The article examines the most problematic and interesting, from the author’s point of view, events and facts that had a cardinal impact on the development of Russian statehood in the period between the February and October revolutions of 1917. The relevance of the study of these problems is primarily due to the growing interest of researchers in the events of 1917 in Russia as a turning point in national history, as well as the understanding of possible alternatives to the development of the state and legal system of the Russian state at various stages of its existence. Based on the analysis of the complex of sources, the following conclusions are made: 1) the events of the February Revolution profoundly affected the course of development of the national statehood; 2) the republican form of government in Russia in 1917 turned out to be quite a promising innovation, however, the government found complete helplessness in solving pressing issues; 3) the reforms carried out by the Provisional Government in March – October 1917, for the most part remained declarative and were never implemented; 4) the construction of bourgeois republican statehood was not completed due to the October Revolution of 1917 and the overthrow of the Provisional Government. At the same time, the very attempt to build a bourgeois-democratic statehood in the spring and autumn of 1917 had a huge moral and symbolic significance. It was a kind of precedent in the domestic state-legal practice and laid a solid foundation for the formation of democracy and parliamentarism in modern Russia.