October Revolution

October Revolution

The October Revolution is the second phase of the Russian Revolution, the first having been instigated by the events around the February Revolution. It was led by Vladimir Lenin and based upon the ideas of Karl Marx, and marked the beginning of the spread of communism in the twentieth century.

On November 7, 1917, Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin led his leftist revolutionaries in a nearly bloodless coup d'�tat against the ineffective Kerensky Provisional Government (Russia was still using the Julian Calendar at the time, so period references show an October 25 date). Later official accounts of the revolution from the Soviet Union would depict the events in October as being far more dramatic than they actually had been.

For the most part, the coup was bloodless, with the Bolsheviks taking over major government facilities with little opposition before finally launching an assault on the Winter Palace. Official films made much later showed a huge storming of the Winter Palace and fierce fighting, but in reality the Bolshevik insurgents faced little or no opposition and were practically able to just walk into the building and take over.

The Second Congress of Soviets was occurring at the same time as the events of the October Revolution, and Lenin merely announced to the assembled delegates that there had been a change of government without them consulting the soviets (despite the Bolshevik mantra of "all power to the Soviets").

The October Revolutions success ended the phase of the revolution instigated in February and moved the Russian Revolution from being largely a liberal-democratic one to a communist insurrection.