The game covers two and a half years in which Russia changed shape three times: from empire to republic, from republic to Soviet state, and from state to a country split by civil war.
February 1917
Bread queues in Petrograd turned into strikes, the garrison refused to fire on the crowd, and within a week the Romanov dynasty had fallen. Two authorities appeared at once: the Provisional Government, made of Duma politicians, and the Petrograd Soviet of workers' and soldiers' deputies.
Spring and summer
The new government stayed in the war. In April Lenin returned and demanded that no support be given to the Provisional Government. A summer offensive collapsed, the July days brought armed demonstrations, and in August General Kornilov marched on the capital before his troops melted away.
October
The Bolsheviks took power in Petrograd on 25 October (7 November in the new calendar). The first decrees were peace and land. The Constituent Assembly, elected in November, met in January 1918 and was dissolved the next day.
Brest-Litovsk, March 1918
With the army gone, the Soviet government signed a separate peace with Germany and lost Poland, the Baltic provinces, Belarus and Ukraine. In February 1918 the Germans had already advanced as far as Narva and Pskov; in the south, Ottoman forces moved through Erzurum and Kars towards Baku, arriving in September.
Civil war
White armies formed in the south, in Siberia and in the north-west: Kornilov and Denikin in the Don and Kuban, Kolchak in Omsk from November 1918, Yudenich before Petrograd in October 1919. The Red Army, built by Trotsky, held the centre. Both sides fought over grain, railways and the borderlands, where Ukraine, Georgia and Azerbaijan declared independence.
1919
The Whites came closest to Moscow in the autumn of 1919. Kolchak's spring offensive was pushed back across the Urals, Denikin's advance stopped at Orel, Yudenich was halted outside Petrograd. By 1920 the civil war on the main fronts was over; Poland, famine and uprisings were still ahead.