The Russian Revolution was a period of political and social change in Russia, starting in 1917. This period saw Russia abolish its monarchy and adopt a socialist form of government following two successive revolutions and a civil war. It can also be seen as the precursor for the other revolutions that occurred in the aftermath of World War I, such as the German Revolution of 1918–1919. The Russian Revolution was one of the key events of the 20th century.
Felix Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky, nicknamed "Iron Felix", was a Soviet revolutionary and politician of Polish origin. From 1917 until his death in 1926, he led the first two Soviet secret police organizations, the Cheka and the OGPU, establishing state security organs for the Bolshevik government. He was a key architect of the Red Terror and de-Cossackization.
The Russian Revolution of 1905, also known as the First Russian Revolution, began on 22 January 1905. A wave of mass political and social unrest then began to spread across the vast areas of the Russian Empire. The unrest was directed primarily against the Tsar, the nobility, and the ruling class. It included worker strikes, peasant unrest, and military mutinies. In response to the public pressure, Tsar Nicholas II was forced to go back on his earlier authoritarian stance and enact some reform. This took the form of establishing the State Duma, the multi-party system, and the Russian Constitution of 1906. Despite popular participation in the Duma, the parliament was unable to issue laws of its own, and frequently came into conflict with Nicholas. The Duma's power was limited and Nicholas continued to hold the ruling authority. Furthermore, he could dissolve the Duma, which he did three times in order to get rid of the opposition.
Alexei Maximovich Peshkov, popularly known as Maxim Gorky, was a Russian and Soviet writer and proponent of socialism. He was nominated five times for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Before his success as an author, he travelled widely across the Russian Empire changing jobs frequently, experiences which would later influence his writing.
The Department for the Protection of Public Safety and Order, usually called the Guard Department and commonly abbreviated in modern English sources as the Okhrana was a secret police force of the Russian Empire and part of the police department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD) in the late 19th century and early 20th century, aided by the Special Corps of Gendarmes.
Bloody Sunday or Red Sunday was the series of events on Sunday, 22 January [O.S. 9 January] 1905 in St Petersburg, Russia, when unarmed demonstrators, led by Father Georgy Gapon, were fired upon by soldiers of the Imperial Guard as they marched towards the Winter Palace to present a petition to Tsar Nicholas II of Russia.
Yakov Mikhailovich Sverdlov was a Russian revolutionary and Soviet politician who served as Chairman of the Secretariat of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) from 1918 until his death in 1919, and as Chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee from 1917 until his death.
Georgy Apollonovich Gapon was a Russian Orthodox priest of Ukrainian descent and a popular working-class leader before the 1905 Russian Revolution. After he was discovered to be a police informant, Gapon was murdered by members of the Socialist Revolutionary Party. Father Gapon is mainly remembered as the leader of peaceful crowds of protesters on Bloody Sunday, when hundreds of them were killed by firing squads of the Imperial Russian Army.
Narodnaya Volya was a late 19th-century revolutionary socialist political organization operating in the Russian Empire, which conducted assassinations of government officials in an attempt to overthrow the autocratic Tsarist system. The organization declared itself to be a populist movement that succeeded the Narodniks. Composed primarily of young revolutionary socialist intellectuals believing in the efficacy of direct action, Narodnaya Volya emerged in Autumn 1879 from the split of an earlier revolutionary organization called Zemlya i Volya. Similarly to predecessor groups which had already used the term "terror" positively, Narodnaya Volya proclaimed themselves as terrorists and venerated dead terrorists as "martyrs" and "heroes", justifying political violence as a legitimate tactic to provoke a necessary revolution.
"Dual power" refers to the coexistence of two Russian governments as a result of the February Revolution: the Soviets, particularly the Petrograd Soviet, and the Russian Provisional Government. The term was first used by the communist Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) in the Pravda article titled "The Dual Power".
The history of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was generally perceived as covering that of the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party from which it evolved. In 1912, the party formally split, and the predecessor to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union became a distinct entity. Its history since then can roughly be divided into the following periods:
The Left SR uprising, or Left SR revolt, was a rebellion against the Bolsheviks by the Left Socialist Revolutionary Party in Moscow, Soviet Russia, on 6–7 July 1918. It was one of a number of left-wing uprisings against the Bolsheviks that took place during the Russian Civil War.
Mark Andreyevich Natanson was a Russian revolutionary who was one of the founders of the Circle of Tchaikovsky, Land and Liberty and the Socialist-Revolutionary Party. In 1917, he was a leader of the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries, which supported the Bolsheviks during the October Revolution. He was the uncle of Alexander Berkman.
The Semyonovsky Lifeguard Regiment was one of the two oldest guard regiments of the Imperial Russian Army. The other one was the Preobrazhensky Regiment. In 2013, it was recreated for the Russian Armed Forces as a rifle regiment, its name now becoming the 1st Semyonovsky Independent Rifle Regiment.
The Łódź insurrection, also known as the June Days, was an uprising by Polish workers in Łódź against the Russian Empire between 21 and 25 June 1905. This event was one of the largest disturbances in the Russian-controlled Congress Poland during the Russian Revolution of 1905. Poland was a major center of revolutionary fighting in the Russian Empire in 1905–1907, and the Łódź insurrection was a key incident in those events.
The Russian communist revolutionary and politician Vladimir Lenin began his active revolutionary activity in 1892, and continued till assuming power in the Russian Revolution of 1917. Following on from his early life, during which he had become devoted to the cause of revolution against the Tsarist regime in the Russian Empire and converted to Marxism, Lenin moved to St. Petersburg. There he joined a revolutionary cell, and became a vocal advocate for Marxism within the revolutionary socialist movement. Entering a relationship with fellow Marxist Nadezhda Krupskaya, he toured Western Europe to build ties with other Russian revolutionary emigres and learn more about the international Marxist movement. Upon returning to Russia, he was arrested for sedition in 1895 and exiled to Shushenskoye in the Minusinsky District of eastern Siberia for three years. There, he devoted his time to translating and writing revolutionary texts, marrying Krupskaya in July 1898.
The February Revolution, known in Soviet historiography as the February Bourgeois Democratic Revolution and sometimes as the March Revolution or February Coup was the first of two revolutions which took place in Russia in 1917.
The Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies was held on November 7–9, 1917, in Smolny, Petrograd. It was convened under the pressure of the Bolsheviks on the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of the First Congress of Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies.
An index of articles related to the Russian Revolution and the Russian Civil War period (1905–1922). It covers articles on topics, events, and persons related to the revolutionary era, from the 1905 Russian Revolution until the end of the Russian Civil War. The See also section includes other lists related to Revolutionary Russia and the Soviet Union, including an index of articles about the Soviet Union (1922–1991) which is the next article in this series, and Bibliography of the Russian Revolution and Civil War.
Vladimir Mikhailovich Zagorsky was a revolutionary, party activist, Secretary of the Moscow Committee of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks).
