Romanian Eagle

While Romanian smugglers were hard at work digging into Russian corners, something more chaotic happened in St. Petersburg.

Foreign Minister Pavel Miliukov sent a note to the governments of the Allied countries, promising to continue participating in the First World War until the end of the victory. Mass demonstrations against the war broke out by workers and soldiers in Petrograd on March 2 and 3, with demonstrators demanding Miliukov's dismissal.

This greatly displeased the commander of the Petrograd Military District, Lavl Kornilov, who asked the government to issue an order to suppress the demonstrations by force. However, Kornilov's request was rejected by Prime Minister Lvov. Lvov believed that the interim government could not make such a move, otherwise it would be no different from the overthrown Russian government. And it will shake the foundations of the interim government, knowing that there is more than one government agency in St. Petersburg.

Because of the opposition of Prime Minister Lvov, the military repression was rejected. So Foreign Minister Miliukov and Army Minister Guchkov, the two cabinet members announced their resignation. In fact, Lvov's choice was also a helpless move. At that time, if the protests and marches of the people were suppressed, the people would be driven into the arms of Bushelvik. Because many soldiers and workers in St. Petersburg have been organized by the red party, a crackdown would be a prelude to the downfall of the interim government.

After the resignation of the heads of foreign affairs and the army and navy, the interim government can only be convincing by joining other parties. At that time, another government, the Petrograd Soviet, also entered the sight of the Provisional Government.

One more thing to say here is that the Petrograd Soviet was not the later Soviet government, and its government members were not all members of the Bushelviks. Many of its members were Mensheviks. And the provisional government just needs the help of these Mensheviks so that it can unite the left-wing forces.

Of course, the provisional government did not give the Menshevik Party much importance, but gave two irrelevant ministerial positions to Labour and Posts and Telecommunications, whose main target was the Social Revolutionary Party.

Speaking of the Social Revolutionary Party, in fact, this party has not been established for a long time. This is a Russian petty-bourgeois party formed in 1902 by a preliminary coalition of several scattered groups and groups of the old Narodniks. In December 1905, the 1st National Congress of the Socialist Revolutionary Party was held, and the party program and constitution were adopted, and its establishment was officially announced. The main characters are Chernov, Kerensky and so on.

Among them, Kerensky was the most favored by the provisional government, because in 1905, Kerensky served as legal counsel for the victims of the government's repression, and was imprisoned for publishing works inciting the revolution. The event made him famous, and he also worked as a defense attorney for the trials of many opposition politicians. These jobs benefited Kerensky in subsequent years, making him a nationally known political figure.

So the interim government took out the Minister of the Army and Navy, a seat so important in the war, to win him over. In addition to this, of course, the relationship he and Lenin had been friends with as children was also part of the provisional government's considerations. During the provisional government, Lenin made a lot of headaches by saying that the revolution needed to continue.

So, who is this well-known head of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party, Mr. Kerensky?

Kerensky's full name is Alexander Vdolovich Kerensky. On May 4, 1881, he was born in Simbirsk on the Volga River in Russia (now Ulyanovsk, Russian Federation, Lenin was also born in the same place). His mother was from a noble family, and his father was a teacher and principal of a local middle school. And Lenin finished middle school under his father, so Kerensky and Lenin were good friends.

Unlike Lenin, Kerensky received his law degree in 1904, the same year he married the daughter of a Russian general. Then in 1912 Kerensky was elected to the State Duma. During the trial of the Jewish Belis (the accused was falsely accused of killing a Christian boy in a ritual sacrifice), Kerensky successfully persuaded the St. Petersburg lawyers to pass a resolution,

He condemned the incident as deliberately spreading rumors to slander the Jewish nation. He ended up being detained for eight months for criticizing the judicial system.

When the war broke out, Kerensky supported Russia's entry into the war and urged the government and the people to unite with the outside world. However, because the government adopted an oppressive policy and could not fight effectively, he advocated the abolition of the tsarist regime.

In this time and space transformed by Eder, Kerensky was also one of the leaders who quickly rose to prominence during the January Revolution, when he was elected as two vice-chairmen of the Provisional Governing Council of the Petrograd Workers and Soldiers Soviet. This is also one of the main reasons why the interim government needs to be fancy, because it can reconcile the contradictions between the two governments, even if the Petrograd Soviet does not allow its members to participate in the interim government.

Facing the olive branch extended by the interim government, Kerensky happily accepted the post. This made the relationship between the Socialist-Revolutionary Party and the Bolshevik Party very delicate, and it is not yet known how this change will turn out.

On March 15, 1917, the two sides negotiated an agreement, and five socialist ministers entered the cabinet. They are; Army and Navy Minister Alexander Kerensky, Social Revolutionary Party. Minister of Justice Pavel Pereversev, Social Revolutionary Party. Agriculture Minister Viktor Chernov, Socialist Revolutionary Party. Labour Minister Matvey Skobelev, Menshevik. Minister of Posts and Telecommunications Irakli Tsereteli, Menshevik.

After the provisional government absorbed some members of the Petrograd Soviet, the leftist Bolsheviks in the Soviet quickly rose. The government is considering its functions and the satisfaction of the people, but it has not considered the issue of party ideology. Because of the presence of both left and right ministers in the interim government, it is often two-sided and unable to formulate decisive policies.

So the policies that led to the provisional government were always unpopular, and because of the proliferation of smuggling, which made the situation all over Russia worse, the people were gathering dissatisfaction. In fact, members of the interim government knew about these situations, but because of the war, Russia’s economy had been fragmented, and the interim government had no good solution. Therefore, using the performance of the battlefield to divert the attention of the people became one of the few options for the interim government.

Therefore, after Kerensky served as Minister of the Army and Navy, the interim government gave him a lot of support in the army. Replacing officers on the front line who are dissatisfied with continuing to fight, suppressing war weariness among soldiers. To be honest, these actions quickly restored the morale of the Russian army that had collapsed, but not much. They just adjusted the collapsed army to be about to collapse, but the army’s mood was still not high, but the bad domestic situation made Kerensky unable to Take your time to deal with the situation of the army.

So on May 1, Kerensky ordered the front-line army to launch an attack on the German-Austrian forces. So the Russian Provisional Government's attack began in such a hasty situation.