The story in brief
An empire of millions answers to one man. A war bleeds it, a bread line topples him in eight days, and a sealed train carries home the man who will take his place. Then a promise of peace, land and bread, a parliament closed after one night, a civil war, a cellar in Yekaterinburg, and a new state that splits the century in two.
The chapters
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Chapter 1 · 5 min · Free
The Last Tsar
A priest leads a river of workers through the snow to beg their Tsar for help. The Tsar is not there. The soldiers are.
Sources: Nicholas II’s diary (1905); Gapon’s petition (1905); The Duma (1916)
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Chapter 2 · 5 min · Free
February
A bread line on Women’s Day, a regiment that will not shoot again, and a tsar who signs away three centuries in a railway car.
Sources: Order No. 1 (1917); The abdication manifesto; Nicholas II’s diary (1917)
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Chapter 3 · 5 min
The Sealed Train
A train crosses enemy Germany with its doors sealed, carrying the man who will end Russia’s war and start a new one.
Sources: Lenin, April Theses (1917); Churchill, The World Crisis (1929)
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Chapter 4 · 5 min
Ten Days
A wig and a bandaged jaw, a blank shot from a cruiser, and a parliament that lasts one night.
Sources: Reed, Ten Days That Shook the World (1919); The Decrees on Peace and Land (1917)
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Chapter 5 · 6 min
Reds and Whites
Two terrors, the enemy’s soup kitchens, and a new state with the whole world as its goal.
Sources: The Fourteen Points (1918); Lenin’s Letter to the Congress (1923)
Who’s who
The people you meet. Each one is a hero card you can collect.
- Grigori RasputinSiberian Mystic · Healer to the Heir · Never a Monk
- Alexander KerenskyLawyer · Prime Minister of Free Russia · Exile
- Alexandra KollontaiBolshevik · Commissar · Pioneer Diplomat
- John ReedReporter · Ten Days That Shook the World · Buried at the Kremlin
- Leon TrotskyOrganizer of October · Founder of the Red Army · Exile
- Nicholas IIEmperor of All the Russias · The Last Tsar · A Saint to His Church
What you’ll be able to tell
This story belongs to the journey “The Roots”. By the end of it, you can tell why there were two sides at all, and how a democracy can vote and deal itself out of existence.
Stories in this journey
- 1917: The Russian Revolution
- Hitler: How a Democracy Died
Sources
- Nicholas II’s diaries
- Lenin’s April Theses
- Reed, Ten Days That Shook the World
- The Decrees on Peace and Land
- The Fourteen Points
