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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.
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