Russia's dark days in colour: The grim reality of the 1917 revolution is brought to life in images showing troops battling horrific conditions and Lenin disguised as a worker (21 Pics)

Lenin speaking to Red Army troops leaving for the front in Sverdlov Square, Moscow, May 5, 1920. In some earlier black and white pictures...

Lenin speaking to Red Army troops leaving for the front in Sverdlov Square, Moscow, May 5, 1920. In some earlier black and white pictures taken from the same speech, the figure of Leon Trotsky standing in the area with steps behind the speakers' platform was painted out after his later exile from the Soviet Union by Stalin in 1929

Lenin disguised as worker, KP Ivanov, in 1917. The revolutionary leader was made up to look like an ordinary worker so that agents of the Provisional Government did not recognise him. A warrant for his arrest had been issued after a rising of workers and soldiers was put down by the newly formed government in July 1917. Soon after this picture was taken Lenin left Russia to hide out in Finland before returning to lead the Bolshevik revolution

This image shows Tsar Nicholas II and his son, Alexei, sawing wood in captivity in Tobolsk in remote central Russia in 1918 after his abdication. The same year, both were executed along with other members of their family. It contrasts the luxury of their lifestyles before the revolution and the hardships the family faced while in exile after the 1917 uprising

Lenin and Stalin in Gorky in 1922 when the leader was ill. This photograph by taken by Lenin's sister, Maria Ulyanova, two years before his death. Stalin had images of his visits with the Bolshevik leader published to show Lenin’s supposed recovery and to showcase his own proximity to him and therefore legitimise his claim to power 

Tsar Nicholas II visiting the army during the First World War in 1916, the same year as Romania entered the war. A year later Nicholas was forced to abdicate after the February Revolution. Russia continued to fight the war under the Provisional Government until the Bolshevik Revolution on October

Yakov Yurovsky, the Romanov family executor pictured during the First World War in 1915. Just three years later as head of the local Cheka (secret police) in Moscow he was involved in organising and carrying out the executions of seven members of the imperial family and four of their entourage after the revolutions of 1917. 

Grigori Rasputin  known as the 'mad monk of Russia' who gained considerable power over the Romanov family by claiming to be a spiritual leader and being able to heal their sick son, Alexei, who suffered from haemophilia

A guard of Bolshevik fighters in 1919 outside an agit-train or agitation train (agitpoezd) after the October Revolution of 1917. During the Civil War, or War Communism period, these trains were used to spread propaganda and carried printing presses to make political leaflets and pamphlets to spread the ideals of the new regime around the remote parts of Russia, Ukraine and Siberia

Guard soldiers from the Kexholm regiment guarding the Central Telegraph in the then capital of Ruissia, Petrograd (now St Petersburg), in 1917. The city was the focal point of the February Revolution when Bolsheviks demanded 'peace, bread and land' during the horrors of WWI

Women of Death battalion in 1917. The group were all-female combat units formed after the February Revolution by the Provisional Government in a last-ditch attempt to encourage war-weary soldiers to continue fighting in WWI as desertions in the armed forces became rife

Emperor Nicholas II with wife, Alexandra Feodorovna - Alix of Hesse - and their daughter, Olga. She was born in 1895 and became known as Grand Duchess Olga until her death in 1917 at the age of 22. Her remains were identified through DNA and were laid to rest in Peter and Paul Cathedral in St Petersburg in 1998

Barricades in Petrograd in 1917 as the Bolshevik Revolution was in progress. The name St Petersburg was changed at the start of the First World War in 1914 as it was thought to sound too German for many Russians

Soldiers during a protest at the second anniversary of October Revolution in Red Square, Moscow, in 1920. In the centre Bolshevik leader Lenin can be seen alongside a saluting Leo Trotsky to his right

Leo Trotsky in the centre, front, at a gathering of revolutionaries. He was made leader of the Red Army and then later appointed to the position of the People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs. The reality of the Russian Revolution in the early 20th century has been brought to life thanks to the series of newly colourised images

Tsar Nicholas II with son, Alexei. His mother's decision to treat his haemophilia using the so-called mystic powers of Rasputin undermined the royal family and helped add to the downfall of the Romanov dynasty 

Red Army soldiers in 1919. These striking pictures show the grim reality of the First World War and the later Civil War the 'Reds' fought against the 'Whites' - other socialist militants - to gain control of the country after the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917

Funeral of Junkers (a military rank or junior officer) in 1919. It is estimated between seven to 12 million casualties, mainly civilian as well as military, were suffered during the Civil War between the Red Army and other factions around Russia, which ended in 1923

These images of another funeral of Junkers in 1919 form part of the collection of expertly colourised images of the Russian Revolution and the Civil War period that followed

Boris Savinkov in 1917, a writer and revolutionary who was organised armed resistance against the Bolsheviks once they came to power. He fled in 1920 and returned after Lenin's death in 1924 but was imprisoned at Lubyanka prison in Moscow, where he either jumped, or more likely was pushed, from a window by agents of the OGPU (secret police)

Revolutionary women and former members of the Russian Army hold up a plaque reading 'The tyranny has collapsed and the chains are broken' at the funeral of February Revolution victims in Petrograd, as the city was known at the time, in March 1917

Sergei Witte, the Prime Minister of Imperial Russia, in 1905. He was known as being neither liberal nor conservative and was described as 'one of Nicholas's most enlightened ministers', and the architect of Russia's new parliamentary order in 1905. He served both the last two Tsars and as a finance minster oversaw the industrialisation of Russia at the turn of the century