Peace, land, and bread toppled a wartime empire in 1917
The Russian Revolution names 1917's upheavals that abolished monarchy and installed socialist government through two successive revolutions plus civil war. February revolt, amid World War I defeats and urban shortages, opened the year; Bolsheviks later rode slogans of peace, land, and bread.
The groundwork was laid in 1905, when Bloody Sunday set off strikes and mutinies and produced both the St Petersburg Soviet, a model for its 1917 successor, and the Duma that later formed the Provisional Government. The First World War did the rest. Early patriotism faded after defeats in 1914–1915, and Nicholas II made things worse by taking personal command of the army in 1915, so every loss was pinned on him. The German-born Empress Alexandra, left in charge at home, drew suspicion, and the mystic Grigori Rasputin's sway produced corrupt, disastrous appointments.
The economy frayed too. The Ottoman entry into the war in October 1914 cut Russia's sea route to the Mediterranean, deepening shortages of goods and shells. Harvests held up, but the government printed money to fund the war, and by 1917 prices had risen as much as fourfold since 1914; peasants hoarded grain rather than sell it cheaply, leaving cities hungry. Liberals pressed their case, and in 1915 Octobrists and Kadets demanded a responsible government, which the tsar refused.
With mutiny looming, Nicholas abdicated on 15 March 1917, and a Duma-led Provisional Government shared power uneasily with soviets that controlled militias. It kept fighting the unpopular war and cracked down during the July Days, while the Bolsheviks gathered support by promising an end to the war, land for peasants and food for the towns. Their armed rising in Petrograd from 7 November toppled the government and proclaimed a Soviet Russian republic.
Civil war followed, pitting the Reds against nationalists, rival socialists, anarchists, monarchists and liberals, the last two backing the White movement; Leon Trotsky forged the Red Army and peasants seized land across the countryside. Soviet power spread to Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Byelorussia, leading to the Soviet Union. The revolutionary era is usually said to close in 1922 with the Whites' defeat, after which the ruling party held power for six decades.
Source: Russian Revolution
