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Shmoop! 1917 was a busy year in Russia. It's like the universe's social planner

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sat down one morning and went crazy with the calendar. As we've mentioned again

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and again and again in this course Russia was a troubled country, prior to

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World War one. It was also a troubled country prior to Tsar Nicholas the

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second ascension to the throne in 1894. But because he sucked at his job, things

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got much worse during his reign and then the war rolled around in 1914. Well three

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years later more than a million Russians were dead. There was no food, Russian

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workers weren't getting paid beans, Nicholas was an incompetent general and[Tsar on a horse]

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his wife Alexandra, who looked after Russia in his place, while he was off

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playing soldier, was an incompetent ruler. She was also German. So go ahead, take a

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wild guess who the hungry, underpaid, Russian people didn't like very much. Huh,

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that's right, their Romanovs rulers. So on February 22nd 1917, no one was terribly

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surprised, when protests and riots broke out in Russia's capital city of [riots in city]

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Petrograd. The Bolsheviks teamed up with about 20,000 workers, to demonstrate and

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even though the military was ordered to put a stop to the rioting, many soldiers

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weren't interested in following that order, some even joined the protesters.

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Because, well heck, if you can't beat them, well join them. Five days later, the crowd

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had grown to about 200,000 people. It was around this time, that a number of

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influential Russians met with Nikolas, to tell him his people were ready to vote [telegram paper]

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him off the island. He didn't take the news very well. He ordered the Duma, or

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Russia's legislative body, shut down. The Duma's president, decided, being on the

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right side of history meant, blowing a raspberry at the Tsar and creating a

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provisional government. Well that meant that jolly old Tsar Nicholas was out of

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a job by March 2nd. However the provisional government, wasn't so great

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at governing. It wouldn't pull out of the war, that the Russian people hated. It led

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everybody, who'd been classified as a terrorist, or revolutionary, go about [checklist]

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their business and while it promised to hold democratic elections, it didn't do

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it soon enough. To make a long and complicated story short. By the summer of

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1917, the provisional government knew it was losing control. It unarmed the

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Bolsheviks, who were stirring up trouble in Petrograd.

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But then had to rearm them in order to prevent a possible military coup and

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that was all she wrote for the provisional government.

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The Bolsheviks succeeded in taking control of the revolution by October

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1917. Some guys you've heard of before, Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin, were put in

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charge of the Council of People's Commissars. As revolution swept across

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Russia, the members of the provisional government were arrested and Russian laws [men behind bars]

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were replaced with communist policies. So yeah, 1917 was just full of surprises for

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Russia. But, if you think 1917 was crazy, well just wait until 1918.

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That's when Lenin, up and kills a lot of his new subjects. There's also probably a

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few brunch dates in the calendar. What? The universe's social planner loves a

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good brunch. Come on, you think they have eggs? [antique decorative jeweled]

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