Alternatives to Kerensky ?

raharris1973

Gone Fishin'
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Kerensky was not the first leader of the Provisional Government after the February Revolution, the first was Prince Lvov.

Who else besides Mr. Kerensky could have taken the premier role in the RPG instead of Kerensky?

Could Prince Lvov have kept it?

How might Lvov or other alternatives to Kerensky have differed from, or mirrored, Kerensky on policy.

Could Lvov or the RPG in its early weeks/months simply hand power over to the Petrograd Soviet?
 

Deleted member 94680

Have Rodzianko cling to power somehow? Make the Soviets push for power far earlier and the military decide that Rodzianko isn't that bad after all?
 

raharris1973

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So Rodzianko was a significant leader in the legislature. And indeed, as a politician with a lot of pre-revolutionary experience, he was a reasonable contender for power.

Have Rodzianko cling to power somehow?
This part of your post confused me and seemed to say Rodzianko had been Kerensky's predecessor, which he was not.

Kerensky's predecessor was Georgi Lvov - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgy_Lvov

Were you thinking Rodzianko could have been picked as an alternative to Lvov in the revolution's earliest weeks? The military had a beef with Rodzianko, was that before or after the February Revolution or both?
 

Deleted member 94680

So Rodzianko was a significant leader in the legislature. And indeed, as a politician with a lot of pre-revolutionary experience, he was a reasonable contender for power.


This part of your post confused me and seemed to say Rodzianko had been Kerensky's predecessor, which he was not.

Kerensky's predecessor was Georgi Lvov - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgy_Lvov

Were you thinking Rodzianko could have been picked as an alternative to Lvov in the revolution's earliest weeks? The military had a beef with Rodzianko, was that before or after the February Revolution or both?

Although it doesn't make it entirely clear I got the impression that Rodzianko was effectively Lvov's predecessor. By heading the Provisional Committee of the State Duma he was involved in setting up the post-Tsar regime.
"The Committee declared itself the governing body of Russian Empire, but defacto competed for power with the Petrograd Soviet, which was created on the same day"
"On March 15 (March 2 O.S.) the Committee and the Petrograd Soviet agreed to create the Provisional Government."
"Rodzianko remained prime minister just for a few days. He succeeded in publishing an order for the immediate return of the soldiers to their barracks and subordinate to their officers. To them Rodzianko was totally unacceptable as prime minister and Prince Georgi Lvov, a member of the Constitutional Democratic Party, became his successor." Make him acceptable somehow and the conclusion I drew is he would remain as Prime Minister and head the Provisional Government.
 
By the time Kerensky replaced Lvov as Prime Minister in July, anyone to the right of Kerensky would have been unacceptable to the soviets.

And make no mistake, the soviets were the real power well before October:

***

"In order to give you a sense of the situation in 1917, I am going to read you some excerpts from a book by an American woman Rheta Childe Dorr, correspondent, fighter for women’s rights, a self-proclaimed socialist, although, as we shall see, a peculiar one. The name of the book is Inside the Russian Revolution. In the following passage, she describes her first impression in Russia (10):

"About the first thing I saw on the morning of my arrival in Petrograd … was a group of young men, about twenty in number, I should think, marching through the street in front of my hotel, carrying a scarlet banner with an inscription in large white letters.

"'What does that banner say?' I asked the hotel commissionaire who stood beside me.

"'It says ‘All the Power to the Soviet’,' was the answer.

"'What is the soviet?' I asked, and he replied briefly:

"'It is the only government we have in Russia now.'[2]

"Judging from this passage, when did Dorr arrive in Russia? Most of us would naturally assume it was after the Bolshevik revolution in October, when the soviets overthrow the Provisional Government. But in actuality, Dorr arrived in late May 1917 and stayed in Russia only until the end of August. Her book consists of newspaper columns written in the fall; it was sent to press before the October revolution. Her outlook thus gives us an invaluable look at what was happening in 1917, free of hindsight.

"Dorr’s account brings home an essential fact: 'The soviets, or councils of soldiers’ and workmen’s delegates, which have spread like wildfire throughout the country, are the nearest thing to a government that Russia has known since the very early days of the revolution … Petrograd is not the only city where the Council of Workmen’s and Soldiers’ Delegates has assumed control of the destinies of the Russian people. Every town has its council, and there is no question, civil or military, which they do not feel capable of settling' (10, 19). Dorr herself was intensely hostile to what she felt was the tyrannical rule of the mob, partly because of her devotion to the war against Germany. She regarded soviet rule as no better and in some ways worse than the tsars. Take censorship of the press:

"'Even if [the average American traveler] could read all the daily papers, however, he would not get very much information. The press censorship is as rigid and as tyrannical today as in the heyday of the autocracy, only a different kind of news is suppressed (5).'

"In order to give her American readers an idea of 'the committee mania' that had taken over Russia, she used this analogy:

"'Try to imagine how it would be in Washington, in the office of the secretary of the treasury, let us say, if a committee of the American Federation of Labor should walk in and say: 'We have come to control you. Produce your books and all your confidential papers.' This is what happens to cabinet ministers in Russia, and will continue until they succeed in forming a government responsible only to the electorate, and not a slave to the Council of Workmen’s and Soldiers’ Delegates (47-8).'...

"As Dorr truly observes, soviet power was established in February 1917, and not in October..."

https://johnriddell.wordpress.com/2...he-soviets-biography-of-a-slogan-by-lars-lih/
 

raharris1973

Gone Fishin'
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Monthly Donor
Well what figures to the left of kerensky might have been chosen either first for war minister or later picked for PM?
 
Well what figures to the left of kerensky might have been chosen either first for war minister or later picked for PM?

Chernov would be the obvious candidate for Prime Minister in a non-Bolshevik soviet government. The problem is that the Mensheviks, due to their dogmatic Marxism, felt that the Russian revolution was still going through tis "bourgeois" stage, and that too left-wing a government (which would mean a break with the Kadets) was therefore not desirable. And alas the SR's went along with the Mensheviks on that point. To quote an old soc.history.what-if post of mine:

"As it was, the Mensheviks and SRs were handicapped by the fact that in
each case the right wing of the party was dominant, and the left wing did
not want to split with it (except, as I noted, some of the extreme left-
wing SRs, and even they split only after October). The Right Mensheviks
and Right SRs opposed an all-socialist government and insisted on
supporting Kerensky (himself nominally an SR though he regarded himself as
being above parties) and on maintaining a coalition with the Kadets. In
the case of the Right Mensheviks, this was due to a dogmatic Marxism (the
Mensheviks were always more "orthodox" about their Marxism than the
Bolsheviks): Since by all orthodox Marxist standards, backward Russia was
not ready for socialism, it was essential not to alienate the bourgeoisie
from the revolution. As for the SRs, they were curiously willing to
follow the pro-war, pro-coalition-with-the-Kadets Mensheviks. Oliver
Radkey in *The Agrarian Foes of Bolshevism: Promise and Default of the
Russian Socialist Revolutionaries, February to October 1917* (New York and
London: Columbia UP 1958) notes that the Mensheviks' concept of
revolution was "as though made to order" for the right SR's, "whose zeal
for war led them above all else to desire a class truce, which could only
mean the bourgeois hegemony of the revolution postulated in Menshevik
theory" (p.467). But Radkey also adds (pp. 466-7):

"'Yet it was not just the right wing which held the PSR in thralldom to
Menshevism. The center was also responsible for this fateful dependency of
the larger party upon the smaller, even to the extent of abandoning its
own concept of the revolution. Chernov says the SR's were twice late in
respect to coalition, first with its formation, and then with its
liquidation. But he also tells us, on an earlier occasion when the
impression of the overwhelming catastrophe sustained by his party was
fresh on his mind, that at the time of the July crisis the question of a
socialist government had been posed and had been decided in the negative,
partly because the Mensheviks refused to join. A break with Menshevism was
by no means desired by many adherents of the center, leftist in
inclination. Presumably he numbered himself among these members--he was
always friendly to Menshevism. It was at the Tenth Petersburg Conference,
however, that he spoke more frankly than on other occasions. He admitted
that SR tactics had been framed with reference to Menshevik tactics--
sometimes excessively so. He admitted that for the Mensheviks, with their
concept of a bourgeois revolution, coalition had been a goal, whereas for
the SR's it was only a means. When Tsereteli at the Democratic Conference
termed 1905 a failure but this revolution a success, because of the
achievement of coalition, Chernov had realized that their paths were
fatefully diverging. Need he have waited so long? And why, after the
truth finally dawned upon him, should he have thought of Tsereteli as
minister of foreign affairs in a government headed by himself?'"

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/soc.history.what-if/f_0jpbTE2Ag/oIfcnukKr30J
 
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