ABSTRACT
All accounts of the Russian revolution agree that soldiers and sailors played a critical role at crucial moments particularly in Petrograd. One has only to think of the mutiny that turned the February demonstrations from a crisis into an incipient revolution or of the sailors who formed the backbone of the July demonstrations and who had it in their power to overthrow the Provisional Government there and then or, last but not least, of the soldiers and sailors who joined in the October uprising and of the even greater number who sealed its success by refusing to obey orders to resist it.
