Russia 1917: The Soldiers’ Revolution

This essay examines the under-studied «soldier’s revoltion» of 1917 and 1918. During this period, ordinary soldiers of the Russian Army responded to the appeals and directives of the Bolsheviks and began to self-demobilize. This demobilization was a response to changing battlefield conditions and to what they believed to be the redress of long-standing grievances in rural Russia. This self-demobilization had important consequences for the new regime, which then needed to re-mobilize the rural population for the civil war.