Russian Revolution (1917)

The 1917 Russian Revolution — actually two revolutions, the February democratic revolution and the October Bolshevik coup — created the world's first communist state and inspired communist movements on every continent for the next 70 years. The Soviet Union it produced became a nuclear superpower that defined the Cold War, influenced the decolonisation of Asia and Africa, and ultimately collapsed in 1991 in a manner that reshaped the entire global order.