II. Fill in the prepositions where necessary:

1. In 1917 the Romanov dynasty, which had ruled Russia ____ 1613, was brought ____; and with it the Russian monarchy, whose roots stretched ____ to the grand princes of Muscovite Russia.

2. Aleksandr Kerensky’s views were ranging ____ liberal ____ mildly socialist.

3. The Petrograd Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies had no clearly stated purpose other than to defend the revolution ____ general and the interests of Russia’s working classes ____ particular.

4. The Provisional Government was ____ a precarious situation.

5. Most ordinary Russian workers were not interested ____ Western-style parliaments, that were so important ____ the moderate and liberal educated elite; nor did the masses care ____ Russia’s war aims, another issue ____ major importance ____ the leaders of the Provisional Government.

6. Workers were concentrated ____ key cities like Petrograd and Moscow and therefore were a threat ____ any government they opposed.

7. The Provisional Government could not count ____ the military either.

8. Other factors added ____ the Provisional Government’s burdens.

9. The government’s problems included peasants’ demand ____ land reform to transfer noble-owned properties ____ their hands as well as the demand ____ the non-Russian national minorities ____ some form ____ local autonomy.

10. The Provisional Government put an end ____ all religious, national, and class discrimination ____ issuing several major human rights decrees that guaranteed a wide range of civil and political liberties.

11. Thousands of demoralized and angry soldiers feared they would be transferred ____ the front.

12. The government managed to rally enough soldiers ____ its side to put ____ the uprising

III. Discuss the following questions:

1. Who officially led the Provisional Government? Who were the most important members of it?

2. What did it mean to be a left-wing member of the government?

3. What another key body formed at the same time as the Provisional Government? What were the purposes and the policy of this institution?

4. What did the contradiction between the Provisional Government and the Soviet result in?

5. Why did the Provisional Government have no influence with peasants and workers? Why did it have “no real power of any kind”?

6. What state of affairs was called “dual power”?

7. What other factors added to the Provisional Government’s burdens?

8. What measures were actually carried out by the Provisional Government and why did they have little weight?

9. What event(s) led to an uprising known as the July Days? What helped to put down an uprising?

IV. Summarize the information presented in the text. Text 2

1. Lenin, the Bolsheviks, and the November Revolution

I. Scan the text and explain the words in bold:

Against this chaotic background Lenin, who made it back to Russia from exile in Switzerland in April, plotted and schemed. Lenin’s goal from the beginning was to overthrow the Provisional Government and establish a one-party Bolshevik dictatorship. As the only major political party of the center or left that refused to support the Provisional Government, the Bolsheviks were able to exploit the deteriorating conditions in the spring and fall to gain support among the disaffected workers and soldiers in and around Petrograd. They also gained several prominent new recruits from among the radical intelligentsia, most notably the Social Democratic firebrand Leon Trotsky, a dynamic speaker and brilliant organizer who before 1917 had stood aloof from both Bolsheviks and Mensheviks and, indeed, often clashed with Lenin. When Trotsky joined the Bolshevik Party in 1917, Lenin found a right-hand man whose skills both complemented and enormously enhanced his own. Together the two men formed a powerful historic partnership.

The Bolshevik eclipse caused by the July Days came to an end when the Provisional Government faced another coup in early September, this time by conservative forces led by the general Lavr Kornilov. To help with its defense, the government released Bolshevik leaders from prison and even supplied arms to the party’s militia, the Red Guards. During the days that followed the failed Kornilov coup, Bolshevik strength among the Petrograd workers and soldiers grew so that by mid-September the party held a majority in the Petrograd Soviet. Shortly thereafter it won a majority in the Moscow Soviet.

Lenin now decided the time had come to overthrow the government. At first only Trotsky among the party’s Central Committee members supported him. For all their bluster and years of pining about revolution, when the moment of truth arrived the other members, to put it bluntly, lost their nerve. It took Lenin a month, until the end of October, to convince his timid colleagues to make a grab for power. The coup itself, organized mainly by Trotsky (Lenin was still in hiding), began during the late night and predawn hours of November 6–7 when armed Bolshevik detachments seized key points throughout the city. It was successfully concluded late in the evening of November 7, the official date of the Bolshevik Revolution, when the party’s militia occupied the Provisional Government’s headquarters at the Winter Palace and arrested most of its ministers (Kerensky fled the city). Russia’s eightmonth experiment with democracy was over. The Soviet era in Russian history had begun.