[3] His father, Fyodor Mikhailovich Kerensky, was a teacher[3] and director of the local gymnasium and was later promoted to be an inspector of public schools.

His paternal grandfather Mikhail Ivanovich served as a priest in the village of Kerenka in the Gorodishchensky district of the Penza Governorate from 1830.

His mother, Nadezhda Aleksandrovna (née Adler),[5] was the granddaughter of a former serf who had managed to purchase his freedom before serfdom was abolished in 1861.

[7] In 1889, when Kerensky was eight, the family moved to Tashkent, where his father had been appointed the main inspector of public schools (superintendent).

[11][12] In fact, the Socialist Revolutionary Party bought Kerensky a house, as he otherwise would not be eligible for election to the Duma, according to the Russian property-laws.

During the 4th Session of the Fourth Duma in spring 1915, Kerensky appealed to Mikhail Rodzianko with a request from the Council of elders to inform the tsar that to succeed in the war he must: In August, he became a significant member of the Progressive Bloc, which included several socialist parties, Mensheviks, and Liberals – but not Bolsheviks.

In response to bitter resentments held against the imperial favourite Grigori Rasputin in the midst of Russia's failing effort in World War I, Kerensky, at the opening of the Duma on 2 November 1916, called the imperial ministers "hired assassins" and "cowards", and alleged that they were "guided by the contemptible Grishka Rasputin!

[19] Mikhail Rodzianko, Zinaida Yusupova (the mother of Felix Yusupov), Alexandra's sister Elisabeth, Grand Duchess Victoria and the empress's mother-in-law Maria Feodorovna also tried to influence and pressure the imperial couple[20] to remove Rasputin from his position of influence within the imperial household, but without success.

Shortly after the February Revolution of 1917, Kerensky ordered soldiers to re-bury the corpse at an unmarked spot in the countryside.

It is likely the corpse was incinerated (between 3 and 7 in the morning) in the cauldrons of the nearby boiler shop[23][24][25] of the Saint Petersburg State Polytechnical University, including the coffin, without leaving a single trace.

These two bodies, the Duma and the Petrograd Soviet, or – rather – their respective executive committees, soon became each other's antagonists on most matters except regarding the end of the tsar's autocracy.

"[29] The huge majority (workers and soldiers) gave him great applause, and Kerensky now became the first and the only one[30] who participated in both the Provisional Government and the Ispolkom.

The military heavily criticised Kerensky for his liberal policies, which included stripping officers of their mandates and handing over control to revolutionary-inclined "soldier committees" (Russian: солдатские комитеты, romanized: soldatskie komitety) instead; abolition of the death penalty; and allowing revolutionary agitators to be present at the front.

1917) and the official suppression of the Bolsheviks, Kerensky succeeded Prince Georgy Lvov as Russia's prime minister on 21 July [O.S.

Following the Kornilov Affair, an attempted military coup d'état at the end of August, and the resignation of the other ministers, he appointed himself Supreme Commander-in-Chief, as well.

They had all believed that Russia would stop fighting when the Provisional Government took power,[citation needed] and subsequently felt deceived.

His philosophy of "no enemies to the left" greatly empowered the Bolsheviks and gave them a free hand, allowing them to take over the military arm or "voyenka" (Russian: Военка) of the Petrograd and Moscow Soviets.

[38] His arrest of Lavr Kornilov and other officers left him without strong allies against the Bolsheviks, who ended up being Kerensky's strongest and most determined adversaries, as opposed to the right wing, which evolved into the White movement.

Kerensky narrowly escaped, and he spent the next few weeks in hiding before fleeing the country, eventually arriving in France.

Kerensky's grandson (also named Oleg), according to the Internet Movie Database, played his grandfather's role in the 1981 film Reds.

[better source needed] Kerensky and Olga were divorced in 1939 soon after he settled in Paris, and, in 1939, while visiting the United States he met and secretly married Lydia Ellen "Nell" Tritton (1899–1946), the Australian former journalist who had become his press secretary and translator.

[47] Kerensky eventually settled in New York City, living on the Upper East Side on 91st Street near Central Park[48] but spent much of his time at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University in California, where he both used and contributed to the Institution's huge archive on Russian history, and where he taught graduate courses.

[49] Kerensky died of arteriosclerotic heart disease at St. Luke's Hospital in New York City on 11 June 1970, after being initially admitted for injuries sustained from a fall.

The local Russian Orthodox Churches in New York City refused to grant Kerensky burial rites because of his association with Freemasonry, and because they saw him as largely responsible for the Bolsheviks' seizure of power.

Kerensky's body was flown to London, where his two sons resided; he was buried at the non-denominational Putney Vale Cemetery.