The Russian Revolution observes its 100th anniversary the end of this month. Though it has now been more than a quarter century since the Soviet system was officially eclipsed by the democratic government led by Boris Yeltsin, the legacy of the Revolution certainly endures.

Indeed, given the authoritarian and expansionist characteristics of Yeltsin’s successor, Vladimir Putin, his regime is somewhat reminiscent of the behavior of the Soviet system.

Yeltsin was not, however, the first democratic leader of the country.

Leadership of the Russian government that Vladimir Lenin and the Bolsheviks overthrew was in fact under a democratic ruler. His name: Alexander Kerensky. (The Tsarist regime was displaced earlier in the year by the original democratic government).

Kerensky was a familiar presence in the Pine Tree State, however, after fleeing Russia. He made a number of appearances in the state including speaking engagements at the University of Maine at Orono as well as University of Maine at Farmington (then known as Farmington State Teachers’ College) just 70 years ago this month, also at the end of October.

Kerensky’s 1947 visit to Maine was at the outset of the Cold War, the same year in which Winston Churchill during a visit to the United States had coined the expression “Iron Curtain.”

Kerensky in Maine in that time still sounded a note of optimism that the Russian people were not supportive of the Stalinist Communist regime. He held out hope that a democratic system would one day be restored.

He was heavily critical of recent American foreign policy which he blamed for allowing Stalin to repatriate hundreds of thousands of Soviets imprisoned in Germany to the Soviet Union where many of them were then sent to Soviet concentration camps or executed.

Kerensky himself of course had been declared an outlaw by the Bolsheviks with a price on his head for most of his life. That is why he packed a pistol, for example, during his visit to Maine.

Despite the Damocles sword hanging over his head, Kerensky nevertheless lived to the ripe age of 89, not dying until June of 1970. He still did not live long enough, however, to see the dawn of another democratic era in Russian affairs, something that did not occur, of course, until the early 1990s under Yeltsin.

More on Bowdoin degree-holders

My last column discussed whether Bowdoin should revoke the honorary LL.D degree awarded to future Confederate leader Jefferson Davis in 1858, this while Davis was still a U.S. Senator from Mississippi. The attention given to Bowdoin is also a reminder, however, that obviously one of Maine’s premier institutions of higher learning has had many alumni whose both earned as well as honorary degrees have not been so similarly clouded by subsequent events.

Among them are authors Nathaniel Hawthorne and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, President Franklin Pierce, not to mention such 20th century luminaries as Sen. George Mitchell, Defense Secretary William Cohen, governors Owen Brewster, Horace Hildreth and James Longley, Sr.

Probably the most celebrated group of alumni to be grouped within a single class were Atomic Energy and Securities Exchange Commissioner Sumner Pike and long-time Illinois Sen. Paul Douglas (originally from Newport, Maine), Douglas being known as the father of Truth In Lending legislation during his 18-year tenure in Congress. They all graduated in 1913. The class alumni secretary was the more obscure, but still memorable Luther Whittier.

Whittier regularly “filled out the ticket” as the Democratic nominee for state representative in the Farmington area of Franklin County. Because this was such a Republican stronghold he routinely lost, thus constrained to devote his time to a small family farm that raised sweet corn and a small herd of cattle during his lengthy adult working years. Politically, however, lightning did strike when he was 76. This was on his seventh and only successful bid for election. This occurred in 1964 during the Johnson landslide that also swept into office the first Democratically controlled legislature in 50 years.

Whittier cut an unusual profile. He is no doubt the last member of the Maine legislature who combined in one persona the following three somewhat unconventional characteristics: he had never driven an automobile, he was never married and had no telephone. (He was not the last, however, by any means to have campaigned by means of a bicycle).

As House chair of the Legislature Welfare Committee he was, despite being a Democrat, known for somewhat strict and conservative views on issues that came before his committee.

Nevertheless, he was so popular among his fellow legislators that near the end of the session the House passed a resolution conferring upon Whittier legislative license plates even though he had never either driven or owned a registered motor vehicle.

In rising to accept the honorary plates, Whittier announced that he would decorate his bicycle with them. That seemingly benign gesture, however, was greeted by an admonition from the Secretary of State’s Office that attaching a license plate to a bicycle is illegal under Maine law!

Though Whittier was a nonconformist he was not a law-breaker. He thus acquiesced in the Secretary of State’s pronouncement.

When he died in 1988 at the age of 99,  he had outlived both of his more prominent 1913 Bowdoin classmates, Sumner Pike (who had actually returned to Maine after his service in Washington and was a legislative colleague of Whittier’s in the 1965-66 sessions) and Sen. Douglas.

Despite the community’s GOP proclivities, Farmington named one of its highways after him in 2000, the four mile long Back Falls Road being re-named in his honor as Whittier Road at that time.

It’s the public way which nearly all persons going to and from a regional high school and vocational center must take. It’s not, however, despite a number of improvements, much more hospitable to bicycles than when Whittier rode his on it even though he would probably find it a bit friendlier to Democrats.

The political upset in Alabama

The upset a few days ago of incumbent U.S. Sen. Luther Strange in his own GOP primary by Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore is an unusual intra-party rebuke to an incumbent senator. It has been quite rare for an incumbent U.S. Senator standing for nomination in his or her own party in any time to be deprived of such a nomination even though in Strange’s case he had initially been appointed to the position rather than elected.

The last time it happened in Maine, for example, was in 1952 when Sen. Owen Brewster was denied the Republican renomination to a third term by his challenger, Gov. Frederick Payne.

It did happen in New Hampshire, however, as recently as 2002 when John Sununu upset incumbent Sen. Bob Smith in that state’s Republican primary 15 years ago.

Paul H. Mills, is a Farmington attorney well known for his analyses and historical understanding of public affairs in Maine. He can be reached by e-mail: [email protected].