What Was the Russian Revolution of February 1917?
The Russian Revolution of February 1917 was the mass uprising that brought down the Romanov dynasty and dissolved the Russian Empire. It started on 23 February 1917 (8 March by the Western calendar), when women textile workers in Petrograd walked off the job; the protest rapidly drew in other workers and then the soldiers stationed in the capital. In less than a week the imperial government had ceased to function and Tsar Nicholas II had given up the throne, closing the chapter on centuries of autocratic rule and opening the way to an entirely new political order in Russia (see Figes, A People’s Tragedy, 1996).
The background of the revolution
No single cause produced February 1917. Deep-rooted strains had been building for decades: a society and economy changing faster than the political system could accommodate, an autocracy unwilling to modernize itself, increasingly assertive nationalist and revolutionary movements, and the relentless demands of great-power competition. Onto these were piled the burdens of the First World War and, in the capital itself, an acute shortage of bread.
Of these factors, the war mattered most directly. It laid bare every weakness of the imperial system, drained the economy, and pushed ordinary Russians toward radical politics. At the start of 1917 the army stood near breaking point, the economic situation was desperate, and public discontent ran deep; confidence in the monarchy had been worn away by repeated wartime disasters, and the regime could see no path out of the crisis.
The immediate trigger of the revolution was the bread crisis in Petrograd. By early 1917, the Russian economy was in a state of near-collapse, with food shortages in the major cities and inadequate transportation. The situation in Petrograd became particularly acute in February 1917, with long lines at the bread shops and a growing sense of crisis among the population.
The outbreak of the revolution
The spark came on 23 February 1917, when women textile workers in Petrograd struck over bread shortages and the bitter cold. Their protest snowballed, drawing in other workers and then the garrison soldiers, until within days the regime’s authority in the capital had simply evaporated.
Strikes, street demonstrations, and military mutinies followed one another in quick succession. Workers at the city’s great plants, among them the Putilov works, downed tools, and the crowds swelled day by day. Garrison units sent to disperse the demonstrators instead went over to them, one after another, so that by 27 February the bulk of the Petrograd garrison stood with the revolution and the government no longer controlled its own capital.
That same day, 27 February, the Petrograd Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies came into being and quickly emerged as one of two rival centers of authority. Led by Socialist Revolutionaries and Mensheviks, the Soviet issued its celebrated Order No. 1, granting political rights to soldiers and sailors and asserting the Soviet’s own authority over military units.
The abdication of Nicholas II
Nicholas II was at army headquarters in Mogilev when the revolution broke out. His attempt to reach the capital by train was blocked, and under pressure he abdicated on 2 March 1917 (15 March by the Western calendar), naming his brother, the Grand Duke Michael, as his successor. Michael refused the crown the following day, and with that refusal the Romanov dynasty came to an end.
After more than 300 years of Romanov rule, the abdication formally closed both the dynasty’s history and the empire’s. It came as the culmination of a long decline in the dynasty’s standing, with the February uprising and the disintegration of the imperial government delivering the final blow.
Michael’s refusal proved fateful. Convinced that he could not take the throne without popular consent, and that the Provisional Government was in no position to guarantee such consent, he stepped aside, leaving Russia’s constitutional future undecided. That unresolved question fed the instability that ultimately led to the October Revolution.
The Provisional Government
Power passed to a Provisional Government drawn largely from the Constitutional Democratic Party and other progressive groupings. Prince Georgy Lvov headed it until July 1917, when the moderate Socialist Revolutionary Alexander Kerensky took over. The new government promised sweeping change: a Constituent Assembly, an end to the old regime’s curbs on civil liberties, and land reform.
Yet the government could not master Russia’s underlying crises. Its insistence on staying in the war alienated soldiers and workers alike, and it found no answers to the social and economic breakdown engulfing the country. It was further hampered by having to share influence with the Petrograd Soviet, whose hold over soldiers and workers, and whose own revolutionary agenda, limited the government’s freedom of action.
The aftermath of the revolution
Crisis followed crisis between February and October: the April Crisis over war aims, the armed demonstrations of the July Days in Petrograd, the Kornilov Affair of August 1917, when commander-in-chief Lavr Kornilov attempted a military coup, and the steady radicalization of workers and soldiers.
Each of these episodes found the Provisional Government wanting, and its grip on events visibly weakened. The Bolsheviks, with their slogans of “Peace, Land, and Bread,” offered a more attractive alternative, and they were able to use the soviets to organize a mass following. The Bolshevik seizure of power in October 1917 marked the end of the period of dual power, and it set the stage for the establishment of the Soviet state.
The legacy of the February Revolution
February 1917 stands among the great turning points of Russian history: centuries of autocracy ended within days, and an entirely new political order had to be built in its place. Its significance was global as well, hastening Russia’s exit from the First World War and preparing the ground for the October Revolution and the Soviet Union that followed.
The forces the revolution unleashed — the soviets, the revolutionary parties, the mass social movements — went on to define the twentieth century. How the February Revolution should be interpreted, and how it should be remembered, remain live questions in Russian historiography and in Russian public life alike (see Fitzpatrick, The Russian Revolution, 1982).