The Russian Revolutions of 1917: February, October, and After

An evidence-first account of Russia's two revolutions of 1917, the Constituent Assembly, Brest-Litovsk, and civil war, and the long debate over revolution or coup.

Avevide · Last reviewed October 24, 2026 · 9 min read

Russia had two revolutions in 1917, eight months apart, and they could hardly have been more different. The first, in February, brought down a dynasty that had ruled for more than three centuries, and it was greeted with popular acclaim. The second, in October, put a single, disciplined party in power in the capital and set off years of civil war. Arguments over what the second one was, a popular revolution or a coup, began the moment it happened and have never fully stopped.

This deep dive follows the year step by step, then traces how the new government held on through 1921. It relies mainly on the subject essays of Seventeen Moments in Soviet History, a Michigan State University project, and on a Library of Congress exhibition built from documents in Russian archives. Where those sources characterize events in strong terms, the article says whose words they are.

A note on dates: in 1917 Russia still used an older calendar that ran behind the Western one, so the "February" revolution began on February 23, which was March 8 by the Western (New Style) calendar. Dates below follow the Russian calendar of the time unless marked New Style.

February: the fall of the tsar

The revolution began on February 23 when working-class women, marking International Women's Day, took to the streets of Petrograd to protest food shortages and high bread prices. Such protests had happened before during the war. This time, over several days and encouraged by activists in the revolutionary underground, the crowds grew and marched on the city center. Police, Cossacks, and soldiers tried to disperse them with limited success.

By February 27, with the capital at a standstill, key military units went over to the crowds and seized arsenals; the next day tsarist ministers were arrested. Nicholas II, who had taken personal command of the army, tried to return to restore order, but his own generals and a delegation from the State Duma persuaded him that only abdication could bring social peace. More than three centuries of Romanov rule ended.

On March 2 the Duma's provisional committee, made up of moderate and liberal politicians, declared itself a Provisional Government. When a crowd taunted the Kadet leader Pavel Miliukov with "Who elected you?" he answered, "We were elected by the Russian Revolution." The new government accepted from the start that only an elected Constituent Assembly could settle the country's political future.

At the same time, socialist parties called on workers and soldiers to elect deputies to soviets, or councils. The Petrograd Soviet's executive committee, initially led by Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries (SRs), gave the Provisional Government conditional support. This arrangement became known as dual power. For about a month the mood was euphoric: new newspapers, trade unions, and organizations flourished, and the government issued a stream of liberal decrees. But on the "burning" questions of the war and land reform, it set up committees or deferred decisions to the Constituent Assembly, and in retrospect, the Michigan State essay suggests, that relative inaction fatally undermined it.

Spring: Lenin and the April crisis

The euphoria faded within weeks. Inflation wiped out wage gains, workers formed factory committees, and peasants began rent strikes and seizures of landowners' property. Above all, the war, widely blamed for these miseries, divided the two halves of dual power. The Soviet repudiated expansionist war aims; the government rejected annexations too, but insisted on honoring treaty obligations.

Into this tension stepped Vladimir Lenin, who arrived in Petrograd on April 3 aboard a sealed train that had carried him from Switzerland through Germany. At the Finland Station he denounced both the government and the Soviet's moderate leaders and demanded the transfer of "all power to the soviets." These April Theses set the Bolsheviks apart from the other socialist parties, and Lenin had to overcome opposition within his own party to win them acceptance.

A crisis soon proved his point. When a note by Foreign Minister Miliukov, sent to the Allies on April 18, reaffirmed Russia's commitment to fight the war to a victorious end, mass demonstrations forced Miliukov and War Minister Aleksandr Guchkov to resign. On May 5 socialists including the SR leader Victor Chernov and the Mensheviks Irakli Tseretelli and Mikhail Skobelev joined Aleksandr Kerenskii in a coalition government. That blurred dual power and tied the Bolsheviks' main socialist rivals to the government and its war.

Summer: the July Days and Kornilov

Early July brought the turmoil of the July Days in Petrograd. In their aftermath the Provisional Government, now led by Aleksandr Kerenskii, was galvanized into action against the Bolsheviks, and Lenin fled to Finland as a fugitive from arrest on charges leveled after the July Days.

That did not bring calm. Factories cut back or closed as costs rose and managers lost control; workers struck and occupied factory grounds; food and fuel distribution broke down; peasants seized land unpunished; and in the northwest the German army was advancing. Miliukov summed it up in late July as "Chaos in the army, chaos in foreign policy, chaos in industry and chaos in the nationalist questions."

To many who wanted order, General Lavr Kornilov, appointed supreme commander on July 18, looked like a savior. On August 27, after ambiguous exchanges with Kerenskii, Kornilov ordered troops to advance on Petrograd. The attempt collapsed, mainly because the Soviet mobilized workers and soldiers. Armed workers organized as Red Guards, garrison units, and railroad workers who stopped the troop trains defended the capital. The main winners were the radical left, above all the Bolsheviks, who had long warned of a counterrevolutionary strike. Kerenskii's authority was badly damaged.

October: the seizure of power

With the Bolsheviks now holding majorities in the soviets of both capitals, Lenin pressed his party's Central Committee to take power. Most Bolsheviks preferred to let the coming Second All-Russia Congress of Soviets form an all-socialist government, but Lenin insisted only an insurrection would do. On October 10 he won a 10 to 2 vote for making an armed uprising the order of the day. The two dissenters, Grigorii Zinoviev and Lev Kamenev, went public, yet the government took no decisive action.

The Bolsheviks turned the Petrograd Soviet's Military Revolutionary Committee into their command center. Kerenskii's decision to shut down the Bolshevik printing press became the trigger. On October 24 Red Guards and soldiers under the committee's command began occupying key points in the city. By the next day the congress delegates were told the Bolsheviks had taken power in the name of the soviets. The cruiser Aurora fired blank shells at the Winter Palace, where most ministers waited, and Red Guards stormed it. When Menshevik and SR delegates walked out in protest, Leon Trotsky told them to join "the rubbish heap of history."

Winter: the Constituent Assembly and a separate peace

The Constituent Assembly, the goal nearly every party had professed since February, was elected in November, after the Bolsheviks were already in power. Of about 42 million votes cast, the various SR factions received roughly half and the Bolsheviks about ten million, or 24 percent, including about half the soldiers' vote. In December Lenin published theses arguing that the Bolsheviks were not bound by the result, partly on the ground that a republic of soviets was a higher form of democracy.

About seven hundred delegates met for a single session on January 5, 1918, in Petrograd's Tauride Palace. They elected Chernov president, approved the armistice, and issued a land law before soldiers and Red Guards told them to adjourn. When they tried to return the next day, Red Guards barred the way. The Library of Congress exhibit puts it bluntly: when the freely elected assembly did not acknowledge the primacy of the Bolshevik government, Lenin dissolved it.

Peace with Germany was the other urgent question. An armistice was signed at Brest-Litovsk on December 2, 1917. Trotsky's initial policy, "neither war nor peace," used the talks for propaganda in hopes of sparking revolution in Europe. After the Germans resumed their offensive on February 18 (New Style) and stiffened their terms, Lenin won a majority for accepting them, and the treaty was signed on March 3, 1918 (New Style). It bought what the Michigan State essay calls a "breathing spell," trading space for time. Left Communists such as Nikolai Bukharin denounced it as capitulation, and the Left SRs, who had joined the government in December, withdrew from it in protest. The Library of Congress exhibit instead links the Left SRs' March withdrawal to their protest over the assembly's dissolution; the two sources emphasize different grievances.

Holding power: civil war and terror, 1918 to 1921

The Library of Congress exhibit places the years 1918 to 1921 under a state of civil war, with opposition forces threatening the regime from many parts of the country. To defend itself, the new government built a secret police, the Cheka, in December 1917. It began, according to the exhibit, with power only to investigate "counterrevolutionary" crimes, but soon acquired powers of summary justice and waged a campaign of terror against the propertied classes and enemies of Bolshevism. The exhibit displays an order from Lenin of August 11, 1918, telling Communists in Penza to publicly hang at least 100 kulaks, or wealthier peasants, and seize their grain as an example. Suppression of newspapers, first called temporary, became permanent.

Economic policy under the civil war, later dubbed War Communism, had the state requisitioning grain and running much of industry. The Michigan State essay notes that some have seen it as a utopian leap but considers desperation over shortages, particularly of food, a more likely motive. By 1921, amid urban depopulation, strikes, peasant unrest, and open rebellion by sailors at Kronstadt, Lenin reversed course. The New Economic Policy, introduced at the Tenth Party Congress in March 1921, replaced requisitions with a lower tax in kind and let peasants sell their surpluses on the open market. Lenin described it as a retreat of the state to the "commanding heights of the economy."

Revolution or coup?

The sources themselves show why this question persists. The Michigan State essay notes that the Soviet state celebrated October for decades as a sacred act founding a new order, while the Bolsheviks' enemies, and many Western historians after them, regarded it as a conspiratorial coup that deprived Russia of a chance at democracy. The Library of Congress exhibit takes the second view outright, describing Lenin and the Bolsheviks as having come to power "by means of a coup d'état" and then struggling to hold on "against widespread popular opposition."

Both readings must reckon with the evidence. On one side, the Bolsheviks really had won majorities in the big-city soviets, and the decrees on peace and land, as the Constituent Assembly essay observes, made that assembly seem less important to many workers and soldiers. On the other, the insurrection was planned by the Bolshevik leadership while most other socialists, and many Bolsheviks, had hoped for a coalition through the soviet congress, and the Constituent Assembly election gave the Bolsheviks under a quarter of the vote. A careful answer may be that 1917 saw a broad popular revolution in February, a radicalization of soldiers, workers, and peasants through the summer, and an armed seizure of power in October that rode that wave without being identical to it.

Key takeaways

The February Revolution (February 23 to March 2, Old Style) grew from bread protests and a garrison mutiny into the abdication of Nicholas II and a Provisional Government sharing "dual power" with the soviets.
The war and land questions, left unresolved, eroded the Provisional Government through the April crisis, the July Days, and the Kornilov affair.
The Bolsheviks seized power in Petrograd on October 24 and 25, 1917, through the Military Revolutionary Committee.
They won about 24 percent in the Constituent Assembly election, dissolved the assembly in January 1918, and signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk in March.
Civil war and terror followed until 1921, when the New Economic Policy replaced grain requisitions; historians still debate whether October was a revolution or a coup.

Sources

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