1917: the year of revolutions (1) February to October

Workers on the streets of Petrograd.

The third winter of the war coincided with unprecedentedly cold weather (-15 C) in Petrograd. Arctic frosts and blizzards brought the railways to a standstill. Factories closed and thousands of workers were laid off. Food was short.

On Thursday 23 February the temperature rose suddenly and people left their houses. This was International Women's Day, an important date in the socialist calendar and towards noon thousands of women, students and peasants, began to march towards the city centre to protest for equal rights. The march coincided with a strike of women textile workers who were protesting about bread shortages. They were quickly joined by their menfolk from the neighbouring metal works and as they marched towards the city centre they shouted ‘Bread’ and ‘Down with the Tsar’. By the afternoon some 100,000 workers had come out on strike and marched to the city centre.  

On 25 February a three-day general strike began. All the city’s factories ceased to operate, as some 200,000 workers joined the demonstrations, which now had a more political flavour. On Sunday 26 February, police and soldiers fired on marchers, shooting more than fifty people dead. 

In the early hours of 27 February the revolution began in earnest when the Petrograd garrison voted to disobey orders to fire on civilians. Soldiers and workers captured the Arsenal, occupied the telephone exchange and most of the railway stations, requisitioned cars and drove round the streets firing at police snipers and being fired on by them. 

The Peter and Paul Fortress, Petrograd

On 28 February the crowd stormed the Peter and Paul Fortress, ‘the Russian Bastille’ (though the prisons were empty). After some fighting, the red flag was finally raised.

The February Revolution was spontaneous and involved the great mass of the civilian population of Petrograd.  It was more violent than the subsequent October Revolution – nearly 1500 people were killed. Symbols of the old state power were destroyed, tsarist states smashed or beheaded, policemen hunted down and lynched.

But the revolutionary leaders were taken by surprise. They were in exile, in prison or abroad. Lenin was in Zurich, Trotsky in New York. Having spent their whole lives waiting for the revolution they failed to recognise it when it came. 


With the government now non-existent, two blocks tried to take control of the Revolution: the Petrograd Soviet, dominated by Mensheviks, Bolsheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries, and the Duma. Both met in the Tauride Palace, Prince Potemkin's old mansion.

The Tauride Palace, Potemkin's extravagant
mansion, where the Duma and the Soviet
coexisted uneasily.

The formation of the Provisional Government

In negotiations between the Duma Provisional Committee and the Petrograd Soviet, it was agreed that the tsar would have to abdicate. At the same time a Provisional government was formed, nominally headed headed by Prince Georgy Lvov, but in reality dominated by the Kadet Party, led by Pavel Miliukov, who became Foreign Secretary. Its one socialist minister was the radical lawyer and vice-chairman of the Petrograd Soviet, Alexander Kerensky, the only man to have a foot in both camps. 

The abdication of the Tsar

At Pskov, where the royal train was diverted, Nicholas II,was met by emissaries of the High Command and the Duma. In view of his son's delicate health he agreed to abdicate on 2 March. Reluctantly passing over his frail son, he abdicated in favour of his brother, Grand Duke Michael, but Michael agreed to decline the crown. The monarchy was over, and with it,went all its main institutions of support: the bureaucracy, the police, the Army, and the Church. 

Order No. 1

It was not clear what would emerge in the place of the old authorities. The Soviet was reluctant to take power, preferring to concentrate on more immediate goals connected with the soldiers. On 14 March they issued, and then forced on the government, Order No. 1. Its provisions were wide-ranging: 

1. When not on duty, soldiers were to enjoy the rights of citizens including the right not to salute their officers. 
2. Rudeness by officers to soldiers was to be forbidden
3. The old honorific titles were to be replaced by new and democratic forms of address. 
4. Major decisions were to be taken by committees. 

Prince Lvov believed that Russia had now achieved democracy and would lead the world into a progressive future; but his optimism proved misplaced.

The honeymoon period

The Provisional Government initially experienced a honeymoon period. In nearly all the towns and cities throughout Russia, the acceptance was swift and unconditional and power passed peacefully from the old Tsarist officials to committees of public safety. These committees were almost always members of the zemstvo nobility and they were joined by representatives of the newly formed soviets, spontaneously elected as workers’ and peasants’ representatives.

In real terms the Soviets held most of the power. Order No 1 had given them control of the army. Soldiers’ Committees were instructed to obey the Provisional Government only so far as its orders did not contradict those of the Petrograd Soviet. Initially, however, the two bodies worked together harmoniously and carried out an ambitious programme. 

The secret police were abolished together with the death penalty, political prisoners were amnestied and freedom of the press was guaranteed.  Universal franchise was introduced, including women, and the ballot was to be secret. The future structure of Russia was to be decided by a Constituent Assembly.

Unresolved problems

The February Revolution had not solved the problems that had initially brought the workers out onto the streets. 

1. The economic grievances of the workers remained and in response factory committees, dominated by Mensheviks were set up.
2. Most Russians were peasants, who for centuries had believed that the land belonged to them.  An increase in rural violence showed that they were not prepared to be patient.
3. The Provisional Government’s decision to keep Russia in the war proved deeply unpopular.  

On 5 May a new coalition cabinet was formed, without Miliukov, but including several Menshevik and Socialist Revolutionary leaders. Kerensky was now Minister of War. But by then the situation had changed rapidly with the return of Lenin.

The return of Lenin

By the time of the February Revolution, virtually all the leading Bolsheviks were abroad or in exile. Trotsky was in New York, Lenin in Zurich, Stalin in Siberia. Lenin was now determined to get back to Russia but wartime conditions made this extremely difficult. 

After negotiations with the German High Command, he, Krupskaya, and his fellow Bolshevik Grigori Zinoviev left Zurich on a sealed train en route for Petrograd via Germany and Finland.  On 3 April he arrived at Petrograd’s Finland Station after an exile of seventeen years. He immediately proclaimed the start of a world-wide socialist revolution.

The April Theses 

On 4 April Lenin addressed the Bolsheviks at the luxurioua Kseshinskaya Mansion, putting forward an argument that he was to set down in his April Theses. These were a complete rewriting of previous Marxist theory. Instead of accepting the need for a bourgeois stage of the revolution, he called for a new revolution to transfer power to 'the proletariat and the poorest peasants'. He argued that, with the whole of Europe at war, the bourgeois states would experience their own revolution, bypassing Russia's need to go through the bourgeois-capitalist phase. He turned down parliamentary democracy in favour of the direct self-rule of the proletariat through the Soviets. This was, in effect, a declaration of war on the Provisional Government, though he was careful at this stage not to commit himself to its violent overthrow. 

The Mensheviks were hostile, but on 24 April, a conference of Bolshevik organisations in Petrograd accepted the theses, by thirty-eight votes to three. The Central Committee reluctantly agreed to implement the programme. 

On 4 May Trotsky finally arrived from America and immediately addressed packed meetings. A week later Lenin invited him to join the Bolsheviks. 

The Bolsheviks were on their way to becoming a mass party. Lenin's slogans 'Peace, Bread and Land' and 'All power to the Soviets' - had a powerful appeal. Bolshevik membership grew 10-fold to more than ¼ million, though it is a mistake to see the party as tightly knit and unified. In 1917 it was a catch-all party of the radical left. 

The July Days

On 3 July the Bolsheviks over-reached themselves, when masses of soldiers, sailors and workers, toting machine-guns marched on the Tauride Palace. Cars were requisitioned and gun fights broke out. At the Kronstadt naval base, Bolshevik sailors murdered 120 officers, including their admiral. On the following day 400,000 workers and soldiers were joined by 20,000 heavily armed sailors. 

Rioters on Nevsky Prospekt fleeing
after the police had opened fire, 4 July 1917.

But the insurgents had no plan and the Soviet was reluctant to offer them support. Lenin delivered a hesitant and ambiguous speech to the sailors.  

Lenin, minus beard

On 5 July government troops regained control. Many Bolsheviks were arrested, their presses destroyed. Lenin, faced with a charge of treason, fled to Finland in disguise (beard shaved off), and Trotsky was imprisoned. In the short term, the July days were a disaster for the Bolsheviks.

The Kerensky government

Alexander Fyodorovich Kerensky,

Leader of the Provisional Government,

July-October 1917

Public domain.

The July Days led to a re-shaping of the government. On 11 July Kerensky, the only man who could unite left and right, became premier in place of Lvov, though the situation was quickly escalating out of control. In spite of the fiasco of the July Days,  Bolshevik policies seemed increasingly attractive. 

On 9 August the Provisional Government finally scheduled elections for Constituent Assembly for 12 November: the Assembly was to convene on 28 November. 

However, the weakness of the government was shown by the Kornilov affair, when the commander of the army led a march on Petrograd in an attempt to restore order. It failed, but the authority of the Provisional Government was shattered. It was now only a matter of time before he was overthrown by someone able to provide firm leadership. This firm leadership could only come from the Bolsheviks. On 31 August they captured the Petrograd Soviet. On 23 September Trotsky was elected its Chairman.

Lev Davidovich Trotsky
a convert to Bolshevism
and its most effective orator
Public domain.

The revolution planned 

The initiative increasingly lay with Lenin, who was now campaigning within the party for an immediate armed uprising. In two letters that reached the Central Executive Committee on 15 September (‘The Bolsheviks must seize Power’, written on 12 September and ‘Marxism and Insurrection’, written on 14 September), he argued that the time was ripe for the party to seize power. He also argued against waiting for the Constituent Assembly. 'History will not forgive us if we do not resume power now'. 

On 7 October he returned to Petrograd and convened a secret meeting of the Central Executive Committee on 10 October. The decision to prepare for an armed insurrection was taken at this meeting. Of the 21 CEC members, only 12 were present and the vote was taken 10-2 to launch the revolution.  The two dissenters, Gregori Zinoviev and Lev Kamenev argued for caution, but they were overruled, and it was common knowledge that they Bolsheviks were planning a coup.