---
title: "Russian Revolution & Rise of Communism for UPSC"
description: "Learn the Russian Revolution of 1917, the Bolshevik seizure of power, and the global spread of communism, framed clearly for UPSC GS-1 world-history answers."
url: "https://modeldiplomat.com/learn/lessons/upsc-world-history-the-russian-revolution-the-rise-of-communism"
---

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The Russian Revolution & the rise of communism

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# The Russian Revolution & the rise of communism

The Russian Revolution of 1917, the Bolshevik seizure of power, and the global spread of communism, framed for UPSC GS-1 world-history answers.

## The structural crisis of Tsarist Russia

By 1917 the Romanov autocracy, ruling since 1613, had exhausted its legitimacy. The defeat in the Russo-Japanese War (1904–05) triggered the **Revolution of 1905**, after the **Bloody Sunday** massacre of 22 January 1905, forcing Nicholas II to concede the **October Manifesto** and an elected Duma. The reforms were hollow: the Fundamental Laws of 1906 preserved autocratic veto, and Prime Minister Pyotr Stolypin's agrarian reforms (the 'wager on the strong' peasant) were cut short by his assassination in 1911. Russia entered the First World War in 1914 with an industrial base too narrow for total war; by 1917 some two million soldiers were dead, the rouble had collapsed, and Petrograd faced bread shortages.

## The February and October Revolutions

The **February Revolution** (Julian calendar; March 1917 Gregorian) began with International Women's Day strikes in Petrograd on 23 February. When the garrison mutinied, the Duma formed a **Provisional Government** while the **Petrograd Soviet** of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies emerged in parallel — the condition Lenin called *dvoevlastie* (dual power). Nicholas II abdicated on 2/15 March 1917, ending the Romanov dynasty. The Provisional Government under Prince Lvov, then Alexander Kerensky, made a fatal choice: it continued the war and delayed land redistribution.

Vladimir Lenin returned from Swiss exile in April 1917 (transported by Germany in a sealed train) and issued the **April Theses**, demanding 'All power to the Soviets' and 'Peace, Land, Bread'. After the failed July Days and Kerensky's clash with General Kornilov in August, Bolshevik support surged. On the night of 24–25 October 1917 (7 November Gregorian), the Bolshevik **Military Revolutionary Committee**, led organisationally by Leon Trotsky, seized the Winter Palace. The Second Congress of Soviets ratified Lenin's **Decree on Peace** and **Decree on Land** the next day.

## Consolidation: war, terror, and the new state

The Bolsheviks dissolved the Constituent Assembly in January 1918 after it returned a Socialist-Revolutionary majority. The **Treaty of Brest-Litovsk** (3 March 1918) surrendered Poland, the Baltics, and Ukraine to end the war with Germany. The **Russian Civil War** (1918–21) pitted the Red Army, built by Trotsky, against the White armies and foreign interventionists; the Cheka under Felix Dzerzhinsky enforced the Red Terror, and the Romanov family was executed at Yekaterinburg in July 1918.

Economic policy lurched from **War Communism** (grain requisitioning) to the pragmatic **New Economic Policy (NEP)** of 1921, which restored limited private trade after the Kronstadt revolt exposed peasant fury. The **USSR** was formally established in December 1922. Lenin's death in January 1924 opened the succession struggle; by 1928 Joseph Stalin had outmanoeuvred Trotsky, launching the First Five-Year Plan and forced collectivisation. The revolution's international arm, the **Communist International (Comintern)**, founded in 1919, projected the model worldwide.

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