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There were riots in Petrograd about the food shortages and the war. The Bolshevik Party encouraged these riots.
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Soldiers mutinied and refused to put down riots. The government lost control of the country
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When the Tsar's government collapsed, the members of the Duma set up the Provisional Government, led by George Lvuv.
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During the February Revolution, Tsar Nicholas II, ruler of Russia since 1894, is forced to abdicate (renounce his throne) by the Petrograd insurgents.
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Germany decided to resume unrestricted submarine warfare against any boat going into British waters; this attempt to starve Britain was balanced against the fact that it would bring the US into the war. They also made a secret offer to help Mexico regain territory lost in the Mexican–American War in an encoded telegram which the British intercepted. Also, German U-boats started sinking American merchant ships in the North Atlantic. Congress voted to declare war on Germany on April 6, 1917.
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The April Theses were a series of ten directives issued by the Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin. The Theses were mostly aimed at fellow Bolsheviks in Russia and returning to Russia from exile. He called for soviets (workers' councils) to take power (as seen in the slogan "all power to the soviets"), denounce liberals and social revolutionaries in the Provisional Government, called for Bolsheviks not to cooperate with the government, and called for new communist policies.
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US Congress passes the Liberty Loan Act, authorizing the Treasury to issue a public subscription for 2 billion in bonds for the war
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The East St. Louis Riot was an outbreak of labor and race-related violence that caused between 40 and 200 deaths and property damage. The events took place in an industrial city on the east bank of the Mississippi River across from St. Louis, Missouri. They have been described as the worst case of labor-related violence in 20th-century American history, and among the worst race riots in U.S. history.
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1st US Expeditionary Force arrives in France during World War I.
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The Russian troops attacked the Austro-Hungarian and German forces in Galicia, pushing toward Lviv. The operations involved the Russian 11th, 7th and 8th Armies against the Austro-Hungarian/German South Army (General Felix Graf von Bothmer) and the Austro-Hungarian 7th and 3rd Armies.
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Lvov's unwillingness to withdraw Russia from the war made him unpopular with the people and on 8th July, 1917, he resigned and was replaced by Alexander Kerensky.
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British battleship HMS Vanguard explodes at Scapa Flow (the result of an internal explosion of faulty cordite), killing 804 people.
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The Parliament of Finland is dissolved by the Russian Provisional Government. New elections are held in the autumn, resulting in a bourgeois majority.
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China declares war on Germany and Austria and joins the allies. Its major aim was to earn itself a place at the post-war bargaining table. Above all, China sought to regain control over the vital Shantung Peninsula and to reassert its strength before Japan, its most important adversary and rival for control in the region.
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General Kornilov staged an attack against the Provisional Government. The Provisional Government had no control of the army and had to ask the Bolsheviks to help it. This made the government seem weak AND made the Bolsheviks popular (they took control of the Soviets).
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Russia is declared a republic by the Provisional Government. The fundamental basis of the state was representative democracy and federation. This only lasted for 7 weeks.
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The Bolshevik party is a communist party. They wanted to give everyone enough money, food and water so they could survive, this appealed to the people. The Provisional Government was overthrown because of their laws and that they do not listen to the people and fulfill their needs.
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The Red Guards took over the bridges and telephone exchange, cutting off St Petersburg from the rest of the country.
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All that was left of the provisional government was the ministers sitting in the Winter Palace, defended by the women’s Death Battalion. The cruiser Aurora pointed its guns at the Palace, and the Red Guards attacked the Palace. The Death Battalion hid and cried and the ministers surrendered – in the end, the provisional government fell as much because nobody was prepared to support it, as because of the military actions of the Bolsheviks.
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An armistice was signed between the Russian Soviet Federate Socialist Republic on the one side and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Bulgaria, the German Empire and the Ottoman Empire—the Central Powers—on the other. The armistice took effect two days later, on 17 December. By this agreement Russia de facto exited World War 1.
