Abstract
Reviewed by: Peter Waldron, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK
The collapse of the Tsarist regime in February 1917 brought the liberal Prince George L’vov to power as the first prime minister of the Provisional Government. L’vov was a natural choice to head the new regime: while he was a member of Russia’s social and political elite, he had not played any part in national government before 1917, instead establishing his reputation as a prominent liberal member of Moscow local government. During the First World War he had headed the voluntary organization established by Russia’s local councils to provide assistance to wounded soldiers. The competence of L’vov’s wartime organization contrasted sharply with the Tsarist government’s shambolic handling of the war and provided the springboard for L’vov to head the government that replaced Nicholas II’s dysfunctional regime in March 1917.
Porter and Lerner’s book concentrates on how Russian local government nurtured liberalism from the 1860s to its apparent triumph when Tsarism collapsed, only for liberalism to be destroyed by the Bolshevik revolution in October 1917. The book argues that the establishment of Russia’s first parliament – the Duma – at the end of 1905 marked the start of a ‘liberal experiment’ in Russia, but that the failure of Russia’s liberal political parties – Kadets, Octobrists and Progressists – to make common cause was of central importance in the eventual failure of liberals to maintain power. Once war had broken out in the summer of 1914, the continued power of the conservative Tsarist regime was clearly demonstrated as it sidelined the Duma, intending to exclude any form of alternative political opinion from public discourse. While Russia’s liberal Duma politicians found themselves deprived of their public forum and could only fulminate in impotent rage, local government was rapidly able to extend its influence by stepping in to provide essential care – and much more – for Russia’s wounded soldiers. The abdication of Nicholas II in February 1917 appeared to provide the ideal opportunity for Russia’s liberals to take control of the government and move Russia firmly onto a constitutional path. Porter and Lerner identify the failure of L’vov’s Provisional Government to proceed quickly with the election and convocation of a Constituent Assembly as central in the new government’s failure. L’vov’s administration recognized that it had only shaky legitimacy and the Provisional Government proved very reluctant to take substantive decisions about Russian domestic policy without the consent of the Russian people. After the October revolution, and in common with many Russian liberals, L’vov himself left Russia as it became clear that the Bolshevik regime was more than a nine days wonder and he spent the last years of his life as an émigré in France.
The book is a useful addition to the very small amount of work available in English on L’vov, although it is very far from being a complete biography. Based largely on Porter and Lerner’s PhD theses originally written in 1990 and 1976 respectively, the book takes only limited account of the very large amount of material published in the intervening years on the final years of Tsarism and 1917. Heavily weighted towards analysing the politics of the years between 1900 and 1917, Porter and Lerner’s book would benefit from taking more account of the wider contexts of early twentieth-century Russia that militated against the success of liberal politics. The weak development of civil society, the enduring legacy of serfdom and the deeply entrenched ethos of autocracy each contributed to creating a wider social environment in which liberal values and politics barely penetrated through the veneer of Russia’s parliamentary politics. Russia’s dismal performance in the First World War was instrumental in changing the parameters of political discourse, so that the collapse of Tsarism early in 1917 allowed new and radical solutions to become part of everyday thinking. When Russians went to the polls in November 1917 to elect a Constituent Assembly, more than 80 per cent of the votes were cast for socialist parties: the Bolshevik revolution tapped into deep discontents in Russian society. Russian liberalism’s failure was not just the result of the Provisional Government’s inability to act swiftly and decisively in the spring of 1917. Although L’vov ran a wartime organization that had sustained contact with millions of Russian soldiers, popular opinion barely penetrated his Moscow headquarters: Russia’s liberals were fundamentally disconnected from wider political and social currents.