Russian Revolutions of 1917

Article Outline

Introduction; Background; The February Revolution; Growing Radicalization; The October Revolution; The New Government; From Soviet Democracy to Communist Dictatorship

Compromise and Struggle

As the tsarist regime reestablished complete control over Russia, divisions among the revolutionaries deepened. The liberal Cadets made many compromises with the regime in order to set a course for the enactment of reforms through the Duma. The SRs, on the other hand, were inclined toward a resumption of terrorist activities. Within the RSDLP, the gap between Mensheviks and Bolsheviks became wider. For the most part, the Mensheviks sought to ally themselves politically with the reformers in the Duma who wanted to develop the capitalist economy. They also tended to focus more on legislative work rather than on traditional underground activity such as publishing illegal newspapers and organizing strikes. The Bolsheviks insisted on building a more radical political alliance between the workers and peasants. Although the Bolsheviks sent deputies to the Duma and engaged in legislative work, they focused on developing their underground organization.

In 1912 the Bolsheviks split away from the Mensheviks altogether to build their own separate revolutionary party. This split coincided with further industrial development and an upsurge of working-class radicalization. Consequently the Bolsheviks were able to dramatically increase their influence in Russia’s industrial centers until the outbreak of World War I (1914-1918).

World War I

The eruption of World War I in August 1914 halted Russia’s political development toward a working-class revolution. Russia joined with Britain, France, and other nations in waging war against Germany and Austria-Hungary. Issues of economic gain and political power motivated the governments and upper classes of the contending countries. In Russia, as elsewhere, enthusiasm for the war effort among the masses was whipped up under patriotic slogans of saving the nation from foreign aggressors. Opponents of the war were denounced as traitors and suppressed. The prowar patriotism swept up the Cadets, many Mensheviks, and even some SRs. Lenin’s Bolsheviks opposed the war. They found themselves isolated and severely repressed, along with those Mensheviks, SRs, and others who spoke out against the war.

World War I turned into a disaster for both the Russian people and the tsarist regime. Russian industry lacked the capacity to arm, equip, and supply the 15 million men who were sent into the war. Factories were few and insufficiently productive, and the railroad network was inadequate. Repeated mobilizations, moreover, disrupted industrial and agricultural production. The food supply decreased, and the transportation system became disorganized. In the trenches, the soldiers went hungry and frequently lacked shoes, munitions, and even weapons. Russian casualties were greater than those sustained by any army in any previous war. Behind the front, goods became scarce, prices skyrocketed, and by 1917 famine threatened the larger cities. Discontent became rife, and the morale of the army suffered, finally to be undermined by a succession of military defeats. These reverses were attributed by many to the alleged treachery of Empress Alexandra and her circle, in which the peasant monk Grigory Yefimovich Rasputin was the dominant influence. When the Duma protested against the inefficient conduct of the war and the arbitrary policies of the imperial government, the tsar and his ministers simply brushed it aside.

The February Revolution

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In February 1917 socialists organized mass protest rallies in Petrograd (as Saint Petersburg had been renamed after the outbreak of war in 1914). These protests took place on February 23, International Women’s Day, rallying women workers to demand bread, peace, and liberty. But, as a contemporary police report stated, the women workers “got out of hand.” They attracted the support of large numbers of male workers as well. The police proved unable to contain the growing and increasingly volatile protests. Soon 385,000 workers were on strike, and many engaged in confrontations with the police in the streets.

Troops were brought in, but they proved unable to quell the disturbances that engulfed the city over the next five days. In fact, the bulk of the soldiers, who were largely peasants in uniform, joined the insurgency. Consequently, a demand for land reform—to break up the large estates of the nobles and distribute the land among landless peasants—also became a major revolutionary demand. The workers and soldiers organized a growing network of soviets to coordinate their efforts and to establish control throughout the city.

On February 28 the last of the troops loyal to the tsar surrendered, revolutionary soldiers arrested the tsar’s ministers, and the tsar abdicated on behalf of himself and his son. Nicholas II wanted his brother, Grand Duke Michael, to assume the throne. Fearing the implications of the revolutionary upheaval, moderate politicians of the Duma urged Michael to do so. However, the grand duke recognized the popular hostility to the monarchy and declined. At this point the Duma moderates, hoping to thwart the coming to power of what one of them called “the scoundrels in the factories,” established a government that became known as the Provisional Government.

The Provisional Government was made up of the same liberal leaders who had organized the progressive bloc in the Duma in 1915, as well as some moderate socialists. The prime minister, Prince Georgy Y. Lvov, was a wealthy landowner and a member of the Cadets, who favored an immediate constitutional monarchy and ultimately a republic. Lvov was largely a figurehead; the outstanding personality in the Provisional Government until early May was Pavel N. Milyukov, minister of foreign affairs and the strongest leader of the Cadets since its founding in 1905. He played the principal role in formulating policy. The most prominent of the moderate socialists was Aleksandr F. Kerensky, the minister of justice, who was associated with the SRs and had been the leader of the Trudovik (laborite) faction in the Duma. At this time the now powerful soviets of the working-class districts were under the control of Mensheviks and SRs, and they mobilized popular support for the new coalition regime.

The collapse of the tsarist regime thus left in its wake two centers of political authority: (1) the traditional politicians of the Provisional Government, who had little control over the people, and (2) the democratically elected soviets, which exercised more political power owing to support from the great majority of workers and soldiers. This system of dual power proved to be unstable. The instability grew as the moderate politicians proved increasingly unable to meet the rising expectations of the laboring masses.

The Provisional Government declared an end to tsarist repression and established full civil liberties. It also promised early democratic elections for a Constituent Assembly, which would decide the future structure and policies of Russia’s government. At the same time, the new regime dodged the questions of land reform, relieving the workers’ economic distress, and ending Russia’s involvement in World War I.

In Petrograd the network of soviets quickly reorganized itself as a single soviet, a representative body of deputies elected by the workers and soldiers of the city. The Petrograd soviet immediately appointed a commission to cope with the problem of ensuring a food supply for the capital, placed detachments of revolutionary soldiers in the government offices, and ordered the release of thousands of political prisoners. On February 28 the soviet ordered the arrest of Nicholas's ministers and began publishing an official organ, Izvestia (Russian for 'the facts'). On March 1 it issued its famous Order No. 1. By the terms of this order, the soldiers of the army and the sailors of the fleet were to submit to the authority of the soviet and its committees in all political matters. They were to obey only those orders that did not conflict with the directives of the soviet, and they were to elect committees that would exercise exclusive control over all weapons. Also, they were to observe strict military discipline on duty, but harsh and contemptuous treatment by the officers was forbidden. Disputes between soldiers' committees and officers were to be referred to the soviet for disposition; off-duty soldiers and sailors were to enjoy full civil and political rights; and saluting of officers was abolished. Subsequent efforts by the soviet to limit and nullify its own Order No. 1 were unavailing, and that order continued in force.

Growing Radicalization

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The lifting of tsarist repression released thousands of experienced revolutionaries from prison or from exile in Siberia or abroad. Many of them went to Petrograd or Moscow, where they spread their radical message among the masses. They found a receptive audience in thousands of insurgent workers and soldiers.

Of special significance was the return of Lenin to Petrograd in April 1917. Lenin had lived abroad, mainly in Switzerland, from 1900 to 1905 and again from 1907 to 1917. He had become convinced that consistent struggles for radical democracy in Russia would encourage workers and peasants to struggle for socialism. Lenin also believed that the devastation of World War I would inspire working people throughout the world to fight for socialism. He rallied the swelling ranks of Bolsheviks around slogans such as “Bread, Peace, Land” and “Down with the Provisional Government—All Power to the Soviets!” His party became increasingly attractive to large numbers of bitter and disillusioned young workers, soldiers, and sailors.

At the end of May 1917, maverick revolutionary Leon Trotsky returned to Petrograd from a ten-year exile abroad. He found that the program of the Bolsheviks had come essentially to include his ideas about “permanent revolution,” and he soon joined their ranks. Much of the rank-and-file membership of the Mensheviks also went over to the Bolsheviks at this time. Among the SRs, the rank and file and some of the younger leaders turned away from Kerensky and the older leaders associated with him. Various anarchist groups also came to advocate a socialist revolution.

As the people embraced more radical political ideas, growing numbers of young workers, distrustful of the upper classes and the armed forces under the Provisional Government, began arming. They organized workers’ militia groups known as the Red Guards. Militant workers were also forming factory committees to assert their authority in a growing number of workplaces. As growing numbers of soldiers and sailors became more radical, traditional discipline and authority structures within the military disintegrated. However, all this ferment was by no means the work of Lenin and his followers. The popularity of Bolshevik slogans and proposals was growing dramatically, but many workers still voted for the better-known moderate socialists in elections to the soviets. On June 3, elected delegates from the soviets throughout Russia gathered in Petrograd for the first time. At this first Congress of Soviets, only 137 of the 1,090 delegates were Bolsheviks.

Declining Confidence in the Provisional Government

Throughout Russia’s vast rural areas, soviets were also being organized in peasant villages. Here, too, people became disillusioned with the Provisional Government, which had refused to initiate land reform. Many peasants were taking matters into their own hands, seizing the great estates from the landlords and dividing the land among themselves. The government also began losing support among oppressed nationalities seeking autonomy from Russian authority. Finally, the government’s patriotic appeals for a continuation of the war effort could no longer sustain popular support, particularly as military offensives resulted in additional defeats.