ABSTRACT
In February 1917 the pent-up frustration of workers and soldiers in Petrograd overflowed and swept away the Tsarist regime. The revolution triggered an explosion of political activity across the Empire. Representative institutions sprang up in bewildering profusion as the masses seized their political manhood. The social struggle which ensued paralysed the army and drastically reduced the level of economic activity. For eight months a Provisional Government formed by liberal and moderate socialist leaders struggled to bridle and direct the energy that had been unleashed. They failed. The aspirations of the masses could not be contained within the formulae advanced by the Mensheviks and SRs, let alone by those of the Kadets. In the countryside the peasantry took matters into their own hands. In the army and the cities mass radicalism was expressed in an upsurge of support for the Bolsheviks. By late October the Provisional Government was helpless in the face of a Bolshevik-organized uprising and the new institutions which the revolution had thrown up installed a Bolshevik government.
