R ussian R evolution

Abstract

Abstract In search of new approaches, this entry analyzes the Russian Revolution in terms of grassroots mass mobilization, which—in one year—smashed samoderzhavia (the Russian czarist regime), then attempted to create a representative liberal democracy, but culminated in the Bolshevik power seizure. In 1917, the revolutionary social movement took a quite different turn than during the barricade militant uprising and civic unrests of 1905, which advanced Russia towards constitutional monarchy and were followed by economic expansion. World War I disrupted both processes and became a catalyst for the Russian Revolution. The hard core of the Russian Revolution constituted the causal chain of collective actions and events in the year of 1917, from the fall of samoderzhavia to the emergence and then Bolshevization of the soviets, to the power duality, and further on to the construction and failure of the liberal democracy, destroyed in the Bolshevik armed rebellion. Our approach differs from conceptualizations of the Russian Revolution as a prolonged process from 1917 to the end of civil war in 1924 (the official Soviet version) and even further on to the mid‐1930s (Fitzpatrick 2008). Also, we break with the idea, perpetuated in Soviet and Western scholarship, of three Russian revolutions: the 1905 Revolution, the February Bourgeoisie‐Democrat Revolution, and the October Socialist Revolution. The Russian Revolution began in February 1917, with the overthrow of samoderzhavia , and ended in January 1918, with the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly.