Introduction: Year of Two Revolutions in Russia

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.13169/jglobfaul.4.2.0091
• Published date: 01 February 2018
• Date: 01 February 2018
• Pages: 91-94
• Author: Ismail Buyukakan,Bulent Gokay

Journal of Global Faultlines, 2018

Vol. 4, No. 2, 91–94.

91

Introduction

Introduction: Year of Two Revolutions in Russia

The year 2017 is the centennial anniversary of the 1917 Russian Revolution(s). The 1917

Revolution will be remembered as a wave of events which changed not only Russia, but the

political and social landscape of the whole world. Triggered by a mass strike and hungry and

angry female garment workers on the 23 February Women’s Day Festival in St Petersburg,

many hundreds of thousands took to the streets to protest and hence the February Revolution

toppled the Tsarist monarchy in Russia and brought to power a Provisional Government of

coalition of liberals. The chaotic months under this government ended when thousands of

workers and soldiers organized in soviets under the leadership of the Bolsheviks assaulted

the Winter Palace and established workers’ power in the country. Millions wanted “Peace,

Land and Bread”! The Bolshevik uprising thus overturned centuries of oppressive feudalism

in Russia, and their revolution under Lenin’s leadership gave the world Soviet Russia, what

the Marxist movement then named as the first socialist state in the world!