Searching for the “Strong Hand”: The Revolutionary Crisis in Russia in 1917 and the French Assessments on its Termination

Abstract

This article explores how French diplomatic and military representatives in Russia perceived the growing revolutionary crisis of 1917 and what means they proposed to terminate it. Though the French perceptions of the Russian revolution are rather well researched, scholars paid attention chiefly to French estimates linked to the international and strategic situation of Russia and not to the interior processes in this country. Exploring these questions allows us to widen our understanding of the international context of the Russian revolution and to throw new light on the events of 1917 through the lens of French perceptions. This article is based on the underresearched documents from the Diplomatic archives of the French Foreign Ministry and from the National Archives of France. After having analyzed dispatches of French diplomats and military representatives in Russia during 1917, the author discerns two interlinked tendencies of these observers. First, they notice growing disorganization and “anarchy” in Russia; second, they tried to find and to support political forces in Russia that were capable of restoring “order” and to continue the fight in the war. However, inside this conceptual “frame” there were significant controversies. Conservative French diplomats and the military initially put their hopes in Alexander Kerensky and then in General Lavr Kornilov. After being disappointed in both, they tried to restore “discipline” and to conserve the Eastern front by external forces. Left French observers initially had more enthusiasm for the February revolution and even after the evaporation of these hopes warned Paris not to support counterrevolutionary forces in Russia. In many aspects, discussions about Russian policy of France in 1917 foreshadowed the dilemmas in the relations of Paris with “Reds” and “Whites” during the intervention and the Civil war.