The Bolshevik Seizure of the Petrograd Winter Palace on the Night of 7-8 November 1917 That Began the Soviet Era

Tsar Nicholas II had abdicated on 15 March 1917 (2 March Old Style) after the February Revolution. A Provisional Government of liberal and moderate-socialist politicians took power, with the soldier-deputies’ and workers’ Petrograd Soviet functioning as a parallel authority. The dual-power arrangement held through summer 1917 but was unstable.

The Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party — under Vladimir Lenin, who had returned from Swiss exile in April 1917 — proposed direct seizure of power through the workers’ soviets. The Bolshevik political slogan was “Peace, Land, Bread” and “All Power to the Soviets.”

By autumn 1917 the Provisional Government under Alexander Kerensky had progressively lost authority. The summer 1917 offensive against Germany had failed. The Kornilov coup attempt of August 1917 had discredited the Provisional Government’s right-wing supporters. The Bolsheviks had gained majorities in the Petrograd and Moscow soviets by mid-September.

7 November

The Bolshevik Central Committee voted on 23 October 1917 to organise an armed seizure of power. The military operation was planned by Leon Trotsky in his capacity as chairman of the Petrograd Soviet’s Military Revolutionary Committee.

The seizure began at approximately 6 p.m. on 7 November 1917 (25 October Old Style). Bolshevik Red Guards and pro-Bolshevik units of the Petrograd garrison occupied the main railway stations, telegraph offices, post office, and state bank within four hours. The Provisional Government had no military forces remaining loyal enough to resist.

The cabinet of the Provisional Government — minus Kerensky, who had escaped Petrograd disguised in a car borrowed from the American embassy — was holding a meeting in the Malachite Room of the Winter Palace. The palace was guarded by approximately 1,000 cadets (officer trainees), Cossacks, and the Women’s Battalion of Death.

The cruiser Aurora

The cruiser Aurora — anchored in the Neva river opposite the Winter Palace — fired a single blank shot at approximately 9:40 p.m. as the signal for the assault. The Bolshevik attacking force then entered the Winter Palace through several unguarded back entrances. The defending cadets and Cossacks had largely melted away over the previous hours.

The Provisional Government cabinet was arrested in the Malachite Room at approximately 2:10 a.m. on 8 November 1917. The arrest was recorded by the young Bolshevik Vladimir Antonov-Ovseyenko with a brief speech (“In the name of the Military Revolutionary Committee, I declare you under arrest”). The cabinet ministers were escorted to the Peter and Paul Fortress without violence.

What followed

Lenin announced the formation of the Council of People’s Commissars at the All-Russian Congress of Soviets on the afternoon of 8 November 1917. He was elected its chairman. Trotsky became Commissar for Foreign Affairs. Stalin became Commissar for Nationalities. The new government had no democratic mandate; the Constituent Assembly that had been elected in November 1917 (with a Socialist-Revolutionary majority, not a Bolshevik one) was dissolved by force at its first meeting on 19 January 1918.

The Russian Civil War that followed (1918-1922) killed approximately 7-12 million people. The Bolshevik victory in 1922 produced the Soviet Union — the first communist state in human history.

The Soviet Union lasted for 69 years before its 1991 collapse. The geographical state-pattern it left — particularly the Russian Federation and the 14 post-Soviet independent republics — defines the geography of Eurasia in 2026.

The English-language phrase “ten days that shook the world” — coined by the American journalist John Reed in his 1919 account of the events — codified the revolutionary memory in the English-language socialist tradition. Reed died of typhus in Moscow in October 1920 and is buried at the Kremlin Wall Necropolis — one of only three Americans interred at the Soviet pantheon.

The Winter Palace itself was preserved through the Soviet era as the Hermitage Museum’s principal building. It is still operating in 2026.