Alexander Kerensky
—Jason

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The 1917 January Russian Revolution witnessed the collapse of the Russian Empire, the abdication of the Tsar, and first steps towards the Bolshevik Revolution the following October.  The political, social, and military disorder of the Revolution had devastating consequences for both Russian royalty and commoners alike.  One man struggled more than many of his contemporaries to guide the newly created Provisional Government, maintain Russia’s alliance with the Allies, and reshape his society during 1917: Alexander Kerensky.

Kerensky was born in Simbirsk (now Ulyanovsk) ul-an-ofsk on the Volga River on 4 May 1881.  His parents were from the slowly growing middle class in the region: his father was a teacher and director at the local gymnasium and his mother’s family descended from freed serfs who had become successful merchants.  After finishing high school in 1899, Kerensky enrolled at St Petersburg University, where he earned his law degree in 1904. While in school, he also met and married Olga Lvov na Baran ov skaya, the daughter of a Russian general. This gave him an entrée to upper echelons of society.  What he saw elicited in him a desire for reform within Russian society.  Too much power, wealth, and privilege had been concentrated within the Romanov family.  Within a year, world events further pushed Kerensky into the public spotlight as a reformer.

Russia was engaged in a bitter war against the Japanese between 1904 and 1905 over territory in Korea.  The Japanese had scored a series of devastating victories against both the Russian Army and Navy.  Despite this, Tsar Nicholas II sought to continue the war and called for further reinforcements to be sent to the Siberian and Manchurian fronts.  As the war ground forward, shortages of food and the necessities for civilians were becoming more severe and agitation grew within the cities and countryside. Things came to a head in January 1905 when workers in St Petersburg went on strike and the city’s factories and electrical plants shut down.  Workers gathered for a march to the Winter Palace to plead their case with the Tsar: they needed higher pay and more food for their families, and wanted representation in the government.  What started as a relatively peaceful demonstration turned into a bloodbath after Imperial Russian Cossacks fired into, and then charged, the startled crowds.  The number of casualties is hotly debated: the Tsar’s government stated only 200 were killed while the protestors insisted the death toll was over 1,000.

Though this demonstration in St Petersburg had been bloodily crushed, it was a wakeup call for the disaffected people of Russia to rise together.  Within days, hundreds of the thousands of industrial and agricultural workers across the Russian Empire went on strike.  Some railway workers deliberately sabotaged either their trains or railroads to prevent soldiers and supplies from reaching the Far East.  Tsar Nicholas’s uncle, the Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich, called for harsh action to crush the revolutionaries.  He was assassinated for his efforts.  Even as the Russian police and military moved to reestablish Imperial control over vital regions; the Russian Black Sea Fleet mutinied against the orders of the Tsar.  The soldiers sent to arrest the mutineers joined them instead.  The people of the city of Sevastopol, the home port of the Black Sea Fleet, joined the mutineers as well.  Without the clear support of the military to reestablish order, Tsar Nicholas was forced in December 1905 to sign a new constitution into Russian law, which reinstated the Duma (the Russian Parliament). He was also forced to sign a peace treaty with Japan, acknowledging them as the victor of the Russo-Japanese War.

During the 1905 Revolution, thousands of people were arrested as revolutionaries and imprisoned, Alexander Kerensky among them.  After his release, he gained a reputation as one of the most skilled defense lawyers for those prisoners of the Tsar.  With his revolutionary credentials reinforced, Kerensky went on to represent many revolutionaries and workers.  In 1912, a group of striking gold miners in Siberia were murdered.  Kerensky traveled to the site and published a report that gained him more political allies, leading to his election as a representative of the Fourth Duma.  While there, he tirelessly called for reform to protect Russian workers and peasants and to expand suffrage to more people throughout the empire.  Kerensky was a brilliant orator and politician, soon becoming a significant member of the Progressive Block, which included several Socialist Parties, Mensheviks, and Liberals.  He steered away from Lenin’s Bolsheviks, whom he viewed as too radical.

World War I erupted in August 1914. Russia, France, Britain, Belgium, and Serbia stood together as the Entente Powers, while Germany, Austria-Hungary, and the Ottoman Empires were the Central Powers. The battles in the Eastern Front were not kind to the Russian military, which was still in the process of rebuilding after its humiliating defeat by Japan in 1905.  Early Russian successes of August 1914 were quickly turned into crushing disappointments as German and Austrian counterattacks destroyed the fledgling gains of the Tsar.  Between 1914 and 1917, repeated Russian offensives were defeated and pressure on the frontlines ground down the Tsar’s army.  British, French, and Italian attacks against the Germans, Austrians, and Ottomans in Western and Central Europe, along with fighting in the Middle East, failed to relieve the pressure on the Russian military.

Kerensky was still a member of the Duma throughout the war and tried to get the Tsar to push through reforms that could potentially gain favor with the war-weary Russian people.  He called for the domestic political reforms that included a general amnesty for political prisoners, abolition of restrictions on Russian Jews, provisions for abolition of restrictions on other ethnic minorities in Russia, and to announce Russian support for autonomy for Poland (which would hopefully prompt German-Polish nationals to leave Germany to live in an independent Poland). 

The observations made by Kerensky over the years about the problems with the concentration of power within the Romanov family were exemplified by how the war was handled. The blame for the years of defeats, and for the shortages of equipment, food, and clothing in both military and civilian circles, was laid at the feet of the Tsar. All of these military, political, and social issues helped to create the 1917 Revolution. Food shortages ravaged the people of the St. Petersburg, and they felt abandoned by Nicholas, who had spent much of the war along the lines.  Revolutionary groups from the socialist, communist, and democratic parties had been growing in size and desperation.  Violence erupted on 23 February and lasted for eight days.  Many units of the Russian garrison and police joined the revolutionaries instead of putting them down. Tsar Nicholas thought he could alleviate the tensions with his presence, and so took a train to St. Petersburg. He stopped outside the city and was told by the people he met there that he needed to step down from power.  Realizing that he had no political allies and little chance of the military supporting him, Nicholas abdicated.

Kerensky had built an extensive network of alliances across political parties, and he was quick use them to set up a temporary government structure.  He became a member of the Provisional Committee of the State Duma and was also elected vice-chairman of the newly formed Petrograd Soviet. These two bodies, the Duma and the Petrograd Soviet quickly descended into a bitter conflict over which was the actual ruling party.  Kerensky was the only person in the newly created Russian Provisional Government to be a member of both and he struggled to make the new entities work together. The other Entente Powers were shocked by the Russian Revolution and the abdication of Tsar Nicholas.  They sent delegations to St. Petersburg, now renamed Petrograd, to ensure the new government would continue to fight against the Central Powers.  Kerensky, now also acting as Minister of War, promised Russia would stay in the war.  Despite this declaration, the Russian military descended into anarchy as the units formed their own soviet committees and many men deserted. 

Kerensky’s difficulties further multiplied throughout July 1917 as the coalition government collapsed over the issue of Ukrainian autonomy.  Prince Georgy Lvov, the Prime Minister of the Provisional Government, resigned on 21 July.  This was quickly followed by a failed military coup which forced Kerensky to assume the role of Commander-in-Chief of the Russian military.  Kerensky’s ultimate downfall came at the hands of Vladmir Lenin in October 1917.  As the Provisional Government imploded, Lenin’s Bolsheviks courted their fellow communists, the Mensheviks, to form a bloc to overthrow Kerensky.  The 1917 October Revolution began the Russian Civil War.  Thousands of soldiers defected to the newly raised Bolshevik Red Army and swept the Provisional Government from Petrograd. 

Kerensky managed to escape the Bolsheviks and briefly attempted to assemble an army for a counterattack.  Unfortunately, he had alienated almost every ally he previously had; his actions had angered the right-wing political groups and monarchists and had lost him support in the left-wing parties as well.  In June 1918, he fled Soviet Russia, traveling to London and Paris in hopes of getting foreign support to stop Lenin.  He was able to get some aid, but not enough to stop a victory by Lenin and his party. He spent the rest of his life exiled from his homeland and a figure of condemnation by the Russian emigres the world over. He lived in Paris until the German invasion in 1940. He went from there to Australia for a short time, eventually settling in the United States.  He died in of cancer in New York in 1970, never having been allowed to return to his homeland.