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The following is a general overview of the history of Russia during the period of Soviet domination. For full coverage of the history of the Soviet Union, see the article Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
The February Revolution of 1917 was spontaneous, leaderless, and fueled by deep resentment over the economic and social conditions that had prevailed in imperial Russia under Tsar Nicholas. The country, having been sucked into World War I, found the strains of fighting a modern war with a premodern political and economic system intolerable. The tsar was well-meaning but fell short as a war leader and was unable to cope with the burdens of being head of state. His wife Alexandra meddled in government and, while encouraging her husband to be a strong tsar, sought the advice of Rasputin on matters of state. The strain of the war, complicated by the intrigues and machinations within the royal house, caused a great gulf to develop between the monarchy and educated society and between the tsar and the rest of the population.
Hardly a hand was raised in support when the imperial order collapsed in February (March, New Style) 1917. The key factor had been the defection of the military. Without this instrument of coercion, the tsar could not survive. Most Russians rejoiced, but a political vacuum had been created that needed immediate attention. The political government that had been formed was to remain in office until a democratic parliament, the Constituent Assembly, was convened. The new government was bourgeois, or middle-class, representing a tiny segment of the population. However, the soviets, which were proliferating rapidly, did not contest the right of the bourgeoisie to rule.
As Bolshevik domination grew in Petrograd, Moscow, and other major cities, the soviets accepted the idea that the revolution that would give them power would take place in two stages: the bourgeois and the socialist. How long this transition period would last was a debatable point. The Mensheviks, the moderate socialists, held that Russia had to pass through its capitalist phase before the socialist one could appear. The Bolsheviks, the radical socialists, wanted the transition period to be short. Their firebrand leader, Lenin, sensed that power could be seized rather easily. The government was weak, and it could not rely on the army. With its large complement of peasants and workers in uniform, it was this group that formed the natural constituency of the socialists. Like the Mensheviks, the Socialist Revolutionaries, the main agrarian party, did not advocate a rush to power. More than 80 percent of the population lived in the countryside, a fact that made the Socialist Revolutionaries certain to be the leading party when the Constituent Assembly was elected.
The Provisional Government was undone by war, economic collapse, and its own incompetence. Being a temporary administration, it postponed all hard decisions—what should be done about land seizures by the peasants, for example—for the Constituent Assembly. A fatal mistake by the government was its continued prosecution of the war. Middle-class politicians believed wrongly that one of the reasons for the February Revolution was popular anger at the incompetence of the conduct of the war. Disgruntled peasant-soldiers wanted to quit the army. They did not perceive Germany to be a threat to Russian sovereignty and deserted in droves to claim their piece of the landlord's estate. Industrial decline and rising inflation radicalized workers. The Bolshevik slogan of “All Power to the Soviets” was very attractive. Dual power prevailed. The government seemingly spoke for the country, but in reality represented only the middle class; the soviets represented the workers and peasants. Moderate socialists—Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries—dominated the Petrograd and Moscow soviets after February, but the radical Bolsheviks began to win local elections and by September had a majority in the Petrograd Soviet.
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