Russian Revolution of 1917 was a series of rebellions against the Russian czar (emperor), Nicholas II. The revolution swept away the Russian monarchy and laid the foundation for the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, also called the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union ruled Russia and its neighboring republics for 70 years.
In March 1917 (February on the old Russian calendar, which was changed in 1918), the Russian people rebelled against Czar Nicholas II. He gave up his throne, and a provisional (temporary) government tried to administer the country. That government was unable to resolve the many challenges facing Russia. The October Revolution took place in November 1917, when the Bolshevik (later Communist) Party seized power. That takeover is sometimes called the October, Bolshevik, or Communist Revolution. 
Background to the revolution.
Russia experienced great changes in the latter half of the 1800’s and in the early 1900’s. The serfs (rural slaves) were freed in 1861. However, they received little land and were heavily in debt. In the towns and cities, industrialization altered the face of Russian society.
Discontented Russians formed a number of political organizations, all of which the government tried to repress. There were four broad types of groups, with some overlapping ideals. Liberals wanted democratic checks on the power of the czars. Nationalists sought greater independence from Moscow for populations in Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, and elsewhere. Peasant socialists sought to start a revolution among the Russian peasants. Marxists wanted a revolution among the city and town workers. The Marxists were heavily influenced by the teachings and ideas of the German social philosopher Karl Marx.
In 1898, the Marxists formed the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party. In 1903, it split into two groups. Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, better known as V. I. Lenin, argued that party membership should be limited to a small number of professional revolutionaries. His opponents supported fewer limitations on party membership. Lenin named his faction the Bolsheviks (“members of the majority”) and his opponents the Mensheviks (“members of the minority”).
The 1905 Revolution.
In the early 1900’s, Russia’s economy slowed, the country waged an unsuccessful war with Japan, and social unrest grew. On Jan. 22, 1905, thousands of men, women, and children peacefully marched to Czar Nicholas’s Winter Palace in St. Petersburg, the capital. Their intention was to deliver a petition asking for better working conditions and a democratically elected assembly. The czar’s soldiers fired on the demonstrators, killing or wounding hundreds of them.
The “Bloody Sunday” shootings fueled even greater demonstrations. The liberals formed a Union of Unions to help coordinate strikes and protests by different groups. A wave of strikes that began in September grew into a huge general strike in mid-October. Nicholas then agreed to set up an elected lawmaking body, called the Duma (parliament), to advise him, but strikes continued. In St. Petersburg, revolutionaries set up a soviet (council) called the St. Petersburg Soviet of Workers’ Deputies. In December 1905, the army crushed an uprising in Moscow and police arrested the members of the St. Petersburg Soviet, including revolutionary leader Leon Trotsky.
Nicholas and his officials refused to give up much power, and the Duma did not work in the way the liberals had hoped. The czar dissolved the first two Dumas (1906 and 1907) after only a few months. For the third Duma (1907-1912), Nicholas changed the election law so that fewer workers and peasants could vote and so that border regions lost some representation. The changes resulted in a Duma dominated by supporters of the czar.
World War I (1914-1918)
highlighted the weakness of czarist rule. Germany declared war on Russia in August 1914. Soon afterward, Russia changed the German-sounding name of St. Petersburg to Petrograd. The Germans easily overwhelmed a Russian army that was poorly trained and badly led. The war strained the Russian economy. Shortages of food and fuel resulted, increasing the level of social discontent. Within the army, untrained soldiers became rebellious. Many Russian army units refused to go on fighting the war with Germany.
Meanwhile, Czar Nicholas and his wife were deeply influenced by the monk Grigori Rasputin. Under Rasputin’s influence, Nicholas filled key posts with officials who were incompetent and unpopular. In December 1916, a group of Russian nobles loyal to the czar murdered Rasputin.
The February Revolution.
On March 8, 1917 (February 25, on the old Russian calendar), strikes and riots over food and coal shortages broke out in Petrograd. This uprising became known as the February Revolution. Troops sent to stop the uprising joined the demonstrators instead.
In response, some moderate and liberal members of the Duma set up a provisional government. On March 15, 1917, the government forced Czar Nicholas to abdicate (resign his throne). Nicholas and his family were later taken into custody. The Bolsheviks killed them at Yekaterinburg in 1918.
Also in March 1917, leaders of several workers’ groups, left-leaning members of the Duma, and some soldiers revived the Petrograd soviet that had been first set up in 1905. The new soviet—called the Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies—opposed the provisional government. It became a model for other soviets that were soon set up throughout Russia.
This environment, in which both the provisional government and the Petrograd Soviet claimed authority, became known as “Dual Power.” The provisional government drew support from business people, military officers, and government officials. The Soviet had support among industrial workers and enlisted soldiers.
Lenin, who had lived in Switzerland since 1914, returned to Petrograd in April 1917. There, he began calling for an overthrow of the provisional government. In July, soldiers began another uprising in Petrograd. Once order was restored, the provisional government ordered Lenin to be arrested as a German agent. Lenin fled to Finland. Other leading Bolsheviks escaped or were imprisoned. Later that month, the provisional government appointed the socialist Alexander Kerensky as prime minister.
In September 1917, General Lavr Kornilov, the army commander in chief, made a bid to seize power. As Kornilov advanced on Petrograd, Kerensky released the imprisoned Bolsheviks and allowed them to arm the workers. Kornilov’s force broke up before reaching the capital, and the coup attempt ended without violence. With their popularity on the rise, especially among soldiers, the Bolsheviks won a majority in the Petrograd Soviet soon after the “Kornilov affair.”
The October Revolution.
Trotsky, who had escaped in 1907 and gone into exile, had returned to Petrograd in May 1917 and was chosen to head the soviet there in September. Soon after, Lenin returned from Finland and urged the Bolsheviks to take power from the provisional government. On Nov. 7, 1917 (Oct. 25, 1917, on the old calendar), a Bolshevik-led army of workers, soldiers, and sailors took control of key positions in Petrograd. That night, they captured the Winter Palace, which had become the headquarters of Kerensky’s provisional government. Other cities, including Moscow, soon fell to the Bolsheviks.
On Nov. 8, 1917, the All-Russian Congress of Soviets authorized the Bolsheviks to set up a Council of People’s Commissars to run the national government. The new government established a secret police force called the Cheka. Local soviets in towns and cities throughout Russia gave workers control of factories and confiscated the property of large landowners, the Russian Orthodox Church, and anyone who opposed the revolution.
The new government quickly withdrew Russia from the war with Germany. On Dec. 2, 1917, Russia negotiated a cease-fire. On March 3, 1918, the government signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk to prevent German invasion. Under this treaty, Russia lost a quarter of its territory. Ukraine and Finland became independent. Bessarabia (now mostly part of Moldova), Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and the Polish territory that had been ruled by Russia fell under German control. Russia lost many of its factories and about a third of its food-producing land.
In March 1918, the Bolshevik government moved the capital of Russia from Petrograd to Moscow. The Bolsheviks also altered the name of their Russian Social Democratic Labor Party to the Russian Communist Party. It later became the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. In July 1918, a Soviet constitution went into effect.
Barely a month after the October Revolution, counterrevolutionaries—known as Whites—began organizing resistance. Trotsky organized the Red Army (named for the red of the Communist flag) to fight the counterrevolutionaries as well as foreign intervention. The Red (Communist) Russians, aided by the peasantry, fought a bloody civil war with the Whites for nearly three years. The Whites received support from several other countries, including Canada, France, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Foreign-led resistance to the government continued in eastern Siberia for almost two years. But by 1920, the Communists had won and the revolution was complete.
Aftermath.
Communist Russia gradually transformed itself into the Soviet Union. It reconquered Ukraine, which it had lost in 1918, and Georgia and eastern Armenia, which it had lost during the period of civil war. Russia also suppressed nationalist movements in central Asia and what is now Belarus. In 1922, the Russian Communist government formed the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, or Soviet Union. In April 1922, Joseph Stalin became general secretary of the Communist Party. From this position, he gained control of the Soviet Union after the death of Lenin in 1924. Stalin remained in power until his own death in March 1953.
At first, many foreign nations refused to recognize the new Soviet government. The United Kingdom recognized the Soviet Union in 1924, followed by the United States in 1933. The Communist system finally ended in Russia in 1991, two years after it had collapsed in the East European countries. The Soviet Union itself also broke up.
