Alexander Kerensky
Alexander Kerensky governed Russia for four months between two revolutions and lost it to the Bolsheviks without a serious fight. Born in Simbirsk in 1881 — the same town as Lenin, whose father had been his own father's school inspector — he became a defence lawyer for political cases and entered the Duma in 1912 as a moderate socialist. The February Revolution of 1917 made him the only man in both bodies that mattered: a minister in the Provisional Government and a vice-chairman of the Petrograd Soviet. He was justice minister, then war minister, then prime minister from July. His fatal decision was to continue the war. The government's authority rested on the promise of a constituent assembly, and it postponed both the assembly and the land question until peace, which meant it had nothing to offer soldiers or peasants while the Bolsheviks offered bread, land and peace immediately. The June offensive he ordered collapsed and destroyed what discipline remained. The Kornilov affair in August finished him. His own commander-in-chief moved troops on Petrograd, in a confusion over whether Kerensky had requested it; Kerensky dismissed him, declared a coup, and armed the Bolshevik Red Guards to defend the capital. He never disarmed them. The Bolsheviks took Petrograd on 25 October with very little bloodshed, and Kerensky left to find loyal troops and found almost none. He spent fifty-three years in exile, mostly in New York, and died in 1970 aged eighty-nine. He is the standard case of a moderate crushed between two sides who both regarded him as the obstacle.
- Lived: 1881 CE – 1970 CE
- Nationality: Russian
- Roles: head_of_state, revolutionary_politician
