Page 61 - All About History - Issue 26-15

LENIN'S BLOODY REVOLUTION

Nicholas II, not
long after his
abdication in 1917

1917
ELECTION
RESULTS
A session of the
Petrograd Soviet
in 1917

when the Provisional Government, led by the the right shells to fire from them. The Suchhadbeenthestateofthe
moderate-socialist Alexander Kerensky, ordered signaltoattack,ithadbeenagreed, Provisional Government that, as one
the shutting down of the Bolshevik printing would come from a red lantern raised Socialist- commentator put it, the Bolsheviks
pressesasapreludetoanattackonthePetrograd onaflagpole,butduringtheevent,a Revolutionary Party did not so much seize power as pick
Military Revolutionary Committee. In retaliation, red lantern couldn’t be found, and the Percentage: 41 it up from where it had been dropped.
Number of seats: 380
the Bolsheviks’ armed bands of proletariat workers, soldiersenttolookforonegotlostin The revolution has been called a coup
knownastheRedGuard,stormedstrategic thedarkandfellintoabog.Thelamp Bolsheviks in some circles, but the word ‘coup’
points such as bridges, railway stations, telephone he eventually brought back couldn’t Percentage: 24 impliestakingpowerfromastrong
Number of seats: 168
exchanges, post offices, the national bank and the beattachedtothepoleandwasn’t opponent, where the power that the
TauridePalace.Kerenskyfled,havingbeenunable red anyway. Nobody that eventually Constitutional Provisional Government actually
to muster counter-troops in time. By the morning, participatedintheattackevensaw Democratic Party wielded was debatable. Essentially,
Percentage: 5
theonlysitethathadn’tfallentotherevolutionaries it. This Pythonesque chaos dragged Number of seats: 17 there had been nobody actually
was the Winter Palace, the headquarters of the theWinterPalace’sdownfalloutto ‘running’ Russia for the months since
Provisional Government. a tortuous 15 hours, when a more Mensheviks theabdicationoftheTsar.
Percentage: 3
The‘StormingoftheWinterPalace’hasgone organised force could probably have Seats: 18 Sadly, however, the utopian
downasafamouslydramaticmomentinhistory, achieved it in far less time. socialist ideals of the Bolsheviks
butitwasactuallyamuchmorescrappyaffair Luckily for the Bolshevik forces, the Others weresooncompromisedwhenthey
Percentage: 27
than portrayals like Sergei Eisenstein’s classic film defencefromwithintheWinterPalace Number of seats: 120 were actually in charge, with Lenin
October have suggested. The revolutionary military was practically non-existent. The forced into compromises like the
hadplannedtobegintheassaultusingheavy ministers inside were inexperienced crippling Brest-Litovsk peace treaty
artilleryfromthenearbyPeterandPaulFortress, inmilitarymatters,andthesmallnumberoftroops withGermany,whichlostRussiaseveralofits
butitturnedoutthattheweaponstherewere defending them were becoming increasingly provincesanddepriveditofvastswathesofits
rustyfromdisuseandwouldn’tfunction.Soldiers nervous the longer they waited for the Bolsheviks agricultural and industrial resources. The Bolshevik
broughtupreplacementcannonsfromelsewhere tobreachthedoors.Ammunitionandfoodsupplies ideology proved largely unworkable simply due to
inthefortress,butthenrealisedtheydidn’thave for even a single evening were desperately low, thepracticalitiesofgovernance.Leninendedup
and when the Bolsheviks began firing blank shots replacing one monolithic state with a different one,
atthepalacefromthecruiserAuroraanchored overrulingthe‘free’electionsofNovember1917
ontheBolshayaNevaRiver,thesoldiersmostly (in which the Socialist-Revolutionary Party won a
panicked and fled. Lenin appeared in public for significantmajorityofthevotes)andannouncing
the first time in months to proclaim that the “theDictatorshipoftheProletariat”sothatthe
Provisional Government had been overthrown, Bolsheviks walked away with power anyway.
and that the time had finally come to “set about Factionalsplitsandcivilwarfollowed,asdid
buildingaproletariansocialiststate.”TheBolshevik thecontinuingoppressionoftheproletariatthat
position was strengthened even further when the Bolshevism had sought to liberate, the catastrophic
Mensheviks and the Social Revolutionaries walked famine of the 1930s and the horrific regime of the
outoftheresultanttalks,leavingLeninandhis former Bolshevik Joseph Stalin.
comradesbasicallyunopposed.“Youaremiserable Theflurryofideasthathadledtotherevolution © Joe Cummings; Alamy; Rex Features
bankrupts. You have played out your role,” Trotsky had been, and for many is still, inspirational. The
said to those departing. “Go where you belong, into tragedy remains that the revolutionaries failed to
the dustbin of history.” live up to their own ideology.
61