The Russian Revolution took place in 1917,
during the final phase of World War I. It removed Russia
from the war and brought about the transformation of the Russian Empire
into the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), replacing Russia’s
traditional monarchy with the world’s first Communist state. The
revolution happened in stages through two separate coups, one in
February and one in October. The new government, led by Vladimir
Lenin, would solidify its power only after three years of civil
war, which ended in 1920.
Although the events of the Russian Revolution happened abruptly,
the causes may be traced back nearly a century. Prior to the revolution,
the Russian monarchy had become progressively weaker and increasingly
aware of its own vulnerability (and therefore more reactionary).
Nicholas II—the tsar who led Russia in the years leading up to the
revolution—had personally witnessed revolutionary terrorists assassinate
his grandfather and, subsequently, his own father respond to the
assassination through brutal oppression of the Russian people. When
Nicholas II himself became tsar in 1894,
he used similarly severe measures to subdue resistance movements,
which were becoming bolder and more widespread every year. As Nicholas’s
newly imposed oppressions in turn incited still more unrest, he
was forced to make concessions after each incident: it was in this
manner that Russia’s first constitution was created, as was its
first parliament. These concessions continued gradually until Nicholas
II’s grip on power became very tenuous.
As Nicholas II grew weaker, Vladimir Lenin rose to prominence as
the most powerful figure in Russia. Although this famous leader of
the October Revolution was not even in Russia for the February Revolution—he
had lived in self-imposed exile in Europe since 1900 and
returned to Russia only in April 1917—he
nonetheless exerted tremendous influence. Whatever history’s judgment
of him, few other Russian revolutionaries possessed Lenin’s decisiveness and
strength of vision for Russia’s future. Born in 1870 in
the provincial town of Simbirsk as Vladimir Ilich Ulyanov, the young
Lenin was profoundly affected by his older brother Alexander’s 1887 execution
for being involved in a plot to assassinate the tsar. As a young adult,
Vladimir joined the resistance movement himself and took the pseudonym
Lenin but swore that he would never engage in the sort of “adventurism”
that had ended his brother’s life. Nevertheless, his actions would
one day become very adventurous indeed.
The revolution that Lenin led marked one of the
most radical turning points in Russia’s 1,300-year
history: it affected economics, social structure, culture, international
relations, industrial development, and most any other benchmark
by which one might measure a revolution. Although the new government
would prove to be at least as repressive as the one it replaced,
the country’s new rulers were drawn largely from the intellectual
and working classes rather than from the aristocracy—which meant
a considerable change in direction for Russia.
The revolution opened the door for Russia to
fully enter the industrial age. Prior to 1917,
Russia was a mostly agrarian nation that had dabbled in industrial
development only to a limited degree. By 1917,
Russia’s European neighbors had embraced industrialization for more
than half a century, making technological advancements such as widespread
electrification, which Russia had yet to achieve. After the revolution,
new urban-industrial regions appeared quickly in Russia and became
increasingly important to the country’s development. The population
was drawn to the cities in huge numbers. Education also took a major
upswing, and illiteracy was almost entirely eradicated.
The Russian Revolution also had considerable international
consequences. Lenin’s government immediately pulled Russia out of World
War I, changing the balance of forces for the remaining participants.
During the ensuing civil war in Russia, several nations, including
the United States, sent troops to Russia in hopes of keeping the
chaos from spreading beyond Russia’s boundaries. Over the next
several decades, the Soviet Union actively sponsored and assisted Communist
movements and revolutions around the world in an effort to broaden
its sphere of influence. The country also played a fundamental
role in the defeat of Nazi Germany during World War II.
Threatened by the possibility of revolutions
in their own lands, the governments of many Western nations viewed
Communism as a spreading threat and moved to isolate the Soviet
Union as much as possible. Following World War II and the advent
of the nuclear age, a confrontation between the Soviet Union and
the United States took center stage. As this Cold War got under
way, the two countries emerged as superpowers with much of the rest
of the world falling in behind one or the other. A protracted nuclear
arms race between the United States and Soviet Union would last
until the USSR finally collapsed in 1991.
