showed evidence of great spiritual energy. He was attracted to art and music and excelled in the title role of Gogol’s The Government Inspector.’54 A histrionic bent, as we shall see, did stand him in good stead in the first months of the revolution. Nevertheless, his biographers as a rule wisely remained silent about Kerensky’s performance of the role of Khlestakov. The well-known traits of the character in the play, an air-headed impostor, could only too easily be attributed to the schoolboy who had performed the role so well. When things were going wrong for Kerensky as head of the Provisional Government, and later in emigration, he was openly compared to Gogol’s character. In mid-July 1917, the right-wing popular newspaper Narodnaya gazeta [the People’s Newspaper] reprinted a report in the German Vossische Zeitung in a manifest attempt to discredit Kerensky. The author was Friedrich Dukmeyer, who had been a teacher at the grammar school in Tashkent. Among his students had been Sasha Kerensky, about whom Dukmeyer reminisced in 1917. The article reported Nadezhda Adler’s German antecedents and that Kerensky’s grandfather had held the rank of general. The ex-schoolmaster recalled that his pupil ‘dressed somewhat foppishly’, was fond of dancing and theatrical performances, and that the role of Khlestakov ‘seemed to have been written specially for him’. He observed that, ‘even then’, Kerensky was pale.55 The frailty of the minister’s health, which was, as we shall see, much discussed in 1917, seems from Dukmeyer’s account to have been with him almost from birth.
Kiriakov tells us that Kerensky chose his political destiny while still at school. It is said to have been then that he decided to dedicate his life to the liberation of the Russian people.
From all that he read, heard and saw, the lively imagination of Sasha Kerensky re-created in his mind the age-old picture of the slavish life of the entire Russian people – toiling, slow to anger, all-enduring, all-forgiving and long-suffering. He fell in love with this toiling Russian people with all the ardour of his boyish heart. He was filled with profound respect for the first champions of the freedom and happiness of the people. We can hardly doubt that the first heroes Sasha Kerensky wanted to imitate were the heroic fighters of the People’s Will.
Even the city where the future leader went to school is seen as a factor revolutionizing the young schoolboy: ‘Tashkent is the gateway to Siberia. The groans of Russia’s political fighters in the cause of freedom, languishing in penal servitude and exile at that time, were closer and more keenly felt there.’56 Kiriakov is manifestly exaggerating the revolutionariness of his hero. Kerensky himself makes no mention in his memoirs of having held radical views then, or of having read pamphlets about the People’s Will. ‘Neither I nor my classmates were aware of the problems that were exciting young people of our age in other parts of Russia, leading many of them to join clandestine societies while still at school.’57 Kiriakov was clearly exaggerating, but that, in the view of this Narodnik, was how the childhood of a true champion of freedom should have passed. That was the canon for writing the biography of a Leader of the people, and the traditions of the revolutionary underground moved Kerensky’s supporters to come up with a biography to bolster his authority.
Kerensky’s years as a student at St Petersburg University (1899–1904), first in the faculty of history and philology then in the law faculty, were important for the Leader’s biography because it was then that he ‘developed his world view, a robust system of thought which set him on the path to honour, glory and the salvation of Russia,’ as the Odessan biographer puts it.58 The mention of the conscious education and self-education of the future politician is not fortuitous: a ‘robust’ world view, consciously elaborated as the result of independent assimilation of knowledge, was an important qualification for a radical Leader.
Some of Kerensky’s biographers mention his marital status. In 1904 he married Olga Baranovskaya.59 Sometimes a piece of writing would be accompanied by photographs showing Kerensky’s wife and sons, or sometimes just the minister himself with his children.60 It was accepted that the Leader’s family life was of public interest. No doubt on these occasions his family had assisted the writers.
Some of his biographers were given to exaggerating Kerensky’s radicalism in his student days, too, and his involvement with the Socialist Revolutionary Party. ‘His love for the people, the dispossessed toiling people, grew ever strong and expanded in Kerensky’s honest breast. It was this love which impelled him towards the party closest to the people, the peasants and workers, to a party which had inscribed on its banner, “Land and Freedom for all the toiling people. Through struggle justice shall be yours”, the party of Socialist Revolutionaries.’ So wrote Kiriakov, bringing the biography of his hero ever closer into line with the programme of the Socialist Revolutionary Party.61 In reality, the young student’s oppositional leanings did not move him towards adopting the platform of any party.
After Kerensky graduated from university, his aspiration was to join a group of ‘political barristers’ who defended people accused of committing political crimes. Becoming a member of this association was not straightforward: only lawyers who were particularly trusted in radical circles were accepted. To a scion of the ‘bureaucracy’, the son of an official prominent in the Ministry of Public Education with connections in the capital, the initial attitude was one of wariness. He even experienced difficulties being admitted to the legal profession at all, which was dominated by people with liberal or radical views. Kerensky’s biographers omitted to mention these difficulties when writing in 1917.
Kerensky became an assistant attorney-at-law. Eager to become a ‘political’ defence lawyer, he gave free legal advice to the poor of the capital. Like many of his contemporaries he was greatly shocked by the events of Bloody Sunday, 9 January 1905, which he witnessed at first hand. Kerensky visited the families of demonstrators who had been killed by the troops, giving them legal advice. He signed a protest against the arrest of prominent intellectuals who had tried to avert the tragedy. In this connection he first came to the notice of the secret police, and a file was opened on him. The 1917 pamphlets reported this, and the attention paid to the young lawyer by the tsar’s Okhrana, confirmed by the publication of documents, further bolstered his revolutionary credentials.62
His Odessan biographer wrote: ‘Supporting the Socialist Revolutionary Party, Kerensky suffered all the adversities of 1905 with it. Despite the strict secrecy, despite the fact that the party was doing its best to protect Alexander, aware of his extraordinary strength, he was arrested and put in prison.’63 In reality, the party leaders are unlikely to have been acquainted with the young assistant attorney.
In May 1917 Kerensky described his position at the time: ‘After 1905, in the midst of general exhaustion, I was one of those who demanded an attack on the old regime.’64 Reminding the public of a time when he had demanded new, more radical action against the regime served to legitimize his right to curb the excessive demands of the soldiers. For Kerensky, who had by then become minister of war, that was a high priority.
On 23 December 1905, the young lawyer was arrested, accused both of preparing armed insurrection and of belonging to an organization seeking to overthrow the existing order. On 5 April 1906, however, he was released under special police supervision but prohibited from residing in the capitals. Kerensky went back to Tashkent, where his father still worked. With the aid of his family and influential family friends he managed to have that restriction lifted, and he returned to St Petersburg in September.65
Kerensky’s biographers did not report that it was connections in bureaucratic circles that helped him to escape exile. They found different explanations: ‘There was no hard evidence, however, and the future minister of justice was released from a Russian prison,’ the Odessan biographer ad-libbed.66 Neither did they write in 1917 about Kerensky’s return to St Petersburg. Mitigation of his sentence did nothing for his revolutionary reputation. Mentioning his arrest, on the other hand, was very much to the point. After Kerensky was appointed minister of war, the ministry’s main newspaper wrote: ‘A. F. Kerensky was arrested several times by the old government for belonging to far-left movements before commencing his political work as a member of the State Duma.’67 In the circumstances of the revolution, having been in prison under the old regime was a source of authority,