Summary
In 1917 Russia was convulsed by two major seizures of power. The Tsars of Russia were replaced first in February by a pair of co-existing revolutionary governments, one mainly liberal, one socialist, but after a period of confusion a fringe socialist group lead by Lenin seized power in October and produced the world’s first socialist state. The February Revolution was the start of a genuine social revolution in Russia, but as the rival governments were seen to increasingly fail a power vacuum allowed Lenin and his Bolsheviks to stage their coup and seize power under the cloak of this revolution.Decades of Dissent
Tensions between the autocratic Tsars of Russia and their subjects over a lack of representation, a lack of rights, disagreements over laws and new ideologies, had developed across the nineteenth century and into the early years of the twentieth. The increasingly democratic west of Europe provided a strong contrast to Russia, which was increasingly viewed as backward. Strong socialist and liberal challenges had emerged to the government, and an abortive revolution in 1905 had produced a limited form of parliament called the Duma.But the Tsar had disbanded the Duma when he saw fit, and his ineffective and corrupt government had grown massively unpopular, leading to even moderate elements in Russia seeking to challenge their long term ruler. Tsars had reacted with brutality and repression to extreme, but minority, forms of rebellion like assassination attempts, which had killed Tsars and Tsarist employees. At the same time Russia had developed a growing class of poor urban workers with strong socialist leanings to go with the mass of long term disenfranchised peasants. Indeed, strikes were so problematic that some had wondered aloud in 1914 whether the Tsar could risk mobilizing the army and sending it away from the strikers. Even the democratically minded had been alienated and started agitating for change, and to educated Russians the Tsarist regime increasingly appeared like a horrific, incompetent, joke.
The Causes of the Russian Revolution in more depth
World War 1: The Catalyst
The Great War of 1914 to 1918 was to prove the death knell of the Tsarist regime. After initial public fervour, alliance and support collapsed due to military failures. The Tsar took personal command, but all this meant was that he became closely associated with the disasters. The Russian infrastructure proved inadequate for Total War, leading to widespread food shortages, inflation and the collapse of the transport system, exacerbated by the failure of central government to manage anything. Despite this the Russian army remained largely intact, but without faith in the Tsar. Rasputin, a mystic who exerted a hold over the imperial family, changed the internal government to his whims before he was assassinated, further undermining the Tsar. One politician remarked “Is this stupidity or treason?”The Duma, which had voted for its own suspension for the war in 1914, demanded a return in 1915 and the Tsar agreed. The Duma offered to aid the failing Tsarist government by forming a ‘Ministry of National Confidence’, but the Tsar refused. Then major parties in the Duma, including the Kadets, Octobrists, Nationalists and others, supported by the SRs, formed the ‘Progressive Bloc’ to try and pressurise the Tsar into acting. He again refused to listen. This was probably his realistic last chance to save his government.
The February Revolution
By 1917 Russia was now more divided that ever, with a government that clearly couldn’t cope and a war dragging on. Anger at the Tsar and his government led to massive multi-day strikes. As over two hundred thousand people protested in the capital Petrograd, and protests hit other cities, the Tsar ordered military force to break the strike. At first troops fired on protestors in Petrograd, but then they mutinied, joined them and armed them. The crowd then turned on the police. Leaders emerged on the streets, not from the professional revolutionaries, but from people finding sudden inspiration. Freed prisoners took looting to the next level, and mobs formed; people died, were mugged, were raped.The largely liberal and elite Duma told the Tsar that only concessions from his government could stop the trouble, and the Tsar responded by dissolving the Duma. This then selected members to form an emergency Provisional Government and, at the same time – February 28th - socialist minded leaders also began to form a rival government in the form of the St, Petersburg Soviet. The early executive of the Soviet was free of actual workers, but full of intellectuals who tried to assume control of the situation. Both the Soviet and the Provisional Government then agreed to work together in a system nicknamed ‘Dual Power / Dual Authority’.
In practice, the Provisionals had little choice but to agree as the soviets were in effective control of key facilities. The aim was to rule until a Constituent Assembly had created a new government structure. Support for the Tsar faded quickly, even though the Provisional Government was unelected and weak. Crucially, it had the support of the army and bureaucracy. The Soviet could have taken total power, but its non-Bolshevik leaders stopped, partly because they believed a capitalist, bourgeois government was needed before the socialist revolution was possible, partly because they feared a civil war, and partly because they doubted they could really control the mob.
At this stage the Tsar discovered the army would not support him – military leaders, having spoken to the Duma, asked the Tsar to quit – and abdicated on behalf of himself and his son. The new heir, Michael Romanov, refused the throne and three hundred years of Romanov family rule was ended. They would later be executed on mass. The revolution then spread across Russia, with mini Dumas and parallel soviets formed in major cities, the army and elsewhere to take control. There was little opposition. Overall, a couple of thousand people had died during the changeover. At this stage, the revolution had been pushed forward by former Tsarists - high ranking members of the military, Duma aristocrats and others - rather than by Russia’s group of professional revolutionaries.
