by Prof. Gordon L. Bowen, Ph.D.
The Russian Revolution: Key Dates
March 11, 1917: the Duma ignored the tsar's order to dissolve itself, while fires in the city broke out that very night. Meanwhile, the men of the Volhynian guard regiment began killing their officers.
March 15. Czar Nicholas II abdicates the throne.
March 22: Nicholas II arrested at army headquarters and imprisoned at Tsarkoe Selo, the famous royal palace of Catherine the Great.
March 22: The U.S.A. was the first government to recognize the new Provisional Government.
April 16: Lenin returns from Switzerland, delivers “April Theses” speech (April 17).
May 18. The Foreign Minister Miliukov and War Minister
Guchkov both were forced to resign.
May 17: Prince Lvov's reorganizes Provisional Government: Alexander
Kerensky named Minister of War and the
Navy; other socialists also given cabinet positions.
July: Lenin’s Bolsheviks attempt to seize power, fail; Lenin flees to Finland. Thousands of Bolsheviks jailed; Kerensky is appointed Prime Minister of the Provisional Government.
July 30: Gen. Kornilov is named Commander of Russian Army by Kerensky.
September: Kornilov leads troops in march on Petrograd (St. Petersburg); fearing revolt, Kerensky releases and arms Bolsheviks.
November 6: Bolsheviks seize power in Petrograd (St. Petersburg), declare socialist state to have begun.
January 1918: Constituent Assembly meeting is disrupted, ended by Bolsheviks.
March 1918: Treaty of Brest-Litovsk is signed with Germany, ending the war, and allowing Russian Bolsheviks to turn to the task of establishing the new order within a territory substantially smaller than the pre-Revolutionary Russian Empire.
July 1918: former Czar Nicholas II, Czarina and whole family were killed at Ekaterinenburg in the Urals.
