One hundred years ago this week, a protest about food shortages in the Russian capital, Petrograd, turned into the violent revolution that overthrew Czar Nicholas II and brought the Romanov dynasty to an end. The liberal-minded provisional government that assumed power did not last long, succumbing to another revolution eight months later, which inaugurated 70 years of Communist rule.
It was not meant to be like that. The initial revolution of March 1917 succeeded not so much because the mass of the Russian population wanted to overthrow the czar but because very few were willing to defend him. Three years of …read more
Source: Ottawa Citizen
