An attempt to present a comprehensive view of the Russian Revolution, embracing not only the political and military struggle for power between 1917 and 1920, but also the whole movement towards revolutionizing state, society, economy and culture on a worldwide scale. This first volume is effectively a continuation of Professor Pipes' Russia Unders the Old Regime; it focuses on the gradual decay of tsarism culminating in the mutiny of the Petrograd military garrison in Feburary 1917 which brought down Russia's monarchic government and caused the country to fall apart. It also describes the Bolshevik seizure of power, first in Petrograd, then in the provinces inhabited by Great Russians, imposing on this area a one-party regime with its terror apparatus and centralized economic system. The second volume will concentrate on the aftermath of the Bolshevik coup and the Communist regime as it emerged in the final year of Lenin's dictatorship.