From the archives of the Revolution
The Revolution in Russia
By
Leon Trotsky
16 March 2017
This article was published in the Russian-language New York newspaper Novy mir (New World) on March 16 , 1917. It was published in Russian in Trotsky’s 1923 Voina i Revoliutsiia (War and Revolution), Vol 2, pp. 432-434. It is translated here in full for the first time.
What is now happening in Russia will go down in history for all time as one of its greatest events. Our children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren will speak of these days as the beginning of a new epoch in the history of mankind. The Russian proletariat has revolted against the most criminal of regimes, against the most despised of governments. The people of Petrograd have risen up against the most disgraceful and bloodiest of wars. Troops of the capital have assembled under the red banner of rebellion and freedom. The tsarist ministers are under arrest. The ministers of Romanov, the sovereign of old Russia, the organizers of the all-Russian autocracy, have been placed by the people into one of the prisons which until now have opened their iron gates only for champions of the people. This fact alone gives a true evaluation of the events, of their scale and power. The mighty avalanche of the revolution is sweeping ahead—no human force will stop it.
Standing in power, as the telegraph wire announces, is the Provisional Government made up of representatives of the Duma majority, under the chairmanship of Rodzianko. [1] This Provisional Government—the executive committee of the liberal bourgeoisie—neither came to the revolution nor summoned it, nor does it lead it. The Rodziankos and Miliukovs have been raised to power by the first great wave of the revolutionary upsurge. What they fear most of all…