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Historical Materialism #145
The Petrograd Workers in the Russian Revolution: February 1917 – June 1918
The Petrograd Workers in the Russian Revolution is a study of revolution 'from below', from the industrial districts of Russia's capital. It allows the workers speak for themselves, as conscious, creative subjects of the revolutionary process.
518 pages, ebook
Published November 27, 2017
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April 8, 2025
This book is an incredible piece of social history. Mandel throughly analyses the politics of workers in Russia, and argues that the growing support for the Bolsheviks between February and October is logical and serious. This book creates a beautiful picture of the conscious political role of workers and how they are the key creative force throughout the revolution. Mandel quotes at length resolutions at worker’s meetings, workers speeches and personal anecdotes. At the same time, Mandel doesn’t understate the importance of the Bolsheviks in playing a leading role throughout the revolution.
I’m going to now just list my favourite things about the book:
1. The insight into the vanguard of the working class.
“conscious workers actively try to raise up their fellow workers. These 'self-made agitators' were not party people. They were acting on their inner compulsion to bring the others to their level. This active orientation was crucial to the ability of a comparatively small part of the working class, the skilled workers, to exert its influence over the others.”
Vyborg worker:
‘Why, we can't act against our own comrades who haven't yet understood what we understand. We have to tear those comrades away from the politics of conciliation with the capitalists and nudge them towards the politics of a break.’
2. You get a real understanding of what workers were thinking and how they were convinced through their own experience and political discussion of the need for Soviet power. Mandel explains how different events affected the thinking of workers.
3. There’s so many cool anecdotes:
Bolshevik worker on February
‘I was everywhere, of course: in the first demonstrations and during the shooting, and when the troops rose up, then together with the soldiers I was in the arsenals of Peter-Paul, I stole revolvers, rifles, rode around in a car to arrest police, attended meetings, assemblies, spoke there myself. In days such as these, one cannot stand aside. And I have sobered up only in the last few days. Having fallen into the whirlwind of events, one becomes a chip of wood that is swept along, turned and spun.’
Story from a 16 year old worker:
‘my father, jubilant, declared that from now on he was a Red Guard, despite his forty-eight years. As two Red Guards, we shook each other's hand and embraced. This created an unusual closeness between us.’
4. The development of workers control in factories coming from below in response to capitalists sabotaging industry.
5. I got the best understanding of the politics of the Mensheviks and SRs from this book. Mandel quotes at length Bolsheviks, SRs and Mensheviks speaking at workers meetings on the same issue, and it gives so much insight into the different parties.
6. Showing how the majority of workers supported the October Revolution, and how the lack of street mobilisation was reflective of its organised character.
I’m going to now just list my favourite things about the book:
1. The insight into the vanguard of the working class.
“conscious workers actively try to raise up their fellow workers. These 'self-made agitators' were not party people. They were acting on their inner compulsion to bring the others to their level. This active orientation was crucial to the ability of a comparatively small part of the working class, the skilled workers, to exert its influence over the others.”
Vyborg worker:
‘Why, we can't act against our own comrades who haven't yet understood what we understand. We have to tear those comrades away from the politics of conciliation with the capitalists and nudge them towards the politics of a break.’
2. You get a real understanding of what workers were thinking and how they were convinced through their own experience and political discussion of the need for Soviet power. Mandel explains how different events affected the thinking of workers.
3. There’s so many cool anecdotes:
Bolshevik worker on February
‘I was everywhere, of course: in the first demonstrations and during the shooting, and when the troops rose up, then together with the soldiers I was in the arsenals of Peter-Paul, I stole revolvers, rifles, rode around in a car to arrest police, attended meetings, assemblies, spoke there myself. In days such as these, one cannot stand aside. And I have sobered up only in the last few days. Having fallen into the whirlwind of events, one becomes a chip of wood that is swept along, turned and spun.’
Story from a 16 year old worker:
‘my father, jubilant, declared that from now on he was a Red Guard, despite his forty-eight years. As two Red Guards, we shook each other's hand and embraced. This created an unusual closeness between us.’
4. The development of workers control in factories coming from below in response to capitalists sabotaging industry.
5. I got the best understanding of the politics of the Mensheviks and SRs from this book. Mandel quotes at length Bolsheviks, SRs and Mensheviks speaking at workers meetings on the same issue, and it gives so much insight into the different parties.
6. Showing how the majority of workers supported the October Revolution, and how the lack of street mobilisation was reflective of its organised character.
September 26, 2025
An excellent history of the Petrograd workers' movement. A good follow on from Smith's Red Petrograd, this book dealing more with the broader political dynamics.
Advanced workers, as Mandel argues, did not just fight for workers' interests. They had a well-rounded understanding of the world, with thought-through positions on their relation to other classes and on social, personal, and cultural issues. They were higher-cultured and spent a great part of their leisure time on political activities. They were seen as well-developed independently-minded individuals. At the same time they had a greater sense of discipline and responsibility. These workers had a strong sense of class 'separateness' or independence, strongly hostile to the bourgeoisie. For this reason they were not much of an audience for Menshevism. There was however a strong sense of being for working-class unity. It was backward workers who cared more about immediate economic interest and less about political interest.
Separateness, however, had limits. Important to Bolshevism was that the proletariat, once independent, turned back around with its independence and offer proletarian leadership to the broader masses. So for these advanced workers Bolshevism still had something to teach.
Mandel discusses in depth the interrelation of economic and political demands for workers as a distinct group, many issues arising on the level of the factory. But also to be noted is the organic tendency in 1917 for workers to be conscious of maintaining unity with soldiers and peasants. The debate was over the character of such an alliance, objectively whether it be bourgeois-hegemonic or proletarian-hegemonic. Out of this naturally arose the question of the state as the hegemonic organ, the institution around which the people are bound. It was on these terms that workers came to support soviet power: the activity of the masses piercing the terms of hegemony of the provisional government, the inability of the bourgeoisie to rearticulate a position favourable to them which secured popular support, and Bolshevik interventions to articulate a proletarian-hegemonic strategic position. The reason that bosses sought to sabotage production was their loss of faith in the political situation more than anything to do with profitability.
Workers did not establish workers' control with the intention of conducting a socialist revolution. Workers' control did not seek to take responsibility of production, it instead fought to ensure managers and employers did their job of organising production with oversight. Workers would often chuck out the old manager as a servant of the tsarist regime, but would replace them with someone else. This was to keep production going, against sabotage and speculation. This stood alongside the intention of seeing the demands of the working class actualised in the factory, such as the eight-hour day.
This history demonstrates that it would not be a spontaneous process that workers would inact socialist measures. In the period of crisis following July, the political alignment of forces was not simply counterrevolutionary bourgeoisie against revolutionary proletariat. The Socialist Revolutionaries were the biggest party, but at the same time were in internal turmoil. It is very conceivable that left-wing workers would have looked to the Left SRs in the absence of the Bolsheviks. Consequently, the historical development of 1917 must not be understood as an inevitable process. The logic of development was conditioned by the actions and reactions of political forces. The political polarisation in the wake of July was itself conditioned by the influence of Bolshevik demands feeding into the July Days. Spontaneity is not undetermined. But determination doesn't mean it isn't spontaneity. It was not impossible that in the face of a bleak situation, workers might have been herded into a bourgeois-hegemonic solution to crisis, 'bourgeois dictatorship' as was discussed, through a mix of defeat and despairing resignation.
Nevertheless, the Kornilov coup discredited the Mensheviks and SRs. The soviets had renewed themselves as organs of proletarian hegemony for the broader masses. Lenin's slogan was for a 'dictatorship of proletariat and poor peasanty'. The Left SR paper constantly criticised the Bolshevik line, arguing that the category of 'poor peasantry' was meaningless, however they would ultimately vote for it despite criticisms. For Lenin a concrete analysis determined that class polarisation was occuring in the countryside such that it was not appropriate to favour an alliance with the whole peasantry as a general political force. This was a shifting analysis closely attuned to the concrete situation. Revolutions are highly paced, and so too must the positioning of revolutionaries.
The key issue that would ultimately win support for soviet power was the crisis faced by the whole nation. After the failed Kornilov coup, the bourgeoisie surrendered their hegemonic position. They were recognised as saboteurs of the economy, something which affected everyone and Russian society as a whole. Kornilov was denounced as an 'internal German'. What the Bolsheviks presented was proletarian leadership for the people, for the whole nation.
It's worth dwelling on the atmosphere and uneven political attitudes before the insurrection. Mandel describes there having been three predominant sentiments: one of decisive action and bravery for soviet power; one which wanted soviet power but vacillated on pain of memory of the July Days, one which would only act for soviet power once a clear decisive forceful lead had been given; and one of active or passive hostility to the soviets. The majority sentiment was vascillation, the decisive section a minority. This only demonstrates the necessity of leadership in the winning and wielding of political power. It echoes Lenin's argument years earlier that the seizure of power is a dictatorship of the revolutionary people and not immediately the whole people. On the one hand, the Bolsheviks adapted to this atmosphere by presenting insurrection as necessary, to stave off terrible counterrevolution. On the other hand, Lenin advocated against moderate hesitators a courage to act in the face of uncertainty. Decisiveness was necessary for victory, the full consequences of the act could not be known for certain prior to taking action.
After the seizure of power, the path to counterrevolutionism was not simply a direct support for Kerensky, though it did ultimately lead there. The Mensheviks objected to a soviet government on the grounds that such a government did not adequately represent the people. They demanded a government that included defencists, the defencists being representatives of the petty bourgeoisie and intelligentsia. This of course slid into counterrevolution, as such an 'alliance' could only come about through the diminution of soviet power to the advantage of reaction. There was sentiment for a coalition government of socialist parties, but there was also a sentiment which saw a need for a government committed to soviet power. The contradiction was resolved in favour of the latter. Ultimately the Left SRs were won to Bolshevik leadership because only the Bolsheviks were fully committed to a government responsible to the soviets. This shift was heralded by workers as the consummation of the worker-peasant alliance.
After the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly, the main opposition to the Bolshevik government among workers was the SRs. The thrust of support for this opposition was defence of the Constituent Assembly. Open opposition to soviet power was however only a minority. What was a wider problem was general discontent, particularly with the economic situation. The stratifications of the labouring masses understandably persisted. There were genuine political differences between the longer-term workers and those workers who had only been proletarians since the war. Unskilled workers were more likely to have only come around to soviet power during the crisis of August to September, and in enduring hardship were more open to anarchist agitation. Early soviet rule was chaotic, and the government often found it difficult to control the Red Guards.
The dire economic situation sharpened the need for economic centralisation. This led to conflict over the terms of workers' control. Workers in a factory could not just do as they pleased when close coordination was required to escape catastrophe. Far from being merely an authoritarian Bolshevik plot, the centrality of state control of production was recognised by many factory committees, which themselves called for nationalisation when their own activity proved inadequate for resolving economic crisis. This didn't mean that the factory committees should be dissolved. They were an important organ for registering workers' attitudes and input. There was however a need to subordinate them to state regulation. How exactly that ought to be balanced was a concrete question, and in the following months after October there was a tendency for lesser direct workers' input and control.
The dispute saw debates on the theoretical understanding of workers' control. Bearing on this were the debates about the class character of the Russian revolution, and the question of the transition. The Menshevik Internationalists objected to soviet power because they thought such a government would inevitably enact socialist transformation, for which Russia was not ripe. Inversely, there were conceptions which thought Russia to be enacting socialism and that this was a good thing. The reality was more complex. While the revolution involved incursions against the capitalists, this is not the same as socialism. Lenin only ever described Russia as enacting 'steps towards socialism'. Workers' control was not socialism, rather it was a transitional measure towards socialism. So, the retreat of workers' control was not a counterrevolution against socialism, rather it was a strategic retreat for maintenance of the revolutionary political power. That early workers' oppositionists couldn't grasp this was emblematic of their conception of socialism being impoverished.
Brest-Litovsk showed that being strategic sometimes means knowing when to not fight. This was a hard argument to make, and it cost the Bolsheviks their alliance with the Left SRs. The SRs and Mensheviks in their attempts to dissuade away from soviet power would downplay the possibility of revolution in the West, and they argued that the Brest-Litovsk treaty damaged the prospect of such revolutions. Lenin and his supporters however acted upon a wager which demanded strategic manoeuvre and comprise, as long as they were for the goal of international revolution. The argument for the treaty was a hard one to win until the German army was knocking on the door of Petrograd.
Whether the extent of Bolshevik government political repression was justified or excessive is a matter of concrete assessment, but it all must be understood in light of the fact that the stakes could not have been higher and the situation could not have been much more extreme. More importantly, the Bolsheviks did not hold political power through repression alone. Hegemony can never for any class be secured only by force. There are two quotes from the last chapter of the book which express well the terms on which the Bolsheviks held on.
The first, a peasant-turned-worker Bolshevik, expressing support for the government addressing the problems which affect the people as a whole, and prosecuting solutions on those terms: "'Naturally, I'm not a kaledinka [supporter of white General Kaledin]. I'm a peasant, from the people, and I follow the people. And that's why I like the Bolsheviks, since they bother about the people and show favouritism to no one. Just give them some time, and they'll put them all in their place. Then you'll see what they can do."
Second, a Bolshevik worker addressing oppositionist arguments that workers had become estranged from the government: "We must now say this: we have two paths - the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie or the dictatorship of the proletariat. Each one of us would sooner agree to put a bullet through his forehead than allow the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, because we know that its answer to our pleas for mercy would be only a bullet in the forehead... But you, gentlemen, history will not forget you. It will remember you as would-be socialists, as those who, trembling for their miserable hides, abandoned the common cause, the cause of the proletarian revolution. It will remember you as people, who in such a fearful moment find nothing else to do but speak about your Constituent Assembly, speak about the need to summon the bourgeoisie back to power. History will remember them precisely as would-be socialists, as people who took fright at the hard road that the peasants and workers must tread, and who, therefore, stopped - did not even stop, but went backwards to capitalism."
Advanced workers, as Mandel argues, did not just fight for workers' interests. They had a well-rounded understanding of the world, with thought-through positions on their relation to other classes and on social, personal, and cultural issues. They were higher-cultured and spent a great part of their leisure time on political activities. They were seen as well-developed independently-minded individuals. At the same time they had a greater sense of discipline and responsibility. These workers had a strong sense of class 'separateness' or independence, strongly hostile to the bourgeoisie. For this reason they were not much of an audience for Menshevism. There was however a strong sense of being for working-class unity. It was backward workers who cared more about immediate economic interest and less about political interest.
Separateness, however, had limits. Important to Bolshevism was that the proletariat, once independent, turned back around with its independence and offer proletarian leadership to the broader masses. So for these advanced workers Bolshevism still had something to teach.
Mandel discusses in depth the interrelation of economic and political demands for workers as a distinct group, many issues arising on the level of the factory. But also to be noted is the organic tendency in 1917 for workers to be conscious of maintaining unity with soldiers and peasants. The debate was over the character of such an alliance, objectively whether it be bourgeois-hegemonic or proletarian-hegemonic. Out of this naturally arose the question of the state as the hegemonic organ, the institution around which the people are bound. It was on these terms that workers came to support soviet power: the activity of the masses piercing the terms of hegemony of the provisional government, the inability of the bourgeoisie to rearticulate a position favourable to them which secured popular support, and Bolshevik interventions to articulate a proletarian-hegemonic strategic position. The reason that bosses sought to sabotage production was their loss of faith in the political situation more than anything to do with profitability.
Workers did not establish workers' control with the intention of conducting a socialist revolution. Workers' control did not seek to take responsibility of production, it instead fought to ensure managers and employers did their job of organising production with oversight. Workers would often chuck out the old manager as a servant of the tsarist regime, but would replace them with someone else. This was to keep production going, against sabotage and speculation. This stood alongside the intention of seeing the demands of the working class actualised in the factory, such as the eight-hour day.
This history demonstrates that it would not be a spontaneous process that workers would inact socialist measures. In the period of crisis following July, the political alignment of forces was not simply counterrevolutionary bourgeoisie against revolutionary proletariat. The Socialist Revolutionaries were the biggest party, but at the same time were in internal turmoil. It is very conceivable that left-wing workers would have looked to the Left SRs in the absence of the Bolsheviks. Consequently, the historical development of 1917 must not be understood as an inevitable process. The logic of development was conditioned by the actions and reactions of political forces. The political polarisation in the wake of July was itself conditioned by the influence of Bolshevik demands feeding into the July Days. Spontaneity is not undetermined. But determination doesn't mean it isn't spontaneity. It was not impossible that in the face of a bleak situation, workers might have been herded into a bourgeois-hegemonic solution to crisis, 'bourgeois dictatorship' as was discussed, through a mix of defeat and despairing resignation.
Nevertheless, the Kornilov coup discredited the Mensheviks and SRs. The soviets had renewed themselves as organs of proletarian hegemony for the broader masses. Lenin's slogan was for a 'dictatorship of proletariat and poor peasanty'. The Left SR paper constantly criticised the Bolshevik line, arguing that the category of 'poor peasantry' was meaningless, however they would ultimately vote for it despite criticisms. For Lenin a concrete analysis determined that class polarisation was occuring in the countryside such that it was not appropriate to favour an alliance with the whole peasantry as a general political force. This was a shifting analysis closely attuned to the concrete situation. Revolutions are highly paced, and so too must the positioning of revolutionaries.
The key issue that would ultimately win support for soviet power was the crisis faced by the whole nation. After the failed Kornilov coup, the bourgeoisie surrendered their hegemonic position. They were recognised as saboteurs of the economy, something which affected everyone and Russian society as a whole. Kornilov was denounced as an 'internal German'. What the Bolsheviks presented was proletarian leadership for the people, for the whole nation.
It's worth dwelling on the atmosphere and uneven political attitudes before the insurrection. Mandel describes there having been three predominant sentiments: one of decisive action and bravery for soviet power; one which wanted soviet power but vacillated on pain of memory of the July Days, one which would only act for soviet power once a clear decisive forceful lead had been given; and one of active or passive hostility to the soviets. The majority sentiment was vascillation, the decisive section a minority. This only demonstrates the necessity of leadership in the winning and wielding of political power. It echoes Lenin's argument years earlier that the seizure of power is a dictatorship of the revolutionary people and not immediately the whole people. On the one hand, the Bolsheviks adapted to this atmosphere by presenting insurrection as necessary, to stave off terrible counterrevolution. On the other hand, Lenin advocated against moderate hesitators a courage to act in the face of uncertainty. Decisiveness was necessary for victory, the full consequences of the act could not be known for certain prior to taking action.
After the seizure of power, the path to counterrevolutionism was not simply a direct support for Kerensky, though it did ultimately lead there. The Mensheviks objected to a soviet government on the grounds that such a government did not adequately represent the people. They demanded a government that included defencists, the defencists being representatives of the petty bourgeoisie and intelligentsia. This of course slid into counterrevolution, as such an 'alliance' could only come about through the diminution of soviet power to the advantage of reaction. There was sentiment for a coalition government of socialist parties, but there was also a sentiment which saw a need for a government committed to soviet power. The contradiction was resolved in favour of the latter. Ultimately the Left SRs were won to Bolshevik leadership because only the Bolsheviks were fully committed to a government responsible to the soviets. This shift was heralded by workers as the consummation of the worker-peasant alliance.
After the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly, the main opposition to the Bolshevik government among workers was the SRs. The thrust of support for this opposition was defence of the Constituent Assembly. Open opposition to soviet power was however only a minority. What was a wider problem was general discontent, particularly with the economic situation. The stratifications of the labouring masses understandably persisted. There were genuine political differences between the longer-term workers and those workers who had only been proletarians since the war. Unskilled workers were more likely to have only come around to soviet power during the crisis of August to September, and in enduring hardship were more open to anarchist agitation. Early soviet rule was chaotic, and the government often found it difficult to control the Red Guards.
The dire economic situation sharpened the need for economic centralisation. This led to conflict over the terms of workers' control. Workers in a factory could not just do as they pleased when close coordination was required to escape catastrophe. Far from being merely an authoritarian Bolshevik plot, the centrality of state control of production was recognised by many factory committees, which themselves called for nationalisation when their own activity proved inadequate for resolving economic crisis. This didn't mean that the factory committees should be dissolved. They were an important organ for registering workers' attitudes and input. There was however a need to subordinate them to state regulation. How exactly that ought to be balanced was a concrete question, and in the following months after October there was a tendency for lesser direct workers' input and control.
The dispute saw debates on the theoretical understanding of workers' control. Bearing on this were the debates about the class character of the Russian revolution, and the question of the transition. The Menshevik Internationalists objected to soviet power because they thought such a government would inevitably enact socialist transformation, for which Russia was not ripe. Inversely, there were conceptions which thought Russia to be enacting socialism and that this was a good thing. The reality was more complex. While the revolution involved incursions against the capitalists, this is not the same as socialism. Lenin only ever described Russia as enacting 'steps towards socialism'. Workers' control was not socialism, rather it was a transitional measure towards socialism. So, the retreat of workers' control was not a counterrevolution against socialism, rather it was a strategic retreat for maintenance of the revolutionary political power. That early workers' oppositionists couldn't grasp this was emblematic of their conception of socialism being impoverished.
Brest-Litovsk showed that being strategic sometimes means knowing when to not fight. This was a hard argument to make, and it cost the Bolsheviks their alliance with the Left SRs. The SRs and Mensheviks in their attempts to dissuade away from soviet power would downplay the possibility of revolution in the West, and they argued that the Brest-Litovsk treaty damaged the prospect of such revolutions. Lenin and his supporters however acted upon a wager which demanded strategic manoeuvre and comprise, as long as they were for the goal of international revolution. The argument for the treaty was a hard one to win until the German army was knocking on the door of Petrograd.
Whether the extent of Bolshevik government political repression was justified or excessive is a matter of concrete assessment, but it all must be understood in light of the fact that the stakes could not have been higher and the situation could not have been much more extreme. More importantly, the Bolsheviks did not hold political power through repression alone. Hegemony can never for any class be secured only by force. There are two quotes from the last chapter of the book which express well the terms on which the Bolsheviks held on.
The first, a peasant-turned-worker Bolshevik, expressing support for the government addressing the problems which affect the people as a whole, and prosecuting solutions on those terms: "'Naturally, I'm not a kaledinka [supporter of white General Kaledin]. I'm a peasant, from the people, and I follow the people. And that's why I like the Bolsheviks, since they bother about the people and show favouritism to no one. Just give them some time, and they'll put them all in their place. Then you'll see what they can do."
Second, a Bolshevik worker addressing oppositionist arguments that workers had become estranged from the government: "We must now say this: we have two paths - the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie or the dictatorship of the proletariat. Each one of us would sooner agree to put a bullet through his forehead than allow the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, because we know that its answer to our pleas for mercy would be only a bullet in the forehead... But you, gentlemen, history will not forget you. It will remember you as would-be socialists, as those who, trembling for their miserable hides, abandoned the common cause, the cause of the proletarian revolution. It will remember you as people, who in such a fearful moment find nothing else to do but speak about your Constituent Assembly, speak about the need to summon the bourgeoisie back to power. History will remember them precisely as would-be socialists, as people who took fright at the hard road that the peasants and workers must tread, and who, therefore, stopped - did not even stop, but went backwards to capitalism."
March 5, 2023
This is not an easy read. It is a history of the Petrograd Working Class during and after the Russian Revolution. It is a social history that is based on memoirs, minutes of Soviets, Unions, factory committees and reports of party and Government officials. The thesis is that the seizure of power by members of the new Soviet organizations was defensive in almost all cases. There were real reasons for the class hatred that was polarizing the country. The lower classes felt betrayed by the upper classes as the economy tanked, the rich tried to take the assets of the factories. Inflation and unemployment were making life very hard for the “revolutionary democracy”. The soldiers did not want to fight, they wanted to go home and take the land from the landlords. The slogans of peace, land, and bread led directly to All Power to the Soviets. The only alternative to war and economic collapse was a new kind of power. Soviet Power.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 8, 2023
This is a very well written scholarly social history of the Petrograd working
Class during and after the 1917 Revolutions. As such, it is based on primary sources such as memoirs, newspapers, minutes of working class organs such as factory committees, unions, and soviets. The thesis is that the workers in Petrograd reacted to the political and economic disasters caused by the War. They were threatened by the food crisis and inflation, and rallied to the Bolsheviks. They provided the leadership to end the war and give the land to the peasants. Many of the workers still had connections in the countryside and they and returning soldiers brought the revolution to the rest of the country. Other workers left to join the Red Army and Soviet and party offices. I highly recommend this book as a wonderful example of Labor and Social history.
Class during and after the 1917 Revolutions. As such, it is based on primary sources such as memoirs, newspapers, minutes of working class organs such as factory committees, unions, and soviets. The thesis is that the workers in Petrograd reacted to the political and economic disasters caused by the War. They were threatened by the food crisis and inflation, and rallied to the Bolsheviks. They provided the leadership to end the war and give the land to the peasants. Many of the workers still had connections in the countryside and they and returning soldiers brought the revolution to the rest of the country. Other workers left to join the Red Army and Soviet and party offices. I highly recommend this book as a wonderful example of Labor and Social history.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews