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Poster Plakat

Revolution

Of the many upheavals shaking Russia in 1917, the revolutions of February and October in the capital, Petrograd, proved to be decisive. As World War I dragged through its third year, discontent with the rule of the Romanov dynasty grew, compounded by mounting losses and deteriorating food supplies. In early 1917, strikes rocked Petrograd. On March 8 (February 23, o.s.), groups of women walked off the job, their numbers soon swelling to hundreds of thousands of their compatriots. Within a week, soldiers of the city garrison had refused orders to disperse the crowds, going over to the strikers' side. [Text continues at bottom of page]

PP 002: Workers of the world, unite! Long live the Polish Socialist Republic! Free Poland and workers of the Polish nation! PP 006: Long Live The 29th Anniversary Of The Great October Socialist Revolution! (On the banner) PP 010: 1871 – French bourgeoisie take brutal revenge on commoners. 1921 – Proletariat tears away the last black rags of capitalist lies! PP 012: The Brotherly Life of the Katsaps. PP 013: 7 November 1918 PP 022: The sword drawn by the entente against the Russian Revolution will pierce the heart of world bourgeoisie! Workers of all countries, unite! PP 036: Glory to the Motherland of October! PP 040: Russian Socialist Federated Socialist Republic. PP 041: To the Power of the Soviets. Their Union Was Forged in the Fire of October! PP 042: October 25, 1917 -- November 7, 1920 Farmer, you used to work for a landlord! Now the land belongs to the working people! All Power to the Soviets! [Partial translation] PP 053: Entente under the Mask of Peace PP 095: 1917 - 1953. We are lighting fireworks to celebrate our labor gains! PP 102: 1917-1957. Glory to the communist party of the Soviet Union! PP 108: Having completed the Socialist Revolution and having defended the achievements of the revolution in unbelievably hard fighting, the heroic working class of Russia became the originators of a new life. PP 111: Long live the twenty-ninth anniversary of the great October socialist revolution! 1917- 1946 PP 132: [Upper panel] RSFSR (Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic) Workers of all Countries, Unite! [Lower panel] Workers of all Countries, Unite! [Partial translation] PP 162: Our first decree PP 163: Long live the forty-first anniversary of October! PP 184: 1917 - 1964 Glory to October! Forward to communism! Long live the Communist Party of the Soviet Union! PP 195: 1917-1954 Glory to the motherland of October! PP 211: 1917-1951 Long live the 34th anniversary of the great October socialist revolution! PP 217: Glory to the fighters of great October! PP 229: 1918-1948 Glory to the party of Lenin-Stalin -- the Organizer of the victorious armed forces of the USSR! PP 239: Long live the 30th anniversary of the great October socialist revolution! PP 254: Glory to October 1917-1967 PP 258: 25th October PP 269: 1905 Glory to the Fighters of the Revolution PP 305: October 1917-1920 Comrade! Triple your energy, through mortars, bristling bayonets! We celebrate the third anniversary of the October Revolution happily in bloody battle! [partial translation] PP 307: Be glorified, our free fatherland, the reliable foundation of the friendship of peoples!  PP 308: 28th Anniversary Congratulations on a victorious October! PP 309: The Tsar and the Faith PP 320: Long live the union of workers and farmers, the base of soviet power! PP 322: Death to the stranglers and oppressors of workers and peasants! Battle for the Volga [and] Battle for bread for the starving! PP 336: The attack of the imperialists on Soviet Russia. We will win! PP 370: All Power To The Soviets 1917 The Beginning Of A New Era PP 401: On the main square some days ago were three aces –a landlord without land, a manufacturer without a factory, a bank predator sitting without income – they were looking around for an hour. [Partial translation] PP 402: [Top panel] Away With Evil-Doers! [Bottom panel] Come with us! PP 442: 1917-1920 Worker and Peasant! Protect the gains of the October Revolution: your gains. PP 460: Under the rule of the Party let’s fulfill the next five-year plan, improve the level of life, strengthen defense. Sixteenth Anniversary [of] October PP 470: [Top text] Fourth Anniversary of the October Revolution [Lower left panel] Four Years! The end of enmity and rage in the Republic of Labor the worker and the grain-grower are in unity forever. [Partial translation] PP 475: The Fourteenth Anniversary of October. 1930 PP 490: Long Live the Thirtieth Anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution! 1917-1947 PP 492: Long Live The Thirty-Second Anniversary Of The Great October Socialist Revolution! PP 510: Long live the 37th Anniversary of October! PP 527: Continue the work of Revolution! PP 530: 48th [anniversary of ] October PP 533: 1917-1977. Glory to Great October! PP 551: 1917-1953. Glory to the Great October! PP 553: February 1917 PP 554: 1917-1967. Through the ages the banner of the Revolution will not fade! PP 589: Long live the 14th Anniversary of October. Our warmest greetings to people of the Bolshevik tempo — the master workers who are building socialism in our country. PP 605: They are establishing the awakening of the October Revolution – we are victorious. PP 619: 1917-1977 PP 636: Comrades, rifles and hammers celebrate Red October PP 637: October 1917 – October 1920 Long live an all world wide Red October PP 646: Long live the October that has liberated women! 1917-1927. 10 Years PP 687: Long live the 29th anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution! PP 694: Down with capital, long live the dictatorship of the proletariat! 1917 October 25th (November 7) 1920 PP 699: The proletariat of a great country, the avant-garde of the building of the world revolutionary professional movement. PP 738: Glory to the Revolution! 1917 PP 740: Long Live the 40th anniversary of the Great October! PP 758: On the eve of the Worldwide Revolution. PP 760: Long Live the 30th Anniversary of the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic! PP 811: Towards the 4th Anniversary — Every year we celebrate the memory of the heroes that fell in the cause of October PP 849: Glory to the Successors of the Great Cause of the Paris Commune! PP 987: The Cross and the Machine Gun. The February Days of 1917. PP 994: 1905 PP 995: Our Soviet Union is unconquerable, the unconquerable cause of the world- wide workers’ revolution. PP 1000: The Red Army is the defense of the proletarian revolution. PP 1019: To Arms! PP 1021: The worldwide October [Revolution] will destroy the prison-houses of the bourgeoisie! PP 1033: Glory to the 30th Anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution! PP 1042: Forward – to the Second Five-Year Plan of the Construction of Socialism! Long Live May Day! PP 1050: Five Years of MOPR PP 1117: Under the banner of Lenin and Stalin forward to a world October Revolution! PP 1175: How landowners and capitalists straightened out the revolutionary outlying peasantry. [Partial translation]

As elite support drained away, Tsar Nicholas II agreed to abdicate, initially thinking to name Alexei, his 13 year-old hemophiliac son, to reign while his uncle, Grand Duke Mikhail Alexandrovich, was to be regent. Pressed by his generals, Nicholas abdicated also in his son's name, leaving Mikhail Alexandrovich to himself refuse the throne for lack of elite support or popular backing. Amid the civil disorder, the Duma, or imperial parliament, acted independently to form the Provisional Government, quickly pledging to continue fighting the war. Yet from the beginning, it had to contend with a situation described of "dual power" because it vied with the popularly elected Petrograd soviet, or council, in which radical parties, workers, and soldiers were represented.

A party of Marxist revolutionaries led by Vladimir Lenin, the Bolsheviks campaigned for land reform, popular sovereignty in the form of the soviets, and an immediate end to World War I. From April through the summer and into the autumn, the party amassed the support of workers, disaffected soldiers, and radical intellectuals. Spontaneous unrest in early July encouraged the Provisional Government to suppress the Bolsheviks. In September, the party was re-legitimized when they used their influence among workers and soldiers to mobilize forces to thwart an attempted counterrevolutionary military coup, which the Provisional Government had been simultaneously complicit in encouraging but powerless to stop when it spun out of control.

The revolution of October 25 (November 7, o.s.) witnessed armed militias loyal to the Bolsheviks overthrow the Provisional Government. The Bolsheviks seized power in the name of the soviets and established a new executive, the Council of People's Commissars, headed by Lenin. It immediately issued decrees calling for peace, land, and popular power. Calling their government a "dictatorship of the proletariat," the Bolsheviks realized their pledges by discriminating against former imperial elites, the aristocrats, and the capitalists. Although popular in Petrograd, the seizure of power paved the way for the savage Russian Civil War to follow. Emerging battered but victorious by 1922, the Bolsheviks led the formation of the Soviet Union.

In later years, the October Revolution became the focal point for celebration in the Soviet Union, making its anniversary a red-letter day on the Soviet calendar. As early as November 7, 1918, the Communist Party staged dramatic festivals. In 1928, Soviet director Sergei Eisenstein immortalized the events of October in film, reenacting---and embellishing---the storming of the Winter Palace. Represented in literature, the fine arts, museums, theater productions, movies, monuments, and print propaganda, the defining events and personages of the revolution formed the foundations of a sense of self that bound the Soviet Union and Communist Party together.

Suggested Reading and Resources

Laura Engelstein, Russia in Flames: War, Revolution, Civil War, 1914--1921  (Oxford University Press, 2017).

China Miéville, October: The Story of the Russian Revolution (Verso, 2017)

Alexander Rabinowich, The Bolsheviks Come to Power (Indiana University Press, 1976)

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