The February Revolution* was the first of the two momentous parts of the Russian Revolution. It’s usually the October Revolution that gets all of the attention. Yet Tsar Nicholas II was forced to abdicate eight months before the Bolsheviks seized power. On the centenary of the events of February, which overthrew three centuries of Romanov autocracy, a closer look at this often-forgotten first revolution of 1917 is in order.
On February 22nd (March 7th in the modern calendar), workers began going out on strike in Petrograd (now St. Petersburg) for food and an end to the war. The next day, International Women’s Day, the strike spread to women textile workers and more and more workers joined. On the fourth day, a few units of the Army shot strikers. But following the Volinsky Life-Guards Regiment‘s refusal to suppress the demonstrations, a mutiny spread through the Army. They would not put down the strike. And without the military, the Tsar, then still in his Eastern Front command post, was powerless in the face of all the grievances against his corrupt and incompetent rule.
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