The Bolsheviks storm the Winter Palace
A cruiser fires a blank shot as a signal, and the Provisional Government falls in a single night with almost no fighting.
Quick facts
- Date
- 7 November 1917 (25 October O.S.)
- Signal
- Blank shot from the cruiser Aurora
- Casualties
- Minimal; a handful wounded
What happened
By late October 1917, the Bolsheviks controlled the Petrograd and Moscow soviets and their Red Guards militia, formed from the Military Revolutionary Committee that Trotsky led. When the government tried to shut down Bolshevik newspapers and order the cruiser Aurora out of the harbor, it was too late: the Aurora crew backed the Bolsheviks. On the night of 25-26 October by the old calendar (7-8 November modern), the Aurora fired a blank shot toward the Winter Palace as the signal for the Red Guards to occupy the telegraph offices, railway stations, the central bank, and the palace itself, where the Provisional Government's ministers had gathered. An eyewitness account from inside the palace, government minister S.L. Maslov, describes insurgents breaking in around two in the morning while thirty cadets tried and failed to hold the entrance; two grenades wounded two cadets before the Bolshevik commander Antonov arrested everyone present. Kerensky had already fled the city by car. The takeover cost only a handful of casualties.
Why it matters
The near-bloodless fall of the Winter Palace let the Bolsheviks claim power at the moment the Second Congress of Soviets was in session, giving Lenin's government a claim to represent soviet power even though Bolshevik delegates were a minority at that Congress; the Mensheviks walked out in protest rather than legitimize the coup. Soviet propaganda later dramatized the storming into a heroic battle it never actually was.
How we know
An eyewitness account by Provisional Government minister S.L. Maslov, preserved by Michigan State University's Seventeen Moments in Soviet History, describes the assault from inside the palace; World History Encyclopedia corroborates the Aurora's signal shot and the near-bloodless nature of the takeover.
Sources
- World History Encyclopedia. Bolshevik Revolution: When Russia Became a Socialist State in 1917 · Reputable sourceworldhistory.org · The domain "worldhistory.org" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
- Seventeen Moments in Soviet History, Michigan State University. Taking of the Winter Palace (eyewitness account of S.L. Maslov) · Primary source (author-declared)soviethistory.msu.edu · Cited as a "primary" source (no stronger domain match). · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
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