By Lynne Ann Hartnett, Villanova University
Alexander Kerensky’s meteoric rise to power was commendable. His fall from power was equally rapid owing to his political inexperience. In fact, Kerensky’s trajectory from revolutionary to disgraced statesman can serve as a metaphor for the dashed hopes of the revolution in Russia.
Kerensky’s Error of Judgment
By September 1917, the ruling soviets in Petrograd and Moscow were in the hands of the Bolshevik majorities. Russia’s experiment with democracy—which had begun with the February Revolution—was losing grounds. Elections for the constituent assembly were set for November. But a soviet of people’s and soldiers’ deputies congress was to meet in Petrograd just weeks before.
Lenin, who had earlier fled to Finland to escape the provisional government that had wanted him for treason, secretly returned to Russia and convinced his fellow Bolsheviks to seize power before the Congress of Soviets opened on October 25th. However, the news of Lenin’s plan got leaked.
Alexander Kerensky, the president-minister, decided to go on the offensive, and on October 23rd, he shut down Bolshevik newspapers. He also ordered the arrest of members of the soviets’ military arm: the Bolshevik-dominated military revolutionary commission. He also raised bridges to cut off working-class districts from the city center and suspended certain tram lines. Phone lines to Bolshevik headquarters at the former girls’ school, the Smolny Institute, were also cut.
Inexplicably, though, Kerensky didn’t arrest leading Bolsheviks, or cordon off their Smolny headquarters. And this lapse gave the Bolsheviks all the opportunity they needed.
Attack by the Red Guards
Just before dawn, on October 25th, armed Bolsheviks—Red Guards—cut phone lines to the Winter Palace, where the provisional government met. Red Guards also occupied telegraph offices, and seized railway stations, while making their way to the Winter Palace. Soviet histories depict the Bolsheviks’ taking of the palace as a grand siege, undertaken by tens of thousands in support of Lenin. In fact, pro-Bolshevik troops hesitated, even though the palace was defended only by some young cadets, and the Women’s Battalion of Death.
Late on October 25th, the Russian naval vessel, the Aurora, which was stationed near the Winter Palace on the Neva River, fired a blank shell. This signaled that the palace was to be stormed. After midnight, the ministers who remained there were placed under arrest.
However, Kerensky had managed to flee from the capital earlier that day in a car borrowed from the US embassy. He planned to make his way to the front, and recruit soldiers to defend the government. But the Bolsheviks intercepted him.
Kerensky soon found himself under siege in Gatchina Palace. However, he once again managed to save himself by sneaking off disguised as a servant.
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Bolsheviks Come to Power
The democratic revolution had now evaporated after failing to adapt to circumstances. The euphoria and expectations of February were undone by political rivalries, economic despair, and an unwinnable war.
As the Congress of Soviets assembled at Petrograd, the Bolsheviks announced they had seized power in the soviets’ name. Controlling 338 of 650 seats, the Bolsheviks held only a small majority. But the Mensheviks and the Socialist Revolutionaries in the assembly made Lenin’s task considerably easier when they walked out in protest over the Bolsheviks’ usurpation of power.
The historian Sean McMeekin says that, “Once the opposition had left the building, the Bolsheviks were free to rubber-stamp their own revolution.”
Kerensky’s Life in Exile
Kerensky had been influenced by the western world and had hoped to bring about a western-style constitutional democracy in Russia. But with no history of democracy in the country, and given the dire economic and military straits at the time, such a liberal democracy did not have much chance to take root.
Kerensky now fled Russia for Paris. Over the next several decades, he lived in a perpetual exile in Europe and the United States. From Paris he moved to Britain, to Prague, back to Paris, to the US, and to Australia. He finally settled in Palo Alto, California near the campus of Stanford University. He died in New York City in 1970 at the age of 89.
Kerensky had started his political journey with much fanfare. He had held high hopes of bringing a western-style constitutional democracy to Russia, but he ended up being a disgraced statesman who had to flee his own country and seek asylum in a foreign land. This serves as a not-so-glorified example of the dashed hopes of the revolution in Russia. Pushed from power and Russia by Lenin and the Bolsheviks, Kerensky spent the rest of his life imagining what might have been.
Common Questions about the Downfall of Alexander Kerensky
Alexander Kerensky shut down Bolshevik newspapers. He also ordered the arrest of members of the soviets’ military arm: the Bolshevik-dominated military revolutionary commission. He also raised bridges to cut off working-class districts from the city center and suspended certain tram lines. Phone lines to Bolshevik headquarters at the former girls’ school, the Smolny Institute, were also cut.
The Russian naval vessel, the Aurora, fired a blank shell to signal that the Winter Palace was to be stormed.
Alexander Kerensky had been influenced by the western world and had hoped to bring about a western-style constitutional democracy in Russia. But with no history of democracy in the country, and given the dire economic and military straits at the time, such a liberal democracy did not have much chance to take root.
