Stage managed by Prime
Minister Kerensky, the State
Conference opens in Moscow. Delegates had a little
trouble getting there: a protest strike called by the Bolsheviks and their
left-socialist allies shut down the railroad stations and tramways. Even the waiters in the
restaurants joined the strike, and the city lights went out too. Some 400,000 workers were on strike; one-day strikes took place in Kiev, Kostreva, and
Tsaritizn as well.
Poised at the
center of the uneasy compromise between the left and right elements invited to
the conference, Kerensky made the first speech at about 4:00 p.m. He warned the
left (meaning the Bolsheviks, not in attendance) against insurrection, and he
warned the right (explicitly naming Kornilov) against counter-revolution. As
self-described “supreme head” of the state, he, Kerensky, would know how to
deal with any such threats.
Kerensky defended
his war policy without attempting to explain the failure of the June offensive.
When he invited the delegates to rise and salute the ambassadors of the
Entente, only the Menshevik Martov and a few others remained seated, despite
catcalls from the officers’ loge.
Miliukov later
wrote in his history of the revolution that despite Kerensky’s efforts to
project the power of the office he held, “he evoked only a feeling of pity.”
Other ministers
of the Provisional Government then spoke. Among them, the Minister of Industry
asked the capitalists to restrain themselves in the matter of profit; the
Minister of Finance spoke of his plan to decrease the direct tax on the possessing
classes by increasing other indirect taxes. This drew loud cheers from the
right. Chernov, the Social Revolutionary Minister of Agriculture, was not
permitted to speak. Of course, the Provisional Government had no agrarian policy
to speak of.
The dramatic pattern
devised by Kerensky for the conference was anticipated by the alternation of left and right
speakers who held ministries in the Provisional Government.
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