October 1917 was the climax of a revolution we have always called Russian, but was so much more.
In Petrograd, the Russian Empire’s capital, the provisional government that had ruled since February collapsed and Bolshevik-led workers’ and soldiers’ soviets, or councils, took control. In Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine, power fell to the Central Council, or Rada, which had since the summer pressed for Ukrainian autonomy within the Russian state.
The Rada, like all the parliamentary institutions emerging in the empire’s ruins, sat atop a furious movement – in the Russian army and the countryside as much as the towns – which was increasingly beyond its control. In Ukraine, this movement sought an autonomous national government – but in a soviet, not parliamentary form.
