After the February Revolution toppled the tsar, Germany allowed Lenin and about 30 other exiles to cross its territory in a train, hoping he would take Russia out of the war. Arriving late at night on April 16 (April 3 in Russia's old calendar), Lenin was greeted with flags, a military band and an armoured car. He told the crowd that the revolution must go further. His program, published days later as the April Theses, set the Bolsheviks on the path to seizing power that November.
In March 1917 Lenin was living in Zurich, and the news of the tsar's fall caught him by surprise. With Allied countries unwilling to let an anti-war agitator pass, he accepted a German offer of transit. The train crossed Germany under an agreement that its passengers would have no contact with Germans, an arrangement later mythologized as the "sealed train". The travellers continued through Sweden and Finland.
At the Finland Station, Nikolay Chkheidze, the chairman of the Petrograd Soviet, welcomed Lenin with a speech urging unity among socialists in defence of the revolution. Lenin turned away and addressed the crowd directly, hailing the coming worldwide socialist revolution. From an armoured car outside the station he made another speech, then went on to Bolshevik headquarters and spoke for about two hours.
His April Theses demanded no support for the Provisional Government, an end to the war, the transfer of power to the soviets and the confiscation of landed estates. Many fellow Bolsheviks thought him out of touch. Within months his slogans, "peace, land and bread" and "all power to the soviets", had won over much of Petrograd.
Key people: Vladimir Lenin, Nadezhda Krupskaya, Nikolay Chkheidze