Russian Provisional Government

Based on Wikipedia: Russian Provisional Government

Eight months. That's all the time Russia's Provisional Government had between the collapse of three centuries of Romanov rule and the Bolshevik seizure of power. In that brief window, a group of well-meaning liberals and moderate socialists tried to build a democratic state while fighting a world war, feeding a starving population, and holding together an empire that stretched across eleven time zones. They failed spectacularly.

But their failure wasn't inevitable. Understanding how Russia's brief experiment in liberal democracy unraveled tells us something important about revolutions: the moderates who overthrow tyrants rarely get to enjoy the fruits of their victory.

The Collapse of the Old Order

By late 1916, the Russian Empire was dying. The Great War had killed millions of soldiers, the economy was in shambles, and Tsar Nicholas II had proven himself catastrophically incompetent. On November 1st, 1916, a liberal politician named Pavel Milyukov stood up in the imperial parliament, the Duma, and delivered a speech attacking the government. After each accusation, he asked rhetorically: "Is this stupidity, or is this treason?"

The speech went viral, as we might say today. Copies circulated throughout Russia. The government tried to suppress it, which only made people want to read it more.

The Tsar cycled through prime ministers like a desperate man trying different keys on a locked door. Boris Stürmer lasted a few weeks. Alexander Trepov, a few weeks more. Nikolai Golitsyn took the job knowing it was hopeless. These weren't bad men, necessarily. They were simply trying to captain a ship that was already underwater.

When the February Revolution erupted in Petrograd in early 1917, it caught everyone by surprise, including the revolutionaries. Workers went on strike. Soldiers mutinied rather than fire on the crowds. The Tsar, away at military headquarters, received contradictory telegrams and made contradictory decisions. On March 2nd (or March 15th by the calendar most of the world used; Russia still clung to the old Julian calendar, thirteen days behind), Nicholas II abdicated.

He tried to pass the crown to his brother, Grand Duke Michael. Michael looked at what was being offered and essentially said: no thank you. He would only accept if a future Constituent Assembly, elected by the whole Russian people, asked him to. This was a polite way of refusing to drink from a poisoned chalice.

Two Powers, One Palace

Here's where the story gets complicated, and where the seeds of the Provisional Government's destruction were planted.

In the chaotic days of February 1917, two rival institutions emerged, both operating out of the same building: the Tauride Palace in Petrograd. On one side were the members of the old imperial Duma, who formed a Provisional Committee and claimed authority over the state. On the other side was the Petrograd Soviet, a council of workers' and soldiers' deputies that claimed to represent the revolutionary masses.

The word "soviet" simply means "council" in Russian. These soviets had first appeared during the failed 1905 revolution as grassroots organizations coordinating strikes and protests. Now they were back, and the Petrograd Soviet was the most powerful of them all.

The two sides needed each other. The Duma politicians had expertise in governance but no popular legitimacy. The Soviet had the support of workers and soldiers but no experience running a country. So they struck a deal. The Duma committee would form a Provisional Government to run the state until a Constituent Assembly could be elected. The Soviet would support this government, conditionally, while maintaining its own independent authority.

This arrangement, known as "dual power," was inherently unstable. The Provisional Government could pass laws, but it couldn't enforce them without the Soviet's cooperation. The Soviet could veto government decisions simply by telling workers and soldiers not to comply. Imagine trying to run a company where every decision has to be approved by both the board of directors and the union, and you'll have some idea of the dysfunction.

The Promise of Freedom

Despite these structural problems, the Provisional Government's initial proclamation was genuinely inspiring. Published in the newspaper Izvestia the day after the government formed, it promised a sweeping transformation of Russian society.

Full amnesty for all political prisoners. Freedom of speech, press, and assembly. The abolition of all class, religious, and ethnic restrictions. Elections based on universal, equal, and secret voting. Replacement of the hated police with a people's militia.

Most importantly, the government promised to organize elections for a Constituent Assembly that would write Russia's new constitution and determine its form of government. Would Russia become a constitutional monarchy like Britain? A republic like France? The Provisional Government deliberately left this question open, believing only a democratically elected assembly had the legitimacy to decide.

This principled stance would prove fatal. By refusing to claim full authority, the government invited challenges from every direction.

The War Question

The most destructive issue facing the Provisional Government was the war. Russia was still fighting Germany and Austria-Hungary, and the question of whether to continue was tearing the country apart.

The liberal politicians who dominated the first cabinet, men like Foreign Minister Pavel Milyukov, believed Russia must fight on. They had made promises to Britain and France. A separate peace would be a national humiliation. Besides, they hoped a successful military offensive might restore discipline to the army and strengthen the government's position.

The Soviet, and the masses it represented, had a different view. They wanted "peace without annexations or indemnities," a negotiated settlement that wouldn't reward any country for the slaughter. The soldiers at the front had even simpler desires: they wanted to go home and not die.

In April, Milyukov sent a note to the Allied governments promising to continue the war "to its glorious conclusion." When this note became public, it triggered massive protests. Workers and soldiers flooded the streets of Petrograd demanding Milyukov's resignation. Counter-demonstrators came out to support him. General Lavr Kornilov, commanding the Petrograd military district, wanted to use force to restore order. Prime Minister Georgy Lvov refused.

This was the April Crisis, and it demonstrated the Provisional Government's fundamental weakness. Milyukov and the War Minister both resigned. To survive, the government had to bring socialist representatives from the Soviet into the cabinet, creating a coalition that was inherently unstable because its members disagreed about the most important question facing the nation.

The June Offensive and Its Catastrophe

Alexander Kerensky, the new War Minister and the only socialist in the original cabinet, became the government's most prominent figure. He was a lawyer and a brilliant orator, capable of moving crowds to tears with his passionate speeches. His enemies called him the "persuader-in-chief," a title that captured both his talents and his limitations. Kerensky could convince people of anything in the moment, but he couldn't deliver on his promises.

In June 1917, Kerensky embarked on a "whirlwind tour" of the front lines, giving passionate, almost hysterical speeches urging soldiers to fight heroically. "We revolutionaries have the right to death!" he proclaimed. The troops cheered. Then Kerensky left, and the effect wore off.

The June Offensive, launched on the 16th, was supposed to demonstrate that revolutionary Russia could still fight. It collapsed in three days. Soldiers deserted en masse. Some units mutinied and killed their officers rather than advance. The Germans and Austro-Hungarians counterattacked and pushed the Russians back, capturing territory and inflicting massive casualties.

The offensive's failure had immediate political consequences. If the government couldn't win the war, what was the point of continuing it? Why should soldiers die for a regime that couldn't even organize a successful attack?

The July Days

In early July, the coalition government began falling apart. The Constitutional Democratic Party, known as the Kadets, withdrew their ministers in protest over concessions to Ukrainian nationalists. Prince Lvov's cabinet was in disarray. Into this vacuum came armed revolution from below.

On July 3rd, a machine-gun regiment in Petrograd voted for an armed demonstration. The idea was to march peacefully to the Tauride Palace and demand that the Soviet take full power. The next day, twenty thousand armed sailors arrived from the Kronstadt naval base, a hotbed of radicalism. The situation spiraled out of control.

Mobs roamed the streets, looting shops and attacking well-dressed civilians, anyone who looked like they might be bourgeois. Cossacks and military cadets fired into the crowds from rooftops. Dozens died. A group of soldiers and workers from the Putilov iron plant broke into the palace, waving rifles, demanding that the Soviet seize power.

The Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin, found themselves in an awkward position. They had been calling for "all power to the Soviets" for months. Now the masses were trying to give them exactly that, but Lenin wasn't ready. His speech to the demonstrators was uncertain, barely a minute long. He promised that power would eventually go to the soviets, but he didn't call for immediate insurrection.

The crisis ended not with a bang but with a whimper. The Menshevik chairman of the Soviet, speaking in an imperious tone, handed the demonstrators a manifesto and ordered them to go home or be condemned as traitors. Remarkably, they obeyed. The moment passed.

The Bolshevik Collapse and Recovery

In the aftermath of the July Days, the government went on the offensive against the Bolsheviks. The Ministry of Justice released documents claiming the party was receiving German money, essentially accusing Lenin of treason. Warrants were issued for party leaders. Troops raided Bolshevik headquarters. Hundreds of party members were arrested; suspected Bolsheviks were attacked in the streets.

Lenin went into hiding, fleeing to Finland. Leon Trotsky was captured and imprisoned. The Bolshevik party seemed broken.

But the government's victory was hollow. The accusations of German financing, whether true or not, smelled of desperation. The crackdown alienated workers and soldiers who might have been persuadable. And most importantly, the government still couldn't solve any of the country's fundamental problems.

The Kerensky Government

On July 21st, Alexander Kerensky became Prime Minister. Prince Lvov resigned, exhausted and disillusioned. A new coalition cabinet formed, composed mostly of socialists, with Kerensky as its undisputed leader.

Kerensky was in an impossible position. He was too socialist for the conservatives, who saw him as dangerously radical. He was too conservative for the radicals, who saw him as a tool of the bourgeoisie. He tried to please everyone and ended up pleasing no one.

A British journalist named Harold Whitmore Williams, observing events from Petrograd, later wrote that the eight months of the Provisional Government's existence were the history of the steady and systematic disorganization of the army. This was harsh but accurate. Every decision the government made seemed to accelerate the collapse.

The Kornilov Affair

In late August, General Lavr Kornilov, now the army's commander-in-chief, attempted what looked like a military coup. The exact sequence of events remains disputed, but the outcome was clear: Kornilov ordered troops to march on Petrograd, supposedly to defend the government against a Bolshevik uprising that may have been imaginary.

Kerensky, whether out of genuine fear or political calculation, declared Kornilov a traitor and appealed for help to anyone who would provide it, including the Bolsheviks he had just been persecuting. The Soviet organized resistance. Workers dug trenches and armed themselves. Railway workers sabotaged the tracks carrying Kornilov's troops. Agitators convinced Kornilov's soldiers to disobey orders.

The "coup" collapsed without a shot being fired. But the political consequences were devastating. The army's officer corps was discredited. The Bolsheviks, armed and organized to resist Kornilov, kept their weapons. Lenin's party, seemingly crushed in July, was suddenly resurgent. The government that had saved itself by allying with revolutionaries now faced those same revolutionaries with nothing left to offer.

The Political Spectrum Shifts

To understand why the Provisional Government failed, you have to understand how Russian politics transformed in 1917.

Before February, the Constitutional Democrats, the Kadets, were the opposition. They were liberals and intellectuals who wanted a constitutional monarchy on the British model. They were the progressives, the reformers, the people fighting for change.

After February, the Kadets were suddenly the establishment. They held most of the power in the new government. But the revolution had politicized the masses in ways no one anticipated. Workers in the cities increasingly supported socialist parties, first the moderate Mensheviks, then the radical Bolsheviks. Peasants in the countryside supported the Socialist Revolutionaries, who promised to redistribute land.

The political spectrum shifted so dramatically to the left that the Kadets, who had been progressives, were now conservatives. The Provisional Government, dominated by liberals and moderate socialists, found itself outflanked by forces demanding more radical change.

The Mensheviks believed that Russia had to pass through a bourgeois democratic phase before it could achieve socialism. This was orthodox Marxism: capitalism had to develop fully before the working class could take power. So they supported the Provisional Government as a necessary historical stage.

The Bolsheviks rejected this logic. Lenin argued that the war and the collapse of the old regime had created a revolutionary situation. The workers and soldiers could seize power now, skipping the bourgeois phase entirely. "All power to the Soviets" was not just a slogan; it was a political program.

The Final Days

By October 1917, the Provisional Government existed mostly on paper. It controlled the Winter Palace and a few government buildings in Petrograd. Real power lay with the Petrograd Soviet, which was now dominated by Bolsheviks. The army was dissolving as soldiers deserted to go home and claim their share of the land being redistributed in the countryside.

On September 1st, in a last-ditch attempt to establish legitimacy, the government formally declared Russia a republic. This clarified what had been ambiguous since March: there would be no restoration of the monarchy. But it was too little, too late. Proclaiming a republic meant nothing if you couldn't enforce your authority.

The October Revolution, when it came, was almost anticlimactic. On the night of October 25th (November 7th by the Western calendar), armed workers and soldiers, organized by the Bolsheviks, seized key buildings throughout Petrograd. The ministers of the Provisional Government, huddled in the Winter Palace, were arrested. Kerensky escaped and tried to rally loyal troops, but there were no loyal troops left to rally.

The Bolsheviks announced that power had passed to the soviets, the workers' councils that gave their support to Lenin and Trotsky. The eight-month experiment in liberal democracy was over. What followed would be civil war, famine, terror, and the construction of a totalitarian state that would last until 1991.

Why They Failed

The Provisional Government's failure has many explanations. They refused to end an unpopular war. They postponed land reform until the Constituent Assembly could meet, allowing the Socialist Revolutionaries to promise what they wouldn't deliver. They were too democratic to use force against their opponents, and too weak to survive without it.

But perhaps the deepest explanation is structural. The Provisional Government was a compromise between people who fundamentally disagreed about Russia's future. The liberals wanted a constitutional democracy integrated into the Western alliance. The moderate socialists wanted peace and social reform but were afraid of revolution. The masses wanted bread, peace, and land, and they didn't much care about constitutional niceties.

No government could have satisfied all these demands simultaneously. The Provisional Government tried to satisfy everyone and ended up satisfying no one. Their caution, their commitment to legal procedures, their unwillingness to act decisively, all virtues in normal times, proved fatal in revolutionary circumstances.

Lenin understood something the liberals didn't: in a revolutionary situation, the side that acts wins. The Bolsheviks were willing to seize power by force and deal with the consequences later. The Provisional Government kept waiting for the Constituent Assembly to give them legitimacy. The Assembly eventually met, in January 1918, and the Bolsheviks dissolved it after one day.

History rarely gives revolutionaries second chances. The Russian liberals had eight months to build a democratic state. They spent those months arguing about procedures while the country collapsed around them. By the time they were ready to act decisively, there was nothing left to save.