The Dual Power In Action

• Ruled by a mixture of liberals and radicals was never going to be easy. The Soviet's No.1 had said that soldiers and workers should obey the Provisional Government but only when the Soviet agreed with the Provisional Government's decisions and there were many points of :disagreement in the early weeks.
• While the Provisional Government tried to discipline deserters and restore order in towns and countryside, the Soviet encouraged peasants and workers to defy authority and assert their rights
• While the Provisional Government believed that the change of regime should lead to an all-out effort to win' the war, the masses had expected the political changes to being an end to wartime deprivation. Workers' strikes and military desertions continued.
• Milyukov's announcement, in April 1917, that the government would continue fighting until a 'just peace had been won, led to a massive anti-war demonstration in Petrograd forcing Milyukov and Guchkov to resign. They were replaced by socialists in the soviet. Chernov became Minister of agriculture and Kerensky became Minister of War.
• Prince Lvov was replaced as Chairman by Kerensky. Such changes alarmed the upper classes whose despair that the government had failed to protect their property, maintain order, or win the war was aggravated by its apparent shift to the left. Street riots in July, known as the July Days' (which may or may not have been organised by the Bolsheviks) exacerbated their fears. 
• The July days was a period in the Russian Revolution during which workers and soldiers of Petrograd staged armed demonstrations against the Provisional Government that resulted in a temporary decline of Bolshevik influence and in the formation of a new Provisional Government.
• The hopes of the elites were consequently transferred to General Kornilov whom Kerensky had appointed as Commander-in-Chief of the army. Kornilov ordered six regiments of troops to march on Petrograd. However, this attempted coup failed when Kerensky, who at first had supported Kornilov, panicked. Kerensky released imprisoned Bolsheviks and provided the Soviet with weapons from the government's armouries to halt Kornilov's advance. Korniloy's supply lines were cut and the coup leaders arrested.