50 Fun Facts About Russian Revolution

Petrograd, where the 1917 revolutions played out, regained which name in 1991?

The Soviets, or workers' councils, formed there held domestic power alongside the Provisional Government in the "dual power" of 1917.

Why is the February Revolution so called when it took place in March by Western reckoning?

The same lag means the October Revolution is celebrated on 7 November.

Nicholas II abdicated on 15 March 1917 by the Western calendar. How many days behind was Russia's old-style calendar?

That made it 2 March in Russia; officials had convinced themselves the unrest would subside once the tsar stepped down.

At which city, halted on his train, was Nicholas II persuaded to abdicate?

Nikolai Ruzsky, Alexander Guchkov and Vasily Shulgin urged him in unison to give up the throne.

Nicholas II nominated which relative to succeed him, who then declined the throne?

The 300-year Romanov dynasty ended with that refusal.

The unrest of early 1917 began when a strike closed Petrograd's largest factory. Which one?

The next day, rallies for International Women's Day turned into economic and political demonstrations.

Which liberal aristocrat first chaired the Provisional Government formed in March 1917?

He belonged to the Constitutional Democratic Party, the Kadets.

What did Kerensky do as war minister and prime minister despite overwhelming public opposition?

He also promoted free speech and released thousands of political prisoners, but the offensive failed like its predecessors.

The Bolshevik slogan that won them popular support promised three things. Which trio?

It meant an end to the war, land for the peasants and an end to famine.

In which year did the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks split at the Second Congress of the RSDLP?

The break came over Lenin's demand for a small party of professional revolutionaries rather than a broad membership.

Which Lenin pamphlet of 1901 helped precipitate the split with the Mensheviks?

It argued for a vanguard party and attacked the "Economists" who wanted reform without political change.

How did Lenin travel from Swiss exile back to Russia in April 1917?

In fact the train was not truly sealed; passengers spent a night in Frankfurt.

What did Lenin prepare on the journey back to Russia, outlining core Bolshevik policies?

He announced them on arrival at Petrograd's Finland Station, condemning the Provisional Government outright.

What is the mass Petrograd demonstration of midsummer 1917, put down by the Provisional Government, called?

Over 500,000 people took part, and the Bolsheviks' unpreparedness cost them support with soldiers and workers, though only briefly.

Which general's attempted march on Petrograd in August 1917 forced Kerensky to seek Bolshevik help?

Bolshevik influence over railway and telegraph workers stopped the troop movements, and the affair strengthened the party enormously.

The Bolshevik seizure of power in Petrograd began on which date, New Style?

By the old-style reckoning it was 25 October, hence the name October Revolution.

Which cruiser reportedly fired the blank shot signalling the assault on the Winter Palace?

She survived the Russo-Japanese War and has been preserved as a museum ship on the Neva since 1957.

The Winter Palace, seat of the Provisional Government, fell on which date (New Style)?

The cadets and 140 volunteers of the Women's Battalion surrendered rather than resist; the assault on the city itself was almost bloodless.

How did Kerensky escape Petrograd on the morning of the Bolshevik insurrection?

He drove off in a Renault, accompanied by a Pierce-Arrow, hoping to find loyal troops outside the city.

Leon Trotsky, who built the Red Army, was assassinated in 1940 in which country?

He had lived in all three of the others after his exile before settling in Mexico in 1937; the killer, Ramón Mercader, was a Stalinist agent.

Which American journalist wrote the 1919 October Revolution account Ten Days That Shook the World?

He wrote it in another ten days and nights, and is buried in the Kremlin wall.

Which party won the largest vote share in the late-1917 Constituent Assembly elections?

They took around 57 to 58 percent nationally while the Bolsheviks won the cities, including nearly half of Moscow.

What did the Bolsheviks do to the Constituent Assembly once it met in January 1918?

Lenin went to bed telling the guards to let the deputies "go on chattering" and simply bar the doors the next day.

The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, taking Russia out of World War I, was signed on which date?

It was annulled by the Armistice eight months later when Germany surrendered in the west.

Under Brest-Litovsk, what share of the former empire's population lay in the territories Russia gave up?

The lands also held 54 percent of its industry and 89 percent of its coalfields, and Trotsky's stalling policy of "no war, no peace" had failed to prevent it.

Under pressure from German offensives, the Bolsheviks moved the capital from Petrograd to which city?

The new state was proclaimed the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, the RSFSR.

The Cheka, the Bolshevik secret police, was founded in December 1917 under which "Iron" leader?

The founding meeting was held at the Smolny Institute; the organisation hunted "enemies of the people" during the Red Terror.

The Red Terror followed an attempt on Lenin and the killing of which Petrograd Cheka head on 30 August 1918?

A young military cadet, Leonid Kannegisser, shot him outside the Cheka headquarters in revenge for executed officers.

The Romanov family were murdered on the night of 16–17 July 1918 in a house in which city?

The Ipatiev House had been designated the "House of Special Purpose" and the family were held there as hostages.

Who commanded the squad that shot and stabbed the Romanovs to death?

As commandant he had an iron grille fitted after Alexandra kept standing too close to an open window.

Rasputin's hold on the imperial family came from apparently helping tsarevich Alexei, who had what?

The tsarina's reliance on the mystic, and her German birth, fed rumours that fatally undermined the monarchy.

Rasputin was murdered in December 1916 at the palace of which prince?

He died of three gunshot wounds, one at close range to the forehead, whatever the legends about cyanide and drowning say.

Bloody Sunday, 22 January 1905, began as a peaceful march to the Winter Palace led by which priest?

Imperial Guard soldiers fired on the petitioners, triggering the 1905 Revolution and the creation of the first Duma.

Which battleship's June 1905 mutiny was later immortalised in film by Sergei Eisenstein?

In October that year a railway strike became a general strike, forcing the tsar to issue the October Manifesto.

The tsar's October Manifesto of 1905 pledged to create what?

It also promised to halt censorship and expand the vote; Nicholas dissolved the first Duma within months.

Which fateful decision did the tsar take in 1915 that made him personally responsible for every defeat?

It left the German-born tsarina, and Rasputin, running the government at home.

Which Menshevik first chaired the Petrograd Soviet's provisional executive committee in 1917?

Trotsky took the chair in September 1917 and Zinoviev held it from December until 1926.

The Bolshevik-organised workers' militias that later became the core of the Red Army were known as what?

Trotsky organised the militias into the Red Army once civil war broke out.

The White movement in the civil war united around which admiral, who styled himself Supreme Ruler?

His armies were eventually forced into a mass retreat eastward across Siberia.

Which foreign unit's May 1918 revolt overthrew Bolshevik rule in the Urals and Volga?

Thirteen foreign states intervened against the Reds, chiefly hoping to reopen the Eastern Front.

The civil war is generally held to have ended with the capture of which Pacific port in October 1922?

Anti-Bolshevik resistance by the Basmachi movement in Central Asia dragged on until 1934.

The Kronstadt rebellion of March 1921 was an uprising by whom against the Bolshevik government?

It lasted sixteen days, was crushed after several thousand rebels were shot or jailed, and hastened the New Economic Policy.

The suppression of Kronstadt accelerated which change of course, replacing war communism?

The rebels' fifteen political demands went unmet, but Lenin allowed limited private trade to revive the ruined economy.

The Bolsheviks blamed wartime urban food shortages not on bad harvests but on what?

By 1917 prices were four times their 1914 level, so peasants hoarded grain and reverted to subsistence farming.

Which Menshevik leader drafted the 'peace with no annexations' demand in the 1915 Zimmerwald manifesto?

Lenin, backed by Zinoviev and Radek, rejected both the defence of Russia and the call for peace, wanting the war turned into civil war.

Which Ukrainian anarchist peasant movement did Frunze's Bolsheviks destroy when it refused to join the Red Army?

Its leader Nestor Makhno had fought the Whites alongside the Reds before turning on them.

Which 1945 George Orwell allegory of the revolution casts Stalin as a boar named Napoleon?

Trotsky appears as the pig Snowball, who is driven off the farm just as his real counterpart was exiled.

Rallies for which annual observance on 8 March 1917 helped turn Petrograd's strikes into revolution?

Women workers marched to nearby factories and brought out more than 50,000 workers on strike, the day after the Putilov plant closed.

Roughly how many members did the Bolsheviks have by September 1917, up from 24,000 in February?

By that month they had also won majorities in both the Petrograd and Moscow soviets, overtaking the Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries.

Which book did Lenin work on while hiding in Finland between the July Days and October 1917?

He slipped back into Petrograd in October, judging the radicalised city safe enough to press for immediate insurrection.