In fact, fearful of the mob, the Provisional Committee felt the need to negotiate the terms of its assumption of power with the Soviet, and thus visibly placed itself in a position of dependence on it. The upshot was the creation on 2 March of the 'Provisional Government' of mostly liberal Duma politicians - 'provisional' because it was seen as a temporary arrangement until something more legitimate could be brought into being. And indeed right from the start it faced two huge disabilities. The real power on the streets in Petrograd and other population centres lay with the Soviet and its analogues (which swiftly sprang up all over Russia). And the Provisional Government had little formal legitimacy. It was the irregularly born child of a thoroughly unrepresentative and now dissolved Duma (which, in Rodzyanko's words, now simply 'faded away' because its members were 'unprepared for energetic resistance'17). When Prince Lvov was announced as Head of the Government a soldier in the crowd shouted 'You mean all we've done is exchange a Tsar for a Prince?'18 And when the new minister of foreign affairs appeared before the crowd he met the demand 'Who elected you?'19
THE CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY
The response to this question lay in the eight-point programme the Provisional Government had hammered out with the Soviet. All parties agreed that Russia needed a properly elected basis for legitimate government as soon as possible. So point four of the programme called for 'immediate preparations for the convocation of the Constituent Assembly, to be elected on a universal, secret, direct and equal ballot'. The thirty-year-old dream of an assembly to endow Russia with a proper modern democratic constitution looked at last as if it was about to be realised.
The central role anticipated for the Constituent Assembly very quickly became clear. Over the past few days, while the real power politics of the future of Russian governance was being played out in Petrograd, a rather sad sideshow had been underway at various railway stops in western Russia. The Tsar, blocked by transport dislocations from getting back to his capital, and in only imperfect contact with it, was on 2 March advised by Rodzyanko that he had to abdicate. His key generals swiftly endorsed this advice, leaving him little choice. The legal heir was his twelve-year-old haemophiliac son, Alexis. But Nicholas, caring family man and obtuse politician to the end, was worried about Alexis' health and instead settled the crown on his own brother, Michael Alexandrovich. While the shakily installed new rulers in Petrograd might have gone along with the throne falling to the legal heir, a sickly boy, his arbitrary replacement by a mature, militarily experienced Romanov prince was a very different prospect. And there was a very real question as to whether the mob was in any mood for the monarchy to survive at all. Michael quickly decided to dodge the bullet, and on 4 March issued a manifesto putting off all decisions on the future of the Romanov dynasty, including who, if anyone, should wear the crown, to the Constituent Assembly.
From the start, preparation for the Constituent Assembly was seen as both central to the work of the Provisional Government and urgent. Major governmental decisions were either themselves deemed provisional or simply put off until the Assembly convened. The head of the
Provisional Government described the establishment of the Assembly as 'our essential sacred task',20 and at an early coordination meeting between the Soviet and the Provisional Government both sides underlined the need for the earliest possible meeting of the Assembly. In the 'March mood' of euphoria after the February Revolution there was huge enthusiasm for the Assembly with all political parties pressing for work to be speedily carried forward. The hope at that stage was that the Assembly could be convened in three to four months. That is by June.
But political and organisational complexities were already making themselves felt. In a vast country, still at war, simply compiling an electoral law, putting together a voting register, and organising polling - all on the basis of organs of local government which were themselves being radically reformed - were a sufficiently formidable challenge. And all of this offered pretexts for delay to political factions which themselves had reasons for wanting to put things off. The Socialist Revolutionary Party (SRs) who principally represented the peasants did not want elections until the autumn when the harvest would be over. Meanwhile the right-wing parties were happy to see some delay to allow the 'raging sea of revolution' to calm down. Ironically, in view of subsequent events, it was the Bolsheviks who pressed most stridently for early progress, accusing the other parties of going slow on democracy.21
So things bogged down. It took until May for the political parties to agree on general principles for organising the elections (secret ballot, proportional representation, universal suffrage). But they then set up an extraordinarily cumbersome, almost parliament-sized, special council of lawyers to turn all this into electoral law. The timetable, set in June, was for elections to take place on 17 September and for the Assembly to meet on 30 September. But, as a newspaper noted in June under the headline 'The Last Chance': 'Two principles are struggling here: the principle of the greatest possible perfection and the principle of the greatest possible speed. Two months ago the first principle was undoubtedly prevailing. Now the prevalence apparently is leaning towards the second one.'22 As the February Revolution slid increasingly into the past, and crisis succeeded crisis on the Petrograd political scene, so popular enthusiasm for the Assembly faded. At the same time another newspaper was expressing the worries of many when it asked, 'Will the ship of state reach the port of the Constituent Assembly? Will the Provisional Government, together with the Democracy, succeed in maintaining the unity of the state before the arrival of the Master?'23
The so-called 'July Days', in which the Provisional Government very nearly fell to a Bolshevik uprising, both set back progress and gave added urgency to convening the Assembly. The government responded in mid July by pressing the various bodies to redouble their efforts to meet the timetable, and indeed the Socialist parties demanded that the elections be accelerated. But by now it was becoming apparent that even this timetable was impossible. The sequence of getting local elections out of the way and then publishing the electoral list forty days before the Assembly elections, as required by the emerging draft statute, simply couldn't be done by mid September.24 The liberals were relatively relaxed about this as the growing radicalism of the revolution made it clearer and clearer that they would not do well in the elections whenever they were held. The Socialist parties took more persuading, but on 9 August finally, fatally, agreed that the elections should be put back to 12 November, with the Assembly due to convene on 28