ABSTRACT
The fact that the Bolsheviks were able to overthrow the Provisional Government in 1917 is hardly surprising. In retrospect it seems logical and inevitable that the government of the day, middle-of-the-road as it was, unable to make either war or peace, backing neither the expropriation of the large estates or the property rights of landlords, should fall. The percentage of Bolsheviks in Siberia in 1918 was extremely small, while in the whole of Russia it is doubtful if there were more than 75,000 of them at the time of the March Revolution of 1917. States which had proclaimed their indepence would have to be taken back into the Russian fold, and this of course was contrary to their own national aspirations. Russia was completely lacking in democratic experience–with the overthrow of Czarist autocracy bitter quarrels at once broke out as to what should succeed it, and continued after the Bolsheviks had come to power.
