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Updated: September 21, 2025
It would have been impossible to get all to agree to vote against the credits. Under the strong leadership of Alexander Kerensky the Labor party soon took a decided stand in support of the war. In the name of the entire group of the party's representatives in the Duma, Kerensky read at an early session a statement which pledged the party to defend the fatherland.
It was then that Rodzianko, the president of the Duma, addressed a letter to the premier, placing the responsibility of Russia's recent defeats squarely on him and added: "You are obviously too old to possess the vigor to deal with so difficult a situation. Be man enough to resign and make way for some younger and more capable man." Then Goremykin resigned.
Until now since the last of the fighting the control of affairs had been in the hands of the two committees, one representing the radical revolutionists and the other the middle class and aristocratic Duma. Each committee appealed to its constituency to respect the authority of the other.
But even that lie failed to induce the Tsar to alter his decision, and naturally so, for he was afraid of the dark cloud which he saw rising, and which he believed to be due to the long adjournment of the Duma. Hence he was afraid to take the monk's advice. Again I heard both men's voices raised in hot argument.
As we shall see later on, the Laborites and most of the Socialist-Revolutionists afterward supported the war. The declaration of the Social Democrats in the Duma was as weak and as lacking in definiteness of policy as the Manifesto of the Socialist-Revolutionists already quoted. We know now that it was a compromise.
He made it quite clear that the government was not going to grant any reforms worthy of mention. More than that, he made it plain to the entire nation that Nicholas II and his bureaucracy would never recognize the Duma as an independent parliamentary body. Thus the old régime answered the challenge of the Duma.
When he could no more resist the pressure brought to bear upon him by the representatives of the Duma, he wrote and signed a formal instrument of abdication of the Russian throne, naming his brother, Grand-Duke Michael, as his successor. The latter dared not attempt to assume the imperial rôle.
Certainly, liberty is not yet a legal thing in Russia, and the Duma is still an unstable institution, but the end of absolutism is near, for a great event has taken place in the empire of the Tsar, namely, this awakening of the feeling of human dignity, and the spirit of revolt among the lower strata of the Russian people, which in the past, by its unconsciousness, formed the granite pedestal of autocracy.
On the 19th a similar resolution was adopted by the Imperial Council, which continued to follow the leadership of the Duma.
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.
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