A revolution usurped: Bolsheviks seize power and Soviet state is born
It is a key moment in Russian history, known as the October Revolution.
Ironically, by the modern calendar which Russia has since adopted, it actually took place on November 7, 1917. Earlier in the year, mass demonstrations and armed clashes in the Russian capital, Petrograd – now St Petersburg – had resulted in the abdication of the Tsar, in what became known as the February Revolution.
A provisional government was formed, but proved deeply unpopular, and itself resorted to violence in a bid to impose order, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of protesters during the summer.
Meanwhile, Vladimir Lenin, who had been living in exile in Switzerland with other dissidents, organised a plan to negotiate a passage for them through Germany, with whom Russia was then at war in the First World War. Realising that these dissidents could cause problems for their Russian enemies, the German government agreed to permit 32 Russians to return to their home country, travelling in a sealed train across their territory.
After travelling through Germany, Sweden and Finland, Lenin slipped into Russia in disguise. Arriving at Petrograd’s Finland Station in April, he called for a Europe-wide proletarian revolution.
A new provisional government leader, Alexander Kerensky, had taken power in St Petersburg, but was unable to find a solution to Russia’s immediate problems of mass unemployment and food shortages. Disastrously for his government, he also chose to keep Russia in the war.
Lenin’s Bolsheviks began spreading calls for a military uprising. In response the government closed numerous newspapers and shut down the city of Petrograd as minor armed skirmishes broke out.
The following day saw a full-scale uprising as sailors loyal to the Bolsheviks entered the city and tens of thousands of soldiers rose up in support of them. Bolshevik Red Guards seized government buildings and, on the following day, the Winter Palace, the seat of the Provisional government in Petrograd, was captured.
Bolshevik-led attempts to gain power in other parts of the Russian Empire were largely successful in Russia proper – although the fighting in Moscow lasted for two weeks – but they were less successful in ethnically non-russian parts of the empire, including Ukraine and Estonia, which had been calling for independence since the February Revolution. Ukraine declared itself a people’s republic.
The result was civil war, in which a coalition of anti-bolshevik groups attempted to unseat the new government in the Russian Civil War from 1918 to 1922.
The Bolsheviks had made peace with Germany, prompting the Allied Powers of the UK, Frances, Italy and the USA to intervene in the civil war, with them occupying Russian territory for two years.
The war left Russia’s economy and infrastructure heavily damaged, and as many as 10 million perished during the war, mostly civilians. Millions fled – including Kerensky – and the Russian famine of 19211922 claimed up to five million victims.
The United States did not recognise the new Russian government until 1933. The European powers recognised the Soviet Union in the early 1920s and began to engage in business with it.