Prince George E. L'vov

Prince George E. Lvov was born in Dresden in 1861, the same year Tsar Alexander II emancipated the serfs and Russia began to move away from its static society of orders toward a more modern polity. He died in exile in Paris in 1925 with Russia once again in thralldom. Prince Lvov dedicated his life to the improvement of the peasantrys condition and, like many other liberals, hoped to acculturate them to the norms and values of a civil society to attempt to overcome the backwardness of provincial life and ultimately to integrate them as citizens into a modern, vibrant nation. Lvov played an important role in Russias first experiment with local self-government, oversaw the Great Migration of thousands of peasants to settle the wilderness of Siberia free from anyones tutelage, organized aid to the tsars peasant soldiers in the Russo-Japanese and First World Wars and helped to marshal the resources of the nation and coordinate industrial production during the latter conflict. It was precisely because of this lifetime of dedicated public service that he was chosen as liberal Russias standard bearer upon the collapse of the Romanov dynasty. But the few references in the scholarly literature concerning Prince George Lvov are invariably negative ones which fault him for his weak and ineffectual performance as the first head of the Russia Provisional Government in 1917. That the Provisional Government failed is, of course, incontrovertible, though much of the blame rightly should be, and generally is, laid at the feet of his successor. Of course, it must also be allowed that the social revolution developed and then deepened during Lvovs stewardship of Russia. Equally unassailable is the conclusion that it was largely that governments temporizing, whether deliberate or not, which led to its demise. What then accounted for this paralysis and complete failure of Russias liberal movement? This book attempts to answer that question by presenting a more balanced appraisal of Lvovs place in Russian history through an examination of his career as a dedicated public servant.