The Many Revolutions of 1917

Provisional Government

Dual PowerProvisional Government• Middle classes, urban dwellers• Liberal democratic parties• Prince L’vov• Aleksandr Kerensky• Mistakes:• Continued the war effort• Refused to give land to peasants• Failed to solve food supply problem• Delayed calling Constituent Assembly

Revolutionary Petrograd

Dual PowerPetrograd Soviet:–Workers– Soldiers– Executive Committee:• Mensheviks• Socialist Revolutionaries (SRs)• Bolsheviks

– Refused to take power– Failed to see the threat from the

Left

Petrograd Soviet of workers’ and soldiers’ deputies

Lenin returns, April 1917

•Finland Station•April Theses:•No Support for PG•Bourgeois Revolution•Elimination of Army, police and bureaucracy•Pay govt. employees no more than workers•“All Power to the Soviets!”•not Bolshevik power

The Bolsheviks of 1917• Marxists• Almost dead early 1917• Tightly organized, but then mass

party• Led and followed masses• Very good organizers, especially of

soviets.• Split over goals:

– World Revolution: Lenin and Trotsky

– Caretaker govt.: L. Kamenev• Slogans:

“Bread, Peace, Land!”“All Power to the Soviets!”

Peasant Revolutions• Slow to hear• Village skhod ->

soviet• Passed decree• Seized: • Land• Forest

• Fought over the spoils

• Localism

National Revolutions• e.g. Ukrainian

Central Rada• Autonomy• Kerensky and PG

split• Ukrainianized

regiments• But limited

peasants’ support

The July Days• Kerensky’s June offensive failed.• Workers, soldiers, sailors

demonstrated: “All Power to the Soviets!”

• Some Bolsheviks encouraged them.

• Called for end to the war.• Demanded Soviet seize power.• PG cracked down; over 700

wounded and killed.• Bolsheviks blamed; many

arrested.• Lenin fled abroad.