Weakness of Provisional Government

Question 1

PG - Populist decrees

Answer 1

• civil liberties
• 8 hour day for industrial workers
• trade unions recognised
• Okhrana abolished
• However: “Retribution, not a constitution, was the people’s first priority” FIges

Question 2

PG - Land question

Answer 2

Government policy

• not enough $$ for compensation
• beyond ability of bureaucracy
• resolve legally, wait for CA
• meanwhile, protect rights of squires
• 20 May volost committees est to uphold status quo, instead turned revolutionary, passed laws to legitimize seizures

Peasant action

• May, widespread seizures (soldiers on Easter leave), despite govt orders
• govt lack of authority in country (police dismantled, army reluctant)
• First All-Russian Assembly on 4-25 May endorsed seizures “nothing did more to undermine the government’s authority in the countryside”

Question 3

PG - Workers’ rights initial progress

Answer 3

• 8 hour day 10 march
• conciliation oards
• railway worker’s management
• 5-5 fold pay increases

Question 4

PG- Workers’ rights neutral stance problems

Answer 4

• each side accused govt of favoritising the other
• employers said govt was too soft (rights disrupt production)
• Menshevik entry into govt = free reign in strikes, dissapointed when big demands not met, accused govt of backing employers
• month long strike in Surmovo in June, biggest defense production)

Question 5

PG - Nationalism

Answer 5

Policy

• refused to make concessions for Fin and Ukr
• ‘guardians of empire’ until CA
• movements grew in mass appeal
• demands for autonomy turned into independence

Ukraine crisis

• ignored Rada demands for autonomy
• appointed special commision full of Russians (said have to wait for CA, raised legal qs over all Rada demands)
• radicalized, pushed for independence (1st Universal June 10)
• 2 July reached compromise, broadly recognized autonomy
• Russian nationalists outraged
• Kadets ‘behaving like the worst Black Hundred bastards’ Lvov
• seen as counter-rev, Mensheviks and SRs didn’t criticise enough, implicated
• ‘yielded to the counter revolutionary howls of the Great Russian landowners and capitalists’

Question 6

PG - War Question policy

Answer 6

• 27 March Declaration of War Aims (‘lasting peace’, largely same as Soviet peace campaign)

Question 7

PG - War Q - Milyukov Note

Answer 7

• ‘fully carry out obligations’ ‘decisive victory’ ‘ to finish the World War by a convincing victory”
• April 18
• ‘bourgeois assault on the democracy with the prupose of prolonging the war’ Gorkyde
• 20 April demonstrations, led by Fedor Linde, 25,000 men
• Soviet condemned it, thought Soviet would approve
• “completely improvised” Linde, get rid of 10 bourgeoius ministers, Bol and anarchist agitators

Question 8

June Offensive

Answer 8

• reason, push out of Galicia, strengthen campaign for general settlement
  Failure
• over 170,000 deserters, almost 400,000 casualties
• collapse dealt fatal blow to PG and the personal authority of its leaders
  Declaration on the Rights of Servicemen
• 11 May
• restored authority of officers, corporal punishment (Brusilov wouldn’t fight without it)
• ‘Declaration on the Rightlessnes of Servicemen’ Pravda
• Between May 1st and June 11th there were again 7,000 copies of the Pravda, 32,000 of the Social Democrat, and over 61,000 of the Soldatskaia Pravda.

Question 9

PG - WarQ - Verkhovsky warning

Answer 9

• 21 October
• army = 9.5 mill, can suport 7
• rations reduced to 1.5 pounds
• only peace can supress anarchy
• “we cannot go on with the war”
• removed, accused of treason

Question 10

PG - delays on CA

Answer 10

Special Council created

• led by Kadet Kokoshkin
• Kadet’s wanted to delay, didn’t want assembly to be radical, ‘work with such exactitude as to force the delay’ Rosenberg
• tried to make perfect elections
• pushed back from September to November