The Rot from Within

The collapse of the Russian Empire didn't happen overnight. It began with the 1905 Revolution, a "dress rehearsal" where soldiers fired on peaceful protesters (Bloody Sunday). Tsar Nicholas II survived, but his authority was shattered.

By 1914, World War I pushed Russia to the brink. The army was poorly led and ill-equipped; soldiers fought barefoot. At home, the mystic Rasputin held sway over the Tsarina, convincing the public that the monarchy was not just incompetent, but corrupt. Starvation gripped the cities.

The people had nothing left to lose.

The Precursors

1905 Bloody Sunday

WWI Testing Point

The February Revolution

In February 1917 (March N.S.), women in Petrograd took to the streets demanding bread. They were joined by striking workers. When the Tsar ordered the garrison to fire on the crowd, the soldiers refused. They shot their officers instead.

Nicholas II, stranded on a train, was forced to abdicate. 300 years of Romanov rule ended in a matter of days. A Provisional Government was formed, but it made a fatal mistake: it chose to keep fighting the unpopular World War.

Meanwhile, the Petrograd Soviet (a council of workers and soldiers) held the real power on the streets. This "Dual Power" system could not last.

The Fall of the Tsar

"There is no treason anymore. Just revolution."

Outcome: Abdication
Rival: The Soviets

Red October

The radical Bolshevik leader, Vladimir Lenin, returned from exile in a sealed train provided by Germany. His slogan was simple and electrifying: "Peace, Land, and Bread."

On the night of October 25 (November 7 N.S.), the Bolshevik Red Guards stormed the Winter Palace. It was a nearly bloodless coup. The Provisional Government was arrested, and Lenin declared: "We shall now proceed to construct the socialist order."

Lenin immediately confiscated land from the nobility to give to peasants and nationalized the banks. Most importantly, he signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, pulling Russia out of WWI at a massive territorial cost.

The Bolsheviks

Peace, Land, Bread.

Leader: Lenin
Event: Storming Palace

Reds vs. Whites

The coup triggered a savage 5-year Civil War. The Red Army (Bolsheviks), brilliantly organized by Leon Trotsky, fought the White Army (a loose coalition of monarchists, liberals, and foreign troops from the US, UK, and Japan).

The Whites had better generals, but they were disunited and hated by the peasantry for trying to restore the landlords. The Reds controlled the industrial heartland and the railways.

It was a war of total brutality. Both sides engaged in mass executions, torture, and burning of villages. Millions died from fighting, typhus, and a famine that forced people to resort to cannibalism.

Civil War

Red Trotsky

White Denikin/Kolchak

The Red Terror

To secure power, Lenin unleashed the Cheka (secret police). They executed thousands of "class enemies" without trial. The Terror was a tool of state policy.

The ultimate symbol of this terror was the fate of the Romanovs. In July 1918, fearing the Whites would rescue them, the Bolsheviks woke the former Tsar, his wife, and their five children in the middle of the night. In a basement in Yekaterinburg, they were all shot and bayoneted to death.

The message was clear: there was no going back. The old world was dead.

The Cheka

The sword and shield of the Party.

The Soviet Union

By 1923, the Reds had won. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) was born. It was the world's first Marxist state.

Lenin died in 1924, leaving a power struggle between Trotsky and the quiet bureaucrat Joseph Stalin. Stalin would outmaneuver his rivals to become the undisputed dictator, transforming the USSR into an industrial superpower through sheer will and terrifying brutality.

The Russian Revolution had promised freedom, but it delivered a new kind of empire—one that would divide the world for the next 70 years.

1922

A new superpower rises.

Successor: Stalin
Legacy: Cold War