Is it true that Kerensky fled from Petrograd in a women's dress?

The fact that Alexander Kerensky changed into a women's dress when he escaped from Petrograd during the October Revolution, they wrote in Soviet textbooks. We checked whether this actually happened.

That's how Described Kerensky’s escape to the textbook “Brief History of the All -Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks”, published in 1938: "As for Kerensky, he, dressed in a women's dress, managed to hide in an "unknown direction"".

Kerensky in a women's dress has been preserved in public consciousness today. In 2018, the satirical publication “IA Panorama”, publishing invented news, toldthat supposedly Finland is going to give Russia a dress in which Kerensky fled in 1917. Some users of social networks in this believed.

There are several versions, in which dress Alexander Kerensky fled from the Winter Palace - changing into the clothes of sisters of mercy or maid. According to another version, during the October Revolution, Kerensky fled to the women's dress not from the Winter Palace, but from Gatchinsky, where he was in the hands of the Bolsheviks.

Rumors that Kerensky fled in women's clothing were supported by Bolshevik propaganda. In addition to the fact that such a version was presented in Soviet textbooks, in 1938 the artist Grigory Shegal wrote picture “The flight of Kerensky from Gatchina,” and the picture began to be replicated by Soviet textbooks.

After the events in October 1917, Alexander Kerensky, who was then the head of the Provisional Government, was in a difficult situation. On the one hand, the Bolsheviks demanded his issuance, and on the other, he himself declared illegal Cornilov’s speeches, so the army did not want to support him. Then Kerensky moved from Petrograd to Gatchina, where he was going to wait out the battles between the Bolsheviks and Cossacks of General Krasnov. But the Cossacks soon also refused to defend Kerensky, considering him a traitor after the Kornilov performance. As a result, Kerensky fled from Gatchina, and soon left Russia completely.

So Kerensky fled, apparently, at least twice: from Petrograd and from Gatchina. But none of the shoots, in his own words, he did not have to change into a women's dress. In 1966, in an interview with Soviet journalist Henry Borovik Kerensky exclaimed:

“Mr. Borovik, tell me there in Moscow - you have smart people! Well, I did not run from the Winter Palace in a women's dress! "

Kerensky himself was sure that the rumors were distributed by the monarchists who hated him. Advisor to the director of the State Hermitage, Doctor of Historical Sciences Julia Kantor in conversation With TASS about the myths of the October Revolution, she proposed another version of why there was a rumor of Kerensky in a dress:

“It was about the dress of the sister of mercy, and the myth of it arose from the fact that a hospital has existed in the Winter Palace since 1915. Those who entered the Winter Palace on the evening of October 25, including the Antonov-Ovseenko group, came to the hospital and even tried to tear off the bandages from the wounded, believing that the members of the Provisional Government were disguised as so-the doctors and sisters of mercy recalled. The warning wounded to them gave them serious resistance, using crutches and the entire improvised inventory as a means of self -defense. ”

According to Cantor, the fact of the existence of the hospital and the presence in it of the wounded on the revolutionary night was silent in the Soviet era, since the shelling still led the shelling, knowing about the hospital and that they did not manage to evacuate the wounded from it.

Subsequently, another version appeared: Kerensky fled not in a women's dress, but "in a sailor jacket and blue glasses" - so, for example, Retelling Memories of General Krasnov Pavel Milyukov. 

In general, eyewitnesses to Kerensky’s escape paid attention to other details. For example, US Ambassador to Russia of that time David Francis I remembered In his book “Russia from the window of the American Embassy” that during the escape from Petrograd, Kerensky actually “stole” the car of American diplomats. But there was no question of women's clothing in memories.

The American diplomats failed to take the escape from Gatchina, but about this episode later He wrote Kerensky himself: “I was transformed into a very ridiculous sailor, whose sleeves were short-skinned, my reddish-brown sites and crags were clearly knocked out of the style. The dishevefers was so small for me that she barely held on the top of the head. The disguise was completed by huge driver's glasses. ”

Although in explicitly, only Kerensky himself refutes the myth of Kerensky in a women's dress, historians converge In the opinion that this did not happen in reality. The main vulnerable place of the myth is the lack of a single version of events, the exact circumstances in which this happened, and several versions of the dress itself, with the memoirs of eyewitnesses, are not coinciding.

Fake

What do our verdicts mean?

Read on the topic:

1. The assault on the winter, volley "Aurora", Kerensky in a women's dress: myths about the October Revolution
2. Kerensky fled from the Bolsheviks in a women's dress (Portal History.rf)
3. Comparative memoirism - the escape of Kerensky from the winter and Gatchina in the description of different persons