Comrade Kerensky. Boris Kolonitskii

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СКАЧАТЬ Yusupova.¹⁴⁶

      Kerensky was the best-known and most gifted orator of the left, constantly transgressing the limits of what was permissible. For the radical intelligentsia, he was ‘their man in the Duma’. To many people in Petrograd his face would have been familiar because his portraits were printed in a variety of publications. In a time of crisis, to be recognizable is a political asset. The banning of his Duma speeches only added to his renown, and he found himself hailed as ‘the most popular person’ in town.¹⁴⁷ Many people had no doubt that, in the coming crisis, Kerensky was destined to be centre stage. Indeed, at that time of unrest a number of deputations came to see him and demand that he ‘seize power’. The same demand was made in letters to him.¹⁴⁸ There is nothing surprising about the fact that delegates from the Putilov factory came to Kerensky on 22 February (another group went to Nikolai Chkheidze, the leader of the Social Democratic group). They warned the ‘citizen deputy’ that the strike and lockout at their huge factory might have serious political consequences.¹⁴⁹

      The following day Kerensky made the statement of the Putilov workers known in the State Duma, stressing how moderate their demands were. A Duma resolution was amended to include the demand ‘that all dismissed workers of the Putilov factory should be reinstated and operation of the plant immediately resumed.’¹⁵⁰ The resolution had no practical impact because the revolution had already begun that day, but the strikers may have felt heartened that the Duma’s demands and the speeches of the opposition deputies showed support for their actions. More and more enterprises went on strike, and the strikers headed for the city centre. Mobs ransacked food stores and political rallies began.

      Kerensky’s speeches now stood him in good stead. His supporters wrote that, ‘long before the revolution, he had said in the Duma that a revolution was the only way of saving Russia from a state of anarchy which was being fomented from the throne. It was Kerensky who prompted the Russian Revolution to take the final step.’¹⁵¹

Kerensky’s subsequent influence was to be due largely to the decisive and effective action he took during the February Revolution. Already on 25 February, at what was to prove the last meeting of the State Duma, he called upon it to lead the movement and create a new government. In the evening, he made a speech at the Petrograd City Duma, protesting at the shooting of demonstrators and demanding establishment of ‘a responsible ministry’. He rejected compromise with the government. During these days Kerensky was present at a number of meetings with clandestine groups. One such was held on the evening of 26 February in his own apartment, to which he had invited activists of the socialist groups. Kerensky was to recall that he participated in setting up an information bureau to coordinate the actions of the socialist groups: the Trudoviks, Mensheviks, Bolsheviks, Interdistrict activists, Socialist Revolutionaries and People’s Socialists. Those assembled were unable, however, to come to any agreement because the rifts between them were just too great, but at least the exchange of views and the move to coordinate the protest movement was a big step forward.¹⁵² Even on that day Kerensky seems himself to have been unaware that the revolution had begun.¹⁵³

      Kerensky tried unsuccessfully to persuade Rodzyanko to convene an official session of the Duma on 27 February. He and his allies wanted the Duma to take a tougher line, but the chairman was not to be persuaded: the official meeting was scheduled for 28 February. At an informal meeting of the Council of Elders in Rodzyanko’s office, however, it was agreed to hold a closed meeting of the Duma on 27 February at two in the afternoon.¹⁵⁴

      Maintaining contact with the revolutionary underground, Kerensky was receiving information from illegal circles, and this bolstered his status in the eyes of his Duma colleagues who were desperate for up-to-the-minute intelligence on the popular movement. (He went out of his way on 27 February to show them how well informed he was, and may even have exaggerated.)

      Kerensky’s role in those days at the end of February became a topic for the rumour mill. It was said that he and Chkheidze, hearing of unrest in the Reserve Battalion of the Volhynia Guards Regiment, had gone there on 26 February and fired up the soldiers, and that this had brought about the regiment’s mutiny the following day.¹⁵⁵ In reality, Kerensky learned of the rebellion of the Volhynians early on 27 February.¹⁵⁶ At about eight o’clock that morning Duma deputy Nikolai Nekrasov, a left-wing Constitutional Democrat and prominent Freemason, phoned him at home to say the Volhynians had mutinied and that the State Duma had been prorogued by royal decree. Kerensky hastened round to Nikolai Sokolov, who also lived near the Duma. After a brief conference with him and Alexander Galpern, he made for the Duma.¹⁵⁷ Kerensky and other radical deputies tried to have the Duma continue in official session in defiance of the tsar’s decree and also urged that contact should be established between the Duma and the insurgents filling the streets of Petrograd.¹⁵⁸

At the Tauride Palace, Kerensky found himself the centre of attention. He was both the best known of the left-wing deputies and the most left-wing of the deputies who were well known. His name was familiar to anyone who took an interest in politics, and the sociable and energetic Kerensky had already met a good number of the capital’s citizens. Accordingly, it is unsurprising that many activists who made for the Tauride Palace wanted to see Kerensky and were expecting him to tell them what to do next. Spontaneously arising groups of insurgents, breakaway groups from units of the armed forces and individual activists battled their way through to him from all over the city. Already in the morning many people who knew Kerensky had been coming to the Duma bringing him information, and they conveyed the mood of the revolutionary crowds in the streets. Kerensky’s position straddling the boundary between legal and illegal politics was crucially important in those days, not least because illegals, members of the underground opposition, were not individually known to the masses (and some were in no hurry to take the risk of coming out into the open). The position he came to occupy, however, was very much dependent on Kerensky himself and the feverish activity on which he now embarked. He phoned round political friends, demanding they should go to the barracks and get insurgent troops sent to the Duma. Other politicians were doing the same, but Kerensky was outstanding. Every ten or fifteen minutes he was receiving up-to-the-moment information on the situation in different parts of the city by telephone. Duma deputies approached Kerensky to hear the latest news about action on the streets from the leader of the left. Rather anticipating developments, he assured them that the insurgents were on their way to the Tauride Palace. Many deputies were alarmed by this, but Kerensky insisted that the revolution was already in progress and that the Duma should welcome the mutineers and support and lead the popular movement. Time passed, however, and the troops Kerensky had ‘promised’ were nowhere to be seen. Anxious deputies asked him, ‘Where are your troops?’ He was already being seen not only as the best-informed member of the Duma but also as the representative of an illegal centre of insurgents, if not their leader.¹⁵⁹

Kerensky and the radical members of the Duma were demanding that a meeting of the Council of Elders, scheduled for twelve noon, should be brought forward, but Rodzyanko refused. At this a group of deputies arbitrarily convened a closed session of the council. Kerensky and several others demanded that the Duma should take power into its own hands, but not all those in attendance could support this. Rodzyanko protested against this meeting which he had not sanctioned but then convened an official meeting of leaders of the Duma groups in his office. Speaking on behalf of the Trudoviks, Social Democrats and Progressists, Kerensky again called for the tsar’s decree proroguing the Duma to be disregarded. This proposal openly to defy the monarch was rejected, opposed not only by Rodzyanko but also by Milyukov. The liberals were not prepared for this level of confrontation with the government. It was decided, nevertheless, that the Duma would not disperse, and the deputies were urged to remain where they were and, as planned, convene in the Semi-Circular Hall for an ‘unofficial’ meeting of such members of the chamber as were present. The choice of venue indicated that the Duma was not formally violating the tsar’s decree that it should dissolve, because official meetings were traditionally held in the Great Hall.¹⁶⁰

      Kerensky’s Odessan biographer exaggerates the importance of his speech. СКАЧАТЬ