The long-term goal of the Bolsheviks, who took power by force in Russia in November 1917, was a fairer society where workers and peasants were not exploited by wealthy capitalists. The more immediate consequences, though, of the Bolshevik Revolution were the replacement of the Provisional Government by a highly centralised one-party state, the nationalisation of industries, the radical redistribution of land to the peasantry, a withdrawal from WWI, and the Russian Civil War, which raged for five years. The turmoil Soviet Russia suffered in its early years was eventually overcome as Vladimir Lenin (1870 to 1924) oversaw the creation of the USSR in 1922.

The effects of the Bolshevik Revolution of 7 November 1917 (old calendar 25 October) included:

Following the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II (reign 1894 to 1917) in March and the inability of the Provisional Government to deal with a series of crises through the summer of 1917, the Bolsheviks, the dominant socialists, seized power by force using their Red Guards militia. The Bolsheviks pretended they were acting in the name of the hundreds of soviets (worker councils) across Russia, but, in reality, most of the soviets were not directly involved in the revolution. Crucially, the Bolsheviks did dominate the two largest and most important soviets of Petrograd (St. Petersburg) and Moscow, and they had the support of Russia's armed forces, who were weary of the disastrous First World War (1914 to 18). It was largely a bloodless coup, but there had been minor resistance in the Winter Palace, the government's headquarters, and by officer cadets in Petrograd. In addition, a unit of government-loyal Cossacks was defeated outside the capital. Through November, a lingering resistance in Moscow was eradicated when the Kremlin was shelled. After the event, most large cities recognised the soviets were in power, although in many of these, and in smaller provincial towns, the Bolsheviks had to share that power with other socialist groups. Bolshevik influence "in both the Russian countryside and non-Russian areas remained small" (Shukman, 136).

Hoping to create a socialist society where the working classes and peasantry were no longer exploited by the wealthier classes, the Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin was made 'chairman' of a temporary Workers' and Peasants' Government. The government ministers were now called 'commissars', and the ministries in which they worked were renamed 'commissariats'. This change in names and titles was not restricted to politics but was seen in all aspects of public life as the Bolsheviks abolished traditional ranks, titles, and symbols of the old Tsarist regime.

Lenin was able to keep the soviets at least nominally on board with his revolution, since they had already voted to create the ruling cabinet or Sovnarkom, the Council of People's Commissars. Lenin was the head of this council. Effectively, then, Lenin was the new head of state. There remained many practical difficulties to be overcome. The Bolsheviks had no experience whatsoever of government, the civil service proved highly reactionary, and officials at the central bank even refused to release funds. Within the Sovnarkom, there was disagreement as to whether or not to form a coalition of the left with other socialist factions. These were not merely ideological considerations. The Social Revolutionaries could call on the support of the powerful railway union, which was in the position to paralyse the country's main transport network. However, when negotiations began, the other factions insisted that no coalition socialist government could include either Lenin or Leon Trotsky (1879 to 1940), leader of the Red Guards. The Bolsheviks decided to press on alone, and Lenin was greatly helped by the divisions within the various other socialist groups.

One of the main reasons for the Provisional Government's unpopularity had been its dithering in fulfilling its promise to call a general and popular election, which would create a truly representative Constituent Assembly. The Bolsheviks had been vocal in their criticism of the delay, and so Lenin was obliged to arrange just such an election. Unfortunately for the Bolsheviks, they won less than a quarter of the vote. Of 715 seats available, the Bolsheviks won 175 while the Right Social Revolutionaries won 370. On the very first day, the Constituent Assembly met – 5 January 1918 – Lenin notified the delegates that they would remain subservient to the Sovnarkom and the soviets. When the delegates voted to reject this move, Lenin ordered the Red Guards to close down the assembly. Rival and more moderate socialist groups, like the Right Socialist Revolutionaries and Mensheviks, were now harassed to the point where, eventually, only one party was permitted in the new Soviet Russia: the Communist Party, as the Bolsheviks now called themselves.

The Bolsheviks had won control, but it was a precarious grip on power and one depending "increasingly on a policy of terror" (Wood, 43). A huge bureaucracy of control was created. As the historian G. L. Freeze notes: "the most unique – and devastatingly efficient – innovation of these early years was the creation of the hybrid 'party-state'" (294). Membership of the Bolshevik/Communist Party rose from 23,600 in January 1917 to 750,000 in 1921. The party "gradually metamorphosed into a hierarchically organized bureaucracy" (ibid).

Social, legal, and work changes came when a plethora of decrees was issued by the new government, some within 24 hours of the revolution. Lenin greatly increased his popularity with the working classes by declaring the long-sought-for 8-hour maximum working day. Lenin also shrewdly issued a decree that workers would henceforth control all aspects of production. In reality, Lenin was determined to ensure that in the longer term, the state would control all industries, but to achieve this, he would have to weaken worker-soviet power. The first step was, ironically for followers of Karl Marx, to encourage state capitalism and reinstate former factory managers and specialists. A programme of nationalisation resulted in 37,000 companies being nationalised by 1920.

The Land Decree effectively confiscated all landlords' land (crown-, church-, and gentry-owned) and redistributed it to peasants who were now entitled to as large a plot as they could work without the need of hired labourers. Land was not collectivised, a policy the Bolsheviks had promised before coming to power, since the peasantry would have revolted once more. Lenin bided his time for this policy to be enacted when his grip on power was more secure. In the meantime, the redistribution of land from the rich to the poor continued. "In the central provinces three-quarters of landowners' land was confiscated between November and January 1918" (Suny, 136).

Decrees continued to be passed. Bolshevik propaganda went into overdrive with increased print runs of newspapers and pamphlets extolling the virtues of the Bolshevik Revolution, which were distributed across Russia. Marriage would be henceforth only a civil ceremony. Divorce was made easy to obtain. To combat the ongoing food crisis: "Municipal authorities were made responsible for all food, and shops and restaurants were brought under their control" (Wood, 46). On 14 December, banking became a state monopoly. On 21 January, all Tsarist debts, including foreign ones, were cancelled. No large house could be personally owned. Shares were forbidden, and dividends ended. The wealthy had their property and cash confiscated. During this economic upheaval, the government blithely printed cash, but this only caused rampant inflation.

Another decree of December 1917, a highly secret one, established Lenin's secret police, the Cheka (the Russian acronym for the Extraordinary Commission to Combat Counter-Revolution and Sabotage). The first head of Cheka was Felix Dzerzhinsky (1877 to 1926), known as 'Iron Felix'. The role of Cheka was to eradicate opposition and any prospect of a counter-revolution. Any means were to be used to achieve these aims. As Lenin himself stated in January 1918: "Until we apply terror – shooting on the spot – to speculators, we shall achieve nothing" (Wood, 53). The Cheka's reign of 'Red Terror' used methods ranging from the confiscation of ration books to torture and execution without trial. The victims – perhaps as many as 3 million between 1918 and 1921 – were not only royalists and reactionaries but very often the socialist rivals of the Bolsheviks.

Lenin negotiated a ceasefire with Germany in December 1917, and formally withdrew Russia from WWI with the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, signed on 3 March 1918. The terms of the treaty were so harsh that some socialists called for a return to the fighting, but the reality was that the German army was advancing virtually unopposed. Indeed, Petrograd was deemed still to be under threat, and so Lenin moved the capital to Moscow on 10 March.

Lenin had tried to delay the peace negotiations in the hope that worker-inspired revolutions would occur elsewhere in Europe. They did not. A thorny issue was the states formerly belonging to the Russian Empire, many of which were now occupied by Germany and its allies. Lenin had promised these states independence, but he hoped that the inspiration of the revolution and the power of the local soviets would ensure they in any case joined with Russia into some sort of union of soviet republics. This plan fell apart with the signing of the Brest-Litovsk Treaty.

Under the terms of the peace treaty, Soviet Russia was obliged to give up Ukraine, eastern Poland, Finland, the Baltic provinces (Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia), Belorussia (Belarus), and other territories to Germany, while the Caucasus went to Turkey. In short, the territory the Romanov tsars had gained over two centuries of imperialism was lost, some 290,000 square miles (750,000 km²). Apart from the prestige and land, much wealth in natural resources was lost, too. As the historian F. McDonough notes, the Russian Empire lost "64 per cent of pig-iron production, 40 per cent of coal and 24 per cent of steel" (45). The Russian Empire lost 34 per cent of its population and 32 per cent of its agricultural land (Wood, 51).

Germany, of course, ultimately lost WWI and had to sign its own humiliating treaty of defeat, the Treaty of Versailles. The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was then viewed by the victorious Allies as being null and void. However, most of the new frontiers agreed upon in the treaty, with the exception of Ukraine, were respected. Many of the former territories of the Russian Empire subsequently saw revolutionary or nationalist uprisings as Central and Eastern Europe became highly unstable, a situation which ultimately added to the long list of causes of WWII (1939 to 45).

The Provisional Government had enjoyed the support of many of the middle classes, upper classes, and the Russian Orthodox Church. These groups and others eventually organised themselves into a coherent opposition to the Bolshevik government. Russia's former allies in WWI were furious at Lenin's capitulation at Brest-Litovsk. Hoping to change the soviet regime and get Russia back into the war, Britain and France supported the opponents of the Bolsheviks and the Tsarist generals who began to organise a military opposition to the Bolsheviks, a force known as the 'Whites'. The Bolsheviks, who had formed a conscripted Red Army, were known as the 'Reds'. Other forces involved included non-Bolshevik socialists and local nationalists. The Russian Civil War was fought between these groups.

In July 1918, when an anti-Bolshevik Czech army approached Ekaterinaburg (Yekaterinburg), where the ex-tsar was being held prisoner, Lenin ordered the execution of him and his entire family. As the war dragged on, the Bolshevik position strengthened. The Red Army grew to number 5 million men and women by June 1920, all tightly controlled by 180,000 party commissars and the Cheka.

Although the various White armies pushed on several fronts at the extremities of the former empire, this eventually turned against them as the vast distances involved meant these armies could not link up. The Red Army, well-connected by an excellent use of Russia's interior rail network and benefitting from the support of the peasantry, eventually won the civil war.

The civil war had brought ruin to Russia. "Industrial output was minimal, railway rolling stock was worn out and economic life rested on a primitive system of barter" (Wood, 61). There were famines in many areas, particularly in the south. Lenin had been ruthless in his policies regarding the economy. There had been a raft of measures, like grain requisitioning without payment, rationing, extending the working day to 11 hours, making labour compulsory for every able-bodied male between the ages of 16 and 50, and punishments for those workers considered to be slacking. This raft of measures became known as 'War Communism', but many were counterproductive as they stifled incentives and created a mass migration from the cities to the countryside, where the tentacles of the Communist Party had a more tentative grip on daily life.

Now that the war was over, discontent with the government and its harsh policies was more openly expressed. There were peasant revolts and a rebellion by sailors in Kronstadt in March 1921. These outbursts of independence were brutally quashed. To try and revive the economy, Lenin compromised on his ideology and instigated the New Economic Policy, a strategy which involved a measure of private enterprise. There was an economic recovery, but to compensate for the reinstatement of certain aspects of capitalism, the Communist Party became all-powerful, biding its time until further steps like farm collectivisation and a fully planned economy could be implemented. In 1922, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) was declared. The Bolshevik Revolution, then, had "ushered in a new era in the history of mankind, the era of Socialism, which would in turn develop into full Communism" (Alan Wood, 64).