The October Revolution: The Bolshevik Seizure of Power
A Coup, a Revolution, or Both?
By the autumn of 1917 the Provisional Government had run out of room. The army was disintegrating; peasants were seizing land in the countryside; food was running out in the cities. Into this vacuum stepped the Bolsheviks. On the night of 25–26 October 1917 (Old Style), a few thousand Red Guards, soldiers of the Petrograd garrison and Kronstadt sailors took control of the railway stations, the telegraph offices, the bridges and finally the Winter Palace itself. The Provisional Government was arrested without serious resistance. Most of Petrograd carried on as normal that night. The October Revolution was both a tightly planned seizure of power and the political punchline of a year in which the Bolsheviks had built genuine support in the city’s soviets and factories.
The Bolsheviks won in October because their opponents were exhausted, their slogans (‘Peace, Land, Bread’) answered the most urgent demands of the country, Trotsky organised the seizure through the Petrograd Soviet’s Military Revolutionary Committee, and Lenin pushed the party past its hesitations into action.
Lenin’s Return and the April Theses
In April 1917 Vladimir Lenin reached Petrograd in a sealed train provided by the German government, which had every reason to want a Russia out of the war. The next day he set out his April Theses. The programme stunned even his own party. There must be no support for the Provisional Government. There must be peace, immediately. The land must go to the peasants. The banks and the great factories must be brought under workers’ control. And, above all, ‘All Power to the Soviets’.
Senior Bolsheviks like Kamenev and Stalin had been edging towards conditional support for the Provisional Government. The April Theses ended that. Within weeks the Bolshevik Party had a single direction: opposition to the war and to the government, framed by the slogan that fitted on a banner — ‘Peace, Land, Bread’.
Students sometimes argue Lenin was a German agent because Berlin paid for the sealed train. The two interests aligned without one controlling the other. Germany wanted Russia out of the war and was happy to fund anyone who promised that. Lenin wanted to take a Russia he saw as ripe for revolution out of an imperialist war. Each used the other. The July Days ‘German agent’ leaks were politically devastating in the moment but historians since have shown there is no evidence Lenin took policy direction from Berlin. Strong answers note the funding without collapsing it into control.
The July Days — A Setback Lenin Survived
In early July 1917 Petrograd erupted. Kronstadt sailors and Petrograd soldiers, fearing a transfer to the front, demonstrated for ‘All Power to the Soviets’. The Bolsheviks dithered between leading the rising and trying to restrain it. Kerensky’s government accused Lenin of being a paid German agent and leaked documents in support. Pravda was shut, Trotsky and Kamenev were arrested, and Lenin fled across the Finnish border disguised as a railway worker. Bolshevik membership briefly fell. By August 1917 it looked, on paper, as if the radical left had been broken.
Sergei Eisenstein’s 1928 film ‘October’ staged a Petrograd-wide assault on the Winter Palace. The reality was small. The seizure of power was carried out by perhaps 15,000–20,000 Red Guards, soldiers and Kronstadt sailors organised by Trotsky’s Military Revolutionary Committee. Most of the city carried on as normal that night — trams ran, theatres opened, restaurants served dinner. The Bolsheviks did, however, command real popular support: by September they held majorities in the Petrograd and Moscow Soviets and dominated the factory committees. Strong answers separate the small mechanics of the seizure from the broad political shift that made it possible.
Trotsky and the Military Revolutionary Committee
In September 1917 the Bolsheviks won majorities in the Petrograd and Moscow Soviets. Lev Trotsky — a recent recruit to Bolshevism — was elected chair of the Petrograd Soviet. On 12 October the Soviet, on his proposal, set up the Military Revolutionary Committee (MRC), nominally to defend the city against any new Kornilov-style revolt. In practice the MRC was the planning headquarters of the October Revolution. It contacted the city’s garrison units, won pledges of loyalty, and decided which buildings would be seized first.
Lenin, in hiding in Finland, sent furious letters demanding that the party seize power before the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets opened. He returned to Petrograd in disguise on 10 October. That night, at a Bolshevik Central Committee meeting, the vote was ten in favour, two against, with Kamenev and Zinoviev opposing — both later leaked the decision to a Menshevik newspaper, which is one reason the rising had to happen quickly.
The Night of 25–26 October
From the early hours of 25 October (Old Style), MRC units took the railway stations, the State Bank, the Central Telegraph Office, the bridges and the General Staff building. Kerensky slipped out of Petrograd by car, supposedly to find loyal troops, and never returned to power. By late afternoon almost the entire city was under Bolshevik control except for the Winter Palace, where the remnants of the Provisional Government waited under the protection of cadets and the Women’s Battalion of Death. Around 9pm the cruiser Aurora, anchored on the Neva, fired a blank shell as a signal. The Winter Palace was rushed in the small hours of 26 October. The ministers were arrested in their cabinet room.
When the Second Congress of Soviets convened the same night, the Bolsheviks had a fait accompli to present. Lenin read out the ‘Decree on Peace’ and the ‘Decree on Land’: an immediate end to the war and the transfer of all gentry, Church and Crown estates to peasant communes. The Mensheviks and right-wing Socialist Revolutionaries walked out in protest. Trotsky famously sneered: ‘Go to where you belong — the dustbin of history.’
Trotsky organised the October seizure of power as chair of the Petrograd Soviet and head of the Military Revolutionary Committee; Lenin returned from hiding only days before, but he was the political will who pushed the party past its hesitations and authored the first decrees of the new Soviet government.
Why the Bolsheviks Won
Strong answers explain Bolshevik victory by combining two sets of reasons. The Provisional Government had collapsed under its own weight: the failed war, the postponed Constituent Assembly, the Kornilov Affair. The Bolsheviks then converted that vacuum through Lenin’s political programme, Trotsky’s organisational grip on the Petrograd Soviet, and slogans — Peace, Land, Bread — that addressed the things people actually wanted. The seizure on 25–26 October was small, but the political and military space it filled was real.