October Revolution (1917): Lenin and the Bolshevik Takeover

The October Revolution was the seizure of power in Petrograd by Vladimir Lenin’s Bolshevik Party on 25-26 October 1917 in the Julian calendar then used in Russia, which was 7-8 November in the Gregorian calendar. Armed workers, soldiers and sailors under the Petrograd Soviet’s Military Revolutionary Committee occupied the capital and arrested the ministers of the Provisional Government in the Winter Palace. The takeover created the world’s first state run by a communist party and shaped world history for the rest of the century.

Background

The February Revolution of March 1917 had overthrown Tsar Nicholas II and replaced him with a Provisional Government. It shared power uneasily with the Petrograd Soviet, a council of workers’ and soldiers’ deputies, in an arrangement called dual power.

The new government kept Russia in the First World War and postponed land reform and other major decisions until a Constituent Assembly could meet. A failed offensive in June 1917 cost heavy casualties and fuelled desertion. Food shortages and inflation worsened, peasants began seizing estates, and many workers turned to more radical parties.

Lenin returned from exile in April 1917 and called for “all power to the soviets”, an end to the war and land for the peasants. His slogan “Peace, land and bread” won growing support. After a failed armed demonstration known as the July Days, Lenin fled to Finland and many Bolsheviks were arrested, but the party recovered quickly.

The turning point came in late August, when the commander-in-chief, General Lavr Kornilov, appeared to move against the capital. Alexander Kerensky, now head of the government, turned to the Soviet for help, and Bolshevik-led Red Guards were armed to defend the city. Kornilov’s move collapsed, Kerensky’s authority with it, and in September the Bolsheviks won majorities in the Petrograd and Moscow soviets. Leon Trotsky became chairman of the Petrograd Soviet.

The decision to rise

From Finland, Lenin bombarded the Bolshevik Central Committee with letters urging an immediate armed uprising. He returned secretly to Petrograd and, at a meeting on 10 October (23 October), persuaded the committee to put an insurrection “on the agenda” by a vote of ten to two. The two opponents, Grigory Zinoviev and Lev Kamenev, argued that the party should wait for the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets and the Constituent Assembly.

Zinoviev and Kamenev even outlined their objections in the non-Bolshevik newspaper Novaya Zhizn, so the plan for a rising was an open secret. Trotsky, for his part, preferred to link the takeover to the Congress of Soviets, so that it could be presented as a transfer of power to the soviets rather than a party coup.

The instrument was the Military Revolutionary Committee (MRC), set up by the Petrograd Soviet in mid-October, officially to defend the capital. Dominated by Bolsheviks, it sent commissars to the garrison regiments, which agreed to obey its orders rather than those of the military district headquarters.

The seizure of power

On 24 October (6 November) Kerensky moved against the Bolsheviks, sending cadets to close their newspapers and ordering the bridges raised. The MRC responded. Through the night of 24-25 October Red Guards, soldiers and sailors from the Kronstadt naval base took control of bridges, railway stations, the telephone exchange, the telegraph office, the power station and the State Bank, mostly without fighting. Lenin, in disguise, made his way to the Smolny Institute, the Soviet’s headquarters.

At 10 a.m. on 25 October (7 November) Lenin issued a proclamation, “To the Citizens of Russia”, declaring that the Provisional Government had been deposed and power had passed to the MRC. Kerensky had left the city that morning in a car to find loyal troops at the front.

The ministers remained in the Winter Palace, defended by officer cadets, some Cossacks and a company of the Women’s Battalion of Death. In the evening the cruiser Aurora, moored on the Neva, fired a blank shot, and guns of the Peter and Paul Fortress fired a few live shells, most of which missed. Many defenders slipped away as the night wore on.

Shortly after 2 a.m. on 26 October (8 November) revolutionary forces entered the palace through its many doors and arrested the ministers. Vladimir Antonov-Ovseenko, a leading member of the MRC, formally detained them. Only a handful of people were killed in the capture of the palace.

The Congress of Soviets

The Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets opened at the Smolny late on 25 October, while the palace was still being besieged. Bolsheviks and their allies, the Left Socialist Revolutionaries, held a majority. In protest at the seizure of power, most Mensheviks and Right Socialist Revolutionaries walked out. The Menshevik leader Julius Martov’s call for a coalition of all socialist parties went unheeded.

On 26 October (8 November) the congress approved Lenin’s Decree on Peace, calling for an immediate just peace without annexations, and his Decree on Land, abolishing private ownership of landed estates and giving them to peasant committees. It also approved a new government, the Council of People’s Commissars, known as Sovnarkom, with Lenin as chairman, Trotsky as commissar for foreign affairs and Joseph Stalin as commissar for nationalities.

Key people

• Vladimir Lenin (1870-1924), leader of the Bolsheviks, whose insistence drove the party to seize power.
• Leon Trotsky (1879-1940), chairman of the Petrograd Soviet and the main organiser of the takeover.
• Alexander Kerensky (1881-1970), head of the Provisional Government, who fled and later lived in exile, mainly in the United States.
• Vladimir Antonov-Ovseenko (1883-1938), MRC leader who arrested the ministers in the Winter Palace.
• Julius Martov (1873-1923), Menshevik leader who opposed the one-party seizure of power.

Consolidation and consequences

Bolshevik power was not secure at first. In Moscow, fighting between Red Guards and government supporters lasted about a week and cost hundreds of lives before the Bolsheviks won in early November (mid-November, New Style). An attempt by Kerensky and General Pyotr Krasnov to retake Petrograd with Cossack troops was defeated at Pulkovo at the end of October (Old Style).

Elections to the Constituent Assembly, held in November 1917, gave the largest share of the vote to the Socialist Revolutionaries; the Bolsheviks won roughly a quarter. When the assembly met on 5 January 1918 (18 January) and refused to accept Soviet rule, the Bolsheviks dissolved it the next day. In December 1917 they had already created the Cheka, a political police force headed by Felix Dzerzhinsky, and banned the liberal Constitutional Democratic (Kadet) party. For a few months the Left Socialist Revolutionaries joined the government as junior partners, but they left in protest at the peace with Germany and were suppressed after their own uprising in July 1918.

Lenin’s government signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with Germany in March 1918, giving up vast territories to leave the war. Opposition from monarchists, liberals, rival socialists and national movements, backed at times by foreign intervention, led to the Russian Civil War. The Bolsheviks, renamed the Communist Party in 1918, won it and founded the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in December 1922.

By the numbers

Membership and Red Guard figures come from party and Soviet records and are uncertain. The election results are based on incomplete returns, which is why historians give slightly different percentages.

Myths and facts

Soviet art and cinema, especially Sergei Eisenstein’s film October (1928), portrayed the storming of the Winter Palace as a vast heroic assault by the masses. In reality the palace was taken with little resistance after its defenders had largely melted away, and the city’s daily life, including trams and theatres, went on in many districts during the takeover.

Another common belief is that the Aurora’s shot was a bombardment of the palace. The cruiser fired a single blank round as a signal; the few live shells came from the guns of the Peter and Paul Fortress. Historians also debate whether the event was a popular revolution or a coup: the seizure itself was carried out by a small, organised force, but it rested on real and growing support for the soviets among workers and soldiers in Petrograd.

Timeline

• 1917, 3 April (16 April): Lenin returns to Petrograd and presents his April Theses.
• 1917, late August: The Kornilov affair weakens Kerensky and boosts the Bolsheviks.
• 1917, 10 October (23 October): The Bolshevik Central Committee votes for an armed uprising.
• 1917, 24-25 October (6-7 November): Red Guards and soldiers seize key points in Petrograd.
• 1917, 26 October (8 November), about 2 a.m.: The Winter Palace is taken and the ministers arrested.
• 1917, 26 October (8 November): Decrees on Peace and Land; Sovnarkom formed under Lenin.
• 1918, 6 January (19 January): The Bolsheviks dissolve the Constituent Assembly.
• 1918, 3 March: Treaty of Brest-Litovsk takes Russia out of the war.

Why it matters

The October Revolution brought to power the first government committed to building a communist society. The Soviet state it created became a global superpower, inspired revolutionary movements and one-party regimes across the world, and stood at the centre of the Cold War until its collapse in 1991.