Bolsheviks in 1918 and their remains hidden -- the locations of the bodies remained a secret for much of the 20th century.

Lenin’s government, which established a “dictatorship of a bloody civil war against antiBolshevik White Army forces. The Soviet Union was established in 1922 after their defeat.