History of Soviet Russia and the Soviet Union (1917–1927)

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The ten years 1917–1927, saw a radical transformation of the Russian Empire into a socialist state, the Soviet Union: initially called Soviet Russia from 1917 to 1922 and then the Soviet Union from 1922 onward. This period spanned the 1917 Russian revolutions to Joseph Stalin's rise to power in 1927. Following the February Revolution in 1917 that deposed Tsar Nicholas, a short-lived provisional government had given way to Bolsheviks in the October Revolution. After winning the Russian Civil War (1917–1923), the Bolsheviks solidified their political control. They were dedicated to a version of Marxism developed by Vladimir Lenin, promising the workers would rise, destroy capitalism, and create a socialist society under the leadership of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The awkward problem, regarding Marxist revolutionary theory, was the small proletariat, in an overwhelmingly peasant society with limited industry and a very small middle class. The Bolshevik Party was renamed the...

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