Aleksandr Kerensky

Aleksandr Kerensky (1881-1970), Russian revolutionary leader, who headed the provisional government before the Bolshevik takeover in November 1917.

Kerensky was born on May 4, 1881, in Simbirsk, and educated at the University of St Petersburg. In his youth he secretly joined the Socialist Revolutionary party, which at that time was officially banned as subversive. Publicly, he declared himself a member of the Group of Toil, a moderate legal political party; and in 1912, as a representative of that group, he was elected a deputy to the Duma. In March 1917, after the overthrow of the Tsar and the establishment of a provisional republican government, Kerensky was appointed minister of justice, and two months later he became minister of war. In June he attempted to rally the troops for an offensive against the Germans, but large numbers of soldiers refused to obey their officers, left their posts, and returned to their homes. In the reorganization of the government that followed, Kerensky became provisional Prime Minister of Russia.

One of Kerensky's first acts as Prime Minister was the suppression of the Bolshevik party led by Lenin. Lenin went into hiding in Finland; other Bolshevik leaders, including Leon Trotsky, were arrested. Kerensky's failure to counteract the steady deterioration in the economic and military situation of the country, however, enabled the Bolsheviks to undermine his government and to usurp power for the soviets, or councils, of workers, soldiers, and peasants, establishing a governmental structure parallel to that of the provisional government.

On the political right, Kerensky was beset by monarchists and other counter-revolutionaries, who sought to crush the revolution. In September, when the commander in chief of the Russian armies, General Lavr Georgiyevich Kornilov, attempted to march on the capital and establish himself as a military dictator, Kerensky failed to take decisive measures; the attempted coup was aborted by the action of the Bolsheviks, who utilized the advantages accruing to them from that initiative to seize power on November 7, 1917. Kerensky, who in the meantime had gone to the front in an effort to win support among the troops, organized a military force and attempted to capture Petrograd (now St Petersburg), but the troops refused to fight. He fled to Paris, where he led several anti-Bolshevik organizations and for some years edited the newspaper Dni. He eventually settled in the United States, where he lectured on political and social science. His writings include Prelude to Bolshevism (1919), The Catastrophe (1927), The Crucifixion of Liberty (1934), and Russia and History's Turning Point (1965), a memoir updating some of his earlier work. He died in New York on June 11, 1970.