October Revolution
Also called: Bolshevik Revolution
The Bolsheviks led by Lenin overthrew the Provisional Government in an armed rising and set up a Soviet government — the world’s first socialist regime.
Pyotr Novitsky · Public domain · Source
On 7 November 1917 (25 October in the Russian calendar) the Military Revolutionary Committee of the Petrograd Soviet, directed by Trotsky, sent Red Guards and soldiers to seize the bridges, stations and telegraph offices. That night, signalled by a shot from the cruiser Aurora, the Winter Palace where the Provisional Government sat was taken, and Kerensky fled.
The All-Russian Congress of Soviets set up a Council of People’s Commissars chaired by Lenin as the government and adopted the Decree on Peace, proposing an immediate end to the war, and the Decree on Land, handing the landlords’ estates to the peasants. Banks and large factories were then nationalized.
When the Bolsheviks won only a minority in the Constituent Assembly elected in November, they dissolved it in January 1918, setting Russia on the road to one-party dictatorship. The government moved the capital to Moscow and hurried to make peace with Germany. Civil war against the new regime’s enemies soon followed.