The most consequential revolution of the 20th century did not happened with a change of the guard. In this episode, we dismantle the myth of the "storming" of the Winter Palace to reveal the reality of the Bolshevik seizure of power: a methodical, invisible coup d'état masterminded by Leon Trotsky. While the citizens of Petrograd rode the trams and attended the opera, the Military Revolutionary Committee quietly seized the city's bridges, telegraphs, and banks without firing a shot.

We follow the surreal timeline of October 25th, from Prime Minister Kerensky fleeing the capital in a borrowed American car, to the "siege" of the Winter Palace—defended only by teenage cadets and the Women’s Battalion of Death. The episode concludes in the smoke-filled halls of the Smolny Institute, where Trotsky consigns his political enemies to the "dustbin of history" and Lenin announces the birth of the Soviet state.

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