7) The Provisional Government

"So far as concerned the most threatening problems of the people's existence, the revolution had apparently been achieved only in order to make the announcement: everything remains as before"

The Provisional Government

Trying to outwit the revolution

The bourgeois leaders of the Progressive Bloc had spent the February days of revolution in hiding, fearing the worst. Now, to their astonishment and delight, they found that the Menshevik and Social-Revolutionary leaders had handed power over to them, behind the backs of the revolutionary masses. No wonder the grateful Miliukov praised the Soviet leadership by remarking “how far forward our workers’ movement has progressed since the days of 1905” (1)!

Miliukov was the key figure in bourgeois political circles. Unlike some of his more liberal colleagues, many of whom had had socialistic leanings in their youth, the leader of the Kadet Party was unashamedly a representative of the bourgeois class.

While the petty-bourgeois 'socialists' dreamt of uniting the proletariat and bourgeoisie in some liberal alliance, Miliukov understood, just as Lenin and Trotsky did from the opposing camp, that the interests of the two classes could never be reconciled.

He knew that, despite the Soviet leadership, the revolutionary masses were never going to willingly surrender power to the bourgeoisie. However, without support from the people, Miliukov recognised that his class was in no position to break the revolution. Its only hope was to bide its time, to manoeuvre, to gradually outwit the revolution.

So the bourgeoisie decided to continue with the policy that they had been using from the very start of the negotiations with the Soviet E.C. - to try and avoid any firm decisions and to postpone all reforms to some unknown future date.

Above all, the Kadets wanted to avoid "the fatal question of convoking a Constituent Assembly [some kind of elected Parliament] in war time” (2). So the official Declaration of the Provisional Government of March 6th promised to summon the people’s representatives to a Constituent Assembly at the earliest possible date - but carefully avoided saying when that date would be!

Nothing was said about the form of government. Miliukov still hoped he might be able to resurrect the monarchy as a point of support for the reaction. The only firm promise in the Declaration was to honour the secret treaties with the 'Allies' and to carry on with the war.

"So far as concerned the most threatening problems of the people's existence, the revolution had apparently been achieved only in order to make the announcement: everything remains as before" (3).

Kerensky enters the Government

Although largely responsible for its political direction, Miliukov did not become leader of the Provisional Government. This grey, cowardly and unpopular man too sharply reflected the political essence of the bourgeoisie. Instead, he took the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, leaving the post of Prime Minister to the rich, but politically very ordinary, Prince Lvov.

The rich landlord Rodzianko, President of the Provisional Committee of the Duma, had been pushed to one side, his ability to mediate between the monarchy and the property-owners now unwanted, his ability to mediate between the property-owners and the revolution too transparently lacking.

The rest of the ministry was made up almost entirely by those wealthy landlords, industrialists and bourgeois politicians that the Duma had been recommending to the deposed Czar since 1915. The Octobrist leader Guchkov became War Minister, united with Miliukov in a determination for Russia to continue the war.

The portfolio of Finance went to the extremely wealthy property-owner Tereschenko, that of Agriculture to the mediocre Kadet deputy Shingarev. The landowning Colonel Engelhardt was made commander of Petrograd, while the liberal noble Nabokov became, in effect, minister without portfolio.

"The fact is that, with one single exception, the revolution accomplished by workers and soldiers found no reflection whatever in the staff of the revolutionary government. The exception was Kerensky" (4).

Over the years the capitalists have learnt that there can be at times distinct advantages in involving workers' leaders in the business of government. Abusing the trust that the masses place in them, these traitors can persuade the workers to put up with measures that they might never accept from a bourgeois politician. With this strategy in mind, the Russian liberals tried to ensnare the Menshevik President of the Soviet, Cheidze, with the offer of the Minister of Labour.

The Soviet E.C. had, after all, voted against its members entering the government - but not for reasons of revolutionary principle! They knew that the Petrograd Soviet had no sympathy for the bourgeoisie, so, raising the question of having Soviet ministers in the government was risky. “The Soviet might simply answer: ‘the power ought to belong to the soviet democracy’ " (5).

So the Soviet E.C. decided it would be safest to avoid taking any of the responsibility for the mess that had been created. Instead the bourgeoisie should be left to have sole charge of the revolution that the Menshevik theorists had said was only for the bourgeoisie to lead.

Kerensky, on the other hand, a lawyer and president of the small Trudovik party of Narodnik intellectuals who had become one of the Vice-Presidents of the Soviet E.C., was not weighed down by any such theoretical considerations. He just wanted a place in the government and saw no reason why he should turn down such a golden opportunity to boost his fame!

While Kerensky's Soviet colleagues had no real objection to him taking a portfolio, they couldn't risk giving him an official sanction in full view of the revolutionary masses. But Kerensky wanted to enter the government with the aura of a revolutionary leader.

Without warning the Soviet leaders, he announced to a full session of the Soviet that he was ready to die for the revolution, but more immediately he was more than ready to take the position of Minister of Justice! Convinced by Kerensky's promises of a complete political amnesty and a prosecution of the Czar's officials, the inexperienced assembly gave him a mighty round of applause. Kerensky took this as a vote of confidence and promptly accepted the post in the government.

The Soviet E.C., under the leadership of Sukhanov and the Mensheviks Cheidze and Skobelev, were fairly content with the situation. They had successfully avoided taking the power that they so dreaded and were able to announce support for the Provisional Government "in so far as" it truly served the democratic revolution. In other words, “this support was promised only as a reward for good behaviour - that is, for fulfilling tasks alien to it, and which the democracy itself had declined to fulfil" (6)!

As for Kerensky's portfolio, once the question had passed without too much trouble through the Soviet, they were happy enough. After all, now the intelligentsia had their own man in the government to let them know what the capitalists were up to.

In addition, the E.C. had set up a "Contact Commission" as a 'go-between' to negotiate between the Soviet and the Government. This ludicrous body became, of course, only a talking shop in which two irreconcilable classes would try, and fail, to reach a mutually agreed compromise.

Real power lies with the Soviets

The revolutionary masses viewed the situation with very different emotions. "Among the workers and soldiers the composition of the government created an immediate feeling of hostility, or at the best a dumb bewilderment. The name of Miliukov or Guchkov did not evoke one voice of greeting in either factory or barrack. Officer Mstislavisky reports the sullen alarm of his soldiers at the news that the power had passed from czar to prince: Is that worth shedding blood for? " (7).

The only name greeted with any enthusiasm was that of Kerensky. He was now being made out by the bourgeoisie to be the central hero of the revolution! The masses saw in Kerensky the first step toward the liquidation of the bourgeois government. They only wondered why he was there alone. What they did not yet recognise was that Kerensky was not " a counterpoise to the bourgeois government ... but a finishing touch, a screen, a decoration" (8).

The masses not only did not trust or support the bourgeoisie; they did not even distinguish them from the nobility and the bureaucracy. They put their weapons only at the disposal of the soviets. These had sprung up out of the blue, thanks to the tradition of 1905, giving them tremendous power.

"The masses went over in droves to the socialists, whom they identified with the Soviet. Not only the workers and soldiers ... but all the many-coloured small people of the town - feeling alien to the Provisional Government and its bureaux, were seeking a closer and more accessible authority. The masses poured into the Soviet as though into the triumphal gates of the revolution. All that remained outside the boundaries of the Soviet seemed to fall away from the revolution, seemed somehow to belong to a different world. And so it was in reality. Beyond the boundaries of the Soviet remained the world of the property-owner, in which all colours mingled now in one grayish-pink defensive tint. Not all the toiling masses chose the Soviet ... but all the active elements of the masses poured into the Soviet, and activity prevails in times of revolution. Moreover, since mass activity was growing from day to day, the basis of the Soviet was continually broadening. It was the sole genuine basis of the revolution" (9).

In bourgeois circles and in the Allied embassies the new government had been greeted with satisfaction and relief. Nevertheless, the capitalists did not feel that they were really in charge. Under the Czar, despite the intrigues of the Rasputin clique, the bourgeoisie felt that they had real influence. If nothing else, the factories, land, banks, houses, newspapers and so on had been guaranteed to the property owners.

Now the revolution threatened to call all this into question. The bourgeoisie had the external attributes of power, but knew full well that, in Guchkov's words, ''the government, alas, has no real power; the troops, the railroads, the post and telegraph are in the hands of the Soviet. The simple fact is that the Provisional Government exists only so long as the Soviet permits it'' (10).

A comment from Shidlovsky, a leading deputy in Guchkov's Octobrist party, adds further detail to this accurate observation - ''The Soviet seized all the Post and Telegraph bureaux, the wireless, all the printing establishments, so that without its permission it was impossible to send a telegram, to leave Petrograd, or to print an appeal". Trotsky adds however, "it is necessary to introduce one slight correction: the 'seizure' by the Soviet ... meant merely that the workers and clerks in those enterprises refused to submit to anybody but the Soviet" (11).

The reality was, indeed, that real power was in the hands of the soviets. All of the upper layers of society, officers, directors, landlords, factory managers, felt that they were under the constant suspicious scrutiny of the masses. The Soviet had become an organised expression of the masses' distrust.

“Typesetters would jealously follow the text of the articles which they had set up ... soldiers would glance around suspiciously every time their officer made a move, workers would dismiss from the factory an overseer belonging to the [ultra-reactionary monarchist] Black Hundreds and take in under observation a liberal manager. The Duma from the first hours of the revolution, and the Provisional Government from its first days, became reservoirs into which flowed a continuous stream of complaints and objections from the upper layers of society, their protests against 'excesses', their woeful comments and dark forebodings'' (12).

The reaction begins to organise

The reaction began to organise around the banner of the Kadet Party, now the only openly organised non-socialist party, and all its tendencies hastened to group themselves around the Provisional Government.

On March 2nd the Council of Trade and Industry, representing the capitalists, declared its support for the new government and was soon followed by the town dumas and the provincial councils or "zemstvos". On March 10th even the Council of the United Nobility, previously the mainstay of the Czar declared its support for the Provisional Government.

The possessing classes began, first cautiously and then more and more boldly, to campaign for a 'single sovereignty', blaming all disorders and difficulties upon the existence of the Soviet.

Nevertheless, the reaction and, in particular, the Provisional Government, did not know how much of their real intentions they could risk revealing before the masses. The Soviet leaders in the 'Contact Commission' were not much help either because they too found it hard to judge the exact level of dissatisfaction.

However, there was no serious force behind these veiled threats from the propertied classes. Property "represents an enormous power so long as it is universally recognised and supported by that system of compulsion called Law and the State. But the very essence of the present situation was that the old state had suddenly collapsed, and the entire old system of rights had been called in question by the masses" (13).

The new ministers took over the old czarist apparatus but found that its rule was no longer obeyed. The provincial commissars, often just the old feudal landlords that used to be presidents of the zemstvos given new titles, faced the same problem. They took possession of the clerks, typewriters and chiefs of police only to find that real power lay with the soviets.

This was even more true in the provinces where the rather simpler Menshevik and Social-Revolutionary leaders had not appreciated the requirement to renounce the power as quickly as their colleagues in Petrograd!

In the factories the workers were regarding themselves more and more as the proprietors. In the country the peasants began to look with an ever more determined eye at the landlords' land. "The property-holders, deprived of the possibility of using their property, or protecting it, ceased to be real property-holders and became badly frightened Philistines who could not give any support to the government for the simple reason that they needed support themselves. They soon began to curse the government for its weakness, but they were only cursing their own fate" (14). In truth, the Provisional Government's only real support came from the official democracy and without it the government could not survive.

The Government drags its feet

While still holding onto the power that the Soviet leadership had presented to them, the Provisional Government continued to try and carry out its adopted policy - to make as few reforms as possible.

As early as March 1st, Karaulov, the Minister of the Interior, had issued an order for the arrest of all police officials, but this was, if anything, merely a means of ensuring that these hated men were given refuge from the masses in the jails. Similarly, the Decree of Amnesty on March 8th was a belated gesture since, by then, prisons had been opened by the people all over Russia.

Kerensky, in a moment of revolutionary zeal, actually carried out a resolution of the Soviet E.C., introducing representatives of the workers and soldiers as members of the courts of justice. However, the 'socialist' lawyer Demianov decided that the measure would not be carried out, since "the policies of a revolutionary government ought never to offend anybody unnecessarily” !

As Trotsky notes: “That was, at bottom, the guiding principle of the whole Provisional Government, which feared most of all to offend anybody from the circles of the possessing classes, or even the czarist bureaucracy. To be sure the masses might be offended. But that was the Soviet's business; the masses did not enter into the field of vision of the government" (15).

About the only worthwhile measure to be produced in those days was the famous "Order No. 1", a charter for the freedom of the revolutionary army. It had been passed by the Soviet in the heady days of revolution at the dictation of the mutinous soldiers.

It declared, amongst other things, "that elective committees shall be formed in all military regiments; soldiers' deputies shall be elected to the Soviet; in all political acts the soldiers shall submit to the Soviet and its committees; weapons shall be in the control of the regimental and battalion committees, and shall 'in no case be given up to the officer'; on duty, the severest military discipline - off duty, complete citizens rights" (16).

The Soviet E.C. had not dared oppose the soldiers' demands at the meeting but tried afterwards to send out the order together with an appeal that effectively demanded the soldiers' subordination to the old commanding staff. The typesetters simply refused to set up the document! The E.C. then tried to limit the order to the Petrograd military district only - but in vain, the revolutionary soldiers would not let their new-found rights be taken away.

Apart from this Order No. 1, everything continued pretty much as before, despite the masses' protests. The 'Holy Synod' continued to sit; Greek Orthodoxy remained the state religion. The Czar's old State Council continued to draw their salaries; the arrested ministers were even voted a pension!

Against all the teachings of Marxism on the State, the Mensheviks were allowing the old bureaucracy, the old judges, the old army commanders to remain in place so as not to offend anybody! The only initiative was shown in the haste to remove the old czarist limitations on share-holding!

The workers demanded an eight-hour day - the Provisional Government said nothing, leaving the Soviet leaders to try and pacify its ranks. The peasants demanded land - the government said that any reforms would be best left for the Constituent Assembly to decide on. But they knew full well that they had no intention of ever calling such an assembly if they could avoid it.

Only on March 25th did the government finally agree to call a Special Conference for the working out of an election law for the assembly. Needless to say the conference never opened. However, Shingarev "ordered the formation of local land committees - prudently refraining, however, from defining their tasks and functions. The peasants had an idea that these committees ought to give them the land. The landlords thought the committees ought to protect their property. From the very start the muzhik's [nickname for peasant's] noose, more ruthless than all others, was tightening round the neck of the February regime" (17).