Comrade Kerensky. Boris Kolonitskii

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СКАЧАТЬ were.’¹⁶¹ The journalist Vasiliy Vodovozov, who was on friendly terms with Kerensky, even claimed that to him belonged ‘the merit of the initiative for a session of the State Duma, in defiance of the tsar’s command that it should be prorogued.’¹⁶² Kerensky later wrote the same thing himself, but in fact, as we have said, the private meeting had already been scheduled and was not a reaction to the tsar’s subsequent decree.¹⁶³

      By one in the afternoon, groups of excited soldiers finally began to arrive at the Tauride Palace. One group introduced itself as representing the rebels, who wanted to know what the Duma’s position was.¹⁶⁴ The appearance of insurgents at the parliament building had a considerable impact on wavering deputies and strengthened the hand of Kerensky, who demanded decisive action from the Duma deputies.

      At 2:30 pm the closed meeting of Duma members began. Vladimir Zenzinov recalled that Kerensky ‘technically’ convened it himself, wantonly pressing the bell to summon the deputies. There may have been nothing technical about it: the bell was an invitation to the deputies to convene in the Great Hall, and Kerensky was attempting to call the deputies for an official rather than a closed meeting. Certainly that was how some of the deputies interpreted his act. Rodzyanko ordered the bell to be switched off, and a closed meeting assembled, as scheduled, in the Semi-Circular Hall. At 2:57 Kerensky appeared in the hall and expressed a desire to go out to the rebels and announce the Duma’s support for the movement of the people. He asked the meeting to grant him the necessary authority. His proposal did not meet with enthusiasm from a majority of the deputies, who were wary of revolutionaries. Some of the liberals suspected the uprising had been instigated by pro-German interests. Under the pressure of events, however, the Duma had little option but to shift to the left. No doubt the spread of the uprising would have forced the Duma deputies to become more radical, but the impact of Kerensky’s decisiveness cannot be disregarded. He harassed his Duma colleagues, encouraged them to adopt a radical stance, and was not averse to confronting them with a fait accompli. Kerensky and other left-wing deputies went out to the crowd, gave speeches, issued instructions, and returned to the meeting, urging their colleagues now to undertake positive action.¹⁶⁵ This course of action accorded both with Kerensky’s views and with his temperament, given as he was to romanticizing and idealizing the revolutionary movement. It is also a fact that Kerensky reacted to the emotions of a crowd. He was infected by the elation of the rebellious people constantly arriving at the Duma.

A detachment of mutinous troops approached the Tauride Palace, there was a clash with the Duma sentries and the commander of the guard was wounded.¹⁶⁶ This greatly agitated the deputies. Kerensky rushed out and welcomed the mutineers, thereby setting a precedent for speeches by Duma deputies to newly arriving soldiers becoming something of a ritual. The Social Democratic deputies Skobelev and Chkheidze also addressed the rebels, but it was the leader of the Trudoviks who was unquestionably the more lively and trenchant. ‘The Social Democrats were very reserved: Kerensky had a more authoritative tone,’ recalled Alexander Polyakov, a journalist. It is no surprise that contemporaries often remembered only speeches by Kerensky.¹⁶⁷

      Even conservative publications wrote enthusiastically about Kerensky’s doings in the early days of the revolution. Novoye vremya [New Time] reported:

      In the Tauride Palace the deputies were in a state of shock. The Council of Elders had a meeting, not knowing what to do. The order proroguing the Duma was read out. They decided not to disperse, but had not the courage to declare themselves the new government immediately. Even the left-wingers were perplexed, and it was only when someone shouted, ‘A crowd! Soldiers!’, that Kerensky, not stopping to get a coat or hat, ran out to Shpalernaya Street to greet them.

      ‘We are with you. We thank you for coming, and promise to go forward with the people.’

      The crowd raised Kerensky shoulder-high and tossed him up and down.¹⁶⁸

      The report is not wholly accurate, but it is noteworthy that the reporter made Kerensky the main protagonist. Nearly all Kerensky’s biographers write about his speech to the insurgent soldiers,¹⁶⁹ and it became a central plank of his claim to be regarded as the Leader of the revolution.

      Kerensky urged the rebels to enter the Tauride Palace, replace the old guards and protect the Duma. He gave orders on where to place sentries. The Duma telegraph and entrances to the palace were occupied by soldiers. The invasion of the palace by an armed crowd changed the deputies’ mood, strengthening the position of the left wing and demoralizing the conservatively minded. The new atmosphere was something of which Kerensky was better placed to take advantage than others. These were bold and dangerous acts: by placing himself at the head of mutinous soldiers he was openly declaring himself the leader of an armed uprising. From the point of view of law-abiding subjects of the tsar, he was a rebel, but by his decisive actions he acquired, in the eyes of the insurgents, the status of a revolutionary leader. In particular, his authority with the soldiers was greatly enhanced. In March an influential journalist was entirely justified in calling Kerensky ‘one of the most prominent leaders of the mutinous army’.¹⁷⁰

Kerensky himself subsequently made use of the episode. ‘I led the first contingent of revolutionary troops into the Tauride Palace and set up a token guard,’ he told a meeting of the soldiers’ section of the Petrograd Soviet on 26 March, when his actions were criticized by leaders of the Soviet.¹⁷¹ This line of argument enabled Kerensky to maintain his standing with the main body of deputies. The entry of troops into the building of the State Duma was one of the most important moments in the history of the February Revolution. In 1917 there were differing accounts of what exactly happened, but all the authors agreed that Kerensky had played a major role, which they often exaggerated. For example, a Nizhny Novgorod newspaper wrote:

      A company of some regiment or other with an officer happened to be passing the Tauride Palace…. Suddenly Kerensky appears in the driveway and shouts, ‘Soldiers, the State Duma is with you!’

      With a fiery speech he gains the support of the company and its officer, and a minute later Kerensky utters in the parliamentary chamber the call everyone has so desperately been waiting for in those hours of indecision: ‘Members of the State Duma, the soldiers are with us! Here they are!’

      A moment later Kerensky delegated a squad of soldiers to arrest Minister Shcheglovitov and bring him to the Tauride Palace, and a moment after that the Volhynia Regiment knew what it had to do and where it needed to go.

      That was the beginning of everything.

      Whether it is fact or legend, there is good reason why this formula of a fusion of the democratic ‘idea’ (the Duma) with the democratic ‘matter’ (the soldiers) was arrived at by Kerensky. It is the formula which resolved the whole ‘problem’ of the revolution.¹⁷²

      According to other accounts, Kerensky was entirely ready to win the army over to the revolution. His Odessan biographer writes: ‘Twenty-five thousand armed soldiers were marching towards the Tauride Palace. To what end? Was it in order, at the command of the tsar, to raze to the ground this hotbed of sedition? Or was it to bring tidings of the liberation of the people and emancipation of the army? It seemed there was no one to give an answer. It was approaching, with the tramp of soldiers’ boots and of horse-drawn artillery.’ It was at this critical moment, when, according to the author, ‘chilling doubt’ assailed the deputies’ hearts, that ‘a thin little man, as pale as death and without a hat in the bitter cold’, leaped forth to greet the troops. The revolution was about to win. ‘That little lawyer from Saratov had no way of knowing what he would face on the porch: a red flag or the bayonets of tsarist soldiers. With heroic self-sacrifice he detonated the revolution, and to this day bears that heavy cross.’¹⁷³ This factually inaccurate version of events is of interest because Kerensky is presented as the saviour of the revolution, heading off a planned punitive campaign.

Kerensky’s СКАЧАТЬ