After 300 years of Tsarist rule in Russia, Tsar Nicholas II was forced to renounce his thrown because of his inability to modernize the Russian autocracy. Therefore the duma, an elected body of legislators, was given an inordinate amount of power over the aims of the First Provisional Government.

First, the Duma aspired to represent the Russian public through the selection of ministers for the new cabinet. The Duma wanted to assure the masses of the First Provisional Governments aim to distance themselves from the oppressive rule of past Tsars. On March 1917, the Izvesttia, a long running newspaper in Russia released the goals of the cabinet. The cabinet members of the New Provisional Government wanted to ensure: freedom of speech, fair elections based on direct suffrage, freedom of the press, a unified police and, the elimination of constraints based on class ((http://community.dur.ac.uk/a.k.harrington/provgov1.html)) . Furthermore, the cabinet articulated that it did not want to use military force to carrying out the New Provisional Government’s principles.

In an effort to disassociate the New Provisional Government with the oppressive rule of past Tsars, the cabinet’s goals highlighted socialist ideals. How did the New Provisional Government influence Soviet Russia’s political, social, and economic thought in the twentieth century? In what ways did the duma succeed in their aims to instill unity in the public through the creation of the New Provisional Government?