'Workers of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your chains.' (Karl Marx, 1848) To many of the workers living in societies that had experienced the Industrial Revolution, these words had the appeal of offering release from the grim living and working conditions in which they found themselves. The Bolshevik Revolution of November 1917 seemed to offer the chance to change the world. The Bolsheviks were a political group devoted to the promotion of Marx's ideas of revolution in the name of the industrial workers. Their seizure of power in Russia signalled the possibility of overthrowing the rich, powerful classes who exploited the poor, replacing them with a system that put the worker's interests first. For many workers across Europe this provided an inspiration for the possibilities of the future, yet less than 75 years later the great Soviet experiment was over. The so-called worker's paradise, the Soviet Union, was dead. The story of the Soviet Union is one of enormous struggle to establish and safeguard a worker's state that, despite immense efforts, ultimately failed.

The Bolshevik Party, led by Vladimir Lenin, took power in November 1917 by means of an armed seizure of power in a well-executed coup d'état. The existing government, a provisional government that had taken over after the collapse of the Tsarist regime in March of the same year, was seriously undermined by the pressures of the First World War. Seizing power had been relatively easy for the Bolsheviks; holding on to it was to prove much more difficult. By 1918 the Bolsheviks faced a civil war against a mixed association of groups known as the Whites. Lenin and the Bolshevik Party were forced to extend the areas of the economy they directed in order to supply the newly formed Red Army with the resources to win the civil war. This was achieved by 1921, but in the process the Bolsheviks alienated many of their own supporters. This situation presented the Bolshevik Party with a dilemma that remained an issue for the Soviet Union throughout its history: that of a Party which declared itself as representing the interests 'of the people' but which, in reality, had limited popular support. Force was used to gain and sustain its control over the country.

Once power had been established, the Bolsheviks aimed to modernise the economy of the Soviet Union in order to unleash the potential of Russia's resources for the benefit of its people. Under Lenin, the government experimented with a mixed economy of private and state-owned sectors, known as the New Economic Policy (NEP). This compromise was swept away by Stalin's Five-Year Plans from 1928. State control was tightened over all aspects of production, with the aim of catching up with the rest of the Western World. Economic growth was impressive during the 1930s and played a key role in ensuring the Soviet Union could defeat the Nazi invasion of 1941. The Great Patriotic War (1941-45) wreaked enormous destruction on the Soviet Union, but state direction ensured rapid reconstruction and recovery after 1945.