April Theses call for “all power to the soviets”

On International Women’s Day under the Gregorian calendar, women textile workers in Petrograd struck and marched for bread and an end to war. Their action widened into a mass movement joined by male...

Soldiers mutinied and joined workers as the uprising spread. Delegates formed the Petrograd Soviet while members of the Duma established a committee to manage state affairs. Competing centers of...

Nicholas II abdicated during the February Revolution (15 March Gregorian; 2 March Julian). The Romanov monarchy, which had ruled a multiethnic empire through autocracy, land dispossession and...

A Provisional Government was formed after the Tsar’s abdication. It promised political freedoms but continued Russia’s participation in the First World War and postponed land redistribution and a...

Vladimir Lenin returned to Petrograd after traveling from Switzerland through Germany and Scandinavia. His return sharpened debate within the Bolshevik Party over whether to support the Provisional...

The Provisional Government launched a major offensive on the Eastern Front, hoping to sustain the alliance with Britain and France and restore military discipline. The operation collapsed amid war...

Armed demonstrations by workers and soldiers in Petrograd demanded that the soviets take power. The Bolshevik leadership did not consider an insurrection ready, and the demonstrations were...

General Lavr Kornilov’s movement of troops toward Petrograd was framed by the government as a coup threat. Railway workers, soldiers and political activists helped obstruct the advance. The episode...

Bolshevik-led forces took key sites in Petrograd and arrested the Provisional Government’s remaining ministers. The event, called the October Revolution in the Julian calendar and dated 7 November...

The Second Congress of Soviets approved a new government, the Council of People’s Commissars (Sovnarkom), chaired by Lenin. The structure claimed authority through soviet representation, but political...