V.I. Lenin and the Bolshevik Revolution

On November 7, 1917 (October 25 on the older Julian calendar then used by Russia), the provisional government of Premier Aleksandr Kerensky fell to the Bolsheviks led by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, pictured here. Decades of czarist incompetence and the devastation of World War I had wrecked the Russian economy and in March 1917, Czar Nicholas II abdicated. Kerensky’s provisional government struggled to maintain power until Lenin’s Bolshevik followers stormed Petrograd and seized all government operations. Lenin and his lieutenant, Leon Trotsky, quickly confiscated land and nationalized industry and in March 1918, Russia withdrew from World War I by signing the humiliating Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with Germany. Bloody civil war raged in Russia for the next two years as the anti-Bolshevik White Army battled the Communists for control. Image: Library of Congress