THE FINAL COUNTDOWN

After the fall of the tsarist regime in March 1917, Russian society was anything but settled. Along with turmoil on the battlefields and economic unrest on the home front, there was little consensus on the shape of political advancement. The Provisional Government was balanced upon a series of fragile coalitions, while the return of Vladimir Lenin would further radicalise public debate. Three summer-into-autumn months would witness civil disquiet and failed coups, before the final outcome in October.

3 JULY

REBELLIOUS RUSSIANS TAKE TO THE STREETS

“Take power, you son of a bitch, when it is handed to you!”

These words – angrily yelled by a Petrograd protester and set to a soundtrack of gunfire peppering the air – articulated the frustrations of hundreds of thousands of impatient rebels who had gathered outside the city’s Tauride Palace, in a mass protest later dubbed the July Days. The target of the heckle was Viktor Chernov, the moderate leader of the Petrograd Soviet (a soviet being a council representing workers and soldiers). The anger felt on the