Kerensky as ‘Traitor’: Symbolic Politics, Rumour and the Political Deployment of Rumours in the Revolutionary Period

Abstract

This article is concerned with the de-legitimating tactics used against Aleksandr Fedorovich Kerensky. It draws on both expert political assessments and a considerable quantity of rumours. Journalism, political resolutions, and letters and diaries written by people of different views are examined for negative representations of Kerensky that are associated with allegations of ‘betrayal’, ‘treachery’ or ‘moral degeneracy’ during his time in the Winter Palace. Such negative representations were informed by both the European republican tradition and the patriotic mobilization, which portrayed the residences of enemy heads of state during the First World War as hotbeds of corruption, treason and depravity. For example, in 1917 rumours about Nicholas II, the empress Aleksandra Fedorovna and Rasputin became a conspicuous element of mass culture. In Kerensky’s case, negative representations had begun to spread in connection with the preparations for the June Offensive, but they proliferated in July when he became head of the Provisional Government and especially when the seat of the government was moved to the Winter Palace. Kerensky was compared to the former emperor and rumoured to be enjoying the trappings of imperial power, engaging in amoral behaviour and using narcotic substances. There were also implausible rumours that the head of the government was a traitor. Such rumours were spread publicly by Kerensky’s opponents on right and left alike in a sign of the Provisional Government’s growing political isolation. This period (Kerenshchina) repelled parties that both were opposed to one another and favoured resolving the crisis by violent means, social compromise became harder to achieve and the slide to civil war gained momentum.