Читать книгу Comrade Kerensky - Boris Kolonitskii - Страница 12

Kiriakov saw the date of Kerensky’s birth as portentous. The history of the political struggle against the tsarist regime provided the background for his description of the childhood of the future champion of freedom.

Alexander Kerensky’s first breath (he was born on 22 April 1881) came just a week after some of the great champions of freedom for Russia – Sofiya Perovskaya, Andrey Zhelyabov, Timofey Mikhailov, Kibalchich and Rysakov – breathed their last, hanged by order of Alexander III on Semyonovskaya Square.

His first movements as a little child, his first babbled words, almost coincided with the last movement, the last mumbling of a cowed Russia.⁴³

Kiriakov also found significance in the place where Kerensky was born – Simbirsk – which played a role in how the hero chose his path in life. ‘The Volga brought this child not only “songs that sound like moaning” but also freedom-loving songs about the much admired folk hero Stenka Razin, whose famous cliff was near Simbirsk.’⁴⁴

Readers have it explained to them that, from childhood, Kerensky was in the force field of memories of the people’s sufferings, of great uprisings that were rooted in his haunts, and that these memories were already influencing his outlook on the world.

Such a biography fitted into the canon of Narodnik description of the life of a hero. Kiriakov gives the backstory of the mutual love between Kerensky and Russia, emphasizing the place and time of the Leader’s birth. Other authors, however, did not write about Kerensky’s childhood and youth. ‘A. F. Kerensky’s personal life, like that of many giants of thinking and action, reveals a paucity of external events. He seemed to be saving himself for an immense task, in order to burn up all his energy and powers later, in the flames of the All-Russia conflagration. His biography is that of a typical Russian intellectual,’ declares the Odessan biographer.⁴⁵ The very ordinariness of Kerensky’s early life, however, is turned to account in the propaganda and serves as a further foundation of the Leader’s authority. The ‘giant of thinking and action’ is initially indistinguishable from others, thereby stressing his democratic beginnings, his rootedness in the rank-and-file intelligentsia. It is only in the days of great tribulation that there becomes manifest the greatness of a Leader who has been building up his strength by spending his childhood in an ordinary milieu.

Kiriakov, quoting the testimony of the minister himself, tells the reader, ‘The first childhood memories of A. F. Kerensky, then a six-year-old child, are, in his own words, a vague memory of the unspoken horror that engulfed Simbirsk when people there learned of the execution of the son of the local supervisor of people’s schools, the student Alexander Ilyich Ulianov (brother of our ‘sealed carriage’ N. Lenin), for his involvement in a plot by the last members of People’s Will to assassinate Tsar Alexander III.’⁴⁶ (One cannot help recalling the Soviet biographies of Lenin which never failed to mention the fate of his brother as a decisive factor in the career of that leader.)

Not all his biographers made mention of Kerensky’s parents. Some reported that at the time of Alexander’s birth his father was the headmaster of the grammar school in Simbirsk.⁴⁷ Bogoraz-Tan wrote, not entirely accurately: ‘His father … taught Russian language in Simbirsk and was later headmaster of a grammar school in Kazan.’⁴⁸

Not one of Kerensky’s biographers during the revolution mentioned that, in 1887, his father, Fyodor Mikhailovich Kerensky, had been promoted to the status of full state councillor (the Civil Service equivalent of a general in the army), or that two years later he was further promoted to the post of chief inspector of schools in the territory of Turkestan. The father of the future minister had enjoyed a successful administrative career in the Ministry of Public Education, which was an inconvenience for anyone writing about the revolutionary biography of his son.⁴⁹ (This too is reminiscent of the canonical Soviet biographies of Lenin, which kept quiet about the award to his father of the rank of full state councillor.)

Kerensky’s 1917 biographers did not write about his paternal forebears either. Like many intellectuals he came from a family of priests, a detail in his pedigree which would not have enhanced a politician’s standing during the revolution.

Nor did they mention Nadezhda, Kerensky’s mother, née Adler, whose father had been an officer in the Russian army and in charge of the land survey service of the Kazan Military District.⁵⁰ Her origins were nevertheless frequently discussed: some supposed she was German, others that she was Jewish.⁵¹ (Speculation about Kerensky’s supposed Jewish antecedents did find its way into the Russian periodical press in 1917.)⁵² His mother’s foreign maiden name and the position occupied by his maternal grandfather would have done nothing for Kerensky’s authority as the Leader of the Russian Revolution, and this is doubtless why his first biographers kept quiet about them.

Some biographical sketches had photographs of Kerensky as a grammar-school student, which must have been given to the publishers by the minister himself or by his family.⁵³ Tan, clearly in contact with Kerensky or his relatives, emphasized the future Leader’s successes at school. ‘A. F. Kerensky showed exceptional ability from childhood. He went to school in Tashkent and graduated from the grammar school as the top student, with a gold medal.’ (One is ineluctably reminded of Soviet biographies of Lenin.) Success at school pointed to the Leader’s giftedness, manifest already in his childhood and early youth and a useful indicator of his worthiness to be a Leader. Tan noted also the future Leader’s artistic temperament. ‘From early youth he showed evidence of great spiritual energy. He was attracted to art and music and excelled in the title role of Gogol’s The Government Inspector.’⁵⁴ A histrionic bent, as we shall see, did stand him in good stead in the first months of the revolution. Nevertheless, his biographers as a rule wisely remained silent about Kerensky’s performance of the role of Khlestakov. The well-known traits of the character in the play, an air-headed impostor, could only too easily be attributed to the schoolboy who had performed the role so well. When things were going wrong for Kerensky as head of the Provisional Government, and later in emigration, he was openly compared to Gogol’s character. In mid-July 1917, the right-wing popular newspaper Narodnaya gazeta [the People’s Newspaper] reprinted a report in the German Vossische Zeitung in a manifest attempt to discredit Kerensky. The author was Friedrich Dukmeyer, who had been a teacher at the grammar school in Tashkent. Among his students had been Sasha Kerensky, about whom Dukmeyer reminisced in 1917. The article reported Nadezhda Adler’s German antecedents and that Kerensky’s grandfather had held the rank of general. The ex-schoolmaster recalled that his pupil ‘dressed somewhat foppishly’, was fond of dancing and theatrical performances, and that the role of Khlestakov ‘seemed to have been written specially for him’. He observed that, ‘even then’, Kerensky was pale.⁵⁵ The frailty of the minister’s health, which was, as we shall see, much discussed in 1917, seems from Dukmeyer’s account to have been with him almost from birth.

Kiriakov tells us that Kerensky chose his political destiny while still at school. It is said to have been then that he decided to dedicate his life to the liberation of the Russian people.

From all that he read, heard and saw, the lively imagination of Sasha Kerensky re-created in his mind the age-old picture of the slavish life of the entire Russian people – toiling, slow to anger, all-enduring, all-forgiving and long-suffering. He fell in love with this toiling Russian people with all the ardour of his boyish heart. He was filled with profound respect for the first champions of the freedom and happiness of the people. We can hardly doubt that the first heroes Sasha Kerensky wanted to imitate were the heroic fighters of the People’s Will.

Even the city where the future leader went to school is seen as a factor revolutionizing the young schoolboy: ‘Tashkent is the gateway to Siberia. The groans of Russia’s political fighters in the cause of freedom, languishing in penal servitude and exile at that time, were closer and more keenly felt there.’⁵⁶ Kiriakov is manifestly exaggerating the revolutionariness of his hero. Kerensky himself makes no mention in his memoirs of having held radical views then, or of having read pamphlets about the People’s Will. ‘Neither I nor my classmates were aware of the problems that were exciting young people of our age in other parts of Russia, leading many of them to join clandestine societies while still at school.’⁵⁷ Kiriakov was clearly exaggerating, but that, in the view of this Narodnik, was how the childhood of a true champion of freedom should have passed. That was the canon for writing the biography of a Leader of the people, and the traditions of the revolutionary underground moved Kerensky’s supporters to come up with a biography to bolster his authority.

Kerensky’s years as a student at St Petersburg University (1899–1904), first in the faculty of history and philology then in the law faculty, were important for the Leader’s biography because it was then that he ‘developed his world view, a robust system of thought which set him on the path to honour, glory and the salvation of Russia,’ as the Odessan biographer puts it.⁵⁸ The mention of the conscious education and self-education of the future politician is not fortuitous: a ‘robust’ world view, consciously elaborated as the result of independent assimilation of knowledge, was an important qualification for a radical Leader.

Some of Kerensky’s biographers mention his marital status. In 1904 he married Olga Baranovskaya.⁵⁹ Sometimes a piece of writing would be accompanied by photographs showing Kerensky’s wife and sons, or sometimes just the minister himself with his children.⁶⁰ It was accepted that the Leader’s family life was of public interest. No doubt on these occasions his family had assisted the writers.

Some of his biographers were given to exaggerating Kerensky’s radicalism in his student days, too, and his involvement with the Socialist Revolutionary Party. ‘His love for the people, the dispossessed toiling people, grew ever strong and expanded in Kerensky’s honest breast. It was this love which impelled him towards the party closest to the people, the peasants and workers, to a party which had inscribed on its banner, “Land and Freedom for all the toiling people. Through struggle justice shall be yours”, the party of Socialist Revolutionaries.’ So wrote Kiriakov, bringing the biography of his hero ever closer into line with the programme of the Socialist Revolutionary Party.⁶¹ In reality, the young student’s oppositional leanings did not move him towards adopting the platform of any party.

After Kerensky graduated from university, his aspiration was to join a group of ‘political barristers’ who defended people accused of committing political crimes. Becoming a member of this association was not straightforward: only lawyers who were particularly trusted in radical circles were accepted. To a scion of the ‘bureaucracy’, the son of an official prominent in the Ministry of Public Education with connections in the capital, the initial attitude was one of wariness. He even experienced difficulties being admitted to the legal profession at all, which was dominated by people with liberal or radical views. Kerensky’s biographers omitted to mention these difficulties when writing in 1917.

Kerensky became an assistant attorney-at-law. Eager to become a ‘political’ defence lawyer, he gave free legal advice to the poor of the capital. Like many of his contemporaries he was greatly shocked by the events of Bloody Sunday, 9 January 1905, which he witnessed at first hand. Kerensky visited the families of demonstrators who had been killed by the troops, giving them legal advice. He signed a protest against the arrest of prominent intellectuals who had tried to avert the tragedy. In this connection he first came to the notice of the secret police, and a file was opened on him. The 1917 pamphlets reported this, and the attention paid to the young lawyer by the tsar’s Okhrana, confirmed by the publication of documents, further bolstered his revolutionary credentials.⁶²

His Odessan biographer wrote: ‘Supporting the Socialist Revolutionary Party, Kerensky suffered all the adversities of 1905 with it. Despite the strict secrecy, despite the fact that the party was doing its best to protect Alexander, aware of his extraordinary strength, he was arrested and put in prison.’⁶³ In reality, the party leaders are unlikely to have been acquainted with the young assistant attorney.

In May 1917 Kerensky described his position at the time: ‘After 1905, in the midst of general exhaustion, I was one of those who demanded an attack on the old regime.’⁶⁴ Reminding the public of a time when he had demanded new, more radical action against the regime served to legitimize his right to curb the excessive demands of the soldiers. For Kerensky, who had by then become minister of war, that was a high priority.

On 23 December 1905, the young lawyer was arrested, accused both of preparing armed insurrection and of belonging to an organization seeking to overthrow the existing order. On 5 April 1906, however, he was released under special police supervision but prohibited from residing in the capitals. Kerensky went back to Tashkent, where his father still worked. With the aid of his family and influential family friends he managed to have that restriction lifted, and he returned to St Petersburg in September.⁶⁵

Kerensky’s biographers did not report that it was connections in bureaucratic circles that helped him to escape exile. They found different explanations: ‘There was no hard evidence, however, and the future minister of justice was released from a Russian prison,’ the Odessan biographer ad-libbed.⁶⁶ Neither did they write in 1917 about Kerensky’s return to St Petersburg. Mitigation of his sentence did nothing for his revolutionary reputation. Mentioning his arrest, on the other hand, was very much to the point. After Kerensky was appointed minister of war, the ministry’s main newspaper wrote: ‘A. F. Kerensky was arrested several times by the old government for belonging to far-left movements before commencing his political work as a member of the State Duma.’⁶⁷ In the circumstances of the revolution, having been in prison under the old regime was a source of authority, even an important qualification for holding such a position. His biographers (Kiriakov and the Odessan biographer) also wrote about his arrest, and Leonidov, implying he had spent a considerable time in prison, claimed that, ‘If Kerensky ever did rest, it was only while in prison.’⁶⁸

The arrest was important for his political career, but returning to St Petersburg was no less important: in the provinces Kerensky’s future would have developed quite differently. Once back in the capital, the young lawyer again became active politically, although again the scope of his activities is exaggerated by some biographers. Here, for example, is the Odessan biographer describing his role in organizing elections to the Second State Duma: ‘To prepare for the elections, a special organization of Socialist Revolutionaries was set up in St Petersburg, with A. F. Kerensky as its soul. For tactical reasons the party did not nominate him personally as a deputy.’⁶⁹ The truth of the matter was evidently that the Socialist Revolutionary leaders did not consider this junior lawyer a suitable candidate.

Kiriakov recalls the episode, but frames it differently:

This was all taking place in Zemlya i volya, the Land and Freedom movement, a group of Petersburg intellectuals organizing preparations for the elections to the Second State Duma, in the late summer of 1906. He immediately won everybody’s hearts and several times surprised them with his practical understanding of how the state worked, something in short supply among the old party workers, who had been obliged before 1905 either to keep their heads down in the underground or to live most of the time abroad.⁷⁰

As described by Kiriakov, Kerensky is seen not as a prominent Socialist Revolutionary – which, at that time, he was not – but as belonging to a radical non-partisan association of intellectuals. It is interesting to find the young lawyer being portrayed as the representative of a new generation, more practical and attuned to affairs of state, coming up to replace the veterans of the revolutionary movement. The pragmatism of a statesman, already evident in the young man, further qualifies him for leadership in the revolutionary era, when the new politicians assuming power need skills and knowledge which the radical figureheads of the previous generation simply do not possess. Kiriakov, on the right wing of the Socialist Revolutionary Party, was clearly contrasting Kerensky with Victor Chernov and other party leaders who favoured more centrist positions.

Kerensky’s arrest and subsequent political activity enhanced his reputation in radical intelligentsia circles. In October 1906, Nikolai Sokolov, a Social Democrat and prominent ‘political lawyer’, asked Kerensky to go as a matter of urgency to Revel to defend Estonian peasants who had participated in rioting on the estates of the Ostsee barons. Kerensky immediately travelled to the capital of Estland and conducted a successful defence: most of the defendants were released, unpunished, in the courtroom.⁷¹

One biographer describes this development in Kerensky’s career: ‘Into the dark, dreary night of reaction, A. F. Kerensky brought these persecuted brothers his love and professional skill. He abandoned his practice as a talented young lawyer to devote himself wholly to political trials. Few took place without Kerensky acting for the defence.’⁷²

The reader is being offered the image of a successful, highly paid Petersburg lawyer who, for the sake of an ideal, was renouncing a career which promised to provide him with a substantial income. This was not the case, although idealistic motives did influence the assistant attorney’s decision. Tan too wrote of Kerensky’s hardships, apparently exaggerating them somewhat. ‘He received 25 rubles a month from his patron, for a long time suffered want, and lived with his family in an attic.’⁷³ As we shall see, the image of an ascetic devoting himself entirely to the struggle for freedom was an important part of how he was represented as the Leader of the revolution.

After the trial in Revel, Kerensky was accepted as a fully fledged political defence lawyer. Almost all his biographers mention this occupation, and the minister of war himself, working on his credibility, reminisced both about his time in prison and his defence of people accused of crimes against the state. In the course of an important speech on 26 March 1917 in front of the soldiers’ deputies in the Petrograd Soviet, he stated: ‘I have spent much time in the dungeons of Russian justice, and many champions of freedom passed through my hands.’⁷⁴