Читать книгу Comrade Kerensky - Boris Kolonitskii - Страница 13

The specialization of ‘political defence lawyer’ was not lucrative, but it did bring renown in radical circles. It was a career which required observance of an unwritten but strict code of conduct well understood by both lawyers and defendants. Political defence lawyers confronted a number of ethical and professional issues. They were expected to have the accused acquitted while at the same time defending their client’s political views. To do both things simultaneously was difficult, and at times impossible. For the Constitutional Democrat Vasiliy Maklakov, one of the most prominent lawyers of the time, the first priority was legal defence of the client. ‘If he [the lawyer] should not offend or denigrate the political views of his client, if he could not, without humiliating himself, hypocritically dissociate himself from them because he agreed with them, he must nevertheless respect the duty of judges to observe and uphold the existing law. It was not permissible to conflate the obligations of political campaigner and defence lawyer,’ he reminisced.⁷⁵

Many lawyers, however, were perceived by society as politicians and behaved as such. This role of ‘tribune of the people’, denouncing the regime and its ‘servants’, was one Kerensky assumed. For him, every trial was a battle with a hateful government personified by the state prosecution. Here is how his role is described by Leonidov: ‘A. F. Kerensky was least of all a professional lawyer, selling his time and powers to individuals to protect their selfish interests and rights. He has always been drawn to defend the interests of the disenfranchised social classes, has always battled for their right to life, and invariably tried to bring them to that wonderful day when they would enjoy their rights in full measure.’⁷⁶

This description harmonizes with the tenor of Kerensky’s speeches in 1917, denouncing the failings of the judicial system of the old regime. It is, nevertheless, an unfair representation of the reality of the pre-revolutionary judicial system, where many of the empire’s judges and prosecutors were highly professional lawyers conscientiously performing their duties. When he became minister of justice, Kerensky effectively recognized the good faith of some of his former opponents in court and appointed them to positions of power.

As counsel for the defence, the future minister of justice had found himself involved in high-profile trials. The case of the so-called Tukum Republic, in which he defended Latvian insurgents, attracted much publicity. Kerensky also conducted the defence of Labourites (Trudoviks) who signed the Vyborg Appeal. He participated in the trials of the leaders of the All-Russia Peasant Union, of the St Petersburg Military Organization of the Social Democrats, of St Petersburg province’s Union of Teachers, of Tver province’s Peasant Brotherhood, and of the Northern Flying Squad of the Combat Organization of the Socialist Revolutionary Party. Kerensky’s clients included Bolsheviks: he defended the fighters who participated in the raid on the Miass treasurer’s office. These trials were duly recalled by his biographers in 1917. Even this partial list of cases demonstrates how much the young defence lawyer was in demand. He was admitted as a full member of the Corporation of Lawyers, and the Council of the St Petersburg Circuit of Courts of Justice called him to the bar in 1909.

Of particular importance for Kerensky’s career was the trial of the Armenian socialist Dashnaktsutyun Party in 1912, when the elite of the Armenian intelligentsia found themselves in the dock. Kerensky was able to prove the falsehood of witness statements presented by the prosecution. It was a resounding victory for the defence, and one of the investigators was even formally charged with perjury and falsification. (The authorities declared him mentally unfit in order to save him from being prosecuted.) Of the 145 accused, 95 were acquitted.⁷⁷

This trial was a favourite of Kerensky’s biographers. Leonidov wrote of a political victory for the defence, Kerensky having supposedly proven that it was not the investigator who was sick and unfit but the court system created by Minister of Justice Ivan Shcheglovitov, who, for oppositionists, and particularly for the radical lawyers, was the personification of the regime they detested.⁷⁸ Kerensky’s Odessan biographer represents the trial as a tragic duel between an honest, idealistic lawyer and an all-powerful system, a duel whose outcome was predetermined.

Kerensky had again to contend with that stone wall. The court chairman did not let him speak, cutting him off in mid-sentence when his accusations were becoming too near the mark. He kept threatening to have him removed from the court and made vitriolic remarks during the course of the trial. The shocked courtroom witnessed the heroic struggle of a man unarmed with one who was armed, a battle between lawfulness and brute force, a struggle whose outcome was – alas! – a foregone conclusion.⁷⁹

This style of writing about Kerensky’s legal career was at odds with the actual history of the trial but in tune with the general climate of denouncing the old regime, which was a major component of Kerensky’s own speeches. The image of a valorous, uncompromising champion fighting a pitiless system was grist to the mill of those aiming to promote him.

There were occasions when Kerensky’s success in the role of tribune of the people had an adverse effect on the fate of those he was defending. His colleagues warned: ‘If you want him to defend the revolution, he will do so brilliantly, but if it is the defendant you want defended, go to someone else because the revoutionary always takes precedence over the lawyer in Kerensky. The military judges hate him!’⁸⁰ This testimony has the ring of truth, although, as we have seen, Kerensky did have his successes in court. What is perhaps more to the point here, however, is that his biographers believed their readers would be more taken by the description of a lawyer who gave priority to the revolution rather than to defending his client. In 1917 it was the image of the fiery revolutionary lawyer which was effective in underpinning his authority.

Some defendants, indeed, wanted just such a defence lawyer who shared their radical beliefs, and Kerensky’s reputation had revolutionary activists seeking him out. Yevgenia Bosh, a Bolshevik arrested in 1912, was eager to be defended by such a lawyer. Her mother wrote to Kerensky, ‘She does not want to be defended by a lawyer in whom she could not have total confidence and respect for his previous work and very much wishes to ask you to defend her.’⁸¹ She was not the only revolutionary to appeal for support to the radical barrister.

Sensational trials were widely reported in the press, and Kerensky’s reputation and influence in radical circles grew. Even in August 1917, such an opponent of the head of the Provisional Government as Sergo Ordzhonikidze recalled the Kerensky ‘who at one time, acting as a defence lawyer, forced all Russia to heed his ardent speeches.’ The prominent Bolshevik was contrasting Kerensky the earlier radical lawyer with Kerensky the minister.⁸² The political lawyer had been respected by left-wing Social Democrats too, and it is striking that, when later they were attacking Kerensky as head of the Provisional Government, they respectfully recalled this earlier period in his life.

A further contribution to spreading Kerensky’s fame across the nation was made by the events at the Lena goldfields, on which nearly all his biographers dwell. In April 1912 police and troops opened fire on strikers there and 250 people were killed. There was a public outcry and a government commission was sent to investigate. The opposition in the Duma insisted, however, that a special commission, independent of all government departments, should be established, and the money to pay for it was raised by public subscription. The commission, consisting of a number of lawyers from Moscow and Petersburg, was headed by Kerensky. The lawyers helped the workers conclude a new agreement with the company. Armand asserts that his colleagues on the commission described Kerensky as ‘a wonderful young man, but hotheaded. It is difficult to conduct an investigation if you are burning with indignation.’⁸³ Leonidov does not see this as negative, and many readers in the revolutionary era also viewed it positively. Society’s radically inclined members endorsed Kerensky’s strident denunciation of the perpetrators, even if their guilt had not been legally established. His image as a fiery tribune of the people unmasking the regime helped to establish his reputation as a politician, both before the revolution and, to an even greater extent, after it.

The investigation contributed to his reputation, even if his achievement is sometimes plainly overstated. ‘Kerensky forced the government to admit its responsibility for the atrocity, and before the truth proclaimed by Kerensky even the most dedicated servants of the fallen regime had to bow their heads,’ Leonidov declares.⁸⁴

His public speeches made the young lawyer a true celebrity, as the leaders of the Trud group noted. Some had been clients of Kerensky when he made the case for the defence in the trial of the All-Russia Peasant Union. In the autumn of 1910 prominent Trudoviks suggested he should run for election to the State Duma. Despite his links with the Socialist Revolutionaries, Kerensky accepted their suggestion and was elected as a deputy from the second municipal curia of Volsk in Saratov province, which had a reputation as a radical town.⁸⁵ Kiriakov, who is keen to emphasize the Leader’s links with the Socialist Revolutionaries, stresses that his election to the Duma was forced on him. ‘He had to go underground, to camouflage himself.’⁸⁶ His biographers try hard to demonstrate that, even as a deputy, Kerensky remained a radical. ‘In his speeches on agrarian issues, as well as those concerning workers, budgets and other matters, he was always vigilant in the interests of democracy and openly declared himself a socialist.’⁸⁷

Kerensky’s status as a member of the Duma strengthened his authority in radical circles and opened up new opportunities for political action. The young politician could never have played such a role in the February Revolution had he not been a deputy, but, within a few months of the overthrow of the monarchy, the Duma, elected on a ‘qualified’ franchise, was losing popularity with the masses, who were moving to the left. Some of Kerensky’s biographers prefer to describe his ‘parliamentary’ period as forced upon him, and even as an ordeal: ‘He felt fettered by his work in the Duma, and the need for constant interaction with the bourgeois parties was burdensome and irritating.’ They emphasize that his speeches, which sounded ‘trenchant and bold’ within the walls of the Tauride Palace, met with ‘hostility from the vast majority of those elected to the restricted-franchise Duma’ but elicited ‘a fervent response from the ranks of democracy’.⁸⁸ Kerensky’s Odessan biographer highlights his unique situation in the Duma, contrasting the radical politician with the other deputies.

He became the conscience of the Fourth Duma, one of its few bright spots. At moments when Russia’s prematurely born parliament was crushed by contempt and arrogance from the ministerial box, when the tsar’s lackeys from the podium of the State Duma derided the people’s representatives with such maxims as the notorious ‘that is how it was, and that is how it will be!’, only one voice rang out invariably firm, invariably bold and confident. That was the voice of A. F. Kerensky….

The five years of Kerensky’s battle for freedom and truth are all that can redeem the five years of lassitude and impotence of the Fourth State Duma.⁸⁹

The members of the Provisional Government, the Executive Committee of the Petrograd Soviet, and the former deputies of the State Duma – Mensheviks, Trudoviks, progressives and Constitutional Democrats – would hardly have concurred with that judgement. Nor would anyone who read the Duma reports attentively. Nevertheless, some readers of the era of revolution who were only just beginning to take an interest in politics might well have believed that Kerensky was the only real representative of the people in the restricted-franchise and ‘bourgeois’ Duma.

During the revolution, Kerensky himself described his work in the State Duma as a constant struggle against the enemies of the people. ‘For five years from this rostrum I battled with and denounced the old government. I recognize enemies of the people and I know how to deal with them,’ he declared in his speech of 26 March to the soldier’s section of the Petrograd Soviet.⁹⁰

The young lawyer very soon became the Trudoviks’ principal speaker. His meteoric rise caused alarm to some of the old guard of the Trudovnik group. Armand mentions that they periodically discussed plans to mount resistance to ‘Socialist Revolutionary domination’, but Kerensky’s authoritativeness, she claims, frustrated this. ‘His forcefulness won naturally, without tension.’⁹¹

Kerensky’s Duma speeches were quite dissimilar to the businesslike addresses of parliamentarians discussing budget and legislative bills. From the rostrum of the Duma, just as in court, he passionately denounced the regime and its servants. Kerensky was addressing his speeches not to the deputies and ministers but to the whole of Russia. The speeches were brilliant, emotive, sometimes defiant. Nor was his behaviour in the Duma chamber always in accord with standards of parliamentary decorum. An official observing the sessions noted, ‘The Duma chairman did not react to a whistle, directed at the representative of the government, which echoed round the chamber, although everybody had seen that it was Member of the Duma Kerensky who was responsible.’⁹² Unsurprisingly, he was regarded as the left-wing enfant terrible of the Duma.⁹³

The right-wingers reacted angrily to Kerensky’s impassioned speeches. There were scenes. Those chairing the sessions interrupted the speaker, deprived him of the right to speak or debarred him for several sessions. His reputation as a troublemaker could mean that quite unforeseen meanings could be read into the most innocent expressions. There was even a joke that the official preamble, ‘Honourable members of the State Duma …’, had caused the chairman to react with, ‘Member of the Duma Kerensky, I am issuing you with a first warning.’ Armand writes proudly about his insubordinate behaviour and the reaction it evoked.⁹⁴ His aggressive manner only increased respect for Kerensky in radical circles.

It is hardly surprising that his speeches provoked conflict and attracted the attention of the press. Journalists in the Duma who were hungry for sensations often reported them. Kerensky became popular and was much quoted. His influence grew, and he began chairing meetings of the Trudoviks. From 1915 he was officially their leader.⁹⁵

There were times when Kerensky was perceived as the most prominent and best known of all the left-wing deputies. Nikolai Chkheidze, the leader of the Menshevik group, was a lacklustre orator, incapable of firing up his colleagues or attracting the attention of journalists. His adherence to Marxist orthodoxy prevented him from engaging in tactical negotiations with ‘bourgeois’ groups, and, as a result, the more dynamic Kerensky sometimes conducted negotiations on behalf of both the left-wing groups – a further boost to his standing.

Not everyone was taken by the histrionic style of Kerensky’s speeches, which ran counter to traditional expectations of parliamentary oratory. Senator Nikolai Tagantsev remembered them as ‘demagogic’, and, while not denying that he had a gift for it, considered that his rhetoric was fit only for making speeches at protest rallies.⁹⁶ In 1917, of course, that kind of rhetoric was just what was needed to enthuse huge rallies. Leonidov lavishes praise on Kerensky’s oratorical style. ‘You will not find exquisite honing in the speeches the present minister made in the Duma, nor will you find oratorical flourishes. Everything is improvised. These are not speeches in the narrow, commonly understood sense: they are the howls of a rebellious, bleeding heart, the great, ardent heart of a true tribune of the people.’⁹⁷

Popular in radical circles, the Duma deputy found himself invited to all manner of meetings, assemblies and conferences. In 1913 he was elected chairman of the Fourth All-Russia Congress of Trade and Industry Workers,⁹⁸ which elicited derisive comment from right-wingers. In the Duma, Nikolai Markov characteristically declared, ‘Deputy Kerensky is, to the best of my knowledge, and to yours too, a lawyer. At all events, not just a ledger clerk. Unless a ledger clerk of a Jewish Qahal. But only in a figurative sense … Can we really allow the propaganda of the likes of Mr Kerensky in the whole society [sic] of poorly educated people?’⁹⁹ In radical circles, such speeches by the hated far-right supporters of the Black Hundreds only burnished the halo of the Trudoviks’ leader. Many people living in Russia saw Kerensky as their own defence lawyer. He received many letters from ‘unimportant people’ exposing abuses and injustices and hoping he would intercede.

Kerensky continued to involve himself in illegal and semi-legal undertakings. He had a fat dossier in the Police Department, where a close eye was kept on him, with informers being infiltrated among those close to him. In 1913 Kerensky worked with the Petersburg Collective of the Socialist Revolutionaries. Okhrana agents based in Paris even reported that he had become a member of the party’s Central Committee. The information was false but indicative of the Interior Ministry’s suspicions about him. In reality, Kerensky declined an invitation from the Socialist Revolutionaries to become their representative in the Duma, aiming instead to unify all the Narodnik groups politically. These police reports were nevertheless published by supporters of Kerensky in 1917, which may have given readers an exaggerated impression of the scale of his illegal activities. This was all to the good as far as his status was concerned.¹⁰⁰

On 23 July 1914, on the eve of the First World War, Kerensky was detained in Yekaterinburg at a gathering of teachers which had not been officially sanctioned. He was saved from actual arrest by his immunity as a Duma deputy.¹⁰¹

In 1911 or 1912, the young politician had been invited to join the Great Orient of the Peoples of Russia, a secret society established in 1910 on a basis of Masonic lodges.¹⁰² Kerensky played a major role in the organization and became both a member of the Supreme Council of Lodges and, in 1916, its secretary (a position he may still have been holding in early 1917). A historian of Freemasonry even writes of this as Kerensky’s organization, seeing the Great Orient of the Peoples of Russia as distinct from Russian Freemasonry in the preceding period.¹⁰³

To what extent did the Freemasons contribute to Kerensky’s advancement? The lawyer Alexander Galpern, who replaced him as secretary of the Supreme Council and became the Provisional Government’s principal civil servant, recalled: ‘It was, after all, we ourselves who put him forward and indeed created him, so it is we who bear responsibility for him.’¹⁰⁴ If the Masons advanced Kerensky’s career, the popular politician for his part was exceptionally important for the brothers, who were seeking to enrol influential people in their ranks. He was an important figure in the public eye before joining the lodge.

Kerensky’s biographers had nothing to say in 1917 about his being a Mason. There was almost no discussion of Freemasonry at the time, although a febrile public was susceptible to suggestions of conspiracy. All manner of conspiracy theories were, in fact, used by both the left and right wings for political mobilization. The sympathy of foreign Masonic organizations for the anti-monarchist revolution in Russia was well known, and it was even possible to read about ties between the Masons and Kerensky in the newspapers. On 24 May a newspaper of the Ministry of War, which Kerensky by this time headed, published greetings from Italian members of the International Mixed Scottish Masonic Rite to ‘renewed Russia’. The addressee was the Russian minister of war. The Italian Freemasons congratulated the Russian people ‘on their deliverance from traitors to their homeland who had sought to compel Russia to conclude a shameful peace.’ They expressed the hope that the Russian army ‘will make every effort to bring the war to a victorious conclusion’ and invited ‘all our Russian colleagues to join with the Italian Masons for the joint dissemination of our shared ideals.’¹⁰⁵

One can only speculate as to why this address from the Italian Freemasons to their ‘Russian colleagues’ was not exploited by Kerensky’s opponents (among whom were ‘brothers’ who were to become the minister’s foes after February and right-wingers who had been furiously decrying ‘Yid Freemason plots’ before the revolution). At all events, the revolutionary minister’s Freemasonry had no obvious impact on his public image in 1917.

Of no small importance to Kerensky’s reputation were some trials in which he was not personally engaged. In 1911–13 Russia was greatly exercised by the case of Menahem Beilis, a Kievan Jew accused of ritual murder. Senior officials in the Interior Ministry and the Ministry of Justice exerted pressure on the investigation, and right-wingers unleashed anti-Semitic propaganda in the Black Hundred press and the State Duma. In such a situation the code of conduct of a radical intellectual called for resolute action.

Leftists, liberals and even some conservatives launched a campaign in defence of Beilis, and Kerensky made a speech in the Duma about the trial on 23 October 1913. That same day a meeting was held of barristers of the St Petersburg Circuit of the Courts of Justice. Radical lawyers turned a routine meeting into a political rally. Having mobilized their supporters, who came to the meeting in large numbers, Kerensky and Nikolai Sokolov insisted on a discussion of the Beilis case. A resolution was adopted condemning ‘violations of the foundations of justice’ by the government.

Those who had organized the protest were accused both of contempt of court and the Russian government and of attempting to influence the outcome of an ongoing trial. The government attempted to deprive Kerensky of his immunity from prosecution as a Duma deputy, and the minister of justice, Ivan Shcheglovitov, informed the chairman of the Duma that Kerensky was required in court to face criminal charges. The Duma Commission on Personnel Matters decided by a majority vote that Kerensky could not be expelled from the Duma.¹⁰⁶ In June 1914 the court reached its verdict in the case of the Petersburg lawyers, and Kerensky was sentenced to eight months’ imprisonment. He continued, however, to be protected by his immunity as a deputy. Banquets were organized in his honour, telegrams of greetings were sent to him, and like-minded deputies gave the leader of the Trudoviks a standing ovation in the Duma.¹⁰⁷ Kerensky’s biographers write about this episode but do not always mention his parliamentary privilege, which might have given readers the impression that he had actually been in prison for that length of time.

Kerensky’s attitude to the First World War was of great importance for his career, but some biographers simply omit to mention it. In 1917 Russian society was completely split over this issue, so, for any statesman seeking to create a broad political coalition, being pinned down on the matter could only have adverse consequences. In his memoirs, Kerensky describes his position as simultaneously defencist and revolutionary. These apparently contradictory positions he reconciled on the basis that it was essential to overthrow the tsarist government because it was not competent to win the war.¹⁰⁸

It was impossible for him to adopt that position publicly. Nevertheless, as leader of the Trudovik group, he had no option but to state his position on the war at an emergency meeting of the State Duma on 26 July 1914. In his speech Kerensky declared:

Citizens of Russia, remember that you have no enemies among the working classes of the belligerent countries. Defending to the utmost everything you hold dear from attempts to seize it, remember that this terrible war would not have come about if liberty, equality and fraternity were guiding the actions of the governments of all countries. All you who desire the happiness and prosperity of Russia, heighten your resolve, summon up all your strength and, having successfully defended your country, liberate it. To you, our brothers, shedding your blood for your own motherland, we bow low and send fraternal greetings!

It was a skilfully constructed speech, acceptable to the radical intelligentsia because its call to defend the country could be read as a signal to liberate it politically. The patriotic pathos of the speech earned Kerensky applause from all sides of the Duma. Indeed, his speech was interrupted by applause, in which even right-wing deputies joined.¹⁰⁹

In the course of devising autobiographical sources of legitimation in 1917, Kerensky could not avoid the topic of the war, and when it was tactically to his advantage he could even present himself as an internationalist. Addressing the First All-Russia Congress of Soviets on 4 June, he declared, ‘From the very beginning of the war, at the first session of the State Duma on 20 July 1914, we and the Social Democrats in Russia were the first – remember this – the only parties in Europe to vote publicly against military appropriations.’ This claim was greeted with applause.¹¹⁰ Remembering the past in this manner was what that particular audience at that particular moment wanted to hear.

Kerensky publicly condemned chauvinism and criticized all the governments of Europe for unleashing war, but, most importantly, he never omitted to harshly attack the Russian government. He did not exclude the possibility of a civil truce within the country but made it conditional on the introduction of a whole raft of reforms. At other times he was more radical. His Trudovik colleague Vladimir Stankevich, who was close to him, described Kerensky’s position as ‘contributing to the war effort by criticizing the government.’ Kerensky was influenced by the decisions of the Zimmerwald International Socialist Conference held in September 1915, and he would often use the phraseology of the internationalists, even while remaining a defencist who never stopped opposing the government. When it was to his advantage Kerensky would even describe himself as ‘a left-wing Zimmerwaldian’. This was untrue, although some of his contemporaries did believe he was opposed to the war.¹¹¹ Depending on the situation, seeking to create the widest possible coalition against the government, Kerensky could express different views, adapting what he said to his audience.

At illegal meetings Kerensky found himself under pressure from radically minded Socialist Revolutionaries who were conducting anti-war propaganda, and would use words they would find persuasive. With time, however, his differences with the internationalist wing of the Socialist Revolutionaries became more marked.¹¹² He wanted to create a ‘red’ or ‘left’ bloc uniting all socialists, whatever their attitude to the war.¹¹³ In his public speeches he took every opportunity to denounce the government – common ground for all the forces he was trying to bring together.

Together with Nikolai Sokolov, Kerensky organized the legal defence of five Bolshevik deputies of the Duma who had been arrested in November 1914. From the tribune of the Duma he protested against the arrest of ‘our comrades’ and headed a group of radical lawyers who defended these Social Democrats in court. He continued subsequently to demand the release of ‘the five’.¹¹⁴ The celebrated memoirist Nikolai Sukhanov, a Menshevik internationalist, recalled that Kerensky behaved like a professional revolutionary. He used his trips around the country as a Duma deputy for illegal work, delivering public lectures, helping to organize opposition, supporting it with funds provided by his liberal friends. This was not something which could remain unnoticed. The right-wing politician Nikolai Tikhmenev wrote: ‘The revolutionaries’ leaders, the likes of Kerensky, are busily travelling round Russia delivering talks and lectures, and in the meantime evidently arranging a bit of this and a bit of that. Financed by murky sources, new social-democratic newspapers are popping up like bubbles out of the mud in provincial towns. The insolence of the “progressive” press is on the increase.’¹¹⁵ Kerensky’s opponents in the Duma may have exaggerated the scope and results of his activities, but his renown was increasing all the time. His connections with those in the underground, and his reputation as someone with those links, were of importance to him during the events of February 1917.

Kerensky, as we have noted, did not confine his illegal activity only to supporting Socialist Revolutionaries. Meetings aimed at bringing about unity among the left-wing organizations took place in his own apartment. On 16–17 July 1915 a conference of representatives of the Narodnik groups of Petrograd (as St Petersburg had been renamed at the outbreak of war), Moscow and the provinces was held there. The police considered Kerensky to be the prime mover of this meeting, at which a central bureau was established to coordinate the activities of the Trudoviks, the People’s Socialists and the Socialist Revolutionaries. Disagreements on the issue of the war, together with police harassment, prevented the union from becoming a reality. Meetings of the capital’s Socialist Revolutionaries also took place in Kerensky’s apartment, as the secret police were well aware. In July 1915, police posts on the Russo-Finnish border received a secret order advising them that Kerensky was travelling around the empire, ‘engaging in anti-government activity’. They were instructed to keep him under observation. After the revolution this document was put up at Beloostrov railway station at the Finnish border for the public to see, as publications supportive of Kerensky duly reported.¹¹⁶

The police exaggerated the role of the Trudovik leader in organizing protest. A report from the director of the Police Department linked the strikes of summer 1915 to Kerensky’s propaganda activity, claiming he had called for the establishment of factory collectives to form soviets along the lines of those which had appeared in 1905. In the report Kerensky was named as ‘the principal leader of the current revolutionary movement’. In reality, Kerensky and Chkheidze had urged the workers not to waste their energy on individual strikes but to prepare for future decisive action against the regime. After February 1917, police assessments of this kind, even if factually erroneous, were all to the good of the reputation of the champion of freedom. Newspapers published such documents, provided by Kerensky’s supporters who had the archives under their control. His biographers readily quoted from them.¹¹⁷

Kerensky’s wartime experience was important training for the politician. He tried persistently, if not always successfully, to reconcile fundamentally different political forces in order to enable them the better to fight their common enemy, the existing regime. He kept his position on the most controversial issue – his attitude towards the war – unclear, and at times in front of different audiences described it in different ways or with different emphases. It would, nevertheless, be a mistake to classify Kerensky as a centrist. His behaviour was more a matter of pragmatic ideological flexibility, sincere if bordering on opportunism. This ambiguity prevented him from becoming the leader of any one party, but it also meant he was welcome in very diverse circles, which was crucial for someone attempting to broker interparty agreements and who saw his mission as being to build a broad coalition of oppositionists.

It is not easy to assess Kerensky’s actual contribution to organizing the underground. Michael Melancon, a historian of the Socialist Revolutionary Party, believes the clandestine revolutionaries used Kerensky and the resources he controlled but rejected him as a leader.¹¹⁸

Other illegals also discussed relations with Kerensky, whose influence was on the increase. Revolutionaries were no doubt also attracted by the money at his disposal. Alexander Shlyapnikov seems to have raised the question of possibly making use of these resources with Vladimir Lenin. In his reply in September 1915, the Bolshevik leader characterized Kerensky as a ‘revolutionary chauvinist’ with whom it was impossible to enter into any alliance but with whom there could be cooperation in technical matters. Lenin’s letter can be interpreted both as a recommendation to make use of Kerensky’s resources and as a call for joint action to achieve the destruction of the regime. ‘Our relations should be direct and clear: you want to overthrow tsarism to gain a victory over Germany, while we are working for the international revolution of the proletariat.’¹¹⁹ As we see, the possibilities for a broad front of the forces of the opposition which Kerensky was trying to create could have included the Bolsheviks. The experience of negotiations during the war, even those which were unsuccessful, did influence the behaviour of its members during the February Days and what they had to say about each other. The initial restraint shown by some of the Bolsheviks in their criticism of Kerensky may have gone back to joint initiatives in the years before the revolution.

During 1917, other Bolsheviks recalled their contacts with Kerensky. For example, at the end of August, Ivan Skvortsov-Stepanov published an article in which he touched on the career of Kerensky, who by then was already the head of the Provisional Government. The Bolshevik recalled a meeting with him in November 1916, by which time Stepanov believed the Trudovik leader had moved to the left. Nevertheless, he claims, Kerensky believed the hand of the Okhrana and imperial court, which he considered Germanophile, was behind workers’ unrest.¹²⁰ We might take this as an attempt by a prominent Bolshevik to discredit the head of the Provisional Government by suggesting Kerensky had failed to understand the real mood of the workers, and hence was questioning the democratic credentials of the leader of the February Revolution. The article can, however, be read in a different way, with even Kerensky’s political opponents, the Bolsheviks, acknowledging his involvement in the activities of the illegals. This could only be to the benefit of his standing.

Other actions during the war redounded to Kerensky’s credit. Well informed about the mood among the illegals, he urged the liberals to give no quarter in the fight against the regime and insisted that the country was on the brink of revolution. Most of them thought he was being overly optimistic,¹²¹ but after the downfall of the tsar the Trudovik leader’s surmises were sometimes treated as infallible predictions.

During the war years Kerensky’s popularity grew steadily, aided by his speeches in the Duma. Banning them from publication only drew attention to them, and they were distributed in handwritten copies or as typewritten texts. Illegal organizations issued leaflets quoting them. After February 1917 the speeches were printed, and boosted his reputation as an opponent of the old regime, endowed moreover with the gift of prophecy.

In 1915 a former police officer, Sergey Myasoyedov, was executed. He had been falsely accused by the General Headquarters of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief of spying for Germany. It was intended that the spymania campaign, instigated by the High Command, would divert public opinion from the bungling of the military leadership.¹²² The Myasoyedov Affair – and people from all parts of the political spectrum were convinced of his guilt – unleashed a deluge of conspiracy theories which proved a helpful propaganda asset. Right-wingers emphasized that Myasoyedov was married to a Jewish woman and had business connections with Jewish entrepreneurs, while left-wingers pointed to the officer’s past in the police. Kerensky successfully exploited the Myasoyedov Affair to denounce ‘treason at the highest levels’. As a deputy, he wrote to the chairman of the Duma, Mikhail Rodzyanko, demanding the immediate reconvening of the Duma. Without providing any evidence, Kerensky wrote that ‘treason has built its nest’ in the Interior Ministry, where, he alleged, ‘a robust organization of full-blown traitors were calmly and confidently at work.’ These forces, he declared, were attempting to ‘stymie a successful conclusion of the conflict abroad in the interests of the enemy.’ Kerensky was not making the accusation against a particular group of top officials in the ministry but denouncing this extremely powerful ministry as a whole. ‘The leading circles of the Interior Ministry are in very close touch with a highly influential political tendency in Russia which considers it a matter of the utmost urgency to restore swiftly a close unity with the government in Berlin.’ To save the country was the duty of those elected by the people. ‘The State Duma must do everything to defend the nation from a shameful stab in the back.’¹²³ Kerensky’s letter gained widespread distribution, with some people writing it out in full in their diaries. According to the police, the letter was the subject of lively debate in politically engaged student circles, leaflets with the text were distributed at Petrograd University, and left-wing student groups – social democrats and internationalist Socialist Revolutionaries – tried to use it as anti-war propaganda.¹²⁴ Even the Bolsheviks published it.¹²⁵ It was distributed in Moscow, Kharkov, Kiev, Kronshtadt and at the front, and it was also translated into Estonian.¹²⁶

The climate of increasing spymania and xenophobia during the war caused competing conspiracy theories to spring up. Almost all the political parties made use of Germanophobia for their own purposes, although right-wing theories were tinged with anti-Semitism and Anglophobia. The opposition talked ever more insistently about a ‘German party’ at court who were angling for a separate peace, and rumours spread about the ‘empress’s plot’.¹²⁷ After the revolution, the most far-out conspiracy theories had conferred on them the status of proven fact, and those who had come up with them and spread them assumed the reputation of courageous patriots who had exposed the treacheries of the old regime. Hatred of the police force, which was abolished after the February Revolution, contributed, in the light of Kerensky’s ‘exposure’ of the would-be conspiracy at the Interior Ministry, to further increasing the popularity of the revolutionary minister.

Creating his own version of a ‘stab in the back of the Russian army’, Kerensky discredited the conspiracy theories of his adversaries. During the war, right-wing politicians and high-ranking military officers spread rumours that, at the front line, practically the entire Jewish population was spying for the enemy and, in the Jewish shtetl of Kuzhi, Jews allegedly even opened fire on Russian troops. Kerensky travelled to Kuzhi and conducted an investigation, on the basis of which in the Duma he called the accusation a vile slander.¹²⁸ One of his 1917 biographers also writes about the Kuzhi investigation.¹²⁹ A reputation as a defender of national minorities was a considerable asset after February 1917.

During the revolution, journalists supportive of Kerensky recalled another earlier episode. In 1916 many residents of Kazakhstan and Central Asia were conscripted to work in the rear, following which there was an uprising accompanied by bloody ethnic conflicts. It was brutally suppressed by Russian troops. Kerensky, having lived in Tashkent in his youth, and feeling himself a ‘Turkestani’, took these events very much to heart and, together with Duma deputies representing the empire’s Muslim population, travelled to Turkestan.¹³⁰ On his return to the capital, he talked about his trip at a closed session of Duma deputies. Giving his interpretation of this complex conflict, he ascribed all the region’s ills to the foolish actions of the tsarist administration. There was, in fact, no denying the incompetence of the government, and after February 1917 Kerensky’s version of events was just what people wanted to hear. The old regime got the blame for everything that had gone wrong. His expedition to Turkestan enhanced Kerensky’s standing with the Muslim intelligentsia, and this was manifested in 1917 when the Central Bureau of Russian Muslims and the Muslim Committee in Moscow gave him a rousing welcome.¹³¹

Leonidov, in his biographical sketch, even insists that it was thanks to Kerensky’s decisive actions that the situation in the region had not deteriorated further in 1916. ‘When these regrettable events were playing out, Kerensky had yet to recover from a serious operation. Straight out of bed, still unwell, in defiance of all the prohibitions of his doctors, he set off to try to persuade General Kuropatkin that he should not turn the formerly loyal peoples of Turkestan into rebels and not allow Russia, which was engaged in fighting a foreign enemy, to trample this peaceful outlying region underfoot.’¹³²

The mention of illness needs elaboration. Doctors discovered Kerensky was suffering from renal tuberculosis, and he had a kidney removed on 16 March 1916 in a clinic in the Finnish resort of Bad Grankulla. For several months his ability to work was severely impaired, and even in early 1917 many people noticed he was looking very unwell. He received numerous letters and telegrams wishing him a speedy recovery.¹³³ Journalists and writers did their best to give him support. These included the economist Ber Brutskus, the publisher and political activist Yakov Sakker, the poet Sergey Yesenin, the writer Alexey Chapygin and the essayist Dmitry Filosofov. Among those urging him to get well soon was his biographer Lidiya Armand. Collective letters from groups of students give a sense of the reputation Kerensky enjoyed among radically inclined young people. An open meeting of students at Moscow University sent greetings to their ‘greatly esteemed comrade’ and expressed the hope that they would soon be able to hear the ‘ardent words of a true representative of Russian democracy’. Participants in an open meeting of students of the Psychoneurological Institute sent congratulations on the occasion of his recovery to the ‘courageous tribune of the people’ and also hoped they would soon again hear the ‘strong, ardent words of the deputy who defends the cherished aspirations of Russian democracy.’ Kerensky was sent good wishes also by the Social Democratic bloc in the Duma, the Jewish Democratic group, and the Trudovik fraction.¹³⁴ Many of those who sent good wishes after his operation went on to support Kerensky politically in 1917 after he had become a minister. It was testimony not only to Kerensky’s authority but also to the emotional ties between the Leader and his supporters. This sympathy for Kerensky when he was ill, as we shall see, also influenced the formation of images of the Leader during the revolution.

Returning to the matter of how well informed Kerensky was, we should mention that he also knew of plans for a coup d’état which were being made in political and military circles. He later recalled: ‘We too, the leaders of the Masonic organization, knew of the conspiracy and, although unaware of all the details, also prepared for the decisive moment.’ Kerensky was himself present at some of the conspirators’ meetings. On one occasion he had a visit from officers intent on arresting the tsar who wanted to enlist his support.¹³⁵ The fact that various groups involved in complicated political intrigues wanted to involve Kerensky is testimony to his reputation and influence. Later Kerensky himself admitted he had been hoping for a coup as early as 1915.¹³⁶ These episodes, however, did not feature prominently in efforts to boost his reputation in 1917.

We find Kerensky under consideration for possible inclusion in a new government in the event of a change of regime.¹³⁷ Rumours to that effect circulated widely, and it is noteworthy that even Lenin in Switzerland was writing in early 1917 about the possibility of a government being established in Russia by Milyukov and Guchkov or by Milyukov and Kerensky.¹³⁸ Kerensky’s growing authority was even more evident to the political elite of Petrograd.

By the beginning of 1917 Kerensky was in a unique situation. His social position, his personal qualities and the resources he had at his disposal made him welcome in highly diverse political circles whose representatives rarely had any contact with each other. Kerensky was both a parliamentarian and a lawyer; he associated with Freemasons and the political underground. His status as a member of the Duma, his parliamentary immunity, his knowledgeability and his fame enabled him to render effective assistance, without undue personal risk, to those in the underground. His position as someone with access to the world of the illegals made him interesting and respected by politicians who confined themselves to legal activities. In different ways and for different groups he was the mouthpiece of public opinion, a source of influence, a moral authority and a well-informed expert. The peculiarities of the political system which had developed in 1905–7 and during the war made it possible for Kerensky to act in such diverse roles at the same time, but only someone endowed with exceptional personal and professional qualities could have taken advantage of these opportunities.

Kerensky was at the centre of diverse political coalitions which united some who supported preservation of the empire and federalists; opponents of the war and defencists; and various kinds of monarchists and republicans of many hues. It is tempting to explain this as having been achieved through Masonic connections, but it needs to be said that such an ‘explanation’ is no more than an intellectual skeleton key. Conspiracy theories can be used to explain any social occurrence, but their cognitive value is minimal. It is more useful to observe here that Kerensky was greatly assisted simply by his non-partisan, non-factional status. He was not signed up to any party programme, and his non-partisanship was most dramatically evident in his attitude to the war. At different times and in different companies he expressed different views, and this cannot always be explained away as political mimicry. As a politician, he was striving – sometimes perhaps instinctively – to create a broad, flexible ideological framework conducive to achieving his unwavering goal of a revolution during the war. For some of Kerensky’s negotiating partners this was revolution in order to continue successful prosecution of the war; for others it was in order to bring the war to an end. It was not only Kerensky who engaged in forming such associations, but his role was highly noticeable. This practice at creating coalitions out of such ill-assorted constituents was of great value to Kerensky during the revolution in his negotiations with representatives of very diverse elites.

Kerensky’s experience as a defence barrister in political trials and as a radical deputy in the State Duma was important for creating his public persona and for consolidating his authority as a tribune of the people and fighter for workers’ rights, as well as for his position as a champion of the law, a defender of national minorities, and a representative of the radical intelligentsia in the realm of big politics. All these facets of Kerensky’s image came into play at the time of the February Revolution.