Vladimir Lenin seizes power from the Tsarist regime in a coup d'etat. Tsar Nicholas II was forced to abdicate on 15th March 1917, and an ineffectual provincial government was established in his place. Contemptuous of what the revolution had accomplished thus far, Lenin returned from exile in Switzerland to spark his Bolshevik revolutionaries culminating in the coup of 7th November. He led the Soviet Union until his death in 1924 and was succeeded by Joseph Stalin. __
