Comrade Kerensky. Boris Kolonitskii

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I Revolutionary Biography and Political Authority

      In May 1917 Kerensky, having just been appointed minister of the army and navy, issued an order reminiscent in style of one of the tsar’s manifestos. It contained a vivid autobiographical element. ‘My new burden is immensely heavy, but as an old soldier of the revolution I have submitted myself unquestioningly to the severe discipline of duty and accepted responsibility before the people and the revolution for the army and navy.’¹

      The 36-year-old minister accounted himself a veteran of the liberation movement well accustomed to revolutionary discipline, which accorded him the right to demand iron discipline from all in the armed forces. It was an approach Kerensky was to use repeatedly when addressing the troops. These statements enhanced his authority as a revolutionary-turned-statesman, and the claim needed to be substantiated by the events of his biography. In 1917 both Kerensky and his supporters constantly recalled episodes from his life which could be put to political use.

      We need both to examine that biographical contribution to establishing the authority of this revolutionary leader and to show the role he and his supporters played in disseminating information about his past career. We need to establish which episodes in Kerensky’s life were most frequently exploited, which were ‘edited’, and which were quietly forgotten. Of interest too are the efforts of Kerensky’s opponents, who had their own spin to put on his past.

1 Biography and biographers

      In 1917 information about Kerensky’s past life was obtainable from the minister’s own testimony and reminiscences of his contemporaries. Mention of his career was made by politicians, journalists and those drafting resolutions. From these tesserae of the mosaic, people in Russia were able to piece together a reasonably convincing picture of the man. Of particular importance was writing undertaken specifically to familiarize society with Kerensky’s biography.

There were quite a few reasons why writers and journalists, members of committees and generals might choose to bring up details of Kerensky’s life, to quote his speeches and to recall his actions in the past. Some wanted to bolster the new leader’s authority; others were responding to public demand (there was great curiosity about this suddenly popular politician). Nor can we overlook more mercenary considerations: publishers were prepared to commission writing on a hot topic, and Kerensky was selling like hot cakes. The minister could not directly control every project relating to his biography, but, as we shall see, he and his inner circle did often themselves initiate such writing, helped it on its way, and facilitated its distribution.

      Kerensky was good with the press, and his staff knew when and how to release information to influential journalists hungry for news. Despite being overworked, he would find time to converse with publishers and journalists, writers and editors, to brief them on how he saw the changing situation and make recommendations. He periodically declared that he did not read items about himself in the newspapers, but without letting slip that he did study the reviews of the periodical press which his staff constantly provided.

      Kerensky set up press and propaganda sections in the departments he oversaw: first in the Ministry of Justice and later in the Ministry of War. These had many shortcomings, and Russian wartime propaganda was overall inferior to that of the Germans and British, but, compared to others, Kerensky and his staff acted energetically and proactively to influence the press and get feedback about the state of public opinion.²

      After the revolution, as minister of justice, Kerensky found himself in possession of a major asset. Order No. 1, signed by the new minister in February 1917, delegated Academician Nestor Kotlyarevsky to remove from the Police Department all papers and documents he might deem necessary and deliver them to the Academy of Sciences.³ The Okhrana security department had secret files with sensitive information about many contemporary figures, and it was important that they should be stored securely. Actually, they were not all removed to the Academy of Sciences: the file on Kerensky, which went back to 1905, was delivered to the Ministry of Justice.⁴

      Journalists were shown the documents and allowed to quote from them. There were also fairly extensive publications in the newspapers which drew on Okhrana materials about Kerensky.⁵ The press likewise reported on researches undertaken by local activists in provincial police archives.⁶

The Central Committee of the Trud [Labour] Group in the Duma, to which Kerensky belonged, published a pamphlet containing excerpts from his file and two police circulars dating from 1915. The print run of 50,000 copies was large for the time⁷ and indicates that the project received substantial funding. The publishers claimed that this collection of documents, prepared by political surveillance professionals, made possible an objective estimate of the scale of Kerensky’s revolutionary activities: ‘The reports of Okhrana agents and the police were written before the revolution and come from the enemy camp, so they tell the story more objectively than we could.’ The preface stated: ‘He did not come to the revolution as something already accomplished but spent days and months preparing the coup whose protagonist he was destined to become.’⁸ СКАЧАТЬ