Comparing February and October

The idea

The exam's favorite Russian question is the difference between the two revolutions of nineteen seventeen, and four heads sort it. Who: February was a spontaneous rising of women workers, strikers and mutinous soldiers with no party in charge; October was a planned seizure by one party through the Petrograd Soviet and its Red Guards. Against whom: February against the tsar; October against the Provisional Government that February had made. Result: February produced dual power, a government without police beside soviets without a majority; October produced one power, then a dispersed assembly and a one-party state. Program: February wanted bread and the tsar gone and kept the war; October promised peace, land and bread and signed Brest-Litovsk. The trap: October did not overthrow the tsar, who had been gone eight months. Practice by placing six items: the abdication, the April Theses, the Winter Palace, Kerensky, the Constituent Assembly, the Cheka.