What if the Provisional Government of Prince Lvov and Alexader Kerensky succeeded? The Lvov Gorvernment, if I'm not quite mistaken, implemeted quite a few modern reforms, including the introduction of basic civil liberties such as freedom of the press, the abolition of ethnic and religious discrimination and capital punishment and made plans for the introduction of universal suffrage. However, Russian in 1917 didn’t need all these things, she needed peace.
Unfortuntetly, it was only really the left and right wing extremes who wanted a seperate peace, liberals like Lvov and Kerensky loved the war, they were fighting alonside the democracies against german militarism (whatever that was) and to defend Russia. Kerensky launched the ill-fated Kerensky Offensive which went absolutely nowhere. The final nail in Kerensky’s Provisional Government’s coffin was the Kornilov Affair.
The Kornilov Affair was a struggle between Commander-in-Chief Lavr Kornilov and Kerensky. Kornilov believed that the Soviets should be stamped out, Lenin and his associates hanged, military discipline restored and the provisional government restructured. He thought that Kerensky authorized him to impose martial law on the capital, so Kornilov ordered his army to Petrograd.
This pissed Kerensky off; he fired Kornilov from his post, thinking that Kornilov planned to set up a military dictatorship. This led Kornilov to believe that Kerensky was captured by the Bolsheviks and was forced by them to sack him. He issued a call to all Russians to save their country. Kerensky panicked and asked the Bolshevik Red Guards for help. He also released important Bolsheviks from prison. The Otctober Revolution happened a few days later.
Is there any way that Kerensky’s govenrment can survive? Here’s one POD, Assistant War Minister Boris Savinkov suspected there was an misunderstanding between Kornilov and Kerensky and offered to mediate. Kerensky ignored him and sacked Kornilov. Suppose that Kerensky listened to Savinkov and allowed him to root out the misunderstandings between them?