Pearson Edexcel International GCSE in History · 4HI1 · Free · no account needed

Dual power and the mistakes of the Provisional Government

Why did a government that considered itself temporary make the one decision it could not survive?

Option A2 · Russia and the Soviet Union, 1905–24 › Key topic 3 · Provisional Government and the Bolshevik Revolution — one of 2 lessons in this key topic. Paper 2 Section A — historical investigation: Russia and the Soviet Union, 1905–24, key topic 3 (30 marks: 6 · 8 · 16).

This lesson ends with Alexander Kerensky. Learn dual power and the mistakes of the Provisional Government, teach it, then defend it against Alexander Kerensky.

What the specification asks for

“Weaknesses and mistakes of the Provisional Government. The impact of the Petrograd Soviet.” — examined through causation and consequence. Incandio is aligned to specification 4HI1; it is not published by, endorsed by or affiliated with Pearson.

1 · Understand it

Two powers in one building

The Provisional Government was formed from the Duma Committee — liberals and moderates, headed first by Prince Lvov and from July by Kerensky. Its authority derived from a parliament elected on a restricted franchise under a monarchy that no longer existed, and it described itself as provisional pending a Constituent Assembly elected by universal suffrage.

The Petrograd Soviet was elected by workers and soldiers, met in the same building, and had around 3,000 members by March. It did not want power — most of its leaders were Mensheviks and SRs who held, on Marxist grounds, that Russia must pass through a bourgeois stage first — but it had the loyalty of the people with the weapons.

Soviet Order No. 1, issued on 1 March, told soldiers to obey the Provisional Government only where its orders did not contradict the Soviet's, and to elect committees to control weapons. From its first week the government did not control the armed forces of its own capital. Lenin's later description of dual power is not a theory; it is a description of an arrangement everybody in Petrograd could see.

The decisions

The war. The government continued it, on three grounds: obligations to the Allies who were funding Russia; the argument that a provisional body had no mandate to make a permanent choice; and a genuine belief in Russia's war aims. The Kerensky offensive of June–July 1917 failed badly, and each failure cost the government soldiers' support.

The land. The peasants — over four fifths of the population — wanted land, and were seizing it. The government said the question must wait for the Constituent Assembly, which was constitutionally proper and meant that peasant soldiers had a reason to go home before the redistribution happened without them. Desertion accelerated through the summer.

The Constituent Assembly. Elections were repeatedly postponed, for defensible administrative reasons — a register had to be compiled, and the country was at war — and postponement removed the government's own justification for doing nothing else.

Each decision was defensible and together they were fatal. The government asked a starving, war-weary country to wait, while it had no means of enforcing the wait and its rival was promising peace and land immediately.

The April Crisis and the pattern

In April the foreign minister Milyukov sent a note to the Allies affirming Russia's commitment to the war's original aims, including Constantinople. It leaked, there were mass demonstrations, and Milyukov and the war minister resigned. Socialists then entered the government, which tied the Soviet parties to a policy they could not deliver and made them responsible for its failures — the single most useful development for the Bolsheviks in the whole period.

By the autumn the pattern was set: a government with legitimacy and no force, a soviet with force and no wish to govern, and one party arguing that the soviet should simply take power. Kerensky's own later defence was that he could not abandon the war honourably and could not win it, and that whoever governed Russia in 1917 faced the same trap — which is the strongest form of the case for him and is worth stating properly.

2 · Learn it — the notes

The dates that earn marks

1 March 1917
Soviet Order No. 1 subordinates military orders to Soviet approval. Why this date: The government does not control the army from its first week.
April 1917
The Milyukov note leaks; the April Crisis; socialists enter the government. Why this date: The moderate socialists become responsible for a war policy they cannot change, which is what the Bolsheviks exploit.
June–July 1917
The Kerensky offensive fails. Why this date: The decision to continue the war is tested and fails publicly, costing the government its remaining military support.
Summer 1917
Peasant land seizures accelerate; desertion rises. Why this date: The land decision produces its consequence, and the two decisions compound each other.

The figures, and how far to trust them

  • About 3,000 — Members of the Petrograd Soviet by March 1917.
  • Over four fifths — The proportion of the population that was peasant, and therefore for whom land was the question.
  • 8 months — The Provisional Government's total life, from March to October 1917.

The people to place

  • Georgy Lvov — First head of the Provisional Government; resigned in July.
  • Alexander Kerensky — In both bodies from March; war minister, then prime minister from July.
  • Pavel Milyukov — Foreign minister whose April note on war aims produced the first crisis.
  • Irakli Tsereteli — Menshevik Soviet leader who argued for supporting the government through the bourgeois stage.

How historians disagree

Attributed interpretations, never voiced — the AO4 seam.

  • The 'no alternative' reading: The Provisional Government faced an impossible position — a war it could not honourably leave, a land question it had no mandate to settle, and no armed force of its own — and no government could have survived it. Contested by The reading that the choices were real: an early Constituent Assembly, an immediate land decree, or a separate peace were all available and each was rejected, so the collapse followed decisions rather than circumstances..

What students say — and what is actually the case

Not this: The Provisional Government was weak because it was incompetent.

This: It was weak because it had no armed force it controlled, no electoral mandate, and a self-imposed rule against permanent decisions. Its ministers were among the ablest men in Russia and the structure defeated them.

Not this: The Soviet was trying to take power from the start.

This: Its Menshevik and SR majority held that Russia must pass through a bourgeois stage and deliberately declined power in March. Only the Bolsheviks argued otherwise, and only from April.

Two things students merge

Blurred: Authority and power.

The distinction: The Provisional Government had authority — recognition, ministries, foreign relations. The Soviet had power — the loyalty of the soldiers and the railways. Dual power is the name for that separation, and it is the whole explanation of 1917.

Blurred: Postponing the land question and refusing it.

The distinction: The government postponed pending a Constituent Assembly, which was constitutionally correct. To a peasant with a rifle the difference between postponement and refusal was invisible, which is what made the correct decision fatal.

What a Grade 9 answer holds here

A Grade 9 answer explains the government's failure as a structural trap that its own scruples tightened. It would not settle the land or the war because it considered itself provisional, and it could not enforce the wait because Order No. 1 had given the army to somebody else — so being constitutionally correct was, in the conditions of 1917, the same as being finished.

3 · How it is examined

This strand is genuinely set through: Paper 2 Section A (a) (6 marks — “Describe TWO features of EITHER … OR ….”); Paper 2 Section A (b) (8 marks — “How far does Source A support the evidence of Source B about …? Explain your answer.”); Paper 2 Section A (c) (16 marks — “Extract C suggests that …. How far do you agree with this interpretation? Use Extract C, Sources A and B and your own knowledge to explain your answer.”).

What earns marks: Order No. 1, named and explained. It establishes the government's central weakness with a document and a date, which is worth more than any general statement about instability.

4 · Prove it — the questions

Answered inside Incandio, where a marker checks what a correct answer must contain and tells you which half was missing. The marking stays in the app; the questions are here.

  1. Describe TWO weaknesses of the Provisional Government. [6 marks · Paper 2 Section A (a)]
  2. How far does Source A support the evidence of Source B about the Provisional Government? Explain your answer. [8 marks · Paper 2 Section A (b)]
  3. Describe TWO features of the Petrograd Soviet. [6 marks · Paper 2 Section A (a)]
  4. Extract C suggests that the Provisional Government failed because it continued the war. How far do you agree with this interpretation? Use Extract C, Sources A and B and your own knowledge to explain your answer. [16 marks · Paper 2 Section A (c)]
  5. How far does Source A support the evidence of Source B about relations between the Provisional Government and the Petrograd Soviet? Explain your answer. [8 marks · Paper 2 Section A (b)]

Decide it

This lesson feeds a Decide History judgement — a position you commit to, an objection you answer, a criterion you name: Was October 1917 a revolution or a coup?.

Think you understand it?

Reading is the start. On Incandio a topic counts as mastered only once you have taught it and defended it — the two things a revision guide cannot ask of you.

Incandio this topic → Prove it. Teach it. Defend it. What does “Incandio it” mean?

  1. Prove it — five questions on dual power and the mistakes of the Provisional Government, marked on the spot, that tell you what was missing rather than just what was wrong.
  2. Teach it — Explain dual power and the mistakes of the Provisional Government — what happened, why, and what it made possible — to Ember, an AI pupil who asks the awkward question. Understanding is credited; wording is not required.
  3. Defend it — Argue dual power and the mistakes of the Provisional Government against Alexander Kerensky — three rounds, marked against descriptors you can read before you begin.
  4. Then the exam — 14 authored exam-style questions on this option, marked on Incandio with the mistake you actually made named.

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The debate is against Alexander Kerensky — a real historical figure with a genuine position on this question, portrayed from the record.

Carry on through the option