Foreign minister
When Tsar Nicholas II abdicated under this pressure on March 15, 1917 (Russian Revolution of 1917), Milyukov wanted to preserve the monarchy as a stabilizing force but found little support. The revolutionary tide was now running strongly against him. In the liberal provisional government under Prince Georgy Lvov (Lvov, Georgy Yevgenyevich, Prince), which Milyukov helped to constitute, he towered intellectually over his colleagues but was soon outmaneuvered by the Socialist leader Aleksandr Kerensky (Kerensky, Aleksandr Fyodorovich), who favoured a policy of concessions to popular demands, notably on the question of taking immediate steps toward a negotiated peace. As foreign minister, Milyukov clung to Russia's wartime alliances. He resisted heavy pressure from inside and outside the government to send a note to the Allies redefining his country's war aims, and when he yielded on May 1 the note was phrased ambiguously. Disturbances broke out in the streets of Petrograd (St. Petersburg), and Milyukov was obliged to resign (May 15).
Last years
Thereafter Milyukov endeavoured to counter the new coalition government's leftward swing by rallying the moderates, but with little success. The Bolshevik seizure of power in November 1917 forced him to leave Petrograd for southern Russia, where he became political counselor to the leaders of the White Volunteer Army. Subsequently he emigrated to Paris. Milyukov held fast to his liberal principles and remained active in politics and scholarship until his death.
John L.H. Keep Ed.
Additional Reading
Thomas Riha, A Russian European: Paul Miliukov in Russian Politics (1969), is a thorough study that emphasizes the period 1905–17. A more recent work is Melissa Kirschke Stockdale, Paul Miliukov and the Quest for a Liberal Russia, 1880–1918 (1996).
Lvov, Georgy Yevgenyevich, Prince
▪ Russian statesman
(Knyaz)
born Oct. 21 [Nov. 2, New Style], 1861, Popovka, near Tula, Russia
died March 7, 1925, Paris, France
Russian social reformer and statesman who was the first head of the Russian provisional government established during the February Revolution (1917).
An aristocrat who held a degree in law from the University of Moscow, Lvov worked in the civil service until 1893, when he resigned. He became a member of the Tula zemstvo (local government council), and during the Russo-Japanese War (1904–05) he organized voluntary relief work in the Orient. In 1905 he joined the newly founded liberal Constitutional Democratic (Kadet) Party, was elected to the first Duma (Russian parliament; convened May 1906), and in 1906 was informally nominated for a ministerial post.
During World War I Lvov became chairman of the All-Russian Union of Zemstvos (1914) and a leader of Zemgor (the Union of Zemstvos and Towns; 1915), which provided relief for the sick and wounded and procured supplies for the army. Although his activities were often obstructed by bureaucratic officials who objected to voluntary organizations that encroached upon their areas of responsibility, Lvov's groups made significant contributions to the war effort, and he won the respect of many political liberals and army commanders. When the imperial government fell, he became the prime minister (with Tsar Nicholas II's subsequent approval) of the provisional government (March 2 [March 15], 1917).
Lvov also served as minister of the interior, but his government, composed initially of liberals and, after May 5 (May 18), of moderate socialists as well, was unable to satisfy the increasingly radical demands of the general population. In July, after a major left-wing demonstration threatened to overthrow the provisional government, Lvov resigned his posts (July 7 [July 20]), allowing Aleksandr Kerensky to succeed him as prime minister. When the Bolsheviks seized power in October, Lvov was arrested, but he escaped and eventually settled in Paris.
▪ Russian government
Russian Uchreditelnoye Sobraniye,
popularly elected body that convened in 1918 in Petrograd (St. Petersburg) to write a constitution and form a government for postrevolutionary Russia. The assembly was dissolved by the Bolshevik government.
The election of the Constituent Assembly was held on Nov. 25, 1917 (November 12, Old Style). The Socialist Revolutionary Party, though only receiving a plurality of the vote (40 percent), won a majority of the seats. The Bolsheviks received a little less than 25 percent of the vote. Other parties won only a small number of delegates.
The Bolsheviks and their allies, the Left Socialist Revolutionaries, argued that this mandate was not valid and that the Soviets (where they were in control) more accurately reflected the public will.
When the Constituent Assembly convened on Jan. 18, 1918 (January 5, Old Style), it rejected the Bolsheviks' demand that it recognize the authority of the Soviet government. The Bolshevik delegates (and the Left Socialist Revolutionaries as well) walked out. The next day, troops loyal to the Soviet government dispersed representatives of the non-Bolshevik parties, and the government officially dissolved the Assembly.
Brusilov, Aleksey Alekseyevich
▪ Russian general
born Aug. 31 [Aug. 19, Old Style], 1853, Tiflis, Russia
died March 17, 1926, Moscow
Russian general distinguished for the “Brusilov breakthrough” on the Eastern Front against Austria-Hungary (June–August 1916), which aided Russia's Western allies at a crucial time during World War I.
Brusilov was educated in the Imperial Corps of Pages, and he began his military career as a cavalry officer in the Caucasus. He distinguished himself in the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–78 and was promoted to the rank of general in 1906. Upon the outbreak of World War I, Brusilov was given command of the Russian 8th Army, and he played a brilliant part in the Russian campaign in Galicia (autumn 1914).
In the spring of 1916 Brusilov succeeded the elderly and irresolute general N.Y. Ivanov as commander of the four Russian armies on the southwest sector of the Eastern Front. From June 4, 1916, Brusilov led these armies, who were billeted south of the Pripet Marshes, in a massive attack against the Austro-Hungarian forces. Though they suffered heavy losses, Brusilov's forces by August had taken 375,000 Austrian prisoners (200,000 in the first three days of the offensive) and had overrun all of Bukovina and part of eastern Galicia. Largely because of this offensive, Germany was forced to divert troops that might have sufficed to secure a final victory against the French in the Battle of Verdun. The offensive had other beneficial effects for the Allies. Romania decided to enter the war on their side, and Austria had to abandon its assault in northern Italy. Brusilov's offensive produced no decisive results on the Eastern Front itself, however.
Brusilov served briefly as commander-in-chief of the Russian armies from May 22 to July 19 (O.S. [June 4 to Aug. 1, N.S.]), 1917. Under the Bolshevik government he served as a military consultant and an inspector of cavalry from 1920 to 1924, after which he retired. His memoirs of World War I were translated in 1930 as A Soldier's Note-Book, 1914–1918.
Goremykin, Ivan Logginovich
▪ Russian official
born Oct. 27 [Nov. 8, New Style], 1839, Novgorod province, Russian Empire
died Dec. 11 [Dec. 24], 1917, Caucasus