The Tinderbox of War and Revolution

When Nikolai Bukharin declared in 1919 that Europe stood at the dawn of a revolutionary era requiring fifty years to achieve global victory, he articulated what many radicals across the continent already sensed. The First World War had shattered the old order beyond repair, creating conditions where revolutionary change seemed not just possible but inevitable. As German poet Bertolt Brecht would later reflect while reading Shelley’s “The Mask of Anarchy,” the cries against oppression echoed across generations, suggesting humanity remained trapped in cycles of exploitation despite technological progress.

The Russian Revolution of 1917 emerged from this catastrophic context, becoming what historian Eric Hobsbawm termed the defining event of the “short twentieth century” (1914-1991). Its significance paralleled the French Revolution’s impact on the nineteenth century, but with crucial differences. Where 1789 had spread ideals gradually through intellectual currents and Napoleonic conquests, 1917 created an institutional model for revolution that would be replicated across continents. The Bolshevik seizure of power represented more than regime change—it offered a comprehensive alternative to capitalism at precisely the moment when Western systems appeared most vulnerable.

The Collapse of Tsarism and Bolshevik Ascent

Russia’s path to revolution followed a distinct trajectory shaped by its semi-feudal economic structures and autocratic political traditions. Unlike industrialized Western Europe where Marxist theory predicted socialist revolutions would occur, Russia remained overwhelmingly agrarian with a small but concentrated industrial working class. This paradox—a “backward” country achieving socialism first—would haunt communist theory for decades.

The February Revolution of 1917 (March by Western calendars) began spontaneously when Petrograd women textile workers protested food shortages on International Women’s Day. Their demonstrations merged with strikes at the militant Putilov steelworks, triggering a general strike that paralyzed the capital. Remarkably, within four days, the three-century-old Romanov dynasty collapsed as troops refused to fire on crowds and even the elite Cossack regiments withdrew support. The speed of this unplanned revolution revealed the tsarist regime’s hollow foundations.

What followed was a power vacuum between the ineffectual Provisional Government and grassroots workers’ councils (soviets) that controlled factories and military units. Into this void stepped Lenin’s Bolsheviks, a disciplined minority party that grew from a few thousand members in March to 250,000 by summer’s end. Their genius lay not in conspiratorial plotting—as Cold War mythology later suggested—but in articulating simple demands that resonated with popular aspirations: “Peace, Land, and Bread.” When the Provisional Government disastrously launched another military offensive in June, mass desertions ensued as peasant-soldiers abandoned the front to claim land in the countryside.

The Bolsheviks’ October Revolution (November 7 by the Gregorian calendar) was less a violent insurrection than the assumption of power abandoned by Kerensky’s collapsing government. Eisenstein’s dramatic 1927 film “October” famously depicted the storming of the Winter Palace with more cinematic casualties than the actual bloodless event. Lenin’s real challenge came afterward—could this workers’ party, governing a predominantly peasant society, maintain power and advance toward socialism?

Global Reverberations of the Red Dawn

The revolution’s international impact exceeded even its architects’ expectations. From Havana’s tobacco workers forming “soviets” to Mexican revolutionaries displaying Lenin’s portrait alongside Aztec emperor Moctezuma, the Bolshevik example electrified anticolonial and labor movements worldwide. Indonesian nationalists, Australian shearers, and American Finnish immigrants all reinterpreted local struggles through this new revolutionary lens.

Europe’s postwar revolutionary wave (1918-1923) saw short-lived soviet republics emerge in Bavaria and Hungary while mass strikes rocked Italy and Germany. Even conservative estimates suggested one-third of Germany’s workforce participated in revolutionary actions during 1919-1920. The Bolsheviks initially believed these uprisings marked capitalism’s terminal crisis, with Lenin declaring, “We have entered the epoch of worldwide proletarian revolution.”

Yet this revolutionary moment passed with stunning rapidity. By 1921, Soviet Russia stood isolated as European social democratic parties regained control through elections rather than insurrections. The Bolshevik response—creating a centralized Communist International (Comintern) to coordinate global revolution—produced mixed results. While establishing communist parties from Chile to China, the Comintern also divided the left by demanding absolute ideological conformity to Moscow’s line.

The Paradox of Revolutionary Survival

Against improbable odds, Soviet Russia endured civil war, foreign intervention, and economic collapse. Three factors explain this resilience: the Communist Party’s organizational discipline, patriotic officers’ support against foreign-backed Whites, and peasant loyalty secured through land redistribution. By 1922, the world’s first socialist state had consolidated power—but at tremendous cost.

War Communism’s emergency measures gave way to the New Economic Policy (NEP), a tactical retreat allowing limited market activity. This pragmatic adaptation reflected Lenin’s realization that revolution in backward Russia required prolonged transition. As he grimly noted, “We are not civilized enough for socialism,” acknowledging the gap between Marxist theory and Russian reality.

The revolution’s institutional legacy proved more enduring than its ideological purity. The Bolsheviks created a template for revolutionary governance—single-party rule, centralized planning, and state ownership of production—that would be replicated across the twentieth century. Even as Stalin’s “socialism in one country” replaced Trotsky’s “permanent revolution” as official doctrine, the USSR remained the symbolic center of global anticapitalist struggle.

From Resistance to Revolution: The Second Wave

World War II sparked communism’s second global surge through resistance movements that liberated nations while transforming themselves. Unlike 1917’s urban uprisings, these revolutions emerged from prolonged rural guerrilla warfare—Yugoslavia’s partisans, China’s Red Army, and Vietnam’s Viet Minh all followed this path. By 1950, communist governments ruled one-third of humanity from Berlin to Beijing.

This expansion occurred despite—not because of—Moscow’s directives. Stalin frequently restrained foreign communists, prioritizing Soviet state interests over revolutionary zeal. Yugoslav leader Tito’s independent path and Mao’s peasant-based strategy demonstrated alternatives to Bolshevik orthodoxy, foreshadowing the polycentrism that would fracture the communist world after 1956.

The Revolution’s Contradictory Legacy

Communism’s ultimate collapse in 1989-1991 shouldn’t obscure its transformative impact. The Soviet experiment forced capitalist democracies to implement reforms—from welfare states to decolonization—they might otherwise have avoided. As Italian communist Antonio Gramsci observed, even failed revolutions change history by compelling elites to accommodate popular demands.

The Russian Revolution’s most paradoxical legacy may be its role in saving liberal capitalism—first by defeating fascism in 1945, then by pressuring Western elites to share prosperity during the Cold War. When Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev boasted in 1956 that communism would “bury” capitalism, he unintentionally described how existential competition spurred capitalist innovation and social compromise.

Today, as inequality reaches pre-1914 levels and democratic institutions erode globally, the questions raised in 1917 regain urgency: How can societies balance efficiency with equity? What mechanisms exist for peaceful systemic change? The answers may differ, but the revolutionary century’s central lesson endures—no political or economic order is permanent, and those failing to address fundamental human needs ultimately face their own “ten days that shook the world.”