History remembers revolutions for their explosions.
Think of the French Revolution, and the storming of the Bastille comes quickly to mind. The American Revolution has Lexington and Concord. Russia’s revolution is remembered through darker images: armed Bolsheviks in Petrograd, the cruiser Aurora and the fall of the Winter Palace, the slaughter of the Romanovs at Ekaterinburg, Perm, Alapayevsk, and the Peter and Paul Fortress—and then the Red Terror.
One of its most consequential moments, however, came with almost no drama at all.
In the early morning of January 19, 1918, exhausted deputies sat inside Petrograd’s Tauride Palace after a session that had stretched through the night. Millions of voters had elected them to a Constituent Assembly charged with determining the political future of a state emerging from war, revolution, and imperial collapse.
Suddenly, an armed sailor informed them that the proceedings were over.
The explanation attributed to Anatoly Zheleznyakov became famous: the guard was tired. It seemed innocuous enough. Tomorrow was another day.
The deputies gathered their papers and left.
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