The Russian Revolution stretched from February to October 1917 (Julian calendar), and it was one of the most significant events of the 20th century. The overthrow of the Czarist (i.e., imperial) regime in February and the chaos that followed set the stage for the Bolshevik uprising in October. The result was the creation of the world’s first communist state based on workers’ and soldiers’ councils (soviets), a geographically sizable state initially dedicated to Marx’s vision of social justice, and a society without classes and private property, which in theory would lead to full human emancipation. The creation of a communist state in a hostile capitalist world set the stage for later developments, especially the rise of anti-communist fascism in Europe during the 1920s and 1930s, the Nazi attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941, the beginning of German genocidal warfare in World War II, and the U.S.-led Cold War against the Soviet Union from 1945 to 1991.
Russia in 1917 witnessed a two-stage revolution: the overthrow of the Czarist regime and formation of a liberal Provisional Government during the February Revolution and the overthrow of the Provisional Government by the Bolsheviks and Petrograd Workers’ and Soldiers’ Soviet in the October Revolution. The causes of these two revolutions are found in the deep structure of Russia’s economic, social, and political development in the first decades of the 20th century.
Russia’s economic problems stemmed from its structurally uneven economic development. The agricultural sector was inefficient and relied on outdated techniques that kept production stagnant. This was not a problem in itself, as long as population remained stable and mostly in the countryside, but farms and rural communes could not keep pace with the increased demand for food caused by urbanization. Even if enough food were available, the lack of a modern infrastructure of roads and railroads created problems in supplying growing administrative and industrial centers with food and raw materials. During World War I (1914–1918), deficient infrastructure became a massive problem, as general conscription removed skilled workers from railroads and food-processing industries and peasants from their farms, which only aggravated poor wartime harvests and created widespread famine. Factory workers had to endure terrible working conditions, including 12- to 14-hour days and low wages, as Russia’s industrial captains sought to catch up with Western European industry. Riots and strikes led by labor activists in the industrial centers of Moscow and St. Petersburg (the country’s capital) for better conditions and higher wages were frequent after 1900. Any wage increases were more than rescinded by the scarcities and inflation caused by the mobilization of economic resources for World War I. By 1916, declining real wages, scarcity of fuel, and starvation threatened Russia’s largest cities.
The social causes of the Russian Revolution had deep roots in centuries of the Czarist regime’s oppression of the peasantry, its more recent oppression of working-class aspirations, and its inability to prosecute Russia’s wartime mobilization successfully. Rural peasants ceased to be serfs bound to the soil in 1861, but they had to make redemption payments to the state, something they resented deeply, and they wanted village or communal ownership of the land they worked. In the latter part of the 19th century, peasant disturbances and occasional revolts, often inspired and directed by young urban activists of the Social Revolutionary and Populist (narodnik) parties, lit up the countryside; the goal was to securing small-scale peasant land ownership from the extensive holdings of the state and from the large estates of aristocratic landowners. In the cities, rapid industrialization led to urban overcrowding, slums and unsafe working conditions for the Russian proletariat. In 2 decades (1890–1910), the populations of Moscow and St. Petersburg nearly doubled. The cities were unable to accommodate such growth: apartments were overcrowded, hygi