Russia · 1917

What Caused the Russian Revolution?

By William Souef · Published August 19, 2026

The Russia that arrived at 1917

Two structural facts set the stage. First, land: the serfs had been emancipated in 1861, but on terms that left most peasant households with too little land and too much debt, in a country where the overwhelming majority still farmed. Second, speed: from the 1890s Russia industrialised at forced pace, concentrating a new working class in a handful of cities — Petrograd, Moscow — with brutal conditions and no legal way to bargain.

The 1905 revolution was the warning. After troops fired on a peaceful petition march (Bloody Sunday), strikes and mutinies forced Nicholas II to concede an elected assembly, the Duma. He then spent the next decade hollowing it out, narrowing the franchise and dissolving it when it displeased him. The lesson learned in 1905 by everyone except the tsar was that pressure worked and promises did not.

February: five days that ended a dynasty

By the winter of 1916–17 the war had broken the supply system. Petrograd's bakeries had flour arriving irregularly; queues formed before dawn in −20°C. On 23 February 1917 (8 March in the Western calendar), women marching for International Women's Day joined striking workers from the giant Putilov works. Over the next four days the strike became general, and the decisive question became the garrison: soldiers ordered to fire on the crowds began refusing, then joining.

Once the army was gone, the tsar had nothing left. Nicholas II abdicated on 2 March in favour of his brother, who declined the following day. Power fell to two bodies at once — a Provisional Government drawn from the Duma, and the Petrograd Soviet of workers' and soldiers' deputies. Historians call the result "dual power": the government held the offices, the Soviet held the loyalty of the men with rifles.

The mistake that made October possible

The Provisional Government made a defensible choice that proved fatal: it honoured Russia's alliance commitments and kept fighting. Land redistribution, the peasants' overwhelming demand, was deferred to a future Constituent Assembly. Both decisions handed the Bolsheviks their platform. Lenin, returned from exile in April in a train the German government was happy to provide, refused any cooperation with the Provisional Government and made the case in his April Theses for a second revolution in the name of the soviets.

Through the summer the government weakened — a failed offensive, a chaotic July uprising, then an attempted military coup by General Kornilov that it could only defeat by arming the Bolsheviks it had recently been arresting. By October the Bolsheviks held majorities in the Petrograd and Moscow soviets, and on 25 October (7 November) they took the government's buildings in a near-bloodless operation. The slogan that carried it was not ideology but a list: peace, land, bread.

What followed, and why the date still matters

The Bolsheviks delivered peace at a savage price — the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk in March 1918 surrendered Ukraine, the Baltics and Finland — and land by ratifying what peasants were already seizing. What they did not deliver was the democratic promise: when the Constituent Assembly elections gave the Bolsheviks second place, the assembly was dissolved after a single day in January 1918.

Then came the civil war: Reds against a fractured coalition of Whites, backed by foreign interventions, with famine and typhus killing more than the fighting. By 1922 the Bolsheviks had won and the Soviet Union existed. The reason 1917 still frames the twentieth century is that it produced the first state to claim it was building socialism by force — the model, ally and adversary that shaped everything from the Cold War to decolonisation.

Frequently asked questions

Were there one or two Russian Revolutions in 1917?

Two. The February Revolution was a largely spontaneous collapse — bread riots and strikes that became mutiny, ending with Tsar Nicholas II's abdication. The October Revolution eight months later was a planned seizure of power by Lenin's Bolsheviks from the Provisional Government that had replaced the tsar. Confusingly, by the Western calendar they happened in March and November.

Why did the Bolsheviks win when they weren't the largest party?

Because they offered the two things people wanted most and their rivals deferred: immediate exit from the war and immediate land. They were also concentrated where power physically sat — majorities in the Petrograd and Moscow soviets — and organised for seizure rather than election. When free elections were held in November 1917, they came second, and they dissolved the resulting assembly after one day.

Did Germany really send Lenin to Russia?

Germany facilitated his return, yes — arranging his passage from Swiss exile across German territory in April 1917 in a sealed train. The motive was strategic rather than ideological: a Russia consumed by revolution was a Russia likely to leave the war, freeing German divisions for the Western Front. It worked, though not on the timetable Berlin expected.