Georgy Yevgenyevich Lvov
Георгий Евгеньевич Львов
A scion of Rurik, the Empire's last liberal premier
"The Government is an authority without power, while the Soviet is a power without authority." — As prime minister, Lvov distilled the dual-power reality between his cabinet and the Petrograd Soviet into a single sentence.
A Rurikid prince, Georgy Lvov was the symbolic leader of the zemstvo liberal movement in late Imperial Russia. He rose to national fame leading Red Cross medical brigades in the Russo-Japanese War, and during World War I he chaired the All-Russian Union of Zemstvos and Zemgor, organising vast supply and relief networks for the army. After the February Revolution he became the first prime minister of the Provisional Government, enacting universal suffrage, press freedom, abolition of the death penalty, and the removal of all religious, class and racial restrictions. Unable to secure authority against the Petrograd Soviet or resolve the war crisis, he resigned in July 1917 in favour of Alexander Kerensky. Arrested by the Bolsheviks after October, he escaped and emigrated via the United States to France, living in poverty in Paris and writing his memoirs until his death in 1925.
Career timeline
- 1891–1893Tula zemstvo; famine relief work
- 1900–1906Chairman, Tula Provincial Zemstvo Executive Board
- 1904–1905Russo-Japanese War: led zemstvo medical brigades; national hero
- 1906First Duma deputy (Kadet); chaired medical and food committee
- 1914–1917Chairman, All-Russian Union of Zemstvos; army hospital and supply network
- 1915–1917Leader of Zemgor; coordinated war industry and relief
- 1917.03–07PM & Interior Minister: universal suffrage, abolition of death penalty, anti-discrimination
- 1918–1925Arrested, escaped; mission to US, then Paris exile; wrote memoirs