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Social, legal, and economic reform: 1917–1918

In November 1917, Lenin issued the Declaration of the Rights of the Peoples of Russia, granting non-Russian ethnic groups the right to secede and form independent nation-states. Many declared independence (Finland, Lithuania in December 1917, Latvia and Ukraine in January 1918, Estonia in February 1918, Transcaucasia in April 1918, and Poland in November 1918). The Bolsheviks then promoted communist parties in these new states, while at the Fifth All-Russian Congress of the Soviets in July 1918, a constitution reformed the Russian Republic into the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. The government also switched from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar, aligning Russia with Europe.