Kerensky briefly led from the democratic centre, neither Fascist nor Communist

Kerensky made regular visits to the WW1 Front, to encourage Russian troops. 
WW1Live

In light of the polarisation of many nations’ politics since the 1990s, we all expect left wing and right wing extremists to attack each other. But why can't we expect Socialist Intel­l­ectuals (moderately leftist) and Progressive Conservatives (moderately rightist) to cooperate to form solid governments around the Centre?  Can we find a cen­tralist leader who tried to protect his Parliamentary democracy from the extreme right and left?

Alexander Kerensky (1881-1970) was born in Simbirsk, son of teacher Fyodor Kerensky who later became In­s­pect­or of Public Schools. Al­ex­ander moved to Tashkent with his family as a schoolboy. Then he went on to St Peters­burg Uni to do hist­ory and later law, grad­uating in 1904. Kerensky soon married Olga Lvovna Baranovskaya, a Russian Gen­eral’s daughter, and had two sons.

How was Kerensky politicised? Bloody Sunday in 1905 was a protest march in St Pet­ersburg led by a workers’ organ­isation, the Assembly of Russian Factory and Plant Workers. c200,000 mar­chers went to the Wint­er Palace to pres­ent pet­itions to Tsar Nicholas II, but soon 1,000 protest­ors were shot. Anger spread throughout Russia with more strikes and mar­ches, and in march the univ­ersities were shut down by radicals. In July, sailors on the battleship Potemkin mutinied in Odessa. Odessa’s citizens turned out to support the sail­ors and many were massacred en route to the wharf.

In St Petersburg Leon Trotsky set up a Soviet Workers’ Council to organ­ise opposition to the Tsar, but Trotsky and his supp­or­ters were soon imp­risoned. A revolutionary spirit arose, but it lacked the necessary cent­ral organis­at­ion to overthrow the government. After the lim­ited reforms of 1905 when a political amnesty was granted, Vladimir Lenin briefly returned to Russia from Geneva. Then he left again when the Tsarists cracked down on dissid­ents.

Any protest was met with a brutal resp­onse and anti-Semitic pog­roms in­creased. In Odessa in 1905 c2,500 Jews were killed in a single day; Kishin­ev had two pogroms; in Mariupol had one shocking pogrom.

Tsar Nicholas II, Lenin, Trotsky, Kerensky

Tsar Nicholas II had to deter a revolution. He promised to allow the creation of a State Duma, but the proposed Duma limit­at­ions led to further protests. In Oct 1905 a gen­er­al strike was called. Rel­uct­­antly Tsar Nicholas drafted the October Manifesto, ref­orm meas­ures that would grant civil rights, free political parties, uni­ver­s­al suffrage and the estab­lishment of the Duma as the nat­ional assembly.

Ker­ensky was clearly politicised by the appalling events of 1905 and, as a young lawyer, keenly defended revolution­aries accused of political offences.

The next big step occurred at the Lena River Gold­fields in 1912. Kerensky was asked to report on the Im­p­er­ial Russian Army’s massacre of hundreds of strik­ing gold­field wor­k­­ers. He took part in heroic organ­is­ations eg Aid Com­m­it­tee for the Vict­ims of Bloody Sunday and contributed to the revolutionary soc­ial­ist press. Across Russia he def­ended poor and oppressed peasants from Rom­an­ov injustices.

In 1912 Kerensky was elected to the Fourth Duma, for the democratic socialist Labour Party. He united the anti-monarchy forces, intend­ing to form a newly democratic Russia. In May 1914, Keren­sky asked Tsar Nicholas II to make these vital changes in the domestic pol­icy:
restoring Finland’s Const­it­ut­ion,
decl­ar­ing an am­nesty for polit­ic­al pris­on­ers,
announ­cing Polish aut­on­omy,
ban­n­ing restrict­ions against ethnic min­orit­ies,
ensuring religious tol­er­an­ce and
end­ing harass­ment of legal trade union bodies.

Kerensky was a part of the Socialist Revolutionaries, the Petrog­rad/St Peter­s­burg Sov­iet, seen as a strong symbol of workers and of soldiers. In the new Duma in Nov 1916, he pub­licly criticised the Imperial ministers. When the Feb Revolution of 1917 broke out, he pub­lic­ly advocated the dissolution of the mon­ar­chy. He was ren­own­ed for his personal­ity, stirring speeches, commitment to coal­it­ion gov­ern­­ment and to Russia’s continued WW1 involvement.

In March 1917, when the tsar's government collapsed, Duma members set up the Provisional Government. Ker­en­s­ky took up one of the most important positions, as Minister of Just­ice. He success­ful­ly ab­ol­ished capital punish­ment, remov­ed ethnic and religious discrim­in­at­ions, and made reforms in the Tsarist legal code. My family were all delighted!

In May, Kerensky faced severe problems as the war policy created many divisions among the ministers and eventually some made an exit from the Provisional Government. He was then made the Minis­ter of War and was joined by six other socialists for the cause. He openly supported Russia’s continued involvement in WWl.

After the Provisional Government collapsed in July 1917, Kerensky’s oratory skills and popularity became influential, allow­ing him to replace Georgy Lvov as prime minister.

Prime Minister Kerensky dismissed the Commander in Chief, Gen Kornilov, in Sept 1917 and had him replaced. This created major rifts within the right wing of the government. Then Kerensky re­fused to imp­lement radical changes in social and economic pro­gram­mes as dem­anded by the left wing, thus annoying them as well. As a res­ult, when the Bolsh­eviks threw him out and seized power in late 1917, he failed to gather any forces to defend his govern­ment. The Communist Left and the White Fascist Right were equally anti-democratic.

How much dislike of the Provis­ional Government in Russia was there then? Apart from the rich and a few senior offic­ers, there was precious little. But the political environment in Russia re­mained tense and the newly formed gov­ernment was over­thrown by the Lenin-led Bolsheviks in Nov the same year, after the October Revolution.

 Prime Minister Kerensky (second from right) and his ministers, 1917

After the Bolsheviks seized government, Kerensky gathered some loyal troops and tried to regain his lost government. When this failed, the ex-prime minister had to stay hidden, until he could flee the country.

How did such an educated, literate and compassionate man last such a short time as a Provisional Government minister? Kerensky promoted legislation that any intelligent centralist would have ad­mired. He owed his position to his embrace of the February Revolution, but for the right, the rev­olution was too radical; for the left, too bourgeois. He’d wanted to harmonise the interests of landowners and peasants, workers and bosses. Apparently an im­p­ossible task.

Kerensky divorced and later re-married an Australian, Lydia Nell Tritton. They lived in Paris until the Nazis occupied the city in 1940, then fled to the USA and Australia. He was buried in London in 1970.

Take note, countries that have right wing leaders (eg Brasil, USA, Hungary etc) or left wing leaders (Belarus, North Korea etc). Only in the centre can a Parliament represent all the population.