Comrade Kerensky. Boris Kolonitskii

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СКАЧАТЬ the great legacy won by the blood and toil of many generations of the Russian intelligentsia from the Decembrists onwards. By good fortune we have become the first to enjoy great freedom, and we must protect it and pass it on to our descendants.’²²⁹

      The cult of champions of freedom, promoted by different political players in 1917, would have been unimaginable without glorifying the surviving veterans of the movement. Members of the various groups celebrated the old revolutionaries who were ideologically closest to them, ‘living monuments’ to the struggle who, by their support, could legitimize the current leaders.²³⁰ Of particular importance was the celebrating of Yekaterina Breshko-Breshkovskaya, who had joined the revolutionary ranks in the 1870s and had spent more than three decades in prison and exile. The Socialist Revolutionary Party of which she was a member established a personal cult of the ‘Grandmother of the Russian Revolution’. Portraits and biographies were printed, numerous resolutions were addressed to her, and when she spoke in public she was invariably the centre of attention.

      Breshkovskaya was not celebrated as a leader of the party, but her authority as a heroine and martyr who had lived her life by the precepts of the party’s saints was assiduously promoted by the Socialist Revolutionaries. It served to strengthen the party’s influence and was a tool in the power struggle between sundry factions of the party. Breshkovskaya was one of the most popular figures of the February Revolution. As we have seen, a film was made about her life, and groups of soldiers and students declared themselves the respectful grandchildren of the beloved grandmother. Socialist Revolutionary propaganda urged their supporters to continue the legacy of the aged revolutionary.²³¹

Kerensky never tired of showing his respect for the veterans of the revolutionary movement, provided they were supportive of his policies. Their authority was a valuable asset which bolstered his influence. At the Congress of the Socialist Revolutionaries he referred with demonstrative piety to the party’s ‘teachers’, ‘guides’ and ‘doughty champions’. Kerensky modestly referred to himself as one of the disciples and rank-and-file workers, one of the Socialist Revolutionary Party’s younger generation which, in the period of reaction, feeling its way in the dark, had, as best it could, carried forward the ‘spark of our party’s faith and way of life’. Concluding his speech, Kerensky told the delegates that, having gained so much from rubbing shoulders with the ‘best champions, he nevertheless always strove to feel, if for only a moment, that he was once again their ordinary, insignificant fellow party member and comrade.’²³² Speaking earlier, at the All-Russia Congress of Soviets of Peasants’ Deputies, he had said much the same thing: ‘Old teachers came to my aid whose names we have known since childhood.’²³³

      In the first weeks of the revolution Kerensky appeared several times at public ceremonies in the company of the veteran revolutionary Vera Figner. She gave her support to a number of his initiatives – for example, heading a fund he created as minister of justice to support former political prisoners. In a single week, 17–24 March, 340,000 rubles were donated for their needs. The donations were addressed to Vera Figner and Olga Kerenskaya. Including money previously sent to Olga Kerenskaya, the final total of donations amounted to 2,135,000 rubles.²³⁴ Such a huge response testifies to the respect enjoyed by Kerensky, and the participation of Figner gave the venture even greater reach. The ability to extend support to former prisoners and exiles, many of whom were joining the political elite of revolutionary Russia, was a valuable political lever for the minister.

      Of particular importance for Kerensky was his friendship with Yekaterina Breshko-Breshkovskaya, which underlay their later political cooperation. They met in 1912 when he had travelled to Siberia. One of Kerensky’s first actions when he became minister of justice was to order her immediate release. He demanded, moreover, that the local authorities should convey her with due pomp and ceremony to the capital. On 29 March, when, after a triumphal progress, she finally arrived in Petrograd, Kerensky was there to meet and spend the day with her. Sharp tongues scoffed that he was playing the role of page-boy to a grandmother. Breshkovskaya was naturally flattered by the attention paid to her by the popular hero of the February Revolution.

      At Kerensky’s suggestion, the old revolutionary lady lived in his residences: first in the Ministry of Justice building and later in the Winter Palace. During working lunches attended by politicians and diplomats she acted as hostess. Breshko-Breshkovskaya reminisced later, ‘I went with him to the headquarters of the minister of justice, and he put me up there. I kept asking how I could find a place to stay, but he was having none of it. “Don’t you find it comfortable here?” And so we remained good, true friends all that time. In fact, I will say, forever.’²³⁵ The former revolutionary did not always feel at ease in the tsar’s old quarters but acceded to Kerensky’s request. ‘I wanted to be set free again, but could not bring myself to leave. I could not deny Alexander Fyodorovich’s wish to have me as his neighbour,’ she recalled.²³⁶

In 1917 Breshkovskaya spoke about her special ties with Kerensky. Her speech in April in Revel, where she had gone with the minister of justice, is illustrative: ‘The strength of the Provisional Government is that it includes Kerensky, a socialist, a devoted friend of the people. You have a loyal friend, and that friend is Kerensky. He and I are kith and kin, related not by family ties, but in spirit.’²³⁷

      The friendship between the grandmother of the Russian Revolution and her ‘grandson’ was of considerable political importance for both of them. Breshko-Breshkovskaya was a living legend for the Socialist Revolutionaries. For decades she had been praised by the party. Her biography was presented as the life of a martyr who had dedicated herself to service of the people. The moral and political backing of such an illustrious champion of freedom reinforced Kerensky’s standing and sanctified his actions. For Breshko-Breshkovskaya too, however, the alliance was important: her young ally was proof that she had been right, and justified the battle she had waged against the regime for the whole of her life. Kerensky was the personification of a new generation of revolutionaries who were successfully carrying forward the mission she had begun so long ago. At the same time, the revolutionary minister was a guide for the old Narodnik warrior in the complicated and sometimes confusing world of modern politics.

      The relationship between Kerensky and Breshko-Breshkovskaya was warm and relaxed, and it remained so in later years when both were in exile. In her memoirs she refers to him as the most outstanding member of the Socialist Revolutionary Party.²³⁸ (Other Socialist Revolutionary leaders might not have agreed.) In a different version of her memoirs there is an even more ecstatic description of Kerensky: ‘He has always lived, and probably always will, with the most positive imaginable belief in the future of mankind in general and of the Russian people in particular. This quality of his soul, this great talent of selfless love and an unbounded willingness to serve his people are probably what provided the foundation of the mutual understanding which formed between him and me. I have the greatest respect for this man. I admire his personality as among the best things our land has ever produced.’²³⁹

      In 1917 Breshkovskaya spoke publicly of her admiration for what Kerensky was doing. After visiting Taurida province, she had this to say about the morale of the inhabitants of Crimea (believing that everyone who came to her speeches or with whom she spoke shared her attitude towards the revolutionary minister).

      Nor is there any mistrust of the new composition of the Provisional Government, although those who comprise it are not particularly well known.

This drawback is satisfactorily dealt with by confidence that, as long as Alexander Fyodorovich Kerensky is one of the ministers, nothing bad will be allowed to happen. In the five years that the repute of Kerensky has stood untarnished in the arena of Russia’s politics, the population, even in remote corners of our far-flung land, has come to revere his name and to see it as a guarantee of truth, lawfulness and justice. They have come to see him as a knight, always resolute, always prepared to occupy the most dangerous positions in pursuing his ideal of selfless service to his motherland. To his people.²⁴⁰

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