Petrograd Military Revolutionary Committee

The Petrograd Military Revolutionary Committee (Russian: Петроградский военно-революционный комитет) was a militant group of the Petrograd Soviet and one of several military revolutionary committees that were created in the Russian Republic. Initially the committee was created on 25 October 1917 after the German army secured the city of Riga and the West Estonian Archipelago (see Operation Albion). The committee's resolution was adopted by the Petrograd Soviet on October 29, 1917.

From October 29 - November 11, 1917 it was a body of the Petrograd Soviet, later the All Russian Central Executive Committee. From November 8, 1917 to December 18, 1917 the committee was the highest extraordinary body of state power. All its activities were conducted under the supervision of the Central Committee of the RSDLP(b) and Lenin, who was a member, personally .

Although it took its form and inspiration from the earlier Committee for Struggle Against the Counter-Revolution of the Kornilov Affair, the Military Revolutionary Committee itself was only formed during the last weeks, and indeed days, of the Provisional Government's existence. On 18 October [O.S. 5 October] 1917, General , the commander of the Petrograd Military District, ordered the bulk of the capital's garrison units (those considered by the Provisional Government to be politically unreliable) to prepare for immediate transfer to the front. Given the inflamed political atmosphere this was, perhaps unsurprisingly, a fatal miscalculation on behalf of Alexander Kerensky and quickly sparked a "general mutiny" with most garrison units openly declaring loyalty to the Petrograd Soviet. It was in the city's soviet on 22 October [O.S. 9 October] that the crisis truly exploded and the body, by now with a Bolshevik majority, adopted a militant resolution authored by Leon Trotsky, that specifically called for the creation of a 'military revolutionary centre' to "facilitate the revolutionary defence of Petrograd... from the attacks being openly prepared by military and civil Kornilovites". Over the following days the composition and structure of this new MRC was decided upon, albeit without reference to Trotsky's inflammatory provocation to the Provisional Government, and the body was ratified by the Soviet on 29 October [O.S. 16 October]. It began to gather in the Smolny on 31 October [O.S. 18 October] and its first official meeting was not held until 2 November [O.S. 20 October]. Its chair was the SR Pavel Lazimir.