OVICH ), Russian politician, born at Simbirsk, studied at the University of St. Petersburg, where he took his degree in law, and afterwards joined the St. Petersburg bar. In 1912 he was elected to the Fourth Duma and joined the Labour Group. He was in reality an adherent of the Social Revolutionary party, but as it was impossible in those days to enter the Duma under this flag he chose the Group of Toil (Labour) in preference to the Social Democrats, whom he considered to be too pedantic and distant from the people. As a member of the Duma he made his mark as an eloquent speaker. (See RUSSIA.) When the first Provisional Government was formed after the Feb. 1917 revolution Kerensky took the portfolio of Minister of Justice. Later, on Guchkov's resignation he became War Minister on May 5, and set to work to reorganise the demoralised army. He had a temporary and partial success, reintroducing the death penalty, himself visiting the front, and effecting a brief offensive in June. On July 25th he succeeded Prince Lvov as Prime
Minister of the 2nd Provisional Government, holding this office until the outbreak of the Bolshevik revolution. But he was unable to rally a war-weary population to his support, and caught between the two forces of militaristic reaction and Bolshevik revolution, his government was marked by vacillation and inde cision. He fled from Petrograd on the eve of the October revolu tion, and attempted to march with armed forces on the capital, but was defeated. For a time he was associated with attempts to recover Russia from the Bolsheviks, but finally retired to Paris.
See his books, The Prelude to Bolshevism (1919), and The Catastrophe (1927).