The first years of the October Revolution in the faces: how it was 100 years ago

On the night of November 7 to 8 (according to the old style — October 25-26), an uprising began in Petrograd. The Provisional Government was overthrown, the Winter Palace was seized and the power of the Soviets was proclaimed. The coup in the country was officially called the Great October Socialist Revolution, and this day became the red day of the calendar for 73 years.

For the 100th anniversary, historical photographs were collected, which reflected the first years of the country's life after the October Revolution: congresses of Soviets, the first celebrations on Red Square, portraits of People's Commissars, chairmen and delegates.

The pictures were published in the album "Soviet Russia in the early years of its existence" on the website of the New York Public Library. The authors of the photographs taken between 1917 and 1936 are unknown.

Source: The New York Public Library

Presidium of the First All-Russian Congress of Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies. M.I. Skobelev, N.S. Chkheidze, G.V. Plekhanov, I.G. Tsereteli. Below: E.K. Breshko-Breshkovskaya, E.E. Lazarev and "the grandfather of the Russian Revolution" N.V. Tchaikovsky.

Members of the Russian and German delegation in Brest-Litovsk, 1918. Below: the signing of the armistice in Brest-Litovsk.

II All-Russian Congress of Soviets of Peasant Deputies, November 1917. In the center is the revolutionary Maria Spiridonova.

Meeting of the Petrograd Soviet.

Meeting of the Petrograd Soviet in honor of the Italian delegation. Zinoviev under the lamp.

Delegates of the Third International.

Felix Dzerzhinsky.

General Nikolai Nikolaevich Dukhonin. Below: Bela Kun.

Upstairs: Grigory Yevseyevich Zinoviev. Below: Chairman of the Central Election Commission Mikhail Ivanovich Kalinin and a teacher of a rural school.

Above: an elderly peasant woman cleaning fish — Mikhail Kalinin's grandmother. Below: Prosecutor General Krylenko.

From above: Trotsky traveling along the Volga. Below: Sverdlov, Chairman of the All-Russian CEC.

Top: V.A. Avanesov (center), member of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee. Below: Chairman of the All-Russian CEC Y.M. Sverdlov and E.M. Yaroslavsky.

From above: Vladimir Grigoryevich Chertkov, a close friend of Leo Tolstoy. Below: participants of the V Congress of Soviets during the break of the session at the Bolshoi Theater, Moscow.

From above: the parade of Cossacks on May 1, 1918. Below: People's Commissar Leon Trotsky surrounded by members of the revolutionary General Staff.

Top: Yaroslavsky (left) and Muralov (center). Below: the orchestra meets Lev Trotsky, People's Commissar for Military Affairs.

Trotsky on his way to the front.

From above: Leon Trotsky salutes the red banner. Below: Trotsky in Kursk.

May Day, Moscow, 1920. Children's choir in the open air during the celebration.

May Day, 1920, Petrograd.

Commissariat of Education. Children in the kitchen and at breakfast.

In the propaganda train "Lenin". Drama class.

Hygienic exhibition.

Entrance to the Island of Rest. Recreation palace.

Americans in Russia.

Political cartoons.

Entrance to a nationalized restaurant in Soviet Russia. A religious procession gathered in front of the gates to the Kremlin.

From above: Patriarch Tikhon. Down below: demolition of the monument to General Skobelev in Moscow.

Demolition of the monument to Alexander III.

In the middle: members of the YMCA organization in Moscow, 1917. Below: The Winter Palace in Petrograd.

Ekaterina Konstantinovna Breshko-Breshkovskaya.

On the left: Viktor Mikhailovich Chernov. On the right: General Mikhail Vasilyevich Alekseev.

Maria Leontievna Bochkareva (nee Frolkova) (1889-1920). In 1917, she became one of the first Russian female officers. She created the first female battalion in the history of the Russian army.

Vladimir Dmitrievich Bonch-Bruevich (1873-1955), Soviet historian and ethnographer.

Commissar of the Petrograd Labor Commune.

Konstantin Feldman, a participant in the riot on the battleship Potemkin.

Nikolai Nikolaevich Firsov (1864-1934), historian, socialist-revolutionary, later a Marxist.

Kuzma Antonovich Gvozdev, Minister of Labor, in Kerensky's office.

Mikhail Ivanovich Tereshchenko, Minister of Finance of the Provisional Government.

Buguruslan. The children from the receiver number 17, emaciated from hunger, photographer Lieberman, 1917-1918.

Buguruslan. Hungry Muslim children from the receiver, photographer Lieberman.

Demonstration of school-age children demanding free education, photographer Yakov Steinberg.

The phone in the days of the coup.

The first Soviet orphanage, 1918.

White officers, 1918.

At the next meeting of the counterrevolution. Moscow, June 15, 1923.

Government troops shoot at demonstrators, corner of Nevsky Prospekt and Sadovaya Street, St. Petersburg. Photographer Karl Karlovich Bulla, July 4, 1917.