*The October Revolution may have claimed to give all power to the Soviets, but it also sparked civil war within Russia.  Many people, even reformers—even socialists—opposed Lenin's Bolsheviks, especially after the humiliating treaty of Brest-Litovsk.

*When Lenin dissolved the provisional government, Kerensky and members of the old aristocracy formed an uneasy alliance to fight back—a faction called the Whites.

*Nationalists groups within Russia fought for independence:  the Greens in Ukraine and various central Asian peoples (who ultimately failed), the Finns, Poles, Lithuanians, Latvians, and Estonians (who succeeded).

*To put down communism, especially when the Red Army tried to go to the aid of communist movements in Germany and elsewhere in Europe, the British, French, American, and Japanese governments all sent expeditionary forces to help the Whites (without success, partly because the Whites were so disorganised).

*To fight back, the Bolsheviks became even more radical.  To remove the most obvious object of monarchist support, the Bolsheviks rounded up the Tsar's family in a basement and murdered them all:  Nicholas, Alexandra, Alexi and their four daughters, the family doctor, the Tsar's valet, the Empress's chambermaid, the royal cook, and even the family dog.  Their bodies were dumped in a pit and burned with acid before being covered up.  The royal family are now considered saints in the Russian Orthodox Church.

*Lenin then instituted what he called War Communism from 1918 to 1921.  To do so, he centralised all power in the hands of the government, stripping the Soviets of their power.

*Total war required total revolution of all aspects of life.  Total revolution could only be achieved by a totalitarian state, one that required total discipline, which in turn was achieved through terror enforced by the Cheka (secret police) and the Red Army (led by Leon Trotsky).  The Cheka sent far more people to Siberian gulags than the Tsar's police ever did, and practised far more sadistic tortures as well.  This was known as the Red Terror.

*This might have been unpleasant, but it was necessary to spread the Revolution around the world.  To accomplish this, the Communist International, or Comintern, was formed to unite the workers of the world.  At its height in the late 1920s it had over half a million members outside the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, as the Russian empire was known after 1922.  After all, the goal of a good communist, especially a leader of its dedicated vanguard like Lenin, was to spread communism around the world—race and nationality were unimportant, as all workers around the world are united by common a interest in owning the means of production and enjoying the fruits of their own labour.

*The Civil War ended in 1921 with about five million killed during the fighting.  The entire country was wrecked.  Factories sat empty, farmland was ravaged, the economy was ruined, and millions starved during famines in 1921 and 1922.

*Even worse, world-wide revolution had not be achieved.  Therefore, the Soviet Union had to organise for a long struggle.

*Between 1921 and 1929 Lenin (and his successor, Stalin) instituted a New Economic Policy (NEP), partly to rebuild the economy, and partly to regain the trust of the peasants, for whom War Communism had gone too far.  The NEP allowed some profits to be made in agriculture, particularly by the kulaks (prosperous farmers), and even in some factories.  This was seen as a betrayal of Communism by many idealists, but Lenin considered it taking one step back in order to take two steps forward.

*Lenin changed Russia in many more ways.  The Orthodox Church, although never completely suppressed, was restricted, persecuted, and discouraged:  Communism's official policy was one of militant atheism (religion, after all, is the opiate of the masses).  Church buildings were often destroyed (in 1931 the largest church in Russia was blown up to make room for the Palace of the Soviets, a statue of Lenin bigger than the Statue of Liberty on top of a building bigger than the Empire State Building), but in the end this was too expensive, so they just built a swimming pool), church leaders were imprisoned and executed, and Christians were distrusted by the government and often persecuted (although the same was true of other religious groups as well, particularly Jews). 

*The old Julian calendar was replaced by the Gregorian calendar (used by Catholic Europe since 1582, the UK since 1752).

*Titles of nobility were abolished—everyone was supposed to call everyone else 'comrade.'

*Women were given (in theory, and often in practise) equality with men—to give them more freedom, the state built government run nurseries where children could be raised collectively.

*Education became more widely available.

*Most importantly, eventually everything was collectivised and run by the government.  The NEP delayed this for farmers for a while, but eventually everything was held by the government on behalf of the workers and peasants of the Soviet Union.  Anyone who disagreed could be killed.

*Even literature and art were collectivised:  artists and writers were brought together to collaborate on novels, poems, paintings, and sculptures, with an emphasis on realism and on glorifying the proletariat (the working class).

*The capital was moved from St Petersburg to Moscow, and after Lenin's death, St Petersburg was renamed Leningrad.

*Lenin died in 1924.  His body was embalmed and placed on public display, and eventually a mausoleum was built around his body.  It can be seen today between 10 AM and 1 PM every day but Mondays and Fridays.  Daily care is required to keep the corpse in good condition.

*After Lenin's death, the question of succession was a serious one.  The most obvious successors were Leon Trotsky (Lev Bronstein) (who wanted a Permanent Revolution), Joseph Stalin—the Man of Steel (Joseph Dzhugashvili of Georgia)--General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (a political moderate by Soviet standards), and Nikolai Bukharin (who wanted to continue the NEP).

*Trotsky had been Lenin's oldest and best ally, and was commander of the Red Army.  However, at the time of Lenin's death, he was sick, and Stalin (who, as General Secretary, kept all the records, managed publications, and arranged for his friends to get into positions of power) outmanœuvred him and forced him into exile.  Stalin turned away from international communism for the moment, and (with support from Bukharin) focused on Socialism in One Country, strengthening the Soviet Union while awaiting the right moment for worldwide revolution.