The February Revolution was one of the two major political upheavals that took place in Russia in 1917. It forced Czar Nicholas II to abdicate, paving the way for the establishment in March 1917 of the Russian Provisional Government headed by Georgy Lvov and Alexander Kerensky. The provisional government was set up by a democratic political movement from within a larger revolutionary force. Their members were supported by the Russian bourgeoisie as they favored a republican parliamentary democracy, with the figure of a prime minister. However, the Provisional Government would be overthrown by a radical, far-left political party, known as the Bolsheviks, in the October Revolution, led by Vladimir Lenin.
The February Revolution Provisional Government's first coalition collapsed over the question of World War I and the Austro-Hungarian forces counter-attacks that inflicted heavy losses on the Russian Army. After the July Days unrest in Petrograd (Saint Petersburg), from July 3 to 7, 1917, and the official suppression of the Bolsheviks, Kerensky, who was minister of war, succeeded Georgy Lvov as Russia's prime minister on July 21, 1917. On 15 September, Alexander Kerensky established a republican government, which was contrary to the non-socialists' understanding that the Provisional Government should wait until a Constituent Assembly should meet to decide Russia's form of government. However, it was in line with the long-proclaimed aim of the Socialist Revolutionary Party.
The February Revolution did not resolve the fundamental questions on the minds of the people, questions concerning an end to the imperialist war and the conclusion of peace, the elimination of the system of large land-ownership, labor questions, and the abolition of national oppression. The bourgeois Provisional Government, supported by the collaborationist parties of the Mensheviks and SR’s, followed an imperialist policy against the popular interests. The revolutionary Russian proletariat could not stop at the bourgeois democratic revolution, and as Lenin foresaw, its transformation into a socialist revolution was inevitable. Only a socialist revolution could resolve the pressing problems of social progress—the need to eliminate the bourgeois-landlord system in Russia, put an end to all forms of social and national oppression, and establish a dictatorship of the proletariat with the aim of building a socialist society.
A step of utmost importance on the road to the socialist revolution in Russia was the February bourgeois democratic revolution of 1917, which overthrew the absolute monarchy of Czar Nicholas II. During and after the February Revolution, as a result of the creative initiative of the broadest revolutionary masses throughout the country, soviets of workers’ and soldiers’ deputies were created, as well as soviets of peasants’ deputies and soldiers’ committees in the active-duty army and the rear garrisons. At the same time, trade unions and factory committees became widespread and units of workers’ militia and the Red Guard were formed. The victory over Czarism set all classes of the society into motion. A power struggle for control of the country began. The two major social forces, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, stood in opposition to each other. Based on the armed power of the people, the soviets had the opportunity to take all power in the country into their own hands. But this opportunity was not realized because the leadership of the soviets had been seized by the petit-bourgeois parties of the Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries (SR’s), who followed a policy of collaboration with the bourgeoisie and its main party, the Cadets.
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| Above, violent clashes on the streets of Moscow in 1917. |