 overnight.
In a nearly bloodless transition of power, a provisional government was formed. Its members believed that their main task was to rule as an interim government until a constitutional convention could establish a new democratically based governmental system for Russia. By June 1917, the driving personality behind the provisional government was a social revolutionary (i.e., agrarian socialist) named Alexander Kerensky (1881–1970). He continued Russian participation in a war it could never win, refused to redistribute large estates to land-hungry peasants, could not supply the cities with food, and would not expropriate factory owners to permit workers’ control. Between February and October, Bolshevik activists worked to foment change through the Petrograd and Moscow soviets and other mass organizations. In his April Theses, N. Lenin (1870–1924), the leader of the Bolsheviks, opposed the government’s policies with the slogans “All Power to Soviets” and “Land, Bread, and Peace.” These catchphrases appealed to Russia’s peasantry, urban proletariat, and soldiers. “All Power to Soviets” was Lenin’s way of making grassroots participatory democratic organs the font of political power in Russia, rather than the Provisional Government, which was based on a Duma elected by restricted franchise under the old autocracy. Lenin recognized that there were two parallel systems of government operating (dual power) and encouraged Russian activists in the soviets to challenge and ultimately take state power away from the elite classes and put it in the hands of the urban and rural working classes for the benefit of the Russian people. “Land, Bread, and Peace” referred to specific Bolshevik proposals to end people’s suffering, exploitation, and oppression: organize the distribution of land tied up in large aristocratic estates to the peasants who worked them (and were already seizing the land), give urban workers bread (food), establish workers’ control in industry, and withdraw Russia from an imperialist war so soldiers could return home in peace. These proposals resonated deeply with the Russian people in mid-1917, and they hastened the political transformation of the soviets from institutions supporting liberal parliamentarianism into institutions promoting revolutionary socialism. In July, massive Bolshevik-inspired demonstrations that called for the overthrow of the Provisional Government were brutally suppressed by loyal army troops. Lenin and much of the Bolshevik leadership went into hiding. They recovered when an army under General Lavr Kornilov (1870–1918) moved to attack Petrograd, and Kerensky offered amnesty and arms to those who would defend the city. Bolsheviks recruited a militia of 25,000 to defend Petrograd and persuaded Kornilov’s troops to desert and join the revolution. As a consequence, the Bolsheviks’ prestige with the citizenry grew, and they and their allies in the military were well armed and in a stronger position than ever before.
In early October, after much internal debate, the Bolshevik Central Committee decided to seize control of the state apparatus by means of an insurrection directed against the Provisional Government and so end the situation of dual power. Leon Trotsky (1879–1940) and others made preparations for the uprising, however, a date was not set. Kerensky was also interested in ending the situation of dual power and moved against the Bolsheviks on October 22, ordering the arrest of their Military Revolutionary Committee, banning their press, and cutting the telephone lines to their headquarters at the Smolny Institute. The Bolshevik Central Committee decided to put its plan to overthrow the government into action on October 24. Bolshevik Red Guards occupied key locations in the city and surrounded the Winter Palace, where the Provisional Government had its headquarters. Sailors on warships in the harbor supported the Bolsheviks’ land forces, and the Provisional Government collapsed. The uprising was a success, and Bolshevik-led forces were in control of Russia’s capital by October 26. Th