On April 3, 1917, following the announcement of political amnesty by the Provisional Government, the Bolsheviks’ leader Vladimir Lenin returned to Russia after the emigration (since 1907). Although not unique in the first revolution’s months, his return later became a key event for Soviet history. Revolutionaries, including Georgy Plekhanov, Viktor Chernov, Boris Savinkov, Nikolay Avksentyev, and others arrived in Petrograd almost every week.

Lenin sent a telegram to his sisters Maria Ulyanova and Anna Elizarova-Ulyanova from the town of Torneo in the Finnish-Swedish border to announce that he was arriving on Monday (April 3), at 11 p.m. On the morning of April 3, this news was transmitted to the Central and St. Petersburg Committees and the Military Organization of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (Bolsheviks), RSDLP(b), which notified the Party committees in the districts and military units. Lenin was first welcomed in the Beloostrov railway station by Maria Ulyanova, Aleksandra Kollontai, and Joseph Stalin. Lenin arrived in Petrograd at 11.10 pm on April 3, 1917. By decision of the Military Organization under the Central Committee of the Party, armored vehicles of the armored battalion were brought out to the Finland Station in Petrograd, the area was illuminated by motor vehicle headlights.

Nikolay Chkheidze welcomed Lenin on behalf of the Petrograd Soviet. Then Bolsheviks’ leader climbed on an armored car and spoke on the square in front of the Finlyandsky railway station, filled with thousands of people, announcing radical slogans of transferring all state power to the Soviets of Workers’ Deputies, the development of the bourgeois-democratic revolution into a socialist revolution, the end of the war, and the nationalization of the land. His speech contained the main provisions of Vladimir Lenin’s April Theses (the program of the Bolsheviks’ struggle for the development of the bourgeois-democratic revolution into a socialist one).

After the speech, Lenin went to the ballerina Matilda Kshessinskaya’s mansion, the headquarters of the Central and Petersburg Committees, and the Military Organization of the Bolsheviks. From the balcony on the 1st floor of the mansion (currently Hall 20 of the State Museum of the Political History of Russia), Lenin addressed workers and soldiers with a brief speech. Subsequently, the armored car and the balcony of Kshessinskaya’s mansion became the main symbols of the 1917 revolution.