Kerensky-Life-Provisional Government-Escape-Villain?

It has long been my opinion that AFK's great political error was in arming the Bolsheviks during the Kornilov Rebellion. But for this, the Bolsheviks would not have had their clear shot at power months later.

I realize this is off topic (but how much can one say about Kerensky's escape) but I always thought Kerensky's biggest blunder was not taking Lenin out and shooting him when he had the opportunity.  I make this statement with full knowledge that "hindsight is 20/20".

In regard to the comment about women's rights, I think there is a book out there somewhere that discusses the remarkable (although short-lived) achievements of the Provisional government -- particularly in the areas of social programs, the arts, education, land reform, etc.  I'm afraid I can't remember the name or the author(s)!

RichC

Hi, RichC

I`m afraid , in this case, hindsight is nothing like 20/20.  Throughout 1917, Lenin was a deeply obscure political nonentity. Recent scholarship suggests he remained so, until well after the Bolsheviks had taken power.  It is hard to see how killing him could have done anything but accelerate the approach of civil war. Not exactly like South Africa assassinating Nelson Mandela in 1990, but you get the idea.

Not even Lenin expected to take power, nor to hang onto it, if he did.[see John Cole`s New Statesman article, mentioned previously]  Nor did anyone else. That was part of the calculation made by the British, in their backing for Kornilov and their less than half-hearted intervention in the Civil War.  It is also partly why the majority of the revolutionary movement failed to provide significant opposition to the October coup, which disgusted them.  

It seems most of what I have posted so far is off message. All I can say is that the fairy stories about Kerensky`s escape are of a piece with all the other misrepresentations of him and the Provisional Government. It is hard to separate them.  

I`m not quite sure when the PG was supposed to shoot Lenin.  He fled before they could get him to court,  to face charges of taking money from the Germans.  He only appeared in the country from April to July. When he returned post-Kornilov, he was in hiding, and in disguise.

Apart from the waste of effort, tracking down a minor political figure, with very few supporters, in the middle of a war and and a revolution, the PG had many more pressing issues on their hands, such as feeding the population, defending the country against Germany and coping with the malign interference of its so-called Allies.  

Beyond that, there is the question of how effective political assasssination can be during a time of upheaval.  It was poltical necessity, rather than choice,  that made the PG ask the British to send Trotsky back from Canada. The point about Kerensky is that he had to appease both Left and Right-wing polticians, to stop the country sliding into civil war. This was not a consideration that bothered either Lenin or Lloyd George.

To kill Lenin, or to close down the Soviet, or pursue similar courses of action latterly suggested, would have had exactly the opposite effect to that desired in Russia at the time. In other words, it would have created a violent and destructive reaction, which would hardly be helpful.    

Anyone who supports corporal and capital punishment should try to consider the effect it had on the likes of Lenin, Stalin and Hitler.  Who can say what difference it would have made, had Lenin`s brother not been hung?  How many beatings did it take to turn Stalin into a psychopath?

Political assasination, it must be remembered, was part of the armoury of the tsarist regimes that brought about the  Revolution in the first place. As such, it was anathema to the gentle revolutionary movement that Lenin destroyed with the utmost cruelty and bruitality.   [see "Gulag Archipelago"]
It is also worth considering that the sanctitiy of human life was taken more seriously in Russia that elsewhere.  The death penalty was first abolished in 1864.  Unlike Western Christianity, the Orthodox Church makes Easter and self-sacrifice the centre of its year, not the jollity and material indulgence of Chritsmas.  


Season`s Greetings    

StephenKerensky

Off topic, I was about to ask what became of Kerensky's family when I read that one of his granchildren is posting on this thread.

I am shamefully lacking in knowledge of AK and would truly like to know about his wife and children.

It would seem that he left Russia without them.  What happened?

Hi, RichC

I`m afraid , in this case, hindsight is nothing like 20/20.  Throughout 1917, Lenin was a deeply obscure political nonentity. Recent scholarship suggests he remained so, until well after the Bolsheviks had taken power.  It is hard to see how killing him could have done anything but accelerate the approach of civil war. Not exactly like South Africa assassinating Nelson Mandela in 1990, but you get the idea.

Thanks for responding, StephenKerensky.  I hope you are proud to have such an illustrious antecessor.  I recognize that no one (Kerensky, Lenin, the British, the Germans, etc.), at the time, expected things to turn out the way they did.  That's why I said hindsight is 20/20.  In fact, as I have posted here many times before, few, as late as 1916, expected Tsarism itself to fall.  (Although the wartime Okhrana reports on the mood of the population are fascinating in how startlingly accurate they turned out to be!)

However, Lenin was hardly a "deeply obscure political nonentity".  The Germans certainly didn't think so, did they?  How many nonentities did the Germans trouble themselves enough to send back to Russia in sealed trains?

Beyond that, there is the question of how effective political assasssination can be during a time of upheaval.  It was poltical necessity, rather than choice,  that made the PG ask the British to send Trotsky back from Canada. The point about Kerensky is that he had to appease both Left and Right-wing polticians, to stop the country sliding into civil war. This was not a consideration that bothered either Lenin or Lloyd George.

To kill Lenin, or to close down the Soviet, or pursue similar courses of action latterly suggested, would have had exactly the opposite effect to that desired in Russia at the time. In other words, it would have created a violent and destructive reaction, which would hardly be helpful.    

Fair enough, but we don't know what would have happened, since we are speculating.  We do know, however, that what followed, what really happened, was unbelievably violent.  That's why I posted my original statement.  I think it was Lenin who instigated much of the blood-letting and slaughter which subsequently took place.  

It is also worth considering that the sanctitiy of human life was taken more seriously in Russia that elsewhere.  The death penalty was first abolished in 1864.  Unlike Western Christianity, the Orthodox Church makes Easter and self-sacrifice the centre of its year, not the jollity and material indulgence of Chritsmas.  

I'm not sure why you are making these comments.  But I don't agree with them.  Russia's history, afterall, is soaked in blood.  By saying that, I certainly don't mean to imply that ordinary, individual Russians treasure human life any less than individuals from different cultures.  But I don't think they treasure it any more either.  In fact, I think that people are pretty much the same wherever one happens to go.  

About the religious aspect, my mother was raised Orthodox and my dad was Episcopalian (a protestant denomination).  So I was exposed to Christmas and Easter celebrations twice a year!  The Russian holidays usually followed about two weeks after the Western one's.  Anyway, as an Episcopalian, I don't recall Easter being held in less importance than Christmas.  It was made clear to me, early on, in protestant Sunday school that Easter was a much more solemn occasion.

Alixz, Kerensky`s marriage broke down after his wife Olga aborted her thrid pregnancy.  It is probably just as well, for they would have been unlikely to survie the Terror, if all three were escaping together.  However, they remained good friends.

As it happened, my grandmother, Olga and her two sons were stuck in St Petersburg until 1920. They escaped on false papers, as Estonmians, when they were close to death by starvation.

My grandmother wrote an account of those years which could not find a publisher in Britain, though extracts appeared in tte London Evening Standard, in 1967.  

RichC,  I don`t know where you get your information from. You would be hardpressed to find any serious commentary written after 1900, that did not  revolution a distinct possibility.  It was obvious that change to the antiquated political system had to be achievecd, if Russia was to become a modern country.

As to Lenin, he was certainly obscure, and his unpopular ideas were as far on the fringe of Russian politcal thought as it was possible to go.  He himself had no interest in Russia whatsoever, except to see it destroyed in order to bring about world revolution.  The Germans chose him to support, after their Schlieffen Plan collapsed, because he wasjust about  the only revolutionary who favoured surrender to Germany.  The only people in Russia who knew about Lenin before 1918, or even 1919, were the Okhrana, and other people with special knowledge of Marxists.  

The reason for making the point about Russian attitudes to the sanctity of life is that the most common phrase in al writing about pre-1917 Russia  is "barbarous, Asiatic despotism" and I maintian that this offensive epithet is a long way from the truth.  Many such writeres blame the barbarity of Bolshevism on this so-called "Russian national character" that is allegedly unfit for democratic government.  

And I would suggest that people who were brought up as Episcopalian/Russian Orthodox have an advantage over the majority in the Western world,  in that they had a more thorough grounding in Christian teaching.  

Cheers, StephenKerensky    

RichC,  I don`t know where you get your information from. You would be hardpressed to find any serious commentary written after 1900, that did not  revolution a distinct possibility.  It was obvious that change to the antiquated political system had to be achievecd, if Russia was to become a modern country.

I don't think RichC is arguing against the fact that revolution was a distinct possibility, even an inevitability, once World War I broke out. I think he is merely trying to emphasize that the form this revolution took might have been less violent and "total" than it turned out to be under Lenin's Bolshevik regime. I mean, do you really think it was inevitable that Russia would replace an authoritarian regime with a totalitarian one? Was that really the only way Russia could enter the modern world?    

The reason for making the point about Russian attitudes to the sanctity of life is that the most common phrase in al writing about pre-1917 Russia  is "barbarous, Asiatic despotism" and I maintian that this offensive epithet is a long way from the truth.  Many such writeres blame the barbarity of Bolshevism on this so-called "Russian national character" that is allegedly unfit for democratic government.

But famous Russians themselves have made less than flattering statements about their national character, starting with Pushkin: "God save us from the Russian revolt, senseless and merciless." Not so senseless perhaps, as Solzhenitsyn has pointed out in his History of Russia, but certainly merciless. And as you yourself have indicated, Dostoevsky predicted a future for Russia of darkness and evil under the revolutionaries as early as his novel The Devils ("Besy," also translated as The Possessed).

Maybe the point is that the Russian STATE has held life cheap from time immemorial, not that the Russian people themselves have. From the hordes of peasant soldiers submitting courageously if passively to death under artillery fire in the Crimean War to the naval officers and men going down bravely with the Kursk submarine, because Putin refused to call in international rescue workers until it was too late. My husband and I also have Russian friends, and they all individually said the same thing about the Kursk disaster: "See, in Russia life still counts for nothing." But they were referring to the Russian state, not to the people themselves. It's the people who suffer - and eventually revolt, with a purpose, as a result.   

And I would suggest that people who were brought up as Episcopalian/Russian Orthodox have an advantage over the majority in the Western world,  in that they had a more thorough grounding in Christian teaching.

I don't know, I've had it drilled into me by Protestant ministers in general that Easter is a more important holy day than Christmas in the Christian calendar. And certainly in the Catholic Church Easter is of primary importance. It's just that Christmas is more marketable in the West than Easter - the Easter Bunny can't compete with Santa Claus as a children's hero - and thus you see this tremendous emphasis on Christmas in commmercialized American and British popular culture. But in the actual churches of the West themselves, Easter remains the more important holy day. So I think generally it's a trifle unfair to say that one denomination or another gives a person a more thorough grounding in Christian teaching than another. Certainly the Catholic Church can't be accused of neglecting its flock's spiritual education!!!!

 

RichC,  I don`t know where you get your information from. You would be hardpressed to find any serious commentary written after 1900, that did not  revolution a distinct possibility.  It was obvious that change to the antiquated political system had to be achievecd, if Russia was to become a modern country.

Thanks for writing again, StephenKerensky.  I'm enjoying your insights.  As Elisabeth said, I didn't really mean to imply that people of the time weren't wanting change or that the idea or possibility of revolution in Russia hadn't occurred to anybody.  I just don't think that's what most people expected would happen.  I get a lot of my information from years of study and a BA in Russian history (although that was many years ago and I don't consider myself a "scholar" by any means!)  But I do admire Richard Pipes, the Harvard professor, who is frequently quoted on this forum.  In his Three Why's of the Russian Revolution he writes, "If you read the Russian and foreign press before 1917, or memoirs of the time, you find that hardly anyone expected the downfall of tsarism either.  On the contrary, people believed that tsarism would survive for a long time to come.  One of the reasons the Russian radical revolutionaries, and even liberals, acted with such reckless abandon against the regime was their conviction that they could do so with impunity because it was virtually indestructible....This was especially true of the Revolution of 1905, which at it's climax looked as if it would bring the regime down.  And yet, within two years of having made some political concessions in the October Manifesto, the regime restored order and was firmly back in the saddle....  Suffice to say that as late as January 1917, when he was an exile in Switzerland, Lenin predicted that he and his generation would not live to see a revolution in Russia.  This he said seven weeks before tsarism collapsed."

Three Why's of the Russian Revolution by Richard Pipes, Vintage Books, 1995.

As to Lenin, he was certainly obscure, and his unpopular ideas were as far on the fringe of Russian politcal thought as it was possible to go.  He himself had no interest in Russia whatsoever, except to see it destroyed in order to bring about world revolution.  The Germans chose him to support, after their Schlieffen Plan collapsed, because he wasjust about  the only revolutionary who favoured surrender to Germany.  The only people in Russia who knew about Lenin before 1918, or even 1919, were the Okhrana, and other people with special knowledge of Marxists.  

I'm afraid I'm still having trouble seeing why the German's would have bothered with Lenin if he was a nonentity, as you stated previously.  Even if he was among the only one's who favored surrender to Germany, why bother if he was so inconsequential?  

The reason for making the point about Russian attitudes to the sanctity of life is that the most common phrase in al writing about pre-1917 Russia  is "barbarous, Asiatic despotism" and I maintian that this offensive epithet is a long way from the truth.  Many such writeres blame the barbarity of Bolshevism on this so-called "Russian national character" that is allegedly unfit for democratic government.  

Ok, I see what you mean.  But I also agree with Elisabeth's comments about the attitude of the Russian State toward the sanctity of life.  Unfortunately, the 20th century has shown us that the Russian state has plenty of company.

Best regards,

Richc

Anyone who thinks Kerensky was a fool not to get out of the war has not read the terms of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, nor the agreements drawn up between Britain and France for the dimemberment of Russia after the war.  

Kerensky did not have a choice between the Right and the Bolsheviks.  The Bolsheviks were a tiny party, relatively insignificant until after the Kornilov Rebellion.  Both the Mensheviks and  his own parties, the Trudioviks and Social Revolutionaries were much, much bigger.

The point about the Provisional Government was that it had to keep both Left and Right together, until elections could be held on a proper basis, and so that the country could survive the war.  

It was not a matter of being indecisive, or taking bad decisions.  The problem was that different citizens with different politcial opinions, not to mention Russia`s so-called Allies, had different agendas.  Most of their ideas  were utterly unrealistic, in the circumstances.

Cheers, StephenKerensky  

How splendid this all is!  In the UK the reaction to AFK, and the rest of the family, especially in the media,  is one of sneering contempt.  I really appreciate all this intelligent interest.  

There are very gfew people with Russian background over here anyway, so there is not much chance to discuss all these issues.

Certainly, Elisabeth, there was no need at all for the Revolution to take Russia from authoritarian to totalitarian government.  Lenin`s victory was some kind of miracle, or whatever the opposite of a miracle is.  Nobody expected  the Bolsheviks to triumph.  (I refer you to John COle`s ?1986 articlle in the journal New Statesman, mentioned in an earlier posting, in which Lenin makes this abundantly clear)  

From a Kerenskly perspective, it is the ignorant and deeply stupid perfidy Lloyd George which effectively destroyed any chance Russia had of avoiding defeat and civil war. his was the central plank of all PG policies, and it is the one that most critics choose to ignore, or have failed to understand.  Generally, the more vitriolic they are, the less they apprecaite the situation of Russia in February 1917.  

I absolutely agree about the difference between State and People.  This is exactly what is wrong with Orlando Figes`s book "The People`s Tragedy", where he takes the opposite view, that violence is inherent in the Russian character. Of course, the book was hailed as a masterpiece by  people who know nothing of Russia Figes  seems to forget that Russia`a greatest national hero is Oblomov.  

As to the differences in religious teachings, or the different emphases placed by rival denomnations,  all I can do is point to the severe decline in church-going in Western Europe. Probably things are different in the US. But given the evolution issue, I don`t think different necessarily means better.  

Survey show that most people still believe in God or Christ, without going to church.  The problem with Catholicism,and the Church of England, is that both became harsh and unforgiving instruments of political control.  In this way, it seems to me, they turned the gentleness and forgiveness of true Christianity into the authoritarian dictators, who funded huge armies to cause millions of deaths in wars of religion, while living in vast palaces, wearing gold robes and drinking wine, while the majority suffered various kinds of extreme deprivation.

It has been said that the English Civil War put people strong religious feelings. Those who wantd that srot of thing, Non- Conformists, Quakers etc , took themselves off to America.......

But with a watered-down religion, it seems the Church of England also lost spiritual authority.  Hence Christmas became more "marketable"  than Easter, with its death by torture, and self-sacrifice, which are not such comfortable notions to get to grips with as the birth of a baby.

It might also be worth noting that, in English jails at least, Catholics are represented out of all proportion to their percentage of the population as a whole.    

Pipes may well be right, that the revoltion was "not expected" in the foreign and national press, nor in Russia as a whole.   A very different state of affairs pertained in the Court and in the political circles of Moscow and St Petersburg.  
In "The Crucifixion of LIberty"  Kerensky describes, in some detail, the agonized efforts  of the more intelligent Grand Dukes to get Nicholas to change his ways or abdicate, as early as the beginning of 1916.

Russsia`s plight, from`1915 onwards, became incresingly desperate, until it was  quite obviously reaching the point whenit would be beyond recall.  This is very different to 1905.   It was expected that,even though one of the Grand Dukes had tto threaten suicide to break Nicholas`s stubbornness, the reforms would gradually work. In fact, for every step he took forward, Nicholas took ten steps back, and the unrest inthe country did not cease. So perceptive observers of Russian affairs were easily able to see where things were heading.  

For the rest of the population, it has to be remembered that there was stringent censorship in operation. Penalites were severe.  Even if anti-government papers like Pravda were coming out, distribution throughout Russia was not easy to achieve.

Where  Lenin`s judgement is concerned, he could hardly be expected to know what was going on in 1917.  His chief representative, Malinovsky, was working for the Okhrana, as were two or three others in the Party.  Lenin was outraged in 1914 that practically the entire revolutionary movement was "defencist" i.e. backing the defence of Russia against Germany.  This may have been why he began wiping them all out when he took power, starting with the extreme Left, and moving steadilly to the right.  It may also explain the murderous cruelty of the Cheka and the Gulag. This is an island called Novaya Zemlya in the Arctic Ocean, and no prisoner ever emerged fromit alive.

Far from the February revolutionaries showing "reckless abandon", they offered the only chance of saving Russia from the utter and complete disaster of being forced to surrender to Germany.  Anyone who looks at the terms of Brest-Litovsk, or  the wish-list drawn up by the British and French for the post-war dismemberment of Russia, will have to admit that this is so.  

The Bolsheviks were supposed to be the "hardest of the hard", merciless and without feeling. Yet when Pokrovsky saw what the Germans were proposing at Brest-Litovsk he broke down and wept. It is a pity that some of Kerenskly`s  critics cannot summon up quite that much feeling for Russia and its people.  

The Germans bothered with Lenin precisely because they were desperate, and in the post-Schlieffen Plan world, they had no-one else to turn to.  Lenin must have sold himself on the basis of having Pravda, which German money turned into a national newspaper. He also had just about enough men to spread propaganda at the front.  

I have a book purporting to be by a German intelligence officer, describing his time with a mutinous Bolshevik company on the Russian front line.  Bolshevik propaganda also appeared in German POW camps.  This was the same strategy the Germans used in France, with Mata-Hari.  

When I reluctantly started looking into all this, about 12 years ago, I found it grotesquely complicated and almost impossible to grasp.   It actually is very hard to believe that Lenin really did take over one of the biggest countries inthe world with a handful of men.  That he did so against the wishes of almost the entire population makes it even more incredible.  

What really makes this a difficult event to understand though, is that so many people, the Bolsehviks, the British, the Germans, had good reason to bury information, and distort the truth.   Obviously, I had to be very careful when dealing with my grandafther`s books, which no-one gives much credit to.  I tried really hard to go in with an open mind, and just see what I came up with.    

In the end, and bearing in mind my father`s extreme tendency to honesty, as well as some German accounts (Ludendorff, Hindenburg)  I have come to the conclusion that the anti-PG people invariably have more holes in their arguments than Kerensky himself.   But perhaps you can convice me otherwise?  

Merry Chirstmas   StephenKerensky

I shall  be switching the machine off now, until 2006.

I am not sure where to place this topic because it really involves social history.  If this is the wrong place I will place it somewhere else.  I have just joined.

I am an Australian and was interested to learn that Kerensky married a journalist from Brisbane, Lydia Tritton, while in Paris after the Revolution.  She came from a well-known family of furniture retailers in Brisbane.  I know that Kerensky lived here for a while and Lydia died tragically at a young age.  According to Nina Berberova's autobiography he didn't like Brisbane.  

It would be interesting to find out more about this.

Best Regards,

Lisa

[Weekend Australian]

I am an Australian and was interested to learn that Kerensky married a journalist from Brisbane, Lydia Tritton ...

It would be interesting to find out more about this.

Best Regards,

Lisa

Hi Lisa,

Early last year, 2005, (February or March?) the Weekend Australian inside its journal insert, published a rather extensive article about the Queensland phase of Kerensky's life. Numerous photographs were included.

I suggest that you contact the publisher of The Australian.  

Thank you very much, Belochka.  That is very kind of you.  I am going to try and find that article and may also contact the Russian community in Brisbane to find out more!  

Best wishes,

Lisa

Hello Historyblogger and Lisa,

I am reading Witnesses to the Russian Revolution which is very interesting.  Although it is true that Kerensky didn't have much power and compromised with the Bolsheviks in order to sustain his government, according to this book Kornilov's return did increase support for the Bolsheviks greatly.  I am inclined to think that it did help their coup d'etat.

Best Regards,

Lisa

I'm the first to say that maybe I'm wrong, but as  I recall from college courses in Russian history and my own reading, Kerensky wavered fatally on this occasion as on so many others and instead of supporting Kornilov, as he had previously agreed to do (an action which might have saved the provisional government, or at the very least instituted a new military government not beholden to the Soviets!), suddenly did a complete about-face and betrayed Kornilov to his enemies, those very same Soviets, calling upon the latter for their support against this so-called attempted coup by counterrevolutionary forces.

That said, however, isn't the whole Kornilov business even today wrapped in a veil of mystery? Does anyone really know for certain what happened?

Yes, Kornilov was the last straw. Russia needed a co-operation between the moderate and conservative politicians (Milyukov and Guchkov) and the military. The military and the Kerensky government were never the best of friends, to say the least. As about Kornilov, he considered dismissing Kerensky only as the last measure if no cooperation is possible anymore (what he was critisized by Denikin for). In Kornilov's listing of ongoing ministers Kerensky was the first. Milyukov, L'vov and Rodzyanko (Octyabrist leader) were included also.