How did the Bolshevik revolution change life for Russians?

Answer 1

No, neither the February Revolution nor the October Revolution made life better for the ordinary Russian citizen. In fact the majority of historians feel it was a catastrophe in the long run. Negative effects were numerous:

As to the February Revolution:

• The new government did not stop the war.
• It did not cure shortages of food and manufactured goods.
• It did not institute land reform.

In short, life under the new government was no different than life under the Tsars, because the new government was dedicated to preserving the status quo of society as it existed under the Tsar.

As to the October Revolution:

• The limited amount of free speech allowed under the Tsar was all but totally eliminated by Lenin. All other political parties were banned and factions within the Bolshevik/Communist party were forbidden.
• The country erupted into civil war immediately after the October Revolution. Both the Red Army and the White Forces committed atrocities and generally squeezed everything they could get in order to supply their troops out of the citizens.
• After the civil war, the entire Russsian economy sank, with industrial and agricultural output dropping below levels that existed under the Tsars.
• Lenin's government became one of the most repressive government in the world in order to stay in power.
• Later Stalin's government became worse. With his purges, exiles, execution, deliberate and just casual starvation policies and re-locations to gulags and concentration camps he is generally deemed to have accounted for 20 million deaths.
• Citizen who owned property lost it, but citizens who did not own property were not given any.

Lenin promised "Peace, bread and land" to the Russians. He delivered none of them.

Answer 2

The immediate change was the elimination of the democratic Provisional Government in favor of rule by Lenin and his Bolsheviks through the workers' councils called Soviets in various larger cites. Under Bolshevik rule Russia got out of World War II. A socialist (not Communist) system was imposed on the country under which all but the smallest business were taken over by the government, land was redistributed to peasant farmers and food distribution was temporarily improved. Soon though, many people became disenchanted with the Bolsheviks and the Russian Civil War broke out in 1918 and lasted until 1920. Russia never became the communist workers' paradise that the Russian people hoped it would be. Instead the new government nearly ruined the economy and had to resort to terroristic methods to keep the Russian people from rebelling again.