File:May 1st 1917, Petrograd (14264130389).jpg

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Notes: The back of the picture reads (in Russian and French): "May 1st, 1917". The demonstration took place in a period of political tension. A few before, the publication of the Foreign Minister Pavel Miliukov's note to the allies in the war, was interpreted as a commitment to the war policies denounced by the Russian population. Subsequently, mass demonstrations were organized in Petrograd and Moscow, which entailed the fall of the First Provisional Government during what has been called the "April Days". In the same month, Lenin came back from his exile in Switzerland, and had his April Theses published, in which he condemned World War I and the Provisional Government as bourgeois.

In his History of the Russian Revolution published in 1932, Trotski wrote about the pre-October Revolution atmosphere which surrounded the demonstration in Petrograd: "Like the March funeral, the 1st of May celebration passed off without clashes or casualties as an "all-national festival". However, an attentive ear might have caught already among the rank of the workers and soldiers impatient and even threatening notes. It was becoming harder to live. Prices had risen alarmingly (...) When will the revolution bring peace? What are Kerensky and Tseterelli waiting for [Provisional Government]? The masses were listening more and more attentively to the Bolsheviks, glancing at them obliquely, waitingly, some with half hostility, others already with trust. Underneath the triumphal discipline of the demonstration the mood was tense. There was a ferment in the masses"

Unknown photographer.

Description: 1 photograph. Black and white ; 17 x 23 cm.

Sources and further reading: Figes, Orlando. 2014. Revolutionary Russia, 1891-1991 : a History. New York: Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt and Company

Figes, Orlando. Kolonitskii, B. I. 1999. Interpreting the Russian Revolution: the Language and Symbols of 1917. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Galili y Garcia, Ziva. 1989. The Menshevik Leaders in the Russian Revolution: Social Realities and Political Strategies. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.

Rabinowitch, Alexander. 2007. The Bolsheviks in Power: the First Year of Soviet Rule in Petrograd. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Rabinowitch, Alexander. 1976. The Bolsheviks Come to Power: the Revolution of 1917 in Petrograd. New York: W.W. Norton.

Soukhanov, Nicolai. 1955. The Russian Revolution, 1917: a Personal Record. London: Oxford University Press.