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The writing of this book has been a long and tortuous process, and my enthusiasm for it was not shared by all my colleagues. One distinguished scholar suggested that, if I was going to write a biography, Tsereteli was a more interesting and thoughtful personality. But it was not Kerensky’s life I wanted to study. I have never seen myself as someone else’s biographer. What interested me was what had been written and said, what words had been used, about Kerensky and other political leaders during the 1917 revolution, because I believe that brings out important aspects of how the revolution proceeded.

The topic captured my imagination in the mid-1980s, the historical sources themselves propelling me in that direction. I was astonished by how the rapturous language used to describe the revolutionary leaders in 1917 anticipated the extolling of the Soviet leaders in the 1930s, and I thought it could not simply be written off as evidence of coercion. Zinaïda Gippius’s Blue Book made a powerful impression. It is based largely on the author’s diary and illustrates the changing attitude of a section of the intelligentsia towards Kerensky. People who in spring 1917 were busily and creatively contributing to the cult of a Leader and saviour were, by the autumn, reviling the very leader they had set up: Kerensky was now the main, if not, indeed, the sole, culprit for the political crisis. They appeared quite unaware of any responsibility on their part for the actions of their anointed.

I had a similar reaction when I heard the recrimination in the late perestroika period. ‘I so loved Gorbachev,’ one good lady in Moscow told me with a sigh. She sounded like a young girl disenchanted with the object of her infatuation. She sounded like those people who see their way out of a crisis by bestowing on some new messianic Leader all manner of powers and authority, only later to berate him as they absolve themselves of all blame. I have been publishing since 1991 on Kerensky’s various public images and have been gratified that some of my research has struck readers as having a bearing on the present.

Many people have taken an interest in my work, and there are many I need to thank for their help.

Alexey Miller and Vladimir Chernyaev were the benign, interested and critical readers of this book, and their comments and advice were exceptionally important for me.

Different versions of chapters, and subsequently the book in its entirety, have been discussed at meetings of the History Faculty of the European University at St Petersburg and the Department of the History of Revolutions and Social Movements of the St Petersburg History Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences. I am grateful to Tamara Abrosimova, Alfrid Bustanov, Boris Dubentsov, Mikhail Krom, Vladimir Lapin, Nikolai Mikhailov, Anatoly Pinsky, Natalia Potapova, Pavel Rogoznyi, Yuliya Safronova, Nikolai Smirnov, Konstantin Tarasov, Igal Halfin and Samuel Hirst, who made valuable contributions in these discussions.

Dietrich Beyrau, I. F. Danilova, Victor Kelner, Louise McReynolds, Jan Plamper and Valeriy Sazhin all read chapters of the book, and their advice and comments have been a great help. Collaborating with Murray Frame, Melissa Stockdale and Steven Marks on editing a volume in an international project on the history of the First World War and revolution in Russia taught me a great deal. The advice of the other project participants, notably Anthony Heywood, David McDonald, John Steinberg and Christopher Read, was very helpful.

At various stages in my research I have presented my results at conferences and colloquia. The comments of Vladislav Aksyonov, Jörg Baberowski, Vladimir Buldakov, Ziva Galili, Klaus Gestwa, Katharina Kucher, Daniel Orlovsky, Mark Steinberg, Tanja Penter, Orlando Figes, Jutta Scherrer, Ingrid Schierle and Laura Engelstein were very important. I discussed many aspects of my research with William Rosenberg and was constantly aware of his support.

My consultations with Alla Lapidus, Irina Lukka and Olga Novikova were extremely useful. Dmitry Aziatsev, Vladislav Aksyonov, Alexander Astashov, Mikhail Bezrodny, Marina Vitukhnovskaya, Alexey Gnoevykh, Konstantin Godunov, Alexander Danilevsky, Ilia Doronchenkov, Boris Kotov, Alexander Medyakov, Andrey Nikolaev, Margarita Pavlova, Pavel Rogozny, Nikolai Rodin, Alexander Sokolov, Konstantin Tarasov, Yana Guzey, Yelizaveta Zhdankova, Ella Saginadze and Alexander Reznik all helped me to assemble materials.

Topics which subsequently morphed into paragraphs of the book were discussed in seminars attended by Felix Yakubson, Viktor Voronkov, Vladimir Gelman, Yelena Zdravomyslova, Maria Matskevich, Andrey Stolyarov, Dmitry Travin and Sergey Shelin. Remarks by sociologists, political scientists, journalists, writers and directors gave me a different perspective on my research.

My administrative experience as a provost of the European University at St Petersburg gave me new insights into political history, and my conversations with the university’s rector, Professor Oleg Kharkhordin, constantly stimulated me to reflect on the practical application of political philosophy.

I am grateful to Victor Pleshkov, Nikolai Smirnov and other members of the administrative staff of the St Petersburg Institute of History of the Russian Academy of Sciences for their unfailing support.

I thank the senior staff of the European University at St Petersburg for granting me sabbatical leave, which gave me the opportunity to concentrate on this research project.

The support of the Kone Foundation and the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies at the University of Helsinki enabled me to work in Finnish libraries and archives in 2013.

A grant from the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft) and the support of the Institute for Eastern European History at the University of Tübingen gave me the opportunity to work for three months in German libraries in 2016.

I thank Irina Zhdanova and Anna Abashina, who edited this book, for their advice and comments.

I am constantly conscious of the support of my wife. ‘If my husband is looking out of the window, that does not mean he is not working,’ Katya will sometimes tell people. I am proud that, after some entirely understandable doubts, she has come to this view. Moreover, she has sought, if not always successfully, to defend my card indexes from the onslaught of our granddaughters, Faina and Taisia. I am, of course, gratified that the youngest members of my family are showing so much interest at such an early age in my old-fashioned research laboratory.

As my work on this book was nearing completion, my thoughts were constantly turning to Rafail Ganelin, who died in 2014. He was a most remarkable researcher and a wise person who did a great deal for generations of historians of Leningrad/St Petersburg. I am one of those he helped, and without his support my academic career would have been different. His advice saved me from many errors and blunders. I dedicate this book to the memory of Rafail Sholomovich Ganelin.