Only thirty-six in February 1917, he had long groomed himself to lead the coming revolution. In youth he had displayed no definite ideology: his biography reveals a man of immense ambition in search of a cause. Eventually, he joined the Socialists-Revolutionaries. He first attracted national attention as a defense lawyer in celebrated political trials (e.g., the Beilis case and that of the Lena workers). In the Fourth Duma, he assumed leadership of the amorphous Trudovik faction and thanks to his rhetorical gifts became the spokesman for the entire left. Police reports made public after the February Revolution revealed that in 1915 and 1916 he had led a double life. Taking advantage of parliamentary immunity, Kerensky had traveled throughout Russia to confer with revolutionaries, whom he sought to organize for subversive purposes.95 Long before the Revolution he had been regarded—and regarded himself—as a rising star. Aware of a physical resemblance to the French Emperor, he liked to strike Napoleonic poses. He had great theatrical gifts and resorted to gestures and other devices which cooler heads dismissed as melodrama but which the crowds loved. He could arouse and sway the masses as no one else, but the effect of his rhetoric was short-lived. Contemporaries thought he lacked talent forjudging people, a defect which, combined with an impetuous personality, in the end destroyed him politically.
Kerensky wanted to build his career in revolutionary Russia by providing a unique link between the two elements of the dyarchy, the “bourgeoisie” and “democracy,” and in this ambition he to some extent succeeded. In drawing up the Duma cabinet, Miliukov set aside two portfolios for socialist deputies in the Ispolkom: his hope was that they would provide a bridge between the cabinet and the Soviet. Chkheidze was offered a specially created post of Minister of Labor. Faithful to the resolution of the Ispolkom to stay out of the “bourgeois” cabinet, he declined. Kerensky, on the other hand, was desperately eager to take over the Ministry of Justice: a cabinet post combined with membership on the Ispolkom would put him (after Chkheidze’s refusal) in an unrivaled position as intermediary between the two central institutions of the new regime. He asked the Ispolkom for authorization to join the cabinet. When his request was denied, Kerensky went over the head of the Ispolkom to the “masses.” In an impassioned speech to the Soviet he pledged that as minister he would never betray democratic ideals. “I cannot live without the people,” he shouted in his pathetic manner, “and the moment you come to doubt me, kill me!” Having uttered these words, he made ready to faint. It was pure melodrama, but it worked. The workers and soldiers gave him a rousing ovation and carried him to the room where the Duma Provisional Committee was in session. Unable to stand up to this display of mass approval, the Ispolkom consented to Kerensky’s accepting the Justice portfolio, but it never forgave him for the blackmail.96 Kerensky now resigned as deputy chairman of the Soviet, but kept his seat on the Ispolkom. In the months ahead, as the authority of the Provisional Government waned, he inexorably rose to the top by virtue of his dual position.
An urgent responsibility of the Provisional Government was dealing with ex-tsarist officials, both those who had been taken into custody by vigilante groups and those who had turned themselves in to the Duma seeking protection. On February 28 and March 1, hundreds of such individuals crowded the halls and chambers of Taurida. Here, Kerensky, as Minister of Justice, came into his own. He would allow no violence: “The Duma sheds no blood” was the slogan he launched and managed to make good on in the face of ugly mobs ready to lynch those whom he himself only weeks before had denounced as traitors. He rescued high tsarist officials from certain death by having them taken into custody. Sometimes he personally snatched them from the hands of mobs bent on murder, including Protopopov and Sukhomlinov. He ordered the officials transferred to the Ministerial Pavilion, located next to Taurida and linked to it by a protected passageway. They sat here, under heavy guard, with strict orders not to converse. During the night of March 1–2, with a show of force to impress the crowds, they were transferred to the Peter and Paul Fortress: the diminutive Protopopov seemed shrunk still smaller from terror as he was driven with a guard’s gun pressed to his head. When space in the fortress ran out, the overflow was put into Mikhailovskii Manege. It is estimated that in the first days of the Revolution, 4,000 persons were arrested or placed in protective custody. Many of them would perish in the Bolshevik “Red Terror.”
43. Alexander Kerensky.
