Causes of the October Revolution | Dr Daniel Beer

Nice, but I respectfully disagree. The real cause of the October Revolution can be told in two words

The. War.

Between February and October of 1917, the Russian Army had basically melted away. They just went home. I'm not sure there's another example in history. The Confederate Army in 1864-1865, but nowhere near the scale. Possible the ARVN in 1975. Millions of soldiers went home and were destabilizing an unstable situation. They had been radicalized, as much as the workers. They were hungry. And they wanted land. The February Revolution had swept away the nobility (or so they thought) and all those vast tracts of land were there for the taking. And what group was running around shouting "Peace, Bread and Land"? The left leaning people had been scared by the Kornilov Affair and knew there were dozens of Kornilovs. And there were still dozens of Romanovs. Most knew what happened in England and France when the old dynasty was restored. Had Kerensky been able to bring the war to an end, the Provisional Government might have stabilized. Enough to quiet the fears of another Kornilov or Nicholas II coming back. And coalesced enough of a loyal armed force to suppress the Bolsheviks. But that was a tall order. To make peace with Germany was basically to become a German puppet. If Russia quit, it looked to give overall victory to Germany. And if the Allies won, they had made it clear that they would deal with the backstabbers after the war. There were other factors. Many painted Kerensky as a Tsar in waiting. He had no real political organization, certainly none to match Lenin. But the war brought Lenin to power.