ABSTRACT
The popular uprising that led to the disappearance of the imperial autocracy after three hundred years of rule by the Romanov dynasty, known in Russian and most Western historiography as the February Revolution, took place between February 24 and 28, 1917, according to the Old Style calendar then in use in the Russian Empire. The February Revolution spread quickly throughout the crumbling Russian Empire. As in Petrograd, imperial authorities were replaced, usually without bloodshed, by public committees, and soviets soon formed, first in the cities and then more slowly in district towns and villages. The civil war was greatly complicated by the participation of non-Russian minorities, who often were at odds with the ethnic Russians who favored a centralized Russia and were generally unwilling to make concessions to the other nationalities. The last episode of the civil war and intervention was an attack on Soviet Russia by Poland that led to a bloody summer of fighting in 1920.
