A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution, 1891-1924

support the following principles of government:

1   an immediate amnesty for all political prisoners;

2   the immediate granting of freedom of speech, press and assembly;

3   the immediate abolition of all restrictions based on class, religion and nationality;

4   immediate preparations for the convocation of a Constituent Assembly, elected on the four-tail suffrage (universal, direct, secret and equal), to determine the form of government and the constitution of the country;

5   the abolition of all the police bodies and, in their place, the creation of a people's militia with elected officers responsible to the organs of local self-government;

6   elections to these organs on the four-tail suffrage;

7   a guarantee that the military units having taken part in the revolution would neither be disarmed nor sent to the Front;

8   recognition of full civil rights for the soldiers off-duty.³⁹

No mention was made of the two basic issues (the war and the land) where the aims of the Soviet leaders clashed directly with those of the Duma. Given the bitter political conflicts that later emerged on these two issues (leading to the downfall of the first three cabinets), perhaps this was a crucial mistake.

This, then, was the framework of the dual power system. The Soviet would support the Provisional Government only 'in so far as' (postol'ku poskol'ku), to cite the famous phrase, it adhered to these Soviet principles; and it would act as the government's 'watchman' to make sure it did. The effect was to paralyse the Provisional Government. For it could do nothing without the support of the Soviet. Yet at the same time the Soviet's conditions created a climate of such uncontrolled freedom that there was a crying need for stronger government. As Lenin put it, Russia had become the 'freest country in the world' — and he was the first to exploit it.

***

The new cabinet was picked by Miliukov on 2 March, and published in the newspapers the next day, alongside a Soviet appeal 'To comrades and citizens!'

calling for order and the people's support of the government. To the crowds outside the Tauride Palace the names of their new rulers were mostly unknown. All of them were from the propertied elite. Most of them had been named in the various 'ministries of confidence' proposed by the liberal opposition circles since 1915. Eight of the twelve were deputies of the Fourth Duma (and two more of earlier Dumas); seven were members of either Zemgor or the War Industries Committee; while six belonged to the same Masonic circles,* whose precise role in the February Revolution has long been the subject of historical speculation but little concrete fact.

Prince Lvov, the Prime Minister and the Minister of the Interior, qualified on all these counts. His wartime work in the zemstvos had won him universal respect among the liberal educated classes. It had made him into a truly national figure and this gave the government at least the pretence of being based on something broader than the Duma. Lvov, moreover, was a good team-worker, a man of practical capabilities and without strong party affiliations, and this embodied the coalition spirit for which the government claimed to stand. This was not a government of any one party — it contained elements ranging from the Octobrists to the SRs — but a government of national salvation. This non-party aspect, combined with the general softness of his character, also made Lvov the ideal figure to conciliate between the real power-brokers in his cabinet — Miliukov and Kerensky — who would otherwise have fallen out and split the government from the start. Each of them was prepared to accept Lvov, if only because it stopped the other from becoming the Prime Minister. Yet when Lvov's name was announced to the crowds some of them cried out: 'The privileged class!' One soldier shouted: 'You mean all we did was exchange a tsar for a prince?'

The name of Tereshchenko, the new Minister of Finance, was greeted by the crowds with roars of laughter. 'Who is Tereshchenko?' people asked. And well might they ask. Even the newspapers knew little about him. All they could say was that he came from the Ukraine, was twenty-nine years old and a multi-millionaire. Shingarev, the Minister of Agriculture, had risen from similar obscurity. A provincial doctor and a Kadet member of the Duma, even his closest friends were forced to admit that he was little more than a decent mediocrity. Not much more was known of Konovalov (Trade and Industry), Nekrasov (Transport) or Manuilov (Education), although Guchkov (War and Navy) and Miliukov (Foreign Affairs) were certainly household names and seemed, at first, to meet with general approval.⁴⁰

Only the name of Kerensky, the one socialist in the cabinet, met with the approval of the crowd. 'The mass of the soldiers', Stankevich recalled, 'felt

* Lvov, Kerensky, Nekrasov, Tereshchenko, Konovalov and Guchkov.                     - :

that Kerensky was 'their' minister.' As the Vice-Chairman of the Soviet Executive, he should never have accepted — and even less have asked for — the portfolio of the Ministry of Justice. For it was the Soviet's official policy not to enter the government. Chkheidze had already turned down the offer of the Ministry of Labour. But Kerensky had his heart set on becoming a minister. Young and ambitious (he was still only thirty-five), Kerensky was convinced of his own calling to greatness, and could not bear to see this chance go by. Throughout the previous days he had been a key figure behind the scenes. He alone belonged both to the Soviet Executive and to the Duma's Temporary Committee. He had run from one wing of the Tauride Palace to the other, making himself indispensable to both. Yet it was clear where his sympathies lay: most of his time had been spent in the right wing, and he only rarely came to the Soviet to make some high-sounding speech about the 'people's revolution'. Not once did he venture on to the streets. Although convinced that he was a socialist, Kerensky was in fact a bourgeois radical, a Duma deputy and a democratic lawyer, dressed up as 'a man of the people'. Formally he belonged to the Trudovik Party. Later, when that became the thing to do, he joined the SRs. But in his heart he was not a socialist. In the Duma he always wore a morning coat with a starched dress-shirt and collar. But when he spoke in the Soviet he ripped off his collar and took off his coat to make himself look more 'proletarian'. This was not a revolutionary. It was someone, as Trotsky put it, who merely 'hung around the Revolution'.

Shortly after 2 p.m. on 2 March Kerensky came into the Soviet to deliver what was perhaps the most important speech of his life. He needed the assembly to endorse his decision, taken earlier that morning without its prior approval, to accept the Ministry of Justice. 'Comrades! Do you trust me?' he asked in a voice charged with theatrical pathos. 'We do, we do!' the delegates shouted. 'I speak, comrades, with all my soul, from the bottom of my heart, and if it is needed to prove this, if you do not trust me, then I am ready to die.' A wave of emotion passed through the hall. The delegates broke into prolonged applause, turning into a standing ovation. Seizing this opportunity, Kerensky claimed that he had been obliged to accept the portfolio, since the tsarist ministers 'were in my hands and I could not let them slip'. He told them that his 'first act' as the Minister of Justice had been to order the immediate release of all political prisoners and the arrangement of a hero's welcome for their return to the capital. The delegates were overcome with emotion and greeted this news with thunderous cheers. Now Kerensky turned to ask them whether they approved of his decision to join the government, offering to resign from the Soviet if the answer should be no. But there were wild cries of 'We do! We do!' and, without a formal vote, his actions were endorsed. It was a brilliant coup de theatre. What might have been the moment of his downfall