Annotation: In this pioneering study, historian Boris Kolonitskii shows that the “cult of the leader” (vozhdya naroda), known to many from the figures of Lenin and Stalin, did not originate in the Soviet era, but rather in the spring and summer of 1917, directly after the fall of the Russian monarchy. Alexander Kerensky – the so-called “first love of the revolution – became the first bearer of this title and, in part, the inventor of the cult around it. Thus, traditions from monarchical culture did not disappear completely with the revolution. Spurred onward by the trend of venerating party leaders, the cult of the leader revived this monarchist holdover in the form of a new image of the unique leader of the revolutionary army and its revolutionary people.