The social and economic revolution that swept through the Republican zone during the weeks following the arming of the worker movements on July 19 was proportionately the most extensive, and also most nearly spontaneous, worker revolution in a European country. It was carried out by genuine worker organizations on the local level, working from the bottom up, rather than being organized from the top down by a political party of middle-class intellectuals and activists, as in Russia. In Spain, most productive facilities were quickly taken over by trade union groups and committees, adopting a wide variety of revolutionary procedures.

By contrast, the revolution of March 1917 in Russia had not been a worker revolution (although workers figured prominently in it), but a general revolt against the autocracy in which various social sectors took part, giving rise to a chaotic form of democracy – a system of dual government by a limited parliament on the one hand and local revolutionary councils, or soviets, on the other. The Bolshevik coup d'etat seven months later was a military seizure of power by a single party carrying out a counterrevolution against democracy. It was supported by many, but not all, workers and did not involve the great majority of Russians, who lived in the countryside.