The Bolsheviks Seize Power: October 1917

In the months after Tsar Nicholas II's abdication, Russia's Provisional Government under Alexander Kerensky struggled to maintain control. This episode picks up where the abdication left off, following Lenin's return from exile in a sealed train, the rise of Leon Trotsky as the military mastermind of the Bolsheviks, and the failed Kornilov Affair that fatally weakened Kerensky. We recount the night of October 24–25, 1917, when Red Guards seized key points in Petrograd—the Winter Palace, the telegraph office, the State Bank—with almost no bloodshed. Kerensky fled, and the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets approved a new government, the Council of People's Commissars, headed by Lenin. How did a small, disciplined revolutionary party pull off one of history's most consequential coups? We explore the timing, the strategy, and the popular mood that made it possible.

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