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There have been decades of debate about the aetiology of Stalinism, volumes of stories about the man’s brutality and that of his regime. They cast shadows backwards from what would come

Kerensky’s status as ‘minister-cum-democrat’, straddling government and Soviet, was more than mere addition, more even than synthesis. It was apotheosis.

Sometimes political confrontation was obviated in a short-lived post-revolutionary burst of class camaraderie

All the generals cursed the ‘bandits’ of the Provisional Government, excoriated their perfidy, railed against them – but, that denunciation done, they admitted they faced a fait accompli.

A constitutional monarchy? The mere insinuation provoked in Nicholas a kind of glazed satori of his own limits.