Alexander Kerensky

Family background and early life

Alexander Fyodorovich Kerensky was born on 4 May [O.S. 22 April] 1881 in Simbirsk (now Ulyanovsk) on the Volga River, the eldest son in the family.^[1][2][3] On his paternal side, his ancestors came from the provincial Orthodox clergy. His grandfather, Mikhail Ivanovich, had served since 1830 as a village priest in Kerenka, located in the Gorodishchensky district of the Penza Governorate.^[4] The surname Kerensky derived from the name of this village, although Alexander Kerensky himself associated it with the district town of Kerensk in the same province.^[4] Mikhail Ivanovich's youngest son, Fyodor Mikhailovich Kerensky (1838–1912), graduated with honors from the Penza Theological Seminary in 1859. Unlike his older brothers Alexander and Grigory, who became priests, Fyodor taught for six years in religious and district schools before completing higher education at the Faculty of History and Philology at Kazan University in 1869. Fyodor then taught Russian literature, pedagogy, and Latin across various educational institutions in Kazan.

While in Kazan, Fyodor Mikhailovich married Nadezhda Aleksandrovna Adler (1854–1905), the daughter of the head of the Topographical Bureau of the Kazan Military District.^[4] On her father's side, Nadezhda was a noblewoman of Russian-German heritage.^[5] On her mother's side, she was the granddaughter of a former serf who had managed to buy his freedom before the abolition of serfdom in 1861.^[4] That grandfather had subsequently established a successful mercantile career, becoming a wealthy Moscow merchant and leaving his granddaughter a significant fortune.^[4][6][7] In antisemitic circles before 1917, during the Russian Civil War, and in emigration, rumors repeatedly circulated alleging that Kerensky was of Jewish descent through his mother, including a popular story claiming that she was an Austrian Jewish woman named Adler who had first married a man named Kirbis and that Kerensky had been named Aron before baptism.^[5] Historians have documented that these rumors were entirely without foundation.^[5]

Between 1877 and 1879, Fyodor Kerensky served as director of the Vyatka Men's Gymnasium before receiving an appointment, in the civil service rank of collegiate councillor, as director of the Simbirsk Men's Gymnasium.^[8][9] The most famous pupil under his direction was Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (Lenin), the son of Fyodor's superior, Ilya Nikolayevich Ulyanov, who directed the public schools of the province.^[10] The Kerensky and Ulyanov families in Simbirsk were on friendly terms and had much in common in lifestyle, social standing, interests and origin.^[9][10] When Vladimir Ulyanov graduated with a gold medal in 1887, the only non-top grade on his certificate, a four in logic, was given by Fyodor Kerensky.^[8][9] After Ilya Ulyanov died, Fyodor took an active interest in the welfare of the Ulyanov children. Even following the arrest and execution of Lenin's older brother Aleksandr Ulyanov in spring 1887 for his role in the conspiracy to assassinate Tsar Alexander III, Fyodor Kerensky provided Vladimir with a positive character reference that secured his admission to Kazan University.^[10] In that same year, Fyodor received the rank of Actual State Councillor, granting hereditary nobility to his family.^[11][12]

Alexander was baptized on 6 [O.S. 18] June 1881 in the Tikhvin Church of Simbirsk.^[13] Known within the family by the diminutive Sasha, he had three older sisters (Nadezhda, Elena, and Anna) and a younger brother, Fyodor.^[14] During his childhood in Simbirsk, Sasha contracted osteoarticular tuberculosis of the hip.^[15][16] Following a surgical operation, the boy was confined to bed for six months and subsequently wore a forged iron boot fitted with a heavy weight.^[15][16] Kerensky later recalled that this period fostered introspection and a habit of reading works by Leo Tolstoy that he had previously avoided.^[15][16] By 1887, his condition had receded.^[15] In May 1889, Fyodor Kerensky was appointed chief inspector of public schools for the Turkestan region, and the family moved to Tashkent.^[10][12] Tashkent was then a frontier administrative center of roughly 150,000 residents, about a quarter of whom were Russian.^[12][17] While living there, the household received visits from Captain Lavr Kornilov, returning from a mission in Persia, and Finnish officer Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim, who was exploring Central Asia.^[17] Alexander enrolled in the Tashkent Men's Gymnasium, earning a reputation as a diligent student, a skilled dancer, and a talented amateur actor who performed the lead role of Khlestakov in Nikolai Gogol's The Government Inspector.^[17][18] He graduated with a gold medal in 1899.^[10][19][20]

University and early legal career

In 1899, Kerensky moved to the imperial capital and entered the Faculty of History and Philology at Saint Petersburg Imperial University before transferring the following year to the Faculty of Law.^[10][19][20] At the end of his second year, he gave his first political speech at a student assembly. While he had previously held an unblemished academic record, the university rector summoned him after the speech and recommended that he take a leave of absence to spend time with his family in Tashkent.^[21] He completed his legal studies and graduated with a law degree in 1904.^[10][20] That same year, he chose not to pursue a career in the imperial administrative service, instead joining a private legal aid association and becoming an assistant to the sworn attorney N. A. Oppel.^[20][22] In 1904, he also married Olga Lvovna Baranovskaya (1883–1975), the daughter of Russian general Lev Baranovsky and granddaughter of the prominent Sinologist Vasily Pavlovich Vasilyev.^[23][24]

Following the Bloody Sunday massacre of 9 [O.S. 22] January 1905, Kerensky broke decisively with the autocracy and joined a legal defense committee organized by the bar association to aid victims and their families.^[10][20][25] Beginning in October 1905, he wrote articles for Burevestnik (The Stormy Petrel), a revolutionary socialist bulletin published by the Organization of Armed Uprising.^[25] The publication soon faced police suppression, and its eighth or ninth issue was confiscated.^[25] On 23 December 1905, the police searched Kerensky's apartment, discovering pamphlets belonging to the militant wing of the Socialist Revolutionary Party and a revolver he kept for self-defense.^[25] Arrested on suspicion of belonging to an armed combat unit of the Socialist Revolutionaries, he was imprisoned at Kresty Prison.^[10][25] Because no charges were formally presented within the legal detention limit of fourteen days, he wrote to the assistant prosecutor of the Saint Petersburg District Court to demand clarification; when none came, he initiated a hunger strike.^[25] With the political opening brought about by the convocation of the First State Duma and for lack of sufficient evidence, he was released on 5 [O.S. 18] April 1906 and administratively exiled to Tashkent with his wife and infant son Oleg.^[25] He returned to Saint Petersburg in mid-August 1906.^[25]

Political trials and public acclaim

Upon returning to the capital, Kerensky abandoned clandestine militancy to focus on legal opposition to the imperial government.^[20] In October 1906, at the request of attorney Nikolai Dmitrievich Sokolov, he began working as a defense counsel in political trials in Reval (Tallinn), defending Estonian peasants accused of ransacking the country estates of Baltic German barons during the 1905 unrest.^[26][27][28] He established a national reputation as an advocate for political defendants, securing acquittals or mitigating sentences in high-profile cases.^[26][29] On 22 December 1909 [O.S. 4 January 1910], he was formally admitted as a sworn attorney in Saint Petersburg.^[30] In 1910, he served as the principal defense counsel for the Turkestan organization of Socialist Revolutionaries, who were charged with armed anti-government actions, successfully preventing the imposition of any death penalties. In August 1910, he defended Timofey Nikolayev-Khuri and seventeen other defendants accused of expropriations in Kazan and membership in the Kazan Socialist Revolutionary organization between 1906 and 1907.^[31] In early 1912, he acted as defense counsel in Saint Petersburg for members of the Armenian Dashnaktsutyun party.

Kerensky's national profile rose substantially in 1912 following the Lena goldfields massacre in eastern Siberia, where imperial troops had shot striking miners.^[32][33] He served as chairman of a public inquiry organized by members of the bar to investigate the shootings, publishing findings that exposed the culpability and negligence of government authorities and mining management.^[32][33] Kerensky also spoke out publicly in defense of Menahem Mendel Beilis during the antisemitic blood libel trial in Kiev.^[34] Because he spoke out in support of Beilis, Kerensky was prosecuted in the Case of the 25 Lawyers and in 1914 was convicted of insulting the Kiev judicial chamber.^[34] He was sentenced to eight months' imprisonment; as a sitting member of the State Duma he had parliamentary immunity, which the Duma did not lift, and on appeal the prison term was replaced by an eight-month ban on practicing law.

Member of the State Duma

In the autumn of 1912, Kerensky was elected to the Fourth State Duma as a deputy representing the town of Volsk in the Saratov Governorate.^[33][35] Because the Socialist Revolutionary Party had resolved to boycott the elections, he formally left the party. He joined the Trudoviks (Labor Group), a moderate, socialist, non-Marxist labour party founded by Alexis Aladin. To satisfy property qualification laws for Duma candidates, the Socialist Revolutionaries purchased a house for him.^[36] Kerensky rapidly became one of the most prominent orators of the left factions in the Tauride Palace and sat on the Duma's budget commission.^[35] In June 1913, he was elected chairman of the Fourth All-Russian Congress of Commercial and Industrial Employees. By 1915, he had become the official leader of the Trudovik faction in the Duma.^[37]

In 1912, Kerensky joined the irregular Freemasonic organization known as the Grand Orient of Russia's Peoples, which had originated between 1910 and 1912 from the Renaissance lodge of the Grand Orient of France.^{[38][39][40][41]} This organization was political in its orientation and was not recognized by traditional Masonic Grand Lodges.^[40] It served as an underground network linking liberal, socialist, and anti-monarchist politicians who sought the democratic renewal of Russia.^[36][40] From 1915 until his appointment to the Provisional Government in July 1917, Kerensky served as Secretary-General of its Supreme Council, which also included Nikolai Chkheidze, Alexander Braudo, Sergei Maslovsky-Mstislavsky, Nikolai Vissarionovich Nekrasov, and Prince Sergei Urusov.^{[38][40][42][43]} Upon stepping down in 1917, he was succeeded by the Menshevik Alexander Halpern.^[38]

Following the outbreak of World War I in August 1914, Kerensky opposed imperial war credits on the Duma floor on 26 July [O.S. 8 August] 1914, taking a stand shared by the Social Democratic deputies.^[44][45][46] At the same time, motivated by Russian patriotism, he insisted upon the physical defense of national territory against foreign invasion.^[33][45] In the spring of 1915, during the Fourth Session of the Duma, Kerensky appealed to Duma President Mikhail Rodzyanko with a formal petition from the Council of Elders demanding that the Tsar alter domestic policy to sustain the war effort: proclaiming an amnesty for political prisoners, restoring the constitution of the Grand Duchy of Finland, granting autonomy to Poland, according cultural autonomy to national minorities, lifting legal restrictions on Jews, ending religious discrimination, and terminating state harassment of legal trade unions.^[47][48][49] In August 1915, he associated with the Progressive Bloc, a parliamentary alliance comprising liberals, moderate socialists, and Mensheviks, though excluding the Bolsheviks.^[50] Between June and July 1915, he toured cities across the Volga region and southern Russia.

In 1916, Chairman of the Council of Ministers Boris Stürmer ordered the mobilization of 200,000 indigenous Central Asian inhabitants for rear-echelon military labor, ending their historical exemption from imperial military conscription. The decree on the requisition of the native inhabitants provoked an uprising in Turkestan and the Steppe krai, which was brutally suppressed. The Duma formed an investigative commission headed by Kerensky, who visited the region to examine the events. After studying the events on the spot, Kerensky blamed the imperial government, accused the Minister of the Interior of exceeding his powers, and demanded that corrupt local officials be brought to trial. The Okhrana closely monitored Kerensky, assigning him the surveillance codename 'Skory' (Swift) because of his practice of dashing through streets and boarding moving tramcars, forcing agents to hire horse-drawn cabs to track him.^[51] His health deteriorated significantly during this period: in 1916 he underwent surgery to remove a diseased kidney, a dangerous procedure that left him suffering chronic, severe pain throughout 1917, often causing fainting spells and leading to regular use of intravenous morphine.^[35][51][52]

Kerensky grew convinced that autocracy could not win the war. In a Duma speech on 2 November 1916, he denounced imperial ministers as 'hired assassins' and 'cowards' who were guided by Grigori Rasputin.^[53] Grand Duke Nicholas Mikhailovich, Prince Georgy Lvov, and General Mikhail Alekseyev sought unsuccessfully to convince Tsar Nicholas II to exile Empress Alexandra Feodorovna, Rasputin's chief defender, to Britain or to Livadia Palace in Yalta.^[54] Similar appeals by Zinaida Yusupova, Grand Duchess Elizabeth, and Grand Duchess Victoria Melita failed.^[55][56] According to Kerensky, Rasputin terrorized the Empress by threatening to abandon the court and return to his home village.^[57] In a Duma speech on 29 [O.S. 16] December 1916, Kerensky in effect called for the overthrow of the autocracy, after which Empress Alexandra Feodorovna stated that 'Kerensky ought to be hanged.' Members of the nobility murdered Rasputin in December 1916.^[58] Following the February Revolution, Kerensky ordered soldiers to exhume Rasputin's body from Tsarskoye Selo and rebury it in an unmarked spot, but the transport vehicle broke down or was forced to stop in deep snow along Lesnoye Road, and the remains were probably incinerated in the boilers of the Saint Petersburg Polytechnic Institute between 3:00 and 7:00 a.m.^{[58][59][60][61]}

The February Revolution of 1917

On 14 [O.S. 27] February 1917, Kerensky delivered a fiery speech in the Duma declaring that the Russian people's task was the immediate destruction of the medieval regime, asking how one could fight lawfully against those who turned the law into an instrument of mockery, and asserting that physical removal was the only way.^[62] When Duma President Mikhail Rodzyanko interrupted to ask what he meant, Kerensky replied, 'I mean what Brutus did in the times of Ancient Rome.'^[62] After a decree of Nicholas II interrupted the Duma session at midnight on 26 to 27 February (12 March New Style) 1917, Kerensky urged the Duma's Council of Elders on 27 February not to obey the Tsar's will. Later that day, he joined the Provisional Committee of the State Duma and the Military Commission directing revolutionary forces against the police.^[63] He addressed mutinous regiments, accepted arrested imperial ministers into custody, and oversaw the confiscation of state funds and secret files.^[33]

Simultaneously, Kerensky rejoined the Socialist Revolutionary Party and was chosen as a vice-chairman of the newly formed Petrograd Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies, alongside Menshevik chairman Nikolai Chkheidze.^{[64][65][66][67]} On 3 [O.S. 16] March 1917, he participated in the conference of Duma representatives that secured the abdication of Grand Duke Michael Alexandrovich, ending the Romanov dynasty's claim to immediate power.^[68] Within the Soviet's Executive Committee (Ispolkom), Kerensky participated in decisions during the drafting of Order No. 1 on 1 [O.S. 14] March 1917, which mandated the formation of elective soldier committees in the Petrograd garrison and was later applied across the front lines, subordinating military units politically to the Soviet and weakening traditional officer command.^[69] Kerensky simultaneously intervened to protect imperial civil servants and officers from mob violence.^[69]

When the Provisional Committee of the Duma formed the first Provisional Government under Prince Georgy Lvov, the Soviet's leadership initially barred socialist deputies from accepting cabinet posts in what they deemed a bourgeois administration.^[70] Defying this policy, Kerensky addressed a plenary session of the Petrograd Soviet in an emotional speech, swearing to defend democratic liberties and declaring, 'I cannot live without the people. In the moment you begin to doubt me, then kill me.'^[71][72][73] He received prolonged applause and ratification by acclamation, making him the only individual to sit simultaneously in both the Provisional Government and the Ispolkom of the Petrograd Soviet, functioning as a link between the two rival centers of power.^{[69][74][75][76]}

Minister of Justice

Kerensky became Minister of Justice when the Provisional Government was formed on 2 March (15 March New Style) 1917.^[33][70] He appeared in public in a military-style tunic, although he had never served in the army. He implemented far-reaching reforms that dismantled imperial legal structures.^[77][78] On 3 March, the institution of justices of the peace was reorganized into courts comprising one judge and two lay assessors. On 4 March, the Provisional Government abolished the Supreme Criminal Court, the special chambers of the Governing Senate, judicial chambers, and district courts with estate representatives. Kerensky initiated the Provisional Government's amnesty for political prisoners, and on his orders all revolutionaries were brought back from exile. His second telegram as Minister of Justice ordered the immediate release from exile of the 73-year-old Catherine Breshko-Breshkovskaya, the 'grandmother of the Russian revolution', and her dispatch to Petrograd with full honors.

Under Kerensky's initiative, the government issued a historic decree abolishing capital punishment throughout the Russian state in civil, military, and field courts-martial.^[78] While presenting the signed decree, Kerensky reportedly wept, declaring to his staff that he was happy to sign the permanent abolition of the death penalty in Russia. On 20 March 1917, he signed a landmark decree establishing equality of all citizens before the law, eradicating legal discriminations based on religion and ethnicity, abolishing settlement limits on Jewish subjects within the former Pale of Settlement, and granting equal rights in property ownership, commercial enterprise, military service, and educational access.^[77] The ministry also recognized the independence of Poland and restored the constitutional rights of Finland.^[78]

Kerensky halted the ongoing criminal investigation into Rasputin's murder, transferring the investigator, former Police Department director Alexei Vasilyev, to imprisonment in the Peter and Paul Fortress. As minister, Kerensky concentrated on avoiding the prosecution of former tsarist officials, to ease liberal fears of revolutionary terror, and on drafting a model legal framework.^[79] He maintained personal oversight of the former Tsar Nicholas II and his family while they were interned at Tsarskoye Selo.^[80] Despite pressure from radicals in the Petrograd Soviet, Kerensky treated the Romanovs courteously and attempted to negotiate their exile to Great Britain through Foreign Minister Pavel Milyukov.^[68][80][81] When British asylum was refused and political unrest in the capital intensified, Kerensky arranged their transfer in August 1917 to Tobolsk in Western Siberia to remove them from immediate danger from extremist factions in Petrograd.^[80]

Minister of War and Navy and the June Offensive

In late April 1917, Foreign Minister Pavel Milyukov sent a secret diplomatic note to the Allied powers pledging that Russia would continue World War I to a decisive victory while adhering to tsarist-era territorial annexations.^[82] The leak of this note precipitated a political crisis and mass street protests in Petrograd.^[82] On 24 April [O.S. 7 May], Kerensky threatened to resign and withdraw Soviet backing unless Milyukov was removed and a coalition cabinet incorporating socialist parties was created.^[79] Prince Lvov accepted these demands on 5 [O.S. 18] May 1917.^[64] War Minister Alexander Guchkov resigned in May 1917, and Kerensky succeeded him.^[79][83] Kerensky took over the Ministry of War and Navy, emerging as the dominant figure in the administration.^[2][79][82]

As Minister of War, Kerensky appointed associates from the revolutionary days to leadership positions: his brother-in-law Colonel Vladimir Baranovsky was named head of his military cabinet and quickly promoted to major general, while General Staff Colonels Grigory Yakubovich and Georgy Tumanov became assistant ministers. On 9 May (22 May New Style) 1917, he issued the Declaration of the Rights of the Soldier. On 22 May (4 June New Style) 1917, he replaced the more conservative Supreme Commander-in-Chief, General Mikhail Alekseyev, with General Aleksei Brusilov, the hero of the 1916 Brusilov Offensive. In late May and June 1917, Kerensky toured frontline sectors in open cars, delivering impassioned speeches to demoralized troops to inspire them to fulfill their duties to the revolution and the Allied cause.^[82][84] While his eloquence generated enthusiasm at the moment, it produced little enduring commitment among war-weary soldiers, and skeptical officers derisively dubbed him the 'persuader-in-chief.'^[82][84][85]

Under sustained Allied pressure, Kerensky ordered a major strategic offensive against Austro-Hungarian and German forces in Galicia on 18 June [O.S. 1 July] 1917.^[79][86][87] In its first days the offensive made surprising advances.^[79][88] Within days, however, heavy German counterattacks halted the advance, throwing Russian forces into disordered retreat.^[86][89] The retreat degenerated into mass desertions, insubordination, and mutiny, with over 60,000 Russian soldiers killed or taken prisoner.^[86] Simultaneously, during the Third Congress of the Socialist Revolutionary Party in June 1917, Kerensky suffered a political humiliation when the leftist faction rejected his candidacy for the Central Committee by 136 votes to 134, protesting his decree threatening troops with the death penalty for desertion.^[90][91] Convinced that party leader Victor Chernov had engineered this defeat, Kerensky distanced himself from party discipline and increasingly operated as an independent, non-party statesman.^[92]

Cult of personality

Following his appointment as Minister of War in May 1917, an unprecedented, short-lived cult of personality developed around Kerensky.^[93][94] Russian newspapers and public speakers lavished praise upon him, styling him the 'knight of the revolution,' 'the lion heart,' 'the first love of the revolution,' 'the tribune of the people,' 'the genius of Russian freedom,' and 'the savior of the Fatherland.'^[93][95] Contemporaries described women throwing lilies of the valley and lilac branches to him and a young man reaching out just to touch his sleeve, and publishers printed romanticized biographies of him for which there was commercial demand. In May 1917, Petrograd periodicals even discussed creating a public 'Kerensky Friend of Humanity Fund.'^[94]

The researcher Boris Kolonitsky noted that this cult, despite its revolutionary and democratic character, had monarchical elements familiar to contemporaries, such as the making of commemorative tokens with his image and strong reactions to the public desecration of his portraits. The terminology applied to him as 'leader of the revolutionary army' echoed earlier wartime designations of the Tsar and Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolaevich, providing rhetorical models that Bolshevik propaganda later adapted for leaders such as Leon Trotsky.

Minister-Chairman of the Provisional Government

On 2 [O.S. 15] July 1917, the First Coalition collapsed when Kadet ministers resigned in protest against concessions granted by Kerensky, Irakli Tsereteli, and Mikhail Tereshchenko to the Ukrainian Central Rada regarding Ukrainian national autonomy.^[96][97] The following day, armed demonstrations broke out in Petrograd during the July Days (3–7 [O.S. 16–20] July 1917), as radicalized soldiers, Kronstadt sailors, and workers demanded that the Petrograd Soviet seize state power.^[98] The government suppressed the uprising, declaring martial law and releasing intelligence documents alleging that Vladimir Lenin and the Bolsheviks were receiving financial subsidies from imperial Germany.^[98][99] Bolshevik printing presses were seized, Trotsky and Anatoly Lunacharsky were arrested, and Lenin fled to Finland in disguise.^[98][99] On 20 July [O.S. 7 July] 1917, Kerensky succeeded Georgy Lvov as Minister-Chairman while retaining the post of Minister of War and Navy.^{[64][100][101][102]}

Kerensky attempted to govern as a non-partisan statesman uniting the socialist left and the liberal bourgeoisie.^[66][103] On 12 [O.S. 25] July, he reinstated the death penalty at the military front for desertion, mutiny, and treason.^[87][100] To address economic instability, the government issued emergency small-denomination treasury notes colloquially known as kerenki, which depreciated rapidly amidst rampant inflation.^[100][104] On 19 July [O.S. 1 August], Kerensky dismissed General Brusilov, whom he viewed as having lost command resolve, and appointed General of Infantry Lavr Georgiyevich Kornilov as Supreme Commander-in-Chief.^[98][100] Between 12 and 14 [O.S. 25–27] August 1917, Kerensky convened the State Conference at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow, bringing together nearly 2,500 delegates from political parties, the Duma, soviets, trade unions, and the military command.^[98][105] The assembly revealed deep polarization: socialist delegates and soviet representatives sat on the left, while industrialists, liberals, and conservative officers sat on the right, enthusiastically cheering General Kornilov as a national savior.^[105]

The Kornilov Affair

Following the fall of Riga to German forces on 20 August 1917, Kerensky and Deputy War Minister Boris Savinkov agreed to summon reliable cavalry formations from the front to Petrograd to protect the government and declare martial law in the event of worker unrest or right-wing plots.^[98] Kerensky specifically stipulated that General Alexander Krymov should not command the expedition and that the Caucasian Native Cavalry Division ('Savage Division') must not be included, suspecting both of antirevolutionary conspiracy.^[98] General Kornilov, however, secretly assigned Krymov to command the 3rd Cavalry Corps and advanced on the capital.^[98][106] Vladimir Lvov denied Kerensky's account of an ultimatum: he said that Kornilov had given him no ultimatum, that they had only discussed wishes for strengthening state power, and that he had passed these wishes on to Kerensky.^[106] According to Lvov, Kerensky demanded that he put his thoughts on paper and, once he had done so, had him arrested.^[106]

Late on 26 August, Kerensky informed his cabinet that Kornilov was staging a military mutiny, prompting the ministers to resign and grant him emergency powers.^[107] On 27 August, Kerensky publicly dismissed Kornilov and declared him a traitor to the revolution.^[107] Kornilov responded with a counter-manifesto accusing the Provisional Government of collusion with German agents and ordering Krymov's corps to advance into Petrograd.^[98][106] Desperate to defend the capital, Kerensky turned to the Petrograd Soviet, releasing imprisoned Bolshevik leaders and distributing rifles and ammunition to tens of thousands of factory workers and Red Guards.^{[108][109][110]} By the morning of 28 August, Krymov's main forces were arriving at Luga train by train, and by that evening Krymov had been left without an army.^[98] Krymov traveled to Petrograd for a personal interview with Kerensky on 31 August, where he produced Kornilov's operational order; leaving the office, Krymov shot himself the next day.^[98] General Mikhail Alekseyev arrested Kornilov and his co-conspirators at Mogilev headquarters on 1 [O.S. 14] September to prevent violence by mutinous soldiers.^[98]

The failure of the coup discredited moderate politicians and led to a resurgence of the radicals, and suspicions that Kerensky had been involved in Kornilov's plans discredited him considerably.^{[98][105][111]} Officers and conservatives considered him a traitor who had abandoned Kornilov under socialist pressure, while soldiers and left-wing socialists suspected him of initial complicity in the coup.^[98][111] Discipline in the armed forces collapsed completely: soldiers arrested and executed officers throughout the fronts, while sailors at the Helsinki naval base summarily shot four officers on the battleship Petropavlovsk and drowned three generals and a colonel at Vyborg.^[98][112] British ambassador Sir George Buchanan noted that conservative Cossack regiments subsequently refused to defend Kerensky because they could not forgive his treatment of Kornilov.^[113] On 30 August [O.S. 12 September], Kerensky appointed himself Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Russian armed forces, retaining the post until November.^[64]

The Russian Republic and the Directory

On 1 [O.S. 14] September 1917, Kerensky dissolved the Fourth State Duma and officially proclaiming Russia a democratic republic, pre-empting the Constituent Assembly that had been scheduled to determine the nation's permanent form of government.^{[80][114][115]} He established a five-member Directory, known as the 'Business Cabinet,' which held executive power and consisted of himself, Foreign Minister Mikhail Tereshchenko, War Minister General Aleksandr Verkhovsky, Navy Minister Admiral Dmitry Verderevsky, and Minister of Posts and Telegraphs Aleksei Nikitin.^[80] At the end of September, Kerensky formed a third coalition government.^[116][117] To broaden legislative support, he convened the Provisional Council of the Russian Republic (the Pre-Parliament) on 7 [O.S. 20] October 1917 in the Mariinsky Palace.

Kerensky's insistence on continuing Russia's participation in World War I became increasingly untenable.^[118][119] The Russian army was disintegrating through exhaustion, equipment shortages, and desertion, with an estimated two million men unofficially abandoning their units by the autumn of 1917. Kerensky and other political leaders kept Russia in the war, fearing that the economy, already under heavy strain from the war effort, might become more unstable if supplies from France and the United Kingdom stopped.^[118][119] Operating under the political doctrine of 'no enemies to the left,' Kerensky refused to enact decisive measures against the Bolsheviks, who systematically gained majorities in the Petrograd and Moscow Soviets and consolidated their armed military organization (the Voenka).^[120][121] In mid-October 1917, Vladimir Dmitrievich Nabokov, executive secretary of the Provisional Government, questioned Kerensky about rumors of an impending Bolshevik uprising; Kerensky replied that he positively welcomed such an insurrection so that he could crush Lenin's party once and for all, asserting, 'I have more than enough forces to do so.'^[115]

The October Revolution and flight

By late October 1917, the Bolshevik Military Revolutionary Committee, directed by Leon Trotsky, was preparing to seize power.^[108][122] Kerensky's government possessed negligible military backing within Petrograd. On the night of 24 October [O.S. 6 November], a delegation from the Pre-Parliament led by Menshevik leader Fyodor Dan urged Kerensky to preempt the Bolsheviks by immediately passing land reform decrees and opening peace negotiations, but Kerensky rejected the advice.^[123][124] Early on the morning of 25 October [O.S. 7 November], Kerensky dispatched an urgent telegram to General Nikolai Dukhonin at Mogilev headquarters requesting loyal Cossack regiments, but the order came too late.^[125] The only forces willing to defend the Winter Palace were a handful of officer cadets, disabled veterans, and a single company of 137 soldiers from the First Petrograd Women's Battalion (the Women's Death Battalion).^{[122][126][127]}

On the morning of 25 October, before Bolshevik Red Guards sealed off the capital, Kerensky slipped out of the Winter Palace.^[105] A persistent popular legend claimed that he escaped disguised as a female nurse or housemaid.^[125][128] Decades later, Kerensky emphasized to Soviet journalist Genrikh Borovik that this rumor was fabricated, expressing bitterness that the claim had endured.^[128] Kerensky maintained that he departed openly in his normal tunic in an open car, escorted by a vehicle carrying the American flag belonging to American diplomats. United States Ambassador David R. Francis confirmed in his memoirs that the embassy vehicle had been requisitioned by Kerensky's adjutants despite protests from the embassy secretary regarding the unauthorized use of the American flag.^[125][129] Kerensky later wrote that the men he drove past not only let him through but also saluted him.^[125][130]

Kerensky reached Pskov, where he allied with Major General Pyotr Krasnov and assembled Cossacks of the 3rd Cavalry Corps for a march on the capital.^[82][131] Krasnov's forces captured Tsarskoye Selo on 28 October [O.S. 10 November] but encountered superior Red Guard, sailor, and worker detachments on the Pulkovo Heights the next day, suffering defeat in a brief artillery engagement.^[82][132] The Cossacks retreated to Gatchina Palace, where they concluded an armistice with Soviet forces commanded by Pavel Dybenko on 31 October [O.S. 13 November].^[131][133] When Dybenko jokingly offered to exchange Kerensky for Lenin, the Cossacks, according to General Krasnov's memoirs, began to lean towards handing Kerensky over.^[133] Disguised as an ordinary sailor, Kerensky slipped past sailor patrols and escaped the palace with the assistance of Socialist Revolutionary leaders Abraham Gotz and Nikolai Avksentiev, who drove him toward Luga.^{[133][134][135][136][137]}

Underground and flight from Russia

In late November 1917, Kerensky traveled clandestinely to Novocherkassk to seek an alliance with Don Cossack Ataman Alexei Kaledin, but Kaledin refused to receive him.^[138] Kerensky spent the next forty days hiding in secluded villages around Novgorod and Petrograd, residing at a dacha in Siverskaya.^[138] In January 1918, he returned secretly to Petrograd, intending to appear at the opening session of the All-Russian Constituent Assembly on 5 [O.S. 18] January 1918 to deliver an official address transferring the Provisional Government's authority to the delegates.^[138][139] The Socialist Revolutionary leadership categorically forbade his appearance, with party leader Vladimir Zenzinov warning: 'If you appear in the assembly, that will be the end for all of us.'^[139] Following the Bolshevik dissolution of the assembly, Kerensky went into hiding in Finland near Åbo (Turku) during February and March 1918.

On 9 [O.S. 22] January 1918, the Council of People's Commissars (Sovnarkom) published a decree confiscating bank assets registered under Kerensky's name, seizing 1,157,714 rubles in the State Bank and 317,020 rubles in the International Commercial Bank while appealing to the public for information regarding the origin of the funds.^[140][141] In early May 1918, Kerensky moved to Moscow, where he established contact with Catherine Breshko-Breshkovskaya and joined the clandestine anti-Bolshevik Union for the Regeneration of Russia.^{[141][142][143]} Following the revolt of the Czechoslovak Legion, the Union delegated Kerensky to travel to Western Europe to negotiate with Allied governments for military intervention against the Bolsheviks to reopen the Eastern Front and secure Russia's standing in future peace talks.^{[141][143][144]} Kerensky eventually fled the country.^{[82][141][144]}

Exile in Europe

From 1918 Kerensky lived in Great Britain and France, where he sought to continue his political activity.^[145] He subsequently traveled to Paris, attempting to win Entente recognition and military support for the Directory of Ufa, an anti-Bolshevik coalition dominated by Socialist Revolutionaries.^[144] When Admiral Alexander Kolchak overthrew the Ufa Directory in Omsk in November 1918 and instituted a military dictatorship, Kerensky campaigned actively in London and Paris against Western recognition of the White government in Siberia, warning American diplomats that Kolchak would establish a regime no less repressive than the Bolsheviks.^[146] During the Russian Civil War, Kerensky supported neither side, as he opposed both the Bolshevik regime and the White movement.^[82]

In February 1920, according to contemporary reporting in the Spanish daily El Imparcial, Kerensky was briefly arrested in Baku after arriving in the Caucasus on a British vessel to rally support for a Russian democratic coalition.^[147][148] In August 1920, he gave extensive depositions in Paris regarding the Provisional Government's internment of the imperial family.^[149] Kerensky settled in Paris and edited the emigre newspaper Dni, in which he continued his fight against the communist government of the Soviet Union.^[150] In 1939, Kerensky urged Western democracies to confront both Soviet communism and Nazi German fascism.^[104]

Second marriage and United States years

After living separated from his first wife Olga for more than two decades, Kerensky finalized their divorce in Paris in 1939.^[151][152] That same year, while visiting the United States, he secretly married Lydia Ellen 'Nell' Tritton (1899–1946), an Australian former journalist who had become his press secretary and translator.^[151][153] The marriage took place in Martins Creek, Pennsylvania.^[151][153] Following the German invasion of France in June 1940, the couple fled Paris to Saint-Jean-de-Luz on the Spanish border, boarding a British ship to escape to the United States.^[145] Following the Axis invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, Kerensky publicly offered his assistance to Joseph Stalin to support the Russian war effort, stating that national defense superseded ideological divisions, though the Soviet leadership never answered his letters.^[154]

Between 1942 and 1944, Kerensky drafted an extensive, unpublished manuscript titled History of Russia, covering Russian national history from the ninth century to the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk in March 1918.^[155] After the war, he organized an emigre political association called the Union for the Liberation of Russia, which attracted little support. When Nell became terminally ill with cancer in 1945, Kerensky accompanied her to her home city of Brisbane, Australia, living with her family.^[156] She suffered a stroke in February 1946 and died on 10 April 1946, after which she was buried in Brisbane.^[156] Kerensky then returned permanently to the United States.^[156][157]

Kerensky settled in New York City, residing in an apartment on 91st Street near Central Park on the Upper East Side.^[75][158] He spent substantial periods at the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace at Stanford University in California.^{[75][132][158]} There he taught graduate seminars, conducted research, and helped compile and annotate the institution's vast archival holdings on Russian revolutionary history.^[75][132] Together with the American historian R. P. Browder, he published a three-volume collection of documents, The Russian Provisional Government, 1917: Documents, in 1961. In 1964, Kerensky granted a ninety-minute recorded radio interview to Prince Alexander Lieven of Radio Canada, providing recollections of his flight from Petrograd in 1917; throughout the broadcast, Lieven pronounced Kerensky's surname with the stress on the second syllable without objection.^[159][160] Kerensky delivered his final public lecture at Kalamazoo College in Michigan in October 1967.^[161]

Attempted Soviet visit and death

In 1968, Kerensky explored the possibility of visiting the Soviet Union.^[162] Initial discussions were conducted through Archpriest A. P. Belikov of the Patriarchal Russian Orthodox Church in London.^[42] On 13 August 1968, the apparatus of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union drafted a memorandum outlining strict conditions for granting an entry visa: Kerensky was required to issue a formal declaration recognizing the historical legitimacy of the October Socialist Revolution, affirming the correctness of Soviet government policy, and acknowledging the achievements of the Soviet people over fifty years.^[163][164] Father Belikov recorded that Kerensky privately conceded that the events of October 1917 represented a logical culmination of Russian historical development and expressed no regrets regarding the outcome.^[42][164] The Soviet leadership dropped the proposal from consideration later that month for unclear reasons, possibly in connection with the events in Czechoslovakia.^[163][164]

In December 1968, the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin acquired Kerensky's personal papers from his son Oleg and personal secretary E. I. Ivanova for $100,000, payable in annual installments of $20,000 over five years, to finance his medical expenses and long-term care.^[165] Facing advanced arteriosclerosis and physical decline, Kerensky suffered a severe fall in the spring of 1970 that resulted in a dislocated shoulder, a fractured elbow, and a fractured hip, requiring his admission to St. Luke's Hospital in New York City.^[75][166] Convinced he would become a burden to others, he refused food during his final weeks; hospital staff administered intravenous nutrient solutions, which he repeatedly pulled from his veins.^[167] Alexander Kerensky died of arteriosclerotic heart disease at St. Luke's Hospital on 11 June 1970, at the age of 89.^[75][166]

Local parishes of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia and the Serbian Orthodox Church in New York City refused to grant Kerensky religious funeral rites or burial on consecrated church ground, citing his high-ranking membership in Freemasonry and holding him responsible for the fall of the Russian monarchy and the Bolshevik seizure of power.^{[168][169][170]} His body was flown to London, where his two sons resided, and buried in the non-denominational Putney Vale Cemetery on 18 June 1970.^{[169][170][171]}

Family and personal life

Kerensky's first wife, Olga Lvovna Kerenskaya, remained in Russia with their two sons following his escape abroad. She tried to flee Petrograd for her birthplace, Ust-Sysolsk, but on 23 August 1918 she was arrested, questioned about anti-Soviet activity and sent to Kotlas. She eventually escaped Russia with her sons in 1920, settling in Great Britain, where she died in 1975.^[172] Both of Kerensky's sons pursued careers in engineering in the United Kingdom.^[151][173] Oleg Aleksandrovich Kerensky (1905–1984) became a distinguished civil engineer and bridge designer who contributed to the construction of the Sydney Harbour Bridge and designed the Bosphorus Bridge in Istanbul; he was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1964 and elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1970.^[173] Since the mid-1980s, international conferences called the Kerensky Readings have been held every two years at the British Institution of Structural Engineers. The younger son, Gleb Aleksandrovich Kerensky (1907–1990), also worked as a civil engineer.^[151] Kerensky's grandson, Oleg Olegovich Kerensky Jr. (1930–1993), was a ballet and theater critic who portrayed his grandfather in Warren Beatty's 1981 film Reds.^[151][174]

His younger brother, Fyodor Fyodorovich Kerensky (1883–1919), was prosecutor of Tashkent from 1913 and military commissar of Turkestan from 1917 to 1919; he was killed by Red Guards in Tashkent in 1919 and buried beside his mother there. His eldest sister, Nadezhda Svarichevskaya (1875–1911), married Tashkent chief architect Georgy Svarichevsky. His middle sister, Elena Fyodorovna Kerenskaya (1877–1938), worked as a surgeon at an outpatient clinic in Leningrad; arrested in 1922 and again in March 1935 as a 'socially dangerous element,' she was exiled to Orenburg, where she worked in the municipal health department before being rearrested in June 1937 and executed by firing squad on 2 February 1938. His youngest sister, Anna Olferyeva (1879–1946), was the wife of Vasily Olferyev, an official of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs; from 1920 she lived in emigration in Serbia, and she died in Zemun. Kerensky's brother-in-law, Major General Vladimir Baranovsky (1882–1931), the brother of his first wife Olga, was repressed and died in a camp.

Legacy and commemoration

At the age of 36, Kerensky was the youngest non-monarchical ruler in Russian history.^[175][176] He was also the longest-lived head of state of Russia until Mikhail Gorbachev surpassed his age on 7 April 2020.^[175][176] His political style and administration entered the Russian language: the currency notes issued under his tenure were known as kerenki, while the term kerenshchina was defined in the 1935 Soviet explanatory dictionary as the policy of petty-bourgeois revolutionary authority that masked class compromise with grandiloquent rhetoric.^{[95][177][178]} During his visits to the front in May 1917, soldiers and officers presented him with the Cross of Saint George of the Fourth, Second, and First Class; he declined to wear the decorations himself, transferring them to General Brusilov and national defense funds because he had not seen combat.^[179]

In 2003, the Ulyanovsk City Duma posthumously awarded Kerensky the title of 'Honorary Citizen of the City of Ulyanovsk,' the highest civic award of his birth municipality.^{[180][181][182][183][184][185]} A memorial plaque marks the building of Gymnasium No. 1 in Ulyanovsk where he was born.^[185] In 2017, a bronze bust of Kerensky was erected on the Alley of Rulers of Russia in Moscow.^[186] His personal and family papers are preserved primarily in the Cadbury Research Library at the University of Birmingham, the Hoover Institution Archives at Stanford University, and the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin.^[165][187]

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