To raise the morale of the troops Kerensky went on a tour of the Front during May. Here his hysterical oratory reached fever pitch. With his squeaky voice and waving arms, he appealed to the soldiers to make the supreme sacrifice for the glorious future of their Fatherland. At the end of these tirades he would collapse in a state of nervous exhaustion and have to be revived with the aid of valerian spirits. Though these fainting fits were not contrived, or at least not to begin with, they added an extra theatrical effect to Kerensky’s performances. Everywhere he was hailed as a hero. Soldiers carried him shoulder-high, pelted him with flowers and threw themselves at his feet. An English nurse watched in amazement as they ‘kissed him, his uniform, his car, and the ground on which he walked. Many of them were on their knees praying; others were weeping.’15 Nothing quite like it had been seen since the days of the Tsar.
Yet all this adulation merely gave Kerensky the false impression that the soldiers were eager to fight. Fifty years later, in his memoirs, he still insisted that a ‘healthy mood of patriotism at the Front had become a definite force’.fn1 But this was far from the truth. Kerensky’s visits brought him into contact with a very unrepresentative cross-section of the army. The soldiers’ meetings which he addressed were mainly attended by the officers, the uniformed intelligentsia and the members of the soldiers’ committees. At these meetings Kerensky’s speeches had a mesmerizing effect: they conjured up the sweet illusion of a victorious end to the war with one more heroic heave. Now a weary soldier might well be tempted to believe in this, even if deep down he knew it to be false, simply because he wanted to. But such illusions were soon dispelled once he returned to the trenches. Outside these meetings, moreover, among the vast majority of the rank and file, the mood of the soldiers was much more negative. Kerensky was frequently heckled by such troops during his trips to the Front, yet he never seemed to register the warning that this conveyed. On one occasion near Riga, a soldier was pushed forward by his mates to question the Minister. ‘You tell us we must fight the Germans so that the peasants can have the land. But what’s the use of us peasants getting land if I am killed and get no land?’ Kerensky had no answer — and there was none — but ordered the officer in command of this unit to send the soldier home: ‘Let his fellow villagers know that we don’t need cowards in the Russian army.’ The soldier could not believe his luck, and at once fainted; while the officer scratched his head in disbelief. How many more men would have been sent home on this basis? It was clear that Kerensky saw the soldier as an exception, of whom he could make an example. He did not seem to realize that there were millions of others just like him.16
