ABSTRACT
In order to understand the complexity and chaos that followed the March Revolution, it is helpful to understand three divisions that marked Russia's political life. First divided Russia's privileged classes into two camps, moderate/liberal and socialist, and was in large part responsible for the tense relationship between the Provisional Government as originally constituted and the Petrograd Soviet. Second division was the old dichotomy between Russia's privileged elite-including those elements running both the Provisional Government and the Petrograd Soviet and the masses. The Provisional Government meanwhile compounded its problems when it reaffirmed Russia's commitment to the Allied war effort and aims. The Provisional Government's collapse marked the failure of a decades-long effort to establish Western democratic political life in Russia. Perhaps the most important consequence of the Bolshevik victory was that it postponed for seven decades the effort to establish a society based on the rule of law, private property, and parliamentary democracy in Russia.
