Red Sunday
On January 22, 1905, the Russian Revolution began:100,000 strikers led by Pope Gapon demonstrated in the streets presenting icons of Nicholas II, in Petrograd (now Saint Petersburg), the seat of the Tsar. The riot is harmless, it has no weapons, and manifests in silence. By this action, the people did not seek to bring down the tsar, but simply to make their misery heard, and demanded support from the absolute master, whom they saw as a protector. But the Tsar's army, which incidentally was far from the Winter Palace that day, did not understand it that way, and fired on the peaceful demonstrators. A police commissioner even shouted, “What are you doing? You shoot at a procession, you shoot at the portrait of the Tsar! »
Gapone's bodyguards are killed, but the pope manages to make it out alive. Some time earlier, he had had the Russian workers sign a petition, many of whom cooperated. They demanded more justice and protection from the Tsar, but also a decent salary, the separation of Church and State, the right to create trade unions, etc. Everything that the regime had never put in place before. It was this petition that the workers had come to present to the Tsar on Sunday, January 22, 1905, without violence, as Gapon had ordered, both to the Bolsheviks who saw the Tsar as an enemy to be driven out. The crowd even sang the hymn Lord, Protect the Tsar.
The February Revolution
The February revolution begins on the 20th day of the month, when the big arms company in Petrograd lays off thousands of workers. In addition to the lack of supplies for the population, there were requisitions for the soldiers sent to the front.
On January 23, bread was demanded through a large demonstration organized by the deputies of left. This time, we hear "Down with the Tsar!" and “Down with autocracy!” ". The participants continue the next day, shouting even louder their disagreement both against the war and against the regime.
It was on January 25 that Nicholas II ordered his guards to fire into the procession , which continues to grow, in order to restore order. The soldiers obeyed, but sided with the people during the night, and the next morning, the 27th, the workers and the soldiers fraternized. All immediately invade the Winter Palace, where the deputies are obliged to promise a constitution of the government. The Tsar will eventually have to promise democratic concessions and restore autocracy, which will give way to a socialist republic. The insurgents created a Soviet, made up of workers, peasants and soldiers, and a dual power was thus put in place.
Tsar Nicolas II abdicated on March 3, 1917, and was assassinated on July 17, 1918.
The October Revolution
It was in October 1917 that the Bolshevik party came to power. After Lenin returned on the 10th of the month and fought alongside Trotsky, the Republic was forced to submit to the Bolsheviks.
Led by Lenin and organized by Trotsky, the October Revolution seemed to have been the most effective insurrection since Red Sunday, and after the February Revolution. It was a revolution against industry, which aimed to bring down the monarchy and restore the Russian people to “their dignity and place”. On September 13, 1917, the Petrograd Soviet presided over by Trotsky rallied behind Lenin, whose primary goal was to achieve an immediate peace, and thus end the war that had lasted for three years. A month later, on October 16, Trotsky organizes a revolutionary military committee, which will join the soldiers of Petrograd, who had fraternized with the insurgents in February.
October 25, 1917, the Revolutionary Military Committee holds power, and the Bolsheviks possess the Winter Palace. Now that the latter are claiming the power of the Soviet, the Mensheviks and the Social Revolutionaries are withdrawing from it.
“The Russian Revolution is the French Revolution which arrives late, because of the cold. even declared Salvador Dali. It is true that we can see that the Bolsheviks wanted to dethrone the tsar, and put an end to absolute monarchy, as when the French beheaded Louis XIV. Church and State were separated, religion could no longer abuse its power. Then the Russian Nobles had to leave their country afterwards, leaving room for the people to express themselves in a country now ruled by Leninism.