Government · Autocratic
Romanov state
The Tsar, ministers, bureaucracy, police, and armed forces that upheld imperial authority.
Collective actors
Groups & movements
Trace how institutions, parties, classes, and popular movements shaped revolutionary outcomes.
Social group · Diverse and increasingly militant
Urban workers
A concentrated industrial workforce affected by long hours, insecure wages, shortages, and political repression.
Social group · Diverse; land-focused
Peasants
The majority of the population, whose experiences centred on land, taxation, war, requisitioning, and local authority.
Popular movement · Politically fluid
Soldiers and sailors
Armed groups whose changing loyalties were decisive in 1905, February and October 1917, Civil War, and Kronstadt.
Political party · Marxist revolutionary
Bolsheviks
Lenin’s disciplined revolutionary party, committed in 1917 to transferring power to the soviets under Bolshevik leadership.
Political party · Agrarian socialist
Socialist Revolutionaries
A broad socialist movement with substantial peasant support and a programme centred on land socialisation.
Government · Liberal and moderate socialist coalition
Provisional Government
The temporary authority formed after the fall of the monarchy, weakened by war, land, and legitimacy crises.
Representative council · Socialist
Petrograd Soviet
A council of workers’ and soldiers’ deputies that wielded practical influence during Dual Authority.
Political party · Liberal constitutionalist
Kadets
The Constitutional Democrats sought representative government, civil rights, and substantial political reform.
Political party · Moderate constitutionalist
Octobrists
Moderates who accepted the October Manifesto as a basis for limited constitutional government.
Social group · Socially and politically diverse
Women
Workers, peasants, professionals, activists, and family members whose rights and daily lives changed unevenly.
Social group · Economically and politically diverse
Bourgeoisie
Business owners, professionals, and property holders whose status was challenged by socialist revolution.
Political party · Marxist socialist
Mensheviks
A socialist current that generally favoured a broad party and a bourgeois-democratic stage before socialist transformation.
Social group · Privileged under Tsarism
Nobility
Landowners and former elites who lost legal status, estates, property, and political influence after October.
Military movement · Bolshevik
Red Army
The centralised revolutionary army built under Trotsky that defended the Soviet regime during the Civil War.
Counter-revolutionary coalition · Anti-Bolshevik and fragmented
White movement
Diverse armies and political forces united by opposition to Bolshevik power but divided over Russia’s political and social future.
State institution · Bolshevik security organ
Cheka
The political police led by Felix Dzerzhinsky, used against sabotage, counter-revolution, and broader political opposition.