Specially for the Yabloko web-site, 19.11.2022

Photo: Sergei Frolov “Nicholas II after the Abdication”

Gathering my scraps of thoughts about 1917 [the February 1917 bourgeois revolution in Russia and the following Bolshevik coup in October 1917] (and what, besides scraps, can a non-specialist have about what happened a hundred and five years ago), I think and would like to tell you about the political dangers of honest, but managerially illiterate decisions that are unable to take into account where the “black swans” may actually come from.

Alexander Kerensky [Minister-President of the Russian Provisional Government in the period of 7 (20) July 1917  – 26 October (8 November) 1917] was deeply mistaken in imposing on the country the abdication of [Emperor] Nicholas II with the subsequent implementation of the democratic project through a very radical transitional period.

The “February State”, being philosophically justified, was deprived of a legal basis and a legitimate reputation. The “February [Revolution]” was not a coup d’état, but still, as one might say now, it was a “constitutional coup”, that is, the generation of huge risks of a legal vacuum with hardly predictable consequences.

If the reforms had been carried out on behalf of a bad but legitimate tsar, if Nicholas II had signed everything related to the convocation of a constituent assembly, then it would have been much more difficult for the Bolsheviks to make a coup: as they openly took advantage of the disordered situation, which was very incomprehensible to the layman.

Alexander Kerensky (and all the other with him) seemed to count – at such a critical moment – on the political culture of society, which did not exist and could not exist. It turns out that he thought that he could explain complex things to the country, but there was no listener for complex explanations on behalf of persons with indistinct legitimacy. To put it in a nutshell: if you are honest, then in addition, you should not do stupid things, they will cost a lot. And you should not think provocatively even grounding on honesty.

VICTOR KOGAN-YASNY

is an Advisor to the Chairman of the Federal Political Committee of the Yabloko party. Head of the public organisation “Regional Civil Initiative – the Right to Life and Civil Dignity”. Candidate of chemical sciences.