The Russian Revolution
The 1917 revolutions that overthrew the tsar, brought the Bolsheviks to power, and produced the world's first communist state — the Soviet Union.
Origin
Two revolutions in one year. The February Revolution (March in the modern calendar) toppled Tsar Nicholas II after food riots and military mutinies; he abdicated, and a provisional government took over. The October Revolution (November) was the Bolshevik coup: Lenin's small party, organized for exactly this moment, seized Petrograd. Civil war followed (1918–1922) — Reds versus Whites, with foreign intervention — and ended with Bolshevik victory and the creation of the USSR. Nicholas and his family were shot in a Yekaterinburg basement in July 1918. Stalin succeeded Lenin in 1924. The revolution exported communism to a third of the world.
Modern usage
Reference template for every 20th-century communist revolution (China 1949, Cuba 1959, Vietnam) and for left-wing radicalism generally. Films Doctor Zhivago and Reds (1981) are the main pop-culture treatments. 'October' as a name still carries weight in left-wing circles. The phrase 'storm the Winter Palace' (the dramatized seizure of the provisional government's HQ) is sometimes used metaphorically.
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