The Provisional Government: A Centennial View

Abstract

D. Orlovsky aims to establish the unique qualities of 1917 and the importance of the Provisional Government project. He reviews briefly the treatment of the power question and the PG in the fiftieth and eightieth anniversaries in the West. He proposes a three pronged approach for study of the PG- 1.) as an administrative/bureaucratic operational governing entity; 2.) as a political clearing house for the principal actors and leaders of the major political parties and the programs of those parties and finally, 3.) as a social entity, home of the social movement of lower middle strata occupational, proto-professional and professional groups. Finally, he argues that we take seriously both the “failed” institutions, the Democratic Conference and the Council of the Republic and the alternative of an all socialist government proposed by Martov and other Mensheviks in the endgame of the Revolution during September and October of 1917.