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20
The Bolshevik Revolution, which
began 100 years ago next
month, wasn’t supposed to
happen. In 1917 four-fifths of
Russia’s population were
peasants and Russia was
disastrously embroiled in World
War One. Even after the
revolution of February 1917,
Bolsheviks were a small
minority.
Yet, within eight months,
everything changed. In ten days
in October 1917 the world was
shaken on its axis.
Despite ‘White armies’,
supported by Britain and 13
other foreign invaders launching
war in Russia causing 10.5
million deaths, the socialist
revolution survived.
Two revolutions took place in
1917. The first, on February 23
(March 8 in our calendar), was
led by women who had replaced
men conscripted from factories
and launched strikes and huge
demonstrations in Petrograd and
Moscow against government
corruption and food rationing.
Tsar Nicholas abdicated. A
bourgeois Provisional
Government took office.
The Bolshevik leader Lenin
and his wife Krupskaya returned
from exile in April 1917,
travelling through Germany on
a sealed train before arriving at
Petrograd’s Finland station.
Lenin’s April Theses outlined
the tasks for socialist revolution;
withdrawal from the war,
nationalisation of landed estates
and banks and for production
and distribution under control
of workers’ councils (Soviets).
The popularity of the
Bolshevik programme,
summarised by the slogan
‘peace, bread and land’ led to
the second revolution in October
1917.
Russia’s Provisional
government supported
participation in World War One
despite its growing
unpopularity. As Bolshevik
authority grew in Soviets and
the army, they urged the
overthrow of the Provisional
government.
At this critical juncture
Russian railworkers proved
decisive, preventing a military
coup by general Kornilov,
Russia’s commander-in-chief.
On August 27 1917 the
Petrograd Soviet appealed to
soldiers, telegraph operators,
and railworkers to defend the
revolution and refuse military
orders.
The All-Russian Executive
Committee of the Union of
Railwaymen issued telegrams
across the rail network,
THE REVOLUTION THAT
SHOOK THE WORLD
Professor Mary Davis of the Marx
Memorial Library tells the story of
the Bolshevik revolution