Here's what you think happened: thousands of armed workers charged the gates of the Winter Palace, fought their way through hallway after hallway, and toppled the Russian government in a blaze of gunfire. That version comes from Eisenstein's 1927 film "October" — and it's basically propaganda. The real story of October 1917, the night communist revolutionaries called the Bolsheviks seized power and ended centuries of rule by Russian tsars, was stranger, messier, and honestly kind of absurd.
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Crowns & Conquests·1/1·1′
The place
Hermitage Museum & Winter Palace
The Night Russia Changed Forever
The storming of the Winter Palace that ended an empire
October 25-26, 1917Hermitage Museum & Winter Palace
Moral of the Story
“The greatest revolutions don't always come with a battle cry — sometimes they come with a hangover.”
Characters
V
Vladimir LeninA
Alexander Kerensky (fled before the storming)W
Women's Battalion of DeathR
Red GuardsP
Provisional Government ministersSource
Bolshevik records, John Reed's "Ten Days That Shook the World," Winter Palace garrison memoirs