A People's Tragedy (70 page)

I could feel their nauseating fear... I felt the inner trembling, and the effort of will it took not to lower their gaze before the trusting, wide-open eyes of the workers and soldiers crowded around them. As recently as yesterday it had been relatively easy to be

'representatives and leaders' of these working masses; peaceable parliamentary socialists could still utter the most bloodcurdling words 'in the name of the proletariat' without even blinking. It became a different story, however, when this theoretical proletariat suddenly appeared here, in the full power of exhausted flesh and mutinous blood. And when the truly elemental nature of this force, so capable of either creation or destruction, became tangible

to even the most insensitive observer — then, almost involuntarily, the pale lips of the leaders' began to utter words of peace and compromise in place of yesterday's harangues. They were scared — and who could blame them?38

Who indeed? And yet this fear was also symptomatic of a general cowardice when it came to the responsibilities of power. It was an abdication of statesmanship. Years later Tsereteli said that the Soviet leaders in February had been childish and irresponsible.

Many of them welcomed the dual power system — the source of Russia's chronic political weaknesses in 1917 — because it placed them in a good position. They were given power without responsibility; while the Provisional Government had responsibility without power.

For the majority of the Soviet leaders there was a special factor making the negotiation of a Duma government a matter of the utmost urgency. On I March the left-wing minority of the Soviet Executive (3 Bolsheviks, 2 Left SRs and I member of the Inter-District group) demanded the formation of a 'provisional revolutionary government'

based on the Soviets. This resolution was supported by the Bolshevik Committee in the Vyborg district, the most proletarian in Petrograd. There was thus a real threat that, unless the Soviet majority imposed a government on the Duma leaders, the streets might impose a government on them.

At around midnight on I March a Soviet delegation (Sukhanov, Chkheidze, Sokolov and Steklov) crossed from the left to the right wing of the Tauride Palace to begin negotiations for a government with the Temporary Committee of the Duma. 'There was not the same chaos and confusion here as with us,' Sukhanov recalled, 'but the room nevertheless gave an impression of disorder: it was smoke-filled and dirty, and cigarette butts, bottles, and dirty glasses were scattered about. There were also innumerable plates, both empty and holding foods of all kinds, which made our eyes glitter and our mouths water.' Sukhanov and Miliukov, 'the boss of the right wing', did most of the talking. The enormous Rodzianko, President of the Duma, sulked in a corner drinking soda. Neither Lvov nor Kerensky, the first and the last Prime Minister of the Provisional Government respectively, had a single word to say on its establishment.

Both the Duma and the Soviet sides were pleasantly surprised by the common ground between them. Each had come prepared for a major battle. But in fact there was only one real point of conflict. Miliukov wanted the monarchy retained, albeit with Alexis as Tsar and the Grand Duke Mikhail acting as Regent. Chkheidze pointed out that the idea was 'not only unacceptable, but also Utopian, in
view
of the general hatred of the monarchy amongst the masses of the people'. But Miliukov did not push his point — for which there was

little support among the rest of the Duma leaders — and in the end it was agreed to leave the form of government undecided until the convocation of a Constituent Assembly. Other than that there was little to discuss. Everyone agreed on the need to restore order, and on the need to form a Duma government.

The negotiations were completed in the early hours of the morning. The 'bourgeois groups', as Sukhanov put it, would be left to form a government 'on the view that this followed from the general situation and suited the interests of the revolution'. But the Soviet, 'as the only organ wielding any real power', set as the conditions for its 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 had

in fact become the moment of his triumph. Kerensky was now the only politician with a position in both the government and the Soviet. He was the undisputed leader of the people.41

This was to be the start of the 'Kerensky cult'. His popularity was truly enormous. 'There is only one name that unites everyone', Gippius wrote on I March, 'and that is the name of Kerensky.' During these first weeks of the revolution the workers in their factories, the sailors on their ships and the soldiers in their barracks would ask the question, 'What has Alexander Fedorovich to say?', and invariably the answer would become the final word on any given issue. Kerensky was the darling of the democratic intelligentsia. 'We loved Kerensky,' recalled Gippius. 'There was something alive, something bird-like and childish in him.' With his pale and young-looking face, his bright, keen eyes and his nervous manner, he was the perfect image of the student radical.

This almost universal adulation cannot be explained in terms of the conventional virtues of a politician. Kerensky had few of these. His career in the Duma had not been especially distinguished: he lacked the stature of Miliukov and the style of Maklakov or Fedor Rodichev. And there were other lawyers better qualified to become the Minister of Justice. But Kerensky was the ideal man for February. As Gippius put it, 'He is the right man in the right place.' For one thing, Kerensky was a great orator — not so much in the parliamentary context, which demanded eloquence and intellectual balance, but in the sense that could appeal to the crowds. His speeches were fiery and emotional. They were not concerned with detailed policies but with moral principles and spiritual values.

They often sounded more like the preachings of a priest than the prescripts of a politician. In his youth Kerensky had wanted to become an actor. His speeches were full of dramatic pathos, theatrical gestures and even fainting fits (these were genuine but Kerensky somehow managed to time them to coincide with the climax of his speech).

All this tugged on the heart-strings of his listeners. Kerensky expressed and came to stand for the sentiment of national unity, for the peoples resurrection, which the February Revolution was supposed to be. He was called the 'poet of freedom'; the 'heart of the nation'; the 'spirit of the people'; the 'saviour of the fatherland'; and the 'first love of the revolution'.42