The book of the prominent American historian Alexander Rabinovich continues the theme of the Bolsheviks and the October Revolution in Petrograd, begun in his earlier studies "Prelude to Revolution" and "Bolsheviks Come to Power," Russian translations of which saw the light of day, respectively, in 1992 and 1989. In a new book, based, unlike the previous ones, on the richest material from the Russian archives declassified in the 1990s, the author is not only looking for answers to the intriguing and fundamental questions of Russian history of the 20th century about the reasons for the rebirth of the Bolshevik party and the curtailment of democratism of the Soviets and other revolutionary bodies, leading to the formation of an authoritarian Soviet system, but also paints a convincing and multifaceted picture of life in Petrograd in the first year of the Soviet era.