Russian Republic

• 1. Introduction

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  The Russian Republic was proclaimed on the 1st of September 1917, when Alexander Kerensky and Alexander Zarudny signed a founding decree. Kerensky held the title of Minister-Chairman; Zarudny served as Minister of Justice. The state they named had already been operating for months, ever since Emperor Nicholas II stepped down. It had lacked any formal republican identity until that moment. What those two signatures set in motion lasted barely ten weeks. Russia in that brief window became a place of dramatic political contests and sweeping reforms. No single institution could control the fractured power structure that had emerged after the monarchy fell. How did a government with such ambitious beginnings collapse so quickly? And why did the democratic experiment it represented keep going even after the republic itself was gone?

• 2. Lvov's Radical Reforms

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  Prince Georgy Lvov led the Provisional Government in the months before the Russian Republic was formally declared. In his first weeks as prime minister, he oversaw a burst of legislative change that sought to transform Russia's social and political foundations. Universal adult suffrage came into effect. Freedoms of press and speech were guaranteed. Capital punishment was abolished, and all legal restrictions based on religion, class, or race were removed from Russian law.

  By July 1917, Lvov could not rally sufficient support to govern and stepped down. He handed power to his Minister of War, Alexander Kerensky. Kerensky inherited a government whose authority was disputed on multiple fronts.

• 3. Three Claims on Power

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  The Petrograd Soviet was the most prominent body challenging the Provisional Government's authority. Soviets were workers' councils, most powerful in manufacturing cities, and their leadership came predominantly from left-wing parties. Armed paramilitary units backed the soviets, giving them enough practical strength to challenge a Provisional Government whose state apparatus proved ineffective. A third claimant complicated matters: groups seeking autonomy along ethnic or national lines. Among them, the Central Council of Ukraine was asserting claims over portions of the former Russian Empire.

  The seamen of the Baltic Fleet illustrated just how divided the military was. Their politics sat far to the left, and they made their views known in the capital through open activism. Officers on the right of the political spectrum presented the opposite problem. General Lavr Kornilov was about to make that tension impossible to contain.

• 4. The General's Gambit

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  Kerensky's decision to dismiss General Lavr Kornilov ended in a coup attempt that Kornilov launched and lost. The failure gave Kerensky a political opening. He moved to establish a Provisional Council to function as a temporary parliament, pending elections for a Constituent Assembly. The republic that the founding decree had named now had a legislature to go with it, however provisional.

  On the 7th of November 1917, the Bolsheviks seized power. Both the Provisional Government and the Provisional Council were dissolved in the same action. Yet the Constituent Assembly that Kerensky had been preparing for was not yet finished with its role.

• 5. One Last Democratic Act

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  On the 18th of January 1918, the Constituent Assembly issued a decree naming Russia a democratic federal republic: the Russian Democratic Federative Republic. The assembly had been elected through a partially democratic vote held in November 1917, weeks after the Bolsheviks had already taken power. That the election went ahead at all reflected how durable the democratic impulse remained amid the new regime's consolidation. The assembly's authority lasted exactly one day. On the 19th of January 1918, the Bolsheviks dissolved it. The Russian Republic's de jure existence continued until the 25th of January 1918. On that date, the Bolsheviks proclaimed the Russian Soviet Republic, replacing the name that Kerensky and Zarudny had signed into being.

• 6. A Name Without a State

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  The term 'Russian Republic' has sometimes been applied to all of Russia's post-monarchical politics since the abdication of the 2nd of March 1917. That usage is erroneous. During the period between the abdication and the September proclamation, Russia's political status was formally unresolved. It was left to be decided by a future elected Constituent Assembly. The Bolsheviks themselves had used 'Russian Republic' as their own designation in the period immediately following their seizure of power. The July 1918 Constitution put an end to any ambiguity: it formally adopted 'Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic' as the official name.

  September 1918 brought a direct counter-claim from anti-Bolshevik forces, who declared a rival government: the Russian State. They organized it under the leadership of the Provisional All-Russian Government.