A century ago, on October 25, 1917, Marxist Bolsheviks of Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, alias Lenin, took control of Russia’s imperial capital, launching the October Revolution that led to the creation of the Soviet Union. Although the Bolsheviks were in a political minority, they painstakingly prepared their coup, benefiting from a power vacuum in the country at the height of World War I.
When and where?
The date of October 25 follows the Orthodox Julian calendar which was in use at the time in Russia. It corresponds to November 7 in the Gregorian calendar which is used in most of the world. Russia switched to this calendar after the Revolution. Petrograd was the name given to Russia’s imperial capital St. Petersburg at the beginning of World War I, with the aim of making it sound less Germanic and more Russian.
The city is the site of the Winter Palace, a symbol of czarist absolutism that is now the Hermitage art museum. It was called Leningrad during Soviet times but reverted to its original name, St. Petersburg, after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
The February revolution
Unrest started when demonstrators, angry over the scarcity of food, took to the streets of Petrograd on February 23, 1917, according to the Julian calendar. Supported by thousands of people, in just two days the protest transformed into a mass strike and Czar Nicholas II deployed the Army. The troops were meant to contain the uprising but instead began to take the side of the protesters. After a week of unrest, the last tsar abdicated on March 2, 1917, at the military’s urging, as he watched his conflict-torn country spiral into chaos. A fragile, provisional government headed by Alexander Kerensky took over.
Lenin returns
After more than a decade of self-imposed exile in western Europe, Lenin returned to Russia on April 3, 1917. Although Russia was at war with Germany at the time, the German authorities allowed Lenin and other dissidents to cross Germany on their way to Petrograd, in the hope it would undermine the Russian war effort. Upon his arrival, Lenin addressed Bolshevik supporters, denouncing the provisional government and those calling for reconciliation with the monarchists.
In July, Bolshevik organisations were outlawed by the provisional government and Lenin fled to Finland, returning to Russia later that year to lead the October Revolution.
Leon Trotsky, head of the Bolsheviks’ Military Revolutionary Committee, prepared the coup, styling himself as the Army chief. His first decision was to negotiate immediate peace terms with Germany and the Austro-Hungarian empire.
Attack on the Winter Palace
Overnight October 25-26, the Aurora cruiser ship, staffed with mutineers, fired a blank shot from the Neva River at the Winter Palace, signalling the start of an assault on what had become the seat of the provisional government. Led by Trotsky, Bolshevik forces took control of Petrograd’s key infrastructure and government buildings before seizing the Winter Palace, which was guarded by a disorientated motley crew of some a thousand, almost without resistance. Kerensky’s attempts to organise resistance failed and he escaped. Power had changed hands.
Lenin’s government
On October 27 Lenin formed a body known as the Council of People’s Commissars — or Sovnarkom — that laid the foundation of the Soviet Union. Future Soviet leader Joseph Stalin and Trotsky were council members. The ex-czar and his family, who had been moved to Yekaterinburg in the Urals after the abdication, were killed in 1918 and their remains hidden — the locations of the bodies remained a secret for much of the 20th century. Lenin’s government, which established a “dictatorship of the proletariat”, went on to fight a bloody civil war against anti-Bolshevik White Army forces. The Soviet Union was established in 1922 after their defeat.
Text: AFP
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Vladimir Ulyanov alias Lenin speaks to a huge crowd in Leningrad on April 3, 1917 (late March 1917 according to the Russian orthodox calendar) after his return from more than a decade of self-imposed exile in western Europe.
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After a week of unrest, Russia’s Czar Nicholas II abdicated on March 2, 1917, at the military’s urging, as he watched his conflict-torn country spiral into chaos. A fragile, provisional government headed by Alexander Kerensky took over. Nicholas II, seated second from left, Czarina Alexandra, centre rear, and their family are shown in this undated file photo.
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Armed soldiers carry a banner reading “Communism” march along Nikolskaya street towards to the Kremlin Wall in Moscow in this photo taken in October/November 1917.
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Vladimir Lenin, disguised by being clean-shaven, as he hid out in a village near Razliv railway station, 35 km northwest of St. Petersburg in August 1917.
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A machine gunner looks through a window at his position near the Kremlin in October 1917.
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Junkers get ready at their position atop of the Kremlin Wall in Moscow during the October/November Bolshevik Revolution of 1917.
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People line up to get food at Tverskaya Zastava in Moscow in October/November 1917.
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Machine-gunners guard the Kremlin’s Borovitsky Gates in Moscow in October/November 1917.
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People walk at the damaged Nikolskaya Tower in 1917 right after the revolution fighting in Moscow.
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Russia’s deposed Czar Nicholas II sits on a tree stump with three of the soldiers who held him captive standing in the background at Tsarskoe Selo, the residence of the Russian czar, outside St. Petersburg in this photo taken in spring-summer of 1917. The czar, his wife Alexandra and their five children were executed in 1918.
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Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin addresses a crowd during the first year of the Revolution at the Red Square in Moscow on November 7, 1918.
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A Red Star atop of a Kremlin Tower and a National emblem, left, are seen at Red Square in Moscow on October 27, 2017. The Kremlin has used the symbols of various eras, with Soviet-era red stars topping the Kremlin towers and Czarist-style imperial eagles on top of the State Historical Museum building on Red Square.