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." [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."