ABSTRACT
The 1917 revolution had a sort of rehearsal in 1905/6. It was sparked off by the shooting down of a peaceful crowd in front of the Winter Palace on the 'bloody' Sunday, 22 January 1905. As for the socialist parties, none of them had expected the revolution to break out when it did. The revolution broke out with elemental force, entirely spontaneously, not masterminded or directed by any socialist party. It began inconspicuously on Women's Day, 25 February, 1917 —Women's Day like May Day being one of the days that the socialists had taught the workers to celebrate. In the course of the summer of 1917 the Menshevik party underwent a painful process of reorientation. Between May, when Martov returned to Russia, and October, there was a significant shift to the left, which expressed itself in Martov's rise to leadership.
