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Their leader was Paul Milukov, a professor in the University of Moscow and at one time professor in the University of Chicago. The Duma, though the restrictive election laws had minimized the revolutionary elements within it, clamored for the promised reforms until it was finally dissolved by the Government.
All day delegations from various organizations of both social and military life of the capital appeared before the doors of the Duma to offer allegiance, and again and again Milukov and Kerensky, each the popular hero of their separate elements, the one of the liberal middle classes and the other of the radical working classes, were called out to deliver addresses to crowds of enthusiastic people.
Ex-Premier Boris von Sturmer, the traitor whom Milukov had denounced as a thief, and who had since his downfall been a member of the court camarilla, was arrested and put in a cell lately occupied by a political prisoner.
The president himself, Michael Rodzianko, who hitherto had always been a stanch supporter of the autocracy, being a prosperous landowner and the father of two officers in a crack regiment, arraigned Sturmer as once he had arraigned the revolutionary agitators. But it was left to Professor Paul Milukov, the leader of the Constitutional Democrats, to create the sensation of the meeting.
The first important cause for dissension between the Council of Workingmen's and Soldiers' Deputies and the Provisional Government occurred on April 7, 1917, when Professor Milukov, speaking as Minister of Foreign Affairs, stated that the occupation of Constantinople and the Dardanelles was essential to the economic prosperity of Russia.
His oratory carried the day. The council agreed to a coalition cabinet which should have full control of affairs. After a joint session between the executive committee of the council and the Duma committee, the new cabinet was formed on May 19, 1917. Paul Milukov retired as Foreign Minister, for his nationalistic utterances in regard to Constantinople had aroused against him all the radicals.
That does not mean that they will have any use for M. Milukov or for a monarch with whom M. Milukov might be ready to supply them.
The conservative press of England and America exaggerated to absurdity the program and aims of the radical forces in Russia, while the Socialist press of these same countries was equally unreliable in its partisanship, and would have had its readers believe Prince Lvov and Milukov hardly any improvement on Protopopoff, a view in which it would not have been supported by the most radical Russians.
Protopopoff now began persecuting the members and the leaders of the social forces as though they were the veriest street agitators for Socialism. Next he endeavored to have Paul Milukov assassinated, but the assassin repented at the last moment and revealed the plot.
For some days there were reports that further changes were still to be made, giving the Constitutional Democratic party more definite representation in the cabinet, on condition that these representatives would be free from party dictation. Milukov, the party chief, showed himself very much opposed to this suggestion, as he was to the granting of such absolute power to the Government.
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