A01=Thomas Earl Porter
A02=Lawrence W. Lerner
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Author_Lawrence W. Lerner
Author_Thomas Earl Porter
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Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=HBJD
Category=NHD
Civil society
COP=United States
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Duma
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eq_isMigrated=2
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Language_English
Late Imperial Russia
Nicholas II
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Price_€100 and above
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Russian history
Russian liberalism
Russian Revolution
Russian studies
Slavic studies
softlaunch
Zemstvo
Product details
- ISBN 9781498518673
- Weight: 540g
- Dimensions: 160 x 237mm
- Publication Date: 04 Oct 2017
- Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
- Language: English
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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 L’vov dedicated his life to the improvement of the peasantry’s 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.” L’vov played an important role in Russia’s first experiment with local self-government, oversaw the “Great Migration” of thousands of peasants to settle the wilderness of Siberia free from anyone’s tutelage, organized aid to the tsar’s 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 Russia’s standard bearer upon the collapse of the Romanov dynasty. But the few references in the scholarly literature concerning Prince George L’vov 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 L’vov’s stewardship of Russia. Equally unassailable is the conclusion that it was largely that government’s temporizing, whether deliberate or not, which led to its demise. What then accounted for this paralysis and complete failure of Russia’s liberal movement? This book attempts to answer that question by presenting a more balanced appraisal of L’vov’s place in Russian history through an examination of his career as a dedicated public servant.
Thomas Earl Porter is professor of history at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University.
Lawrence W. Lerner received a PhD from the University of Washington and served for nearly two decades as assistant director of the Russian and East European Studies Center of the institution’s Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies.
