The man in red — Vladimir Lenin is remembered in this poster from the Soviet Union.

Russia was ruled by the autocratic Tsar Nicholas II. Like his father, Alexander III, he feared that a popular uprising could result in his assassination. He therefore resisted liberal reform. As the 20th century dawned, demonstrations demanding higher wages and political reforms became widespread.

One such demonstration resulted in tragedy. In January 1905, about 200,000 laborers marched to the tsar’s Winter Palace in St. Petersburg asking for higher wages, better working conditions, and greater political representation. Although the crowd was not hostile toward Nicholas, Russian forces met the workers with brute force, killing several hundred.

The Bloody Sunday massacre, as it was called, triggered a wave of protests across Russia known as the Revolution of 1905. Fearing a complete revolution, Nicholas agreed to establish the Duma — a Russian parliament. But the gesture was insincere. The Duma existed in name only, as tsarist forces controlled its actions. Socialist revolutionaries felt deceived by Nicholas and plotted their revenge.

This picture is one of the last surviving photos of Tsar Nicholas II and his family before their executions in 1918.

In 1903, differences in ideology led Lenin to form his own faction within the Russian Social-Democratic Party Workers' Party. His followers, known as the Bolsheviks, embraced Lenin's idea of "democratic centralism," in which power flowed from a small group of professional revolutionaries down to the industrial proletariat and rural workforce. Traditional Marxists believed that Russia was not ready for a communist revolution. Marx believed that a nation would have to industrialize completely to experience the conditions that would breed a revolution. The Bolsheviks believed that a small, dedicated, and highly trained inner core could impose the revolution from above and teach Marxism after assuming power.

Lenin had personal as well as ideological reasons to wage revolution. In 1887, his brother was executed for plotting to kill the tsar; and in 1895 he was exiled to the tundra of Siberia for fomenting worker rebellion. Lenin then lived in Europe in exile until 1917.

Undisputed leader of the Revolution, Vladimir Lenin leads a military parade on Red Square in 1919.

Russian forces suffered greatly during World War I, as did Russian citizens. Millions of soldiers died. Starvation hit the countryside. Tsar Nicholas lost control of his country. In 1917, after 3 years of war, mass demonstrations in Petrograd (formerly St. Petersburg) and Moscow, many of them led by women, broke out over food shortages. The Tsar abdicated.

The First Revolution of 1917 took place in March when a Provisional Government led by Alexander Kerensky took control of the Duma when the tsar yielded power. Although the Duma was not unified by any common ideology, most supported a Western-style parliamentary government. The greatest mistake made by the Provisional Government was to continue Russia’s involvement in World War I. The hardships brought by war continued, and many Russians believed the new government to be as ineffective as the tsar.

Encouraged by German officials, Lenin returned from exile in April, issuing slogans such as “Peace, Land, and Bread” and "All power to the soviets." The soviets, small councils of workers and soldiers loyal to the Bolsheviks, helped Lenin seize power in October Revolution. After this mostly bloodless Second Revolution of 1917, Lenin consolidated power by setting up the Cheka, a secret police force that arrested or killed his enemies.

A peaceful march in St. Petersburg on January 22, 1905, becomes "Bloody Sunday" as guards open fire on men, women, and children.

With the Germans advancing, the Bolsheviks sued for peace. The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was signed in March 1918, giving Germany the territories of Poland, Finland, the Baltic States, and the Ukraine, about a third of Russia's wealth and population. Freed from the demands of war, Lenin created social reforms that gave women the same legal status as men and provided for compulsory education. The Bolsheviks also nationalized property and renounced foreign debt. In March 1918 the Bolsheviks renamed their party the Communist party.

A brutal civil war erupted in 1918 when former Tsarist officers tried to wage a counterrevolution. Fighting the Communist "reds" were the Tsarist "whites," supported by Americans, French, British, and Japanese military forces numbering 100,000.

Why would European nations and the United States invade Russia to fight against Lenin? The Bolsheviks' withdrawal from the war had shut down the Eastern Front, angering the British and French. Western leaders also saw the revolution and the nationalization of banks and industries as a threat to the postwar rebuilding of European democracies. And Bolshevism, in principle, was committed to destroying European capitalism. Western leaders wanted to "strangle Bolshevism in the cradle," as British politician Winston Churchill put it.