1917
February–March 1917
The February Revolution
The monarchy fell in the capital because a war government lost the streets, not because a Bolshevik plan succeeded.
By early 1917 Russia had been at war for three years. Bread queues, garrison mutiny, and a collapse of authority in Petrograd forced Nicholas II to abdicate in March (February by the old calendar — both dating systems appear in the sources). The Duma’s liberals formed a Provisional Government. Soviets of workers and soldiers formed alongside it. This “dual power” was unstable from the first week.
The Bolsheviks did not make February. Lenin was in Switzerland. Stalin and Kamenev, in Petrograd, initially took a cautious line toward the Provisional Government. The revolution that American textbooks sometimes merge into a single “Russian Revolution” was two different events, eight months apart, with opposite relationships to a popular vote.
Where to check it · Figes; Richard Pipes, The Russian Revolution; Alexander Kerensky’s memoirs, read as a participant’s brief.