The Provisional Government was provisional in that it intended to rule only until elections to a Constituent Assembly could formalise a permanent government. Consisting of Kadets, ex-Duma members and moderate socialists – Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries – it could only exist with the powerful support of the Soviets. Even the new government’s Minister for War, Alexander Guchkov, admitted as much, ‘the government does not possess real power, and its directives are carried out only to the extent it is permitted by the Soviets, which enjoys all the real elements of real power, since the
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