Note on dating: the Russian calendar was thirteen days behind the Western calendar at the time, so the

"February Revolution" actually occurred in March by the Western calendar.

Bread riots in Petrograd (St. Petersburg) escalated rapidly. Troops sent to suppress demonstrators

refused and joined them. Within days the Tsar abdicated. A Provisional Government, led eventually by

Alexander Kerensky, took power. The Provisional Government made the fateful decision to continue the

war, which it could not effectively prosecute. A parallel power emerged in the form of the Petrograd

Soviet, a council of workers and soldiers, which represented the radical left.

October Revolution (November 1917)

In April 1917 Germany allowed the Russian revolutionary Vladimir Lenin to return to Russia from exile in Switzerland (in a sealed train, hoping he would disrupt the Russian war effort). Lenin led the Bolshevik faction of Russian Marxists. His slogan was simple: "Peace, Land, and Bread." He promised immediate withdrawal from the war, redistribution of land to peasants, and food for hungry workers.

Through 1917 Bolshevik strength grew. On October 25 (November 7 by Western calendar), Bolshevik forces seized key points in Petrograd in a relatively bloodless coup. The Provisional Government fell. The Bolsheviks proclaimed a Soviet government.

Key Bolshevik figures

• Vladimir Lenin (1870-1924): Leader of the Bolsheviks. Architect of the revolution and of the new Soviet state. His pragmatic adaptations of Marxism (vanguard party, revolution in a peasant rather than industrial country) shaped twentieth-century communism.
• Leon Trotsky (1879-1940): Brilliant organizer, founder of the Red Army, theorist of "permanent revolution." Defeated by Stalin in the succession struggle after Lenin's death. Exiled in 1929, assassinated by Stalin's agent in Mexico in 1940.
• Joseph Stalin (1878-1953): General Secretary of the Communist Party. Used his control of the party apparatus to outmaneuver more talented rivals after Lenin's death.

Russian Civil War (1918-1922)

The Bolsheviks (Red Army, organized by Trotsky) faced a coalition of anti-Bolshevik forces (the Whites) including conservative monarchists, liberal democrats, regional separatists, and foreign interventionists (Britain, France, the U.S., Japan all sent troops). The civil war was extraordinarily brutal. The Reds won by 1922, partly because of better organization, partly because the Whites were divided, and partly because they controlled the industrial heartland and central railroads.

The Bolsheviks established the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) in 1922. They had withdrawn Russia from WWI through the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (March 1918), which ceded enormous territory to Germany. When Germany lost the war later that year, the Soviets recovered some of the lost ground but lost Finland, the Baltic states, Poland, and other territories permanently.

Lenin's policies

• War Communism (1918-1921): Wartime emergency policy. Forcible requisitioning of grain from peasants, nationalization of industry, centralized control. Produced famine and resistance.
• New Economic Policy (NEP, 1921-1928): Pragmatic retreat. Allowed limited private trade and small private enterprise. Restored some agricultural production. Lenin called it a temporary tactical retreat.

• One-party rule: Other political parties were suppressed. The Communist Party became the only legal political force.

Stalin's rise

Lenin died in 1924. The succession struggle that followed pitted Stalin against Trotsky and other senior Bolsheviks. Stalin used his position as General Secretary to consolidate control over the party apparatus, building a base of loyalists in key positions. By 1928 he had defeated Trotsky and other rivals. By 1929 he was the unquestioned ruler of the USSR.

Stalin's policies (1928-1953) transformed the Soviet Union into a totalitarian state. Maria will cover Stalinist totalitarianism in detail in Section V below, alongside fascism and Nazism. The point to grasp here is that the Russian Revolution did not simply produce a communist state; through Stalin's transformation, it produced a totalitarian state that was, in many practical respects, similar to its fascist enemies.