Red Guards and revolutionary soldiers guarding Smolny, Petrograd, October 1917

Photos of Revolutionary Russia #1

Red Guards and revolutionary soldiers guarding Smolny, Petrograd, October 1917 -- Photo by famed Soviet photographer Pyotr Otsup (1883-1963).

Otsup was a photographer who sympathized with the Bolsheviks and began taking photos prior to the revolution. During the Soviet era he was a prominent photojournalist who captured images from the Civil War through to the Khrushchev era. He was awarded the Order of Lenin in 1962.

This photo was taken during the days immediately prior to the storming of the Winter Palace which started the Great October Socialist Revolution.

The first in our series from a Soviet collection of photos from the revolutionary period and the early days of Soviet Russia and the USSR that we will be posting over the next month.