# Alexander Kerensky The socialist lawyer who led Russia's Provisional Government from July to October 1917 — the eight-month democratic experiment between the fall of [[Tsar Nicholas II]] and the [[Bolsheviks]]' seizure of power. Kerensky attempted to build a constitutional democracy in the middle of World War I, economic collapse, and revolutionary ferment, and failed: Lenin's [[Bolsheviks]] overthrew the Provisional Government in the October Revolution. Kerensky fled Russia, eventually settling in the United States, where he died in New York in 1970. He is the archetypal figure of the moderate reformer who arrives too late, moves too slowly, and is devoured by the radicals he underestimates — a historical template invoked whenever democratic transitions fail to consolidate before authoritarian alternatives mobilize. ## See Also - [[Russian Revolution]] — the event that consumed his government - [[Vladimir Lenin]] — the revolutionary who overthrew him - [[Tsar Nicholas II]] — the autocrat whose fall created the opening - [[Bolsheviks]] — the faction that destroyed the Provisional Government - [[Mensheviks]] — the moderate socialist faction Kerensky was aligned with