Detail from a 1898 map of St. Petersburg, the Russian capital, from a German atlas. Central St Petersburg, or Petrograd, is on the Neva River. Key landmarks from top to bottom include the Peter and Paul Fortress, which served as a prison, Nevski Prospect, a primary boulevard south of the Fortress, and the Mariyinsky Theater.
St Petersburg (Petrograd); Neva River, Peter and Paul Fortress; Nevski Prospect, Mariyinsky Theater
"Russians might have resisted Bolshevism if there had been a real alternative; but the collapse of capitalism was there for all to see. Wages became meaningless: strikes came, one after another, and caused a fall of fifty per cent in industrial production in the summer of 1917.The principal problem in all this was that wages could not be translated into food. Industry had done well enough from the inflation, at least in its earlier stages, before the autumn of 1916. Agriculture was not in a position to profit nearly as much, and the result of inflation was to drive the bulk of food-producers back into the subsistence-economy from which they had only recently emerged, if at all. Food-deliveries to the towns ran down after November, 1916; Petrograd had, when the March Revolution occurred, only a few days' grain-reserves, and the bread-riots that sparked off the revolution continued to detonate revolutionary explosions throughout the summer and autumn."
Major events that followed the Russian Revolution of February (March New Style) 1917 — the Kerensky Offensive of June and July, the suppression of Bolsheviks and their leader Vladimir Lenin, the right-wing coup attempt by General Lavr Kornilov, the release and arming of the Bolsheviks to defend the government and capital of Petrograd from Kornilov — all took place against a backdrop of demonstrations, food shortages, rising unemployment, and a collapsing economy.
The Eastern Front, 1914-1917 by Norman Stone, pp. 291–292, copyright © 1975 Norman Stone, publisher: Charles Scribner's Sons, publication date: 1975
1917-09-18, 1917, September, Petrograd, food shortage, food, riot
