Excerpts from Books and Wikipedia
"Since Lenin's return from exile in April 1917, the Bolsheviks . . . we're committed to taking power by force from Kerensky's provisional government . . . . The provisional government was increasingly unpopular because of its failure to either end the war or improve Russia's desperate economic crisis. . . . Active preparations were placed in the hands of Leon Trotsky, a recent charismatic defector to the Bolsheviks from their more moderate Menshevik rivals. . . . The October Revolution's greatest coup was the taking of the tsar's Winter Palace, the seat of the provisional government, which was guarded by young military cadets and a battalion of women soldiers. By the end of the day, the city was in Bolshevik hands and the first stage of their takeover of the country had been successfully achieved." [Furtado: 1001 Days] "The October Revolution . . . or the Bolshevik Revolution, was a seizure of state power instrumental in the larger Russian Revolution of 1917." [Wikipedia] "After the epic 1905 unrest, things cooled off for a while; but in the three years 1912–1914 the incidence of strikes, mass protests, police arrests, and killings was spiraling to an alarming degree." [Kennedy: Great Powers, p. 236]