Imagine This …

Imagine being a Russian in 1916. The men are off fighting in World War I and there aren’t enough hands to harvest the crops. The crops are rotting in the ground. In the city, a woman lines up outside the grocery store at dawn before going to work in a factory. She always leaves without enough fuel to keep her house warm and with too little food to feed her family. On the battlefield, the men are running low on basic supplies, including guns and ammunition. They are ordered to fight unarmed or by taking rifles from their comrades who have died in battle.

Now imagine it is 1918. You hear that the tsar (the emperor of Russia) has been killed. There is a new leader who wants to establish peace and bring the men home from war. He plans to shift the power from the upper class to the poor but hardworking lower classes. This man in Vladimir Lenin and his socialist political party—the Bolsheviks¹— has taken leadership of the collapsed Russian Empire. Can you understand why Lenin brought hope to desperate lower-class Russians?

The backstory of the Russian Revolution

To see how the Russian Revolution of 1917 came to be, let’s look back to the Russian Revolution of 1905. Many Russian people took to the streets in peaceful protests of Tsar (also spelled Czar) Nicholas II because he refused to withdraw from a humiliating war with Japan. The tsar’s military forces killed hundreds of protesters on “Bloody Sunday.” This sparked massive protests and civil war across the country. The protests only ended when the tsar agreed to form an assembly of representatives known as the Duma.

During this 1905 civil war, Russian workers began forming groups called soviets (workers’ groups). These soviets gave them a community identity as workers. Russia was a massive and diverse country with very little common “national” identity. Political revolutionaries such as Vladimir Lenin began to unite people based upon their roles as workers. 

The Russian Revolution of 1917: What happened? Why does it matter?

Anger toward the tsar built during the bitterly cold winter of 1916–1917. The Russian people desperately wanted bread to feed their families. Factory workers and women protested in the capital of Petrograd (St. Petersburg) in March 1917. They called for Tsar Nicholas II to step down, for the Russian military to exit World War I, and for the rationing of food and fuel to end. Some members of the military joined the protesters. On March 15, Nicholas II abdicated (gave up his power). A Provisional Committee created by the Duma took control of the country. The Provisional Committee vowed to continue fighting in the war, but this was not what the people wanted. The Bolsheviks opposed the war and gained support from the people. The result was an agreement where the Duma and the Petrograd Soviet council would share power.

This was the first phase of the Russian Revolution, also known as the February Revolution (Russia’s calendar differed from the Western calendar). In the months that followed, the Duma supporters and the Soviet council clashed over how to govern the country. The situation in Russia was still tense and workers continued to protest. Vladimir Lenin and the Bolsheviks supported communism. They believed it would be instituted after a struggle between the wealthy and the working class. They saw the continued protests as a sign of this class struggle.

In November 1917, the Bolsheviks took control of Petrograd in the second phase of the revolution, called the October Revolution. They immediately removed the Provisional Government and arrested political opponents. In March 1918, the Bolsheviks signed a treaty ending Russia’s involvement in World War I.

Although they were out of the global war, Russia was still in a civil war. Bolsheviks continued fighting their opponents in the Provisional Government and from other political parties until 1921. The Bolsheviks were victorious. After almost 10 years of fighting both a foreign enemy and an internal war, the Russian people were still suffering.

The Bolsheviks established communism, a form of socialism in which the state controls the economy. This meant that land and the means of production (like factories) belonged to the people. Lenin eliminated the private and individual ownership of land and factories. Lenin wanted everyone to be unified primarily by their class instead of other types of connections like religion. Everyone would be one community of laborers working for the common good of everyone in the nation.

The revolution reshaped not only Russia but also the world. It resulted in the first communist nation-state in the world. Communism became an alternative to capitalism and a huge political force during the twentieth century.

After the Russian Revolution

By 1922, Russia’s civil war was over, and Russia was now a nation-state. It became the Soviet Union (the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, or U.S.S.R.). Under Lenin, there was more bread, land, and peace, but there was also repression. Lenin died in 1924 and communist leadership would continue under Josef Stalin. There were many challenges facing the Soviet Union. How would the communists maintain power? How would a new communist country survive within a world of capitalist nations? How could it unite a geographically vast and socially diverse country? These challenges would change the course of world history for the remainder of the twentieth century.

1 The Bolsheviks began as a workers’ party that wanted socialist reforms for Russia. Lenin led this branch of the Socialist Party and called for the public ownership of the means of production (factories) and the elimination of capitalism, or the private ownership of businesses. The Bolsheviks would later become the Russian Communist Party. Communism is a political ideology that advocates for public (state) control of the economy. In theory, communism calls for the community to own all properties, including businesses, and the people share in the profits based on their contributions and needs.