Explaining History Podcast

Provisional Government (1917)

Explaining History Podcast

Provisional Government (1917)

Reading time:

1–2 minutes

Full Description

The government established in Russia after the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II in February 1917, initially dominated by liberals and moderate socialists from the State Duma. The Provisional Government chose to continue the war against Germany, a decision that proved fatal: it faced the Petrograd Soviet’s rival authority (the “dual power” situation), could not control the army, and lost legitimacy among a population desperate for peace and land reform. It was overthrown by the Bolsheviks in October 1917.

Critical Perspective

The Provisional Government’s decision to continue the war is the central counterfactual of the Russian Revolution. Had it sought a negotiated peace, it might have retained enough legitimacy to survive. But its leaders — liberals and socialist moderates who believed in Allied solidarity and feared German domination — chose a path that their soldiers and workers would not follow. The revolution of October 1917 was less a Bolshevik seizure of power than the final collapse of a government that had already lost the consent of the governed.

Explaining History

Explaining History Podcast

For more than a decade, the Explaining History Podcast has helped listeners around the world make sense of modern history. What began in 2012 as a simple experiment—short, accessible episodes explaining major historical events—has grown into a long-running library of carefully researched, thoughtful explorations of the 20th and 21st centuries.

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