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The events of February-March 1917 that ended the 300 year reign of the Romanov dynasty and brought democratic government to Russia have traditionally been viewed as a popular revolution. At the forefront of these events, according to this view, were the workers and soldiers of Petrograd, Russia’s capital, whose actions toppled the regime of Nicholas II and spurred the formation of the Provisional Government. Not yet confident of their ability to govern the nation, the workers and soldiers entrusted this task to representatives of the country’s propertied classes who organised the Provisional Government in a spontaneous response to the collapse of the monarchy. To ensure that the new government represented the will of the people, so this interpretation runs, the Petrograd Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies forced it to adopt a radically democratic program significantly at odds with the government’s own moderate inclinations.’ In the words of one adherent of this view, the members of the Provisional Government ‘were the creations of the Revolution rather than active participants in it’.2 In the more than seven decades that have passed since the February Revolution, few historians have challenged this interpretation of the establishment of democracy in Russia in 1917.3 Yet the traditional view is inadequate in a number of respects. This study will briefly examine the circumstances surrounding the formation of the Provisional Government to suggest, first, that this government was not a completely spontaneous creation of the Revolution and, second, that the politicians who constituted the government were themselves responsible for the formulation of its broadly democratic program.4 The history of Russia on the eve of the 1917 Revolution leaves no doubt that popular discontent, often expressed in spontaneous, public outbursts, was responsible for creating the situation that would give rise to the formation ofthe Provisional Government on 2 March 1917. Russia’s entry into World War I had placed severe strains on the country’s still backward economy. The patriotic support that greeted the outbreak of war in 1914 had quickly turned to generalised discontent in the face of mounting hardships and deprivations. Food shortgages were chronic, and rapid inflation compounded the country’s misery. By the summer of 1915, the war weariness, anger and despair of the masses had begun to manifest themselves in public demonstrations of popular discontent. Most frequently these took the form of workers’ strikes.s In the summer of 1916, the strikes had reached an intensity not seen since the tumultuous pre-war years and, despite a brief hiatus at the end of the year, by