Alexander Kerensky: Premier of Russia, 1917

              ALEXANDER KERENSKY
PREMIER OF RUSSIA, 1917
in a lecture

Kerensky trying his telephone after the recent plot and tapping of his telephone discovered by the French police



On Behalf of Democracy
IN A WORLD where dictatorships are a growing menace and where so much is being said about the actual failure of democracy or its destined failure in the very near future, Alexander Kerensky chooses to present a defense of democratic ideals and methods.

Kerensky has been a convinced democrat all his life.  While still an extremely young man, as a representative of Socialist Labor in the Duma, his daring criticism of the corruption in the government was responsible for the repeated urging of the Czarina that he be hanged.  Kerensky resisted the dissolution of the Duma by the Czar with the courage that is typical of him—We will not go, he declared.  We stay here.

Mr. Kerensky first came to public notice when he defended the workmen in the River Lima strike in Russia.  The action was characteristic of him as a barrister and later as a public official, for he always backed the under-dog; his clients were the poor, the unfortunate, the persecuted racial minorities.  Later, as Minister of Justice, one of his first acts was to release political prisoners in Siberia.

His five years in the Duma were a thorough training for the brilliant career that followed.  The year 1917 was one of meteoric rise and fall for Kerensky, for he was successively Minister of Justice in the Provisional Government, Minister of War and Marine, Prime Minister, Generalissimo and Dictator, and Chief of the Provisional Government of Five.  Ironically enough, Kerensky's insistence on democratic methods during his rule was partially responsible for the ease with which he was deposed by the Bolsheviks.  He had stressed freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of belief, depending on the indefinite force of public opinion rather than an armed force to back him.  When the pendulum swung, the man who had been worshipped as a God preparatory to and at the beginning of the Revolution had no definite organized group behind him with which to retaliate.

Though there was a price on his head, he stayed in Russia in disguise until well into 1918, leaving finally by way of Murmansk on a British destroyer.  The years

Kerensky reading the latest news bulletin for his paper New Russia, published in Russian, in Paris
 since then Kerensky has lived abroad, in England, Czechoslovakia, Germany, and more recently in France.  As head of the Republican-Democratic bloc, including such outstanding democrats as Prof. P. N. Miliukov, Mr. Kerensky aspires to have his paper, New Russia (published bi-monthly in Paris), become the nucleus or pivot for the organizing work of democratic Russians abroad.  Three hundred copies of every issue are sent to Russia.

Many of Kerensky's articles have appeared in various periodicals in the United States.  He is also the author of two books, The Russian Revolution, March-November, 1917 and The Crucifixion of Liberty.

Generally accepted as the best contemporary Russian orator, his highly emotional style is at the same time terse and forceful.  Confident from 1918 to 1920 that the Bolshevik fever could not be bludgeoned out by Allied intervention, Kerensky is just as convinced today that the Soviets' faults are minimized and their achievements exaggerated.  He still holds to his faith in democracy, the one sane doctrine in an over-mad world.



January 7, 1938

My dear Mr. Feakins:

This is to confirm our telephone conversation in regard to Alexander Kerensky.  While in Paris in December last, I listened as he both read and spoke in English.  He reads very well, indeed—not as an ordinary person would, but as an orator, with force and understanding.  He speaks English simply and clearly.

Sincerely yours,
(Mrs.) SIMEON STRUNSKY.



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