This is a bit of a difficult question really. Firstly the October Revolution wasn't so much a revolution the way we understand the word. It was rather a coup performed very rapidly by soldiers loyal to the Bolsheviks and it all happened rather fast. The scenes portrayed by the Bolsheviks of huge crowds storming the Winter Palace are just propaganda designed to make the event look more grand and grant more legitimacy to the party.

So due to the nature of the events that night it's hard to tell, seeing as the proletariat class was hardly involved in the proceedings.

For evidence of Proletariat support for Lenin and the Bolsheviks instead look at the July Days, which were what the October Revolution could have been. Tens of thousands of workers and soldiers took to the streets in massive demonstrations against the Kerensky government and it's continuation of the war. The slogan of "Peace, Bread, Land" was designed to win over as many people as possible and it certainly helped mobilize the population of Petrograd against the Provisional Government during the July Days, how many of these demonstrators actually subscribed to actual Marxism and not just Bolshevik populism is open to debate.

The Bolsheviks also managed to organise a 400,000 strong strike in Moscow which definitely would have needed the support of the urban workers to succeed.

The Bolsheviks also came of exceedingly well from the Kornilov Affair, with many of their leaders released from jail but also a huge boost in popularity amongst the workers who viewed them as being a major part of the effort that saved the revolution from the reactionary Kornilov. Huge numbers of Soviets began swinging toward the Bolsheviks not just in Petrograd but in Moscow and other major cities.

So in answer to your question, during the October Revolution did the proletariat support the bolsheviks- yes probably but not in the way Soviet history later depicted this support- in that armed workers stormed the Winter Palace and overthrew the Government after a very bloody battle. Rather select groups of Red Guards and Bolshevik soldiers quickly and quietly took over almost the entire city without a shot being fired. However the Bolsheviks were infinitely more popular than the Provisional Government and the workers had supported them throughout 1917

The sort answer is yes. By October 1917 the Bolsheviks were overwhelmingly the party of the Russian working class. This is important because one of the key factors behind the Revolution's successes - from the events of October, through the extension of Soviet power and ultimately victory in the Civil War - was the ability of the Bolsheviks to mobilise mass support.

To tackle the long answer, I'll look at how we can be fairly confident as to Bolshevik levels of support plus a few qualifers that need to be attached to this. Hopefully this will, without going into too much detail, give a more nuanced picture of the politics of 1917.

While sophisticated opinion polls didn't exist, Russia 1917 presented plenty of opportunities to gauge a party's popularity. In particular there were two key yardsticks of Bolshevik support around the October period:

• The most visible sign was the 'Bolshevisation' of the Soviet movement itself during the summer months. This was particularly sharp post-Kornilov but had been proceeding since early summer. Building on the popularity of their policies (and slogans, as in the June Days) the Bolsheviks began capturing soviet after soviet, at both district and city level. The Petrograd Soviet itself began passing Bolshevik motions in early August (ie pre-Kornilov) before the Bolsheviks gained a firm majority in September. By the time of the Second Congress of Soviets (October) the Bolsheviks commanded some 300 of the 670 delegates, making them the largest faction by some distance. (Contrast to the First Congress, in June, when a mere 100 of 784 delegates had been Bolshevik.)

• Secondly, the delayed elections to the Constituent Assembly were finally held in November 1917 and effectively served as a referendum on Soviet power. To be blunt, and keeping in mind the below caveats, the Bolsheviks trounced their socialist competition in the cities and industrial regions. While watching the results come in the Menshevik Fedor Dan glumly remarked that they were 'civil war returns', given the degree to which the political centre had been hollowed out by both the Bolsheviks and Kadets.

There were also a range of lesser signals through the summer of 1917 as to increasing Bolshevik popularity. Some of the most visible included the June Days, the Moscow strike and the August Duma elections in Petrograd. Particularly interesting is their increasing influence in the labour movement - Steve Smith has demonstrated the degree to which both union and factory committee leaderships and resolutions reflected Bolshevik influence. And of course expansion of Soviet authority in the weeks after the seizure of power could not have happened without widespread support in local provincial organisations.

Ultimately I think Sukhanov nailed it in his memoirs when he said, in reference to the anti-Kornilov effort, that:

The [Committee for Struggle Against the Counter-Revolution] had to mobilise the worker-soldier masses. But the masses, insofar as they were organised, were organised by the Bolsheviks and followed them. At that time, theirs was the only organisation that was large, welded together by an elementary discipline, and linked with the democratic lowest levels of the capital. Without it the committee was impotent. Without the Bolsheviks it could only have passed the time with appeals and idle speeches by orators.

So that's the measure, or indications of such, of Bolshevik popularity. I referred to a few caveats above though, which are worth exploring.

• The first is that none of this was absolute. This a corrective to linear Soviet histories. In terms of electoral turnout alone, the Mensheviks and SRs were never entirely wiped out in urban centres (until later deployment of repressive measures). Similarly workers didn't arrive at a Bolshevik worldview and then have their mindsets freeze in Marxist perfection; the heights of Bolshevik popularity didn't last beyond the second half of 1917, after which crises began to take their toll.

• We talk a lot here of the Bolsheviks but I believe that they need to be seen as merely part, albeit the largest and most important part, of a broad pro-Soviet coalition. Along with anarchists, Left SRs, etc the Bolsheviks reaped the benefits of being outside the failing Provisional Government. In particular, Left SR support would be crucial in the post-October months. The key demand was a Soviet government, an aspiration shared by plenty outside the Bolshevik Party. (Similarly, speaking of the Bolsheviks as a monolithic organisation is pretty inaccurate as well.)

• Leading on from the above, obviously a vote for the Bolsheviks in 1917 was not (necessarily) support for a one-party dictatorship. Nor did it (necessarily) require a schooling in Marxism. The Bolsheviks had a platform that resonated strongly with the workers' worldview but, as a result, this didn't require great theoretical sophistication to grasp. Even if it had, it's not as if the Bolsheviks had detailed blueprints for the post-revolution world.

So where does that leave us?

I don't think that any historian today would seriously dispute that the Bolsheviks were the most popular party in urban Russia in October 1917. This is important because, regardless of what the likes of Richard Pipes argue, the survival of the Revolution hinged in the Bolsheviks' ability to mobilise this support base. It also became the key legitimiser for successive Soviet regimes.

And your second question: yes, October Revolution Day (7 Nov in the Georgian calendar) was public holiday in the USSR. It's not today in Russia but still (IIRC) is in some post-Soviet nations.

Sources

These are a handful of particularly relevant works. Let me know if you want some more general works or a description of what these concern.

• Koenker et al, Party, State, and Society in the Russian Civil War

• Rabinowitch, The Bolsheviks Come to Power

• Rabinowitch, The Bolsheviks in Power

• Smith, Red Petrograd

• Sukhanov, The Russian Revolution 1917: A Personal Record