The Radicalization of the Russian Army Russian soldiers inspired by the Bolshevik cause carry banners with Marxist slogans calling for revolution and democracy, around July 1917. One reads “All Power to the Proletariat,” a telling response to the provisional government’s failure to pull Russia out of the war. Sick of defeat and wretched conditions at the front, the tsar’s troops welcomed Lenin’s promises of “Peace, Land, and Bread” and were enthusiastic participants in the Russian Revolution.
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