Reasons Behind the Failure of the Provisional Government

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Reasons Behind the Failure of the Provisional Government

The provisional government was brought about after the fall of the

Tsarist government collapsed. This was done purely because of lack of

support for the Tsar and being the only major party. They were in

power for 8months and after making five serious errors; they were

removed from power by force. Kerensky ran the provisional government

and it was his lack of judgement, just like the Tsars stupidity and

gullibility that let him down.

The first error he made was that he made no attempt to make the

provisional government legitimate. It never held a democratic

election for fear of losing status. Even though at the start of their

reign they could have won the election and become legitimate,

Kerensky’s lack of judgement made him decide against it. When the

soviets issued ‘Order No1’ he should have taken the chance he got to

remove it as it caused him to partially lose control of the army – one

of his methods of control of the country. The officers were rendered

powerless and the balance of power was clearly seen to shift away from

Kerensky. Finally, the Duma (The Provisional Government) represented

the upper class of society and seeing as 90% of the population of

Russia were peasants this left him in no position to call an election

as even if all the people he appealed to voted for him, he still would

not win it.

Kerensky thought he was going to win the war even though the chances

were that he wouldn’t as his army was under funded with minimal

resources, awful conditions and weather and very few tactics. It

caused a huge amount of damage to the economy and the soldiers...

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...Lenin) when he had the

chance he made a clear and obvious mistake as was shown when Lenin

came back after the Kornilov affair. However hot being able to decide

on any one course of action also left him in a bad situation, trying

to go 50-50 with the peasants would not work as was shown when he

ended up with both of the bad parts (losing the land and not gaining

popularity). His lack of judgement was the stem of all his problems,

continuation of war was his choice, the Kornilov plot was his idea,

the indecision to give land to the peasantry was his plan and

underestimating the Bolshevik’s and Lenin was his judgement. I think

the point at which everything started collapsing around him was after

the Kornilov affair purely because it lost him so much support from

his army (the basis of control in Russia) and the people.

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