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RUSSIAN LIBERALS AT THE HEAD OF RUSSIAN FOREIGN POLICY IN FEBRUARY-OCTOBER 1917

K. Kurylev, S. Darija

Abstract

The article presents the problems of Russia’s foreign policy governance between the February and October revolutions of 1917 in the Russian liberals’ opinion. The liberal opposition supported the government in the main issues of tactics and strategy of the foreign policy activity. One can speak about the identity of positions of the Russian liberals and autocratic government and Ministry of Foreign Affairs on a range of foreign policy issues only in the context of the time period of years 1907-1914. The liberals supported the foreign policy of Tsarism only in the cases when it coincided with the theses of their foreign policy program and met the interests of large national bourgeoisie as a class. The outbreak of war altered the political situation in the state and the balance of forces amongst the liberal oppositional one bout. Despite some reforms in Russian foreign policy and its international and democratic slogans, the Provisional government, which first had had bourgeois-liberal character, and then became a coalition government, was ideologically not ready for the main and necessary step of that moment – for conclusion of a separate peace with Germany. In the situation, when the war-worn state was in an economic crises, faced the collapse of government and had the masses with the strong desire to end the war as soon as possible, such the position of the Provisional government deprived it of the necessary support and doomed it to failure in its confrontation with radical revolutionary parties.

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