Aleksandr Fyodorovich Kerensky

Russian revolutionary leader and politician

• Born: May 2, 1881
• Birthplace: Simbirsk (now Ulyanovsk), Russia
• Died: June 11, 1970
• Place of death: New York, New York

Kerensky was the prime minister of the short-lived provisional government that replaced the deposed Czar Nicholas II and was in turn displaced by the Bolshevik (Communist) Party of Vladimir Ilich Lenin during the Russian Revolution of 1917. Kerensky attempted unsuccessfully to establish a liberal democratic government in Russia.

Early Life

Born in Simbirsk (now Ulyanovsk), Russia, Aleksandr Fyodorovich Kerensky (ah-lehk-SAN-duhr fyoh-DOHR-oh-vihtch keh-REHN-skee) was the eldest son of Fyodor Mikhailovich Kerensky, a schoolteacher and administrator, and his wife, Nadezhda Aleksandrovna (née Adler), the daughter of a prominent military officer and topographer. During their son’s earliest years in Simbirsk, the Kerenskys’ social and professional circle undoubtedly included Ilya Nikolaevich Ulyanov, another local school official, and his son Vladimir Ilich, who, under the pseudonym Lenin, was later to become Aleksandr’s chief antagonist during the stormy days of the Revolution of 1917. Since, however, the future Lenin was more than ten years older than young Aleksandr, there is no evidence that the two were at all acquainted as children.

In 1889, Fyodor Kerensky moved his family from Simbirsk to the frontier city of Tashkent in distant Central Asia, where he had been appointed head of the Turkestan educational administration. Eleven years later, having completed his basic education in Tashkent, Aleksandr traveled to the then capital of Russia and enrolled in the faculty of history and law at St. Petersburg (now Leningrad State) University. As a student, young Kerensky came under the influence of the famous philosopher N. O. Losskii and the liberal jurist L. I. Petrazhitskii and became affiliated with the liberal constitutionalist movement, although his sympathies were more truly drawn to the radical populist Party of Socialist-Revolutionaries (PSR).

On graduation from the university in 1904, Kerensky married Olga Lvovna Baranovskii, the offspring of a distinguished military family and cousin of several active Socialist-Revolutionaries. Thereupon, swept up in the turbulent events of the abortive Revolution of 1905, Kerensky soon joined the PSR, became editor of its newspaper, and even attempted, though unsuccessfully, to join the so-called Fighting Organization, the terrorist wing of the PSR. As a result of these activities, the young revolutionary was arrested and exiled from St. Petersburg for a period of some six months.

Returned to the capital in late 1906, Kerensky began a brief but sensational career as a defense lawyer in a series of highly publicized political trials. Beginning in 1906, Kerensky’s legal activities attracted widespread attention throughout Russia and finally culminated in two celebrated cases in 1912: the first, involving the largely successful defense of the Armenian Dashnak Party, held before a special tribunal of the Imperial Russian Senate (supreme court), and the other, even more famous, embracing the official investigation and condemnation of the czarist government’s mishandling of the tragic Lena Goldfields massacre. The notoriety gained by Kerensky in these two episodes set the stage for his brief but spectacular career in Russian politics.

Life’s Work

In late 1912, taking advantage of the favorable publicity surrounding his legal exploits, Kerensky was elected to the Fourth State Duma (Parliament), representing the Volsk district of Saratov Province. Elected as a member of the Trudoviki (Laborite) Party, an amalgam of moderate socialists loosely associated with the PSR, the young legislator at once became the leading spokesperson for the Duma’s radical opposition. Meanwhile, behind the scenes, Kerensky also joined the ranks of Russian Freemasonry, a secret but highly influential political movement dedicated to the creation in Russia of a republican government under liberal direction.

In 1914, Kerensky received an eight-month prison sentence for sponsoring a protest against the czarist government’s support for the disgraceful trial of Mendel Beilis, a Ukrainian Jew who had been unjustly accused of ritual murder. Saved from incarceration by his parliamentary immunity, Kerensky continued his radical activities in 1914 by leading the Trudoviki refusal to support unconditionally Russia’s entry into World War I. By 1915, Kerensky’s deepening disgust with czarism drove him to the advocacy of a political revolution in Russia though, as yet, without success. Derailed by serious illness in early 1916, Kerensky returned to the Duma later in that year and began at once to agitate for the overthrow of the monarchy, including, if necessary, the assassination of Czar Nicholas II.

In March, 1917, the unexpected coming of the revolution thrust the youthful Kerensky into a position of political leadership during an eight-month period of more or less continual revolutionary chaos. For its part, to fill the vacuum created by the removal of the czar, the Duma promptly established a so-called provisional government headed by a cabinet made up entirely of middle-class liberals with the exception of Kerensky, who, as minister of justice, became the new government’s sole representative of political radicalism. At the same time, the popular Kerensky was also elected vice chair of the powerful Petrograd (formerly St. Petersburg) Soviet of Worker’s and Soldiers’ Deputies, an unofficial body representing the interests of political radicals and the poor. In these circumstances, the young revolutionary became the only common member of the two bodies, which had effectively replaced the fallen monarchy.

As minister of justice in the original provisional government, Kerensky introduced a broad program of civil rights in Russia, including the ending of ethnic and religious discrimination as well as the abolition of capital punishment and the long-established exile system. On the other hand, in late April and in May, Kerensky also became embroiled in a fierce debate with Foreign Minister P. N. Miliukov regarding Russian war aims, in particular the latter’s alleged insistence on Russian acquisition of Constantinople and the Straits of the Dardanelles. In the end, confronted by hostile street demonstrations, Miliukov was forced to resign from the cabinet, in which action he was soon joined by the minister of war, Aleksandr Guchkov.

As a result of the resignations of Miliukov and Guchkov, the provisional government was reorganized on May 18. Arranged by Kerensky and his Masonic “brother” Nikolai Nekrasov, the new cabinet included a combination of liberals and socialists and was thus called the Coalition, the first of three such reorganizations that were destined to occur over the next several months. As minister of war in this new cabinet, Kerensky became convinced that the government’s declared goal of a “general democratic peace” could be achieved only by the undertaking of one last great Russian military offensive that would demonstrate the nation’s continued military strength and thereby pave the way for successful peace talks. With this in mind, the war minister at once departed for the front, where he soon earned the title “Supreme Persuader-in-Chief” in token of his fiery speeches seeking to convince the Russian soldiery to support his planned offensive. Finally launched in early July, the so-called Kerensky Offensive, after some initial success, quickly turned into a disastrous rout, following which the Russian army began rapidly to disintegrate.

On July 16, prompted by the failure of the Kerensky Offensive, popular demonstrations, led first by disaffected workers, soldiers, and sailors and later by the Bolsheviks, erupted in the capital city of Petrograd. In response to this “July Days ” crisis, Kerensky assumed the prime ministry of Russia on July 20. Having defused the Petrograd uprising by releasing documents purporting to show that Lenin and the Bolsheviks were really German agents, Kerensky at length organized a new, second Coalition, which again consisted of a shaky combination of liberals and socialists. Thereupon, in late August, in an effort to reconcile all the contending factions in Russia, the new prime minister summoned the Moscow State Conference, which instead of arresting the country’s deteriorating political situation merely emphasized its hopelessness.

Finally, in early September, the climax of the Kerensky era was reached in the form of the famous Kornilov Revolt. In this confusing episode, the prime minister became convinced that General Lavr Kornilov, the commander in chief of the army, had concocted a plot to overthrow the provisional government and establish a military dictatorship in Russia. Whatever the truth of this charge, which was never substantiated, Kerensky responded by ordering the commander in chief’s dismissal and arrest. More important, to defend the government from the alleged danger posed by Kornilov’s troops (who, in fact, were easily disarmed), Kerensky also ordered the relegalization and arming of the Bolsheviks, who had been proscribed and in hiding since the July Days. In the wake of these developments, no expedient, including the organization in mid-September of still another, third Coalition in which Kerensky served as both prime minister and commander in chief, or the convocation in October of a so-called Council of the Republic (or Pre-Parliament) was sufficient to save the situation. Instead, on November 7, 1917, the Kerensky regime was overthrown in an easy, almost bloodless, revolution engineered in Petrograd by Lenin and his Bolshevik (later Communist) Party.

For his part, having escaped the capital on the eve of the revolution and led a brief, futile effort by a small band of Cossack troops to dislodge the new rulers, Kerensky was forced to flee Russia in May, 1918, never to return. Arriving in Paris, the former prime minister tried to convince the Western allies to support his return to power in Russia by military action. Having failed in this effort, Kerensky began more than fifty years of political exile, living first in Western Europe and later in the United States. During this long period, the former Russian leader engaged in a variety of anticommunist (and antifascist) activities and supported himself by writing and lecturing, much of the subject matter of which was devoted to the justification of his behavior in 1917.

In 1927, Kerensky visited the United States and published the first version of his memoirs, entitled The Catastrophe (1927). From 1928 to 1933, he worked in Paris and Berlin, where he edited the émigré journal Dni (days). In 1939, he divorced his first wife and married Lydia Ellen Tritton, the daughter of a prominent Australian industrialist. Having narrowly escaped the Nazi occupation of Paris in 1940, Kerensky moved to the United States, where he lived for the rest of his life, though not without frequent, often lengthy, visits to Western Europe. From 1956 to 1961, together with the American historian Robert P. Browder, Kerensky worked in the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, where he prepared for publication a large collection of documents on the provisional government that finally appeared in three volumes in 1961. In 1965, he published a second version of his memoirs, grandiloquently entitled Russia and History’s Turning Point (1965). He died of cancer in were chosen on June 11, 1970.

Significance

In addition to its enormous historical significance, the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 was a great watershed in the life of Kerensky. Thus, before the revolution, Kerensky’s career represents an all but unbroken tale of personal and public accomplishment. Based on a philosophical commitment to liberal democracy combined with a kind of populist dedication to improving the welfare of the Russian people, Kerensky’s early legal career, as well as his service in the State Duma, was devoted to the defense of individual rights and the struggle for a better society in the face of a corrupt and tyrannical state.

In 1917, however, primarily because of his great reputation as an implacable foe of czarism, Kerensky was abruptly thrust into a position of political leadership in conditions of revolutionary chaos. In these circumstances, although his personal magnetism and great oratorical skills enabled him for a time to hold his own, his essential political moderation was soon outstripped by the deepening radicalism of the revolution. In the end, therefore, insufficient ruthlessness and a stubborn refusal to sacrifice democratic principles to radical expedience spelled Kerensky’s political doom.

Following the revolution, although he retained his faith in democracy and fought adamantly against both Soviet and, later, fascist authoritarianism, Kerensky’s always considerable ego caused him to spend much of his long time in exile defending his conduct in 1917 and developing various conspiratorial, almost paranoid, explanations for his failure. As a result of this inability to perceive that his fate was really the consequence of powerful social and economic forces largely beyond his capacity to control, the former prime minister alienated his friends, aggravated his enemies, and died in a state of splendid political isolation.

Bibliography

Abraham, Richard. Alexander Kerensky: The First Love of the Revolution. New York: Columbia University Press, 1987. A full-length biography, based on Kerensky’s official papers as well as materials supplied by his family. The treatment is sympathetic but not uncritical.

Acton, Edward, Vladimir Iu. Cherniaev, and William G. Rosenberg, eds. Critical Companion to the Russian Revolution, 1914-1921. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997. This work on the Russian Revolution includes an essay on Kerensky.

Browder, Robert P. “Kerensky Revisited.” In Russian Thought and Politics, edited by Hugh McLean et al. The Hague, the Netherlands: Mouton, 1957. A positive reevaluation of Kerensky, particularly his role in the early period of the revolution.

Elkin, Boris. “The Kerensky Government and Its Fate.” Slavic Review 23 (1964): 717-736. An article hostile to Kerensky and the provisional government in practically every area of their endeavor. Written by a close associate of Miliukov, the treatment is especially critical of Kerensky’s alleged submission to the radical leaders of the Petrograd Soviet.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. “Further Notes on the Policies of the Kerensky Government.” Slavic Review 25 (1966): 323-332. This later article by the same author continues with a criticism of Kerensky.

Katkov, George. Russia 1917, the Kornilov Affair: Kerensky and the Breakup of the Russian Army. New York: Longman, 1980. This slender volume constitutes an exhaustive analysis of perhaps the pivotal episode in Kerensky’s political career. Based in part on interviews with Kerensky in 1963; the author places most of the blame for the Kornilov disaster on Kerensky.

Kerensky, Alexander F. Russia and History’s Turning Point. New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1965. These are Kerensky’s memoirs. In addition to his interpretation of events, Kerensky contends that he and Russian democracy were betrayed by virtually everyone, including the parties of the Left, Right, and center as well as the Germans and the Allies.

Paxton, John. Leaders of Russia and the Soviet Union: From the Romanov Dynasty to Vladimir Putin. New York: Fitzroy Dearborn, 2004. Includes a profile of Kerensky.

Vishniak, Mark. “A Pamphlet in the Guise of a Review.” Slavic Review 25 (1966): 143-149. This article is a rejoinder to criticisms of Elkin. The author’s support of the provisional government is more an attack on Miliukov than a defense of Kerensky.