This meant nothing. The Provisional Government was not put in place by the last Romanov but by the leaders of the Soviet. On 1st March the three Bolsheviks and two of the SRs on the Soviet Executive demanded that instead of a government formed from the Duma there be a Provisional Revolutionary Government based on the Soviets. The majority of the Executive disagreed. It sent a delegation led by Chkheidze to meet Rodzianko, Miliukov and Kerensky to discuss the terms of a Provisional Government that would recognise the existence and authority of the Soviet. Miliukov and the left Menshevik journalist Sukhanov conducted most of the negotiations, out of which emerged an agreement that a Provisional Government formed from most of the parties of the Duma would assume temporary power.
Although the agreement imposed immediate legal reforms such as an end to state censorship, it did not propose policies to address land redistribution or the eight-hour day, issues of immense and pressing importance to the Soviet’s peasant and worker supporters. This reflected the nature of the Soviet delegation. They were politicians of the second rank, mainly writers and journalists. At this crucial moment it needed the direction of leaders such as Martov or Chernov. But those leaders were still abroad. The SRs and Mensheviks decided not to accept ministerial office within the new government, although Kerensky went against that policy and became Minister of Justice. He then went to the Soviet, removing his frock coat and collar before addressing it, and passionately asked for its trust while he worked within the government to ensure that it kept its promises (he also switched parties from Trudovik to SR to ensure a wider base of support). The Soviet, swayed by his oratory, gave him a round of applause and endorsed an action he had already taken.
The Provisional Government was faced with a herculean task, made impossible by its refusal to countenance the one policy that would have secured it mass support and which was necessary for its survival–the withdrawal of Russia from the war. That aside, it was a government not without talent. The appointed Prime Minister, Prince Georgy Lvov, was an honest liberal nobleman, the leader of the “Zemstvo men” who had spent the last few decades trying to secure agrarian justice for the peasants. His weakness was that he focused solely on short-term practical measures and was content to leave a political settlement to the Constituent Assembly. His chief lieutenants Miliukov (Minister of Foreign Affairs) and the Octobrist Guchkov (Minister of War and Navy) were far more political. Guchkov wanted to protect landowners from mass expropriation. Miliukov, having removed the Tsar, reverted to the liberal imperialism of the right-wing Kadets. Shortly after he was installed as Foreign Minister he wrote a secret note to the Foreign Ministries of England and France to assure them that Russia would carry on the war and meet all its military commitments.
The only way the Provisional Government could have consolidated power would have been to do a deal with the Petrograd Soviet, co-opt its leading members into the government, and above all end the war and redistribute the landed estates. It prevaricated on all these, although it took steps to remove the structures of autocracy and to institute full civic and legal rights. A day after the formation of the government it publicly announced its first policies, amongst which were a full and immediate amnesty on all issues political and religious, including terrorist acts, military uprisings and agrarian crimes; complete freedom of the press, trade unions, and other assemblies; the abolition of all hereditary, religious and national distinctions; replacement of the police with a public militia; elections to the Zemstvos to be on the basis of a universal, direct, equal and secret vote; and preparations for the convocation of a Constituent Assembly to determine the ultimate form of government.
This was a far more meaningful and democratic civil framework than Western European governments provided in 1917. Yet the Provisional Government gained little credit for it, at the time or subsequently. Isaac Deutscher’s assertion that Lvov’s government “strove to limit the revolution to the overthrow of Tsar Nicholas II and to restore, if possible, the monarchy” is unfair.23 Lvov wished to address the issue of land redistribution through the Zemstvos, but conservatives such as Guchkov opposed him. It is indisputable that the government sought to continue the war in spite of the socialists’ desire that it be concluded on the basis of no annexations and no indemnities. Octobrists and right-wing Kadets would not countenance Russia’s withdrawal or “defeat” in the war. The liberal Kadets, Trudoviks and “revolutionary defencist” Mensheviks felt that surrender or withdrawal would lead to a German occupation and the restoration of the Kaiser’s cousin to the throne.
In this sense, the Provisional Government and many of its supporters did oppose a restoration of monarchy. With the exception of a left wing led by Martov, most of the Mensheviks were guided by two principles. Firstly, that the February Revolution was a bourgeois revolution in the classic sense, and that the relatively small Russian proletariat could not direct or control the transition to a socialist economy of a primarily agrarian society. Secondly, that defeat by Hohenzollern Germany would mean a giant step backward from the democratic gains achieved by the revolution. These were not dishonourable positions but they ignored two fundamental realities: that the Russian bourgeoisie was too afraid and disorganised to effect a substantial democratic revolution, existing as it did side-by-side with a militant socialist and labour movement; and that the prime driver of the revolution that had gifted them temporary power was mass disaffection with the war and a fervent desire to get out of it.
Although fragile and transitory, the political settlement that emerged in February-March 1917 was the Mensheviks’ great historical opportunity. Yet the party’s official position on the Provisional Government was astonishingly off the mark. On 7th March a Menshevik Party statement published in Robochaia Gazeta proclaimed:
It is temporary, i.e. it exists until the time when the Constituent Assembly creates a permanent one. It is revolutionary, i.e. it was created by a revolution in order finally to consolidate its gains and to cast down the old regime. It is a government, i.e. it possesses the full power which is supported by the revolutionary army and the people.
The only part of this formulation that was true was that it was temporary.
At the time, the Menshevik party felt it had good reason to be satisfied with the first steps of the new government. Its statement made clear that the government’s main task was “to destroy swiftly and decisively everything that remains of the old order”, but its conception of the old order was strictly legal and juridical. It believed that in bolting a major extension of civil liberties onto the Provisional Government’s first programme it had given the government “all the measures that are necessary for the establishment of democratic Russia”. It considered that the revolutionary proletariat, during the February events and subsequently, had “demonstrated its readiness not to split, and to conduct the cause of the liberation of Russia together with the liberal bourgeoisie”.24