The October Revolution in Detail

The October Revolution of 25 October 1917 (7 November, Western calendar) was one of the most consequential political events in modern history. A small, disciplined party seized power in the name of the working class, transforming Russia and reshaping global politics for the rest of the twentieth century. The nature of the October Revolution — whether it was a popular revolution, a military coup, or something in between — remains one of the most fiercely debated questions in historiography.

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The Build-Up to October

Bolshevik Preparations

By October 1917, the political situation had shifted decisively in the Bolsheviks' favour:

Factor	Detail
Soviet majorities	The Bolsheviks won majorities in the Petrograd Soviet (September) and Moscow Soviet
Trotsky as Soviet chair	Trotsky was elected chairman of the Petrograd Soviet on 25 September — giving the Bolsheviks control of the key institution
Growing support	Bolshevik party membership had grown from approximately 24,000 in February to over 200,000 by October
Armed workers	The Red Guards, armed during the Kornilov Affair, provided a ready-made fighting force of approximately 20,000
Army disintegration	The Petrograd garrison, fearing transfer to the front, was sympathetic to the Bolsheviks
Government weakness	Kerensky's government was isolated, discredited, and virtually powerless

Lenin's Role

Lenin, still in hiding in Finland, bombarded the Central Committee with increasingly urgent demands for insurrection:

• On 12 September, he wrote: 'History will not forgive us if we do not take power now'
• On 1 October: 'To delay the insurrection is a crime. To wait for the Congress of Soviets would be a betrayal'
• He returned secretly to Petrograd on 10 October and attended a Central Committee meeting where, by a vote of 10 to 2, the decision to seize power was taken

Opposition Within the Party

Not all Bolsheviks supported immediate insurrection:

• Kamenev and Zinoviev voted against and publicly announced their opposition in the newspaper Novaya Zhizn — effectively revealing the planned insurrection
• They argued that the Bolsheviks should work through the forthcoming Second Congress of Soviets rather than risk an armed seizure
• Lenin was furious and demanded their expulsion (which did not happen)

Key Definition: Military Revolutionary Committee (MRC) — a body formed within the Petrograd Soviet, ostensibly to defend the city against German attack, but actually used by Trotsky to organise the military aspects of the Bolshevik seizure of power. It provided a veneer of soviet legitimacy for what was in practice a party operation.

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The Seizure of Power

Trotsky's Strategy

Trotsky was the organisational genius of the October Revolution. His strategy was to use the MRC to seize power in the name of the Soviet, thereby giving the Bolshevik takeover an aura of legitimacy:

• The MRC was established on 16 October, with Trotsky as its driving force
• It issued orders to garrison units, asserting the Soviet's authority over the military
• On 24 October, Kerensky ordered the closure of Bolshevik newspapers and the raising of bridges to isolate the working-class districts
• This gave the MRC the pretext to act in 'defence' of the revolution

The Events of 24–26 October

Date	Event
24 October	Red Guards and soldiers loyal to the MRC seized key points: telephone exchange, telegraph office, railway stations, bridges, the State Bank, and the Central Post Office. There was virtually no resistance
25 October (morning)	Lenin emerged from hiding and declared: 'The Provisional Government has been deposed' (this was premature — the Winter Palace had not yet fallen)
25 October (evening)	The Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets convened; the Bolsheviks held a majority. Mensheviks and right-wing SRs walked out in protest, famously told by Trotsky to go 'into the dustbin of history'
26 October (early hours)	The Winter Palace was stormed. In reality, it was barely defended — a few hundred officer cadets, Cossacks, and members of the Women's Death Battalion. The 'storming' was far less dramatic than Soviet mythology later portrayed
26 October	Lenin announced the formation of the Council of People's Commissars (Sovnarkom) — the new Bolshevik government

mindmap
  root((October Revolution: Interpretations))
    Traditional Soviet View
      Popular revolution
      Inevitable product of class struggle
      Led by the genius of Lenin
    Liberal/Conservative View (Pipes)
      Military coup by a small minority
      Exploited the power vacuum
      No genuine popular mandate
    Revisionist View (Fitzpatrick)
      Genuine popular support among workers and soldiers
      But organised by a disciplined party elite
      Neither pure revolution nor pure coup
    Post-Revisionist Synthesis
      Elements of both revolution and coup
      Popular discontent was real
      But Bolshevik organisation was decisive

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Was It a Coup or a Revolution?

This is the central historiographical question about October 1917.

Richard Pipes: "It Was a Coup"

The historian Richard Pipes (The Russian Revolution, 1990) argues that: