How Did The Provisional Government Have Authority Without Power

The Russian Revolution occurred in a series of separate revolutions in 1917. After people grew more and more unhappy with the autocrat government, Nicholas II decided to step down from his position of being Tsar leading into him being the last Tsar of Romanov rule. After this, a Provisional Government as well as the Petrograd Soviet political groups were created after Tsar Nicholas II stepped down from his autocrat position. Both of these groups had forms of authority as well as power but, to a great extent it is true that the Provisional Government had “authority without power” through the military, while the Petrograd Soviet had “power without authority” from the support of the people.

Both the Petrograd Soviets and the Provisional Government …show more content…
The Petrograd Soviet members were elected by the people directly for the interests of them in order so that they may be protected. They received great power as whatever actions or decisions made, other soviet councils would follow, giving them power to adjust others (Brooman 20). The Provisional Government party members were mostly made up of people in the Duma, which means that most of the Provisional Government were made up of the same people from the times before. Unlike the Soviet, the Provisional Government was more focused on governing Russia until there could be elections showing how nothing changed politically since the times of Tsar Nicholas (Brooman 20). The Petrograd Soviet was spread out across the country, where people in smaller cities could have a small Soviet, where they would act from the main Soviet and still elect smaller leaders leading them into having more and more support country-wide rather than just in a smaller scale like the Provisional Government. This created the support of the Soviets to rapidly increase. Even though the Provisional Government had all of the authority, they did not have the support from the people which is very dangerous, if the Provisional Government wanted long term authority. However, the Soviets had all of the support of the people because they Soviet leaders were elected by the people, and their aim was to protect working people and the soldiers. All of the decisions that the people want to make were going through to the Soviet because they are the ones that the people feel like they could trust, however, what they wanted doesn’t always come true because they are not the official government to make