September 28-October 3 – September 15-September 20, 1917: Resolutions of the Conference

The Democratic Conference debates several alternatives to Kerensky’s Directory over the next few days.

The Compromisers had drawn back from earlier statements, of the kind that inspired an offer of a deal from Lenin, that the Cadets might be excluded from a new formulation of the Coalition Government. At the conference, Trotsky argued against their inclusion because, as a party, they had not unambiguously denounced the Kornilov insurrection while it was taking place. The response was that, if it was a mistake to blame the whole Bolshevik party for the actions of a few during the July Days, it was also a mistake to blame the whole Cadet party for the actions of those members who abetted Kornilov. Trotsky answered by making a distinction: it is not a question of inviting individual Cadets “into the jails,” but of inviting the party as a whole “into the ministry.” The conference should do the former, but because the bourgeois press either “openly welcomed” Kornilov or “kept mum,” it should not do the latter.

A sailor from the Baltic Fleet spoke even more directly to this point, saying, “Against the creation of a Coalition Ministry the sailors have raised their battle flag!”

Trotsky expresses the alternatives before the conference this way: the centrists wanted a coalition, but without the Cadets; delegates on the right favored Kerensky and wanted to bring the Cadets into the government; the left, including the Bolsheviks, called for a government of the soviets, or at any rate a ministry of socialists – to the exclusion of the Cadets. These positions, of which that of the centrists was the most unstable, governed the formulation of the resolutions placed before the conference.

A centrist resolution in favor of a coalition passed, 766 to 688, but then a left amendment for excluding the Cadets also passed, 595 to 493. When the question was on the resolution as amended, the right and left joined in voting against it with 813 votes, leaving only 133 centrist votes in favor.

The organizers of the conference were at a loss. They convened a rump committee of party leaders, but their vote was also disappointing: 50 for coalition, 60 against. The committee was able to agree, unanimously, that whatever government should happen to be formed, should be responsible to the Democratic Conference. It then resolved that the conference should become a permanent body. Finally it voted to add members of the bourgeois parties to that body, 56 to 48.

Then Kerensky turned up again and told the conference he would not take part in a government of only one party or group of parties. Note that this involves admitting that he would not be able to sustain his Directory if the conference should prefer a new coalition.

September 27 – September 14, 1917: Democratic Conference Convenes

Given their failures in the Soviet, the Compromisers cast about for a means to recover lost ground. After the Kornilov insurrection was defeated, they settled on a “Democratic Conference,” which was to be packed in such a way as to prevent the Bolsheviks from carrying their program.

For this purpose, a new constituency was heard from: the Cooperators. Ostensibly representing the peasantry, they in fact petit bourgeois administrators of agriculture who happened to live in the same villages as the peasants. The Compromisers credentialed some 150 of them.

Lenin and Zinoviev were also credentialed, but the Compromisers did not give them safe-conducts. All Kerensky would promise was that he would not arrest them in the hall where the conference was being held. He’d arrest them at the entrance. Safe-conduct or not, Lenin did not plan to attend; he opposed Bolshevik participation altogether.

The conference convened on September 14 (September 27, new style) in a Petrograd theater. Kerensky decided to attend. When he greeted the praesidium, the Bolsheviks on it refused to shake hands. So did the Kornilovists. Kerensky seems to have pretended they did.

Then Kerensky spoke extemporaneously, knowing he would have to address his role in the Kornilov conspiracy. “I knew what they wanted,” he said incautiously. “Before they went to Kornilov they came to me and suggested I take the same course.” The left of course wondered who “they” were, and what they had “suggested,” but Kerensky shifted topics rather than answer their shouted questions.

Kerensky committed another verbal blunder in response to another shouted question, this one about the death penalty. Both the Petrograd Soviet and the Menshevik party had passed resolutions against restoration of the death penalty in the military. Kerensky responded that he hadn’t ordered any executions, and when he did, “then I will permit you to curse me.” Of course this admitted that the death penalty was not necessary; nor did it make sense to restore the death penalty based on Kerensky’s unspoken promise not to use it. In a later speech, Trotsky pointed this out to anyone who might have missed it.

What the Bolsheviks would do was on everybody’s mind, including Kerensky’s. He expected “the forces of the democracy” to support him in case of an insurrection, warning, “Do not think that I am hanging in the air,” and claiming that he could stop the railroads and the telegraphs. The Bolsheviks in the hall just laughed: what an odd expression, “hanging in the air,” for a dictator to use of himself!

Tseretilli said he thought the government, meaning in particular Kerensky, was getting “a little dizzy” on the heights.

At one point, after a number of speeches by individuals who were part of the government, Trotsky observed, “I have not heard a single speaker here who would...[defend] the directory or its president.” Nor could any of these speakers articulate the policies of the government; nothing was being done to revive the economy, to end the war, or anything else.

The Bolsheviks called on Trotsky to read their declaration of the policy of the party and Central Committee. Tseretilli had framed the issue in one of his speeches: instead of putting the Soviet forward, why don’t the Bolsheviks take the power themselves? This challenge was whispered on the praesidium and repeated in the lobbies. Ten days before, the Cadet paper printed an editorial theorizing that maybe the Bolsheviks could best be got rid of if they were given the power. They would fail and fade to insignificance.

The Bolshevik declaration was neither evasive nor misleading. The party would not seize power “against the organized will of the majority of the toiling masses of the country.” This meant that if the soviets, in many of which the Bolsheviks were now the majority, willed it, the party would seize the power. The declaration also refused to recognize any decision of the Democratic Conference that was not subsequently ratified by the next All-Russian Congress of Soviets.

When they heard the declaration’s call for arming the workers, members of the centrist majority cried in alarm, “What for?” Trotsky replied they would be the revolutionary country’s best defense against both imperialism and counter-revolution.

The Bolshevik attitude towards the future of the Russian state being known, the conference proceeded to debate which policy it would endorse.

Meanwhile it had fallen to Stalin, as liaison between the party and Lenin, to bring Lenin's letters from Finland to Petrograd. Lenin had taken a position against participation in the conference. His first letter on insurrection, addressed to the Bolshevik Central Committee and the committees of Petrograd and Moscow, took the party by surprise. It was just a sketch of points he would continue to make in the weeks to come. But the Central Committee, on Kamenev’s motion but over Stalin’s objections, decided to burn it anyway. (One copy was kept for posterity.)

In another letter, written at about the same time, Lenin begins to add detail to his plan of insurrection, and grounds it in Marxist theory. Trotsky expresses part of the plan this way: “To leave the Alexandrinsky Theater [scene of the Democratic Conference] with an ultimatum and return there at the head of the armed masses.”

September 24 – September 11, 1917: Against Coalition

. The Menshevik Dan speaks in the Petrograd Soviet in favor of coalition government, Trotsky for government of the soviets. Dan’s motion garnered only 10 votes from the hundreds of deputies present.

A resolution against repression of the Bolshevik party passed the Moscow Soviet unanimously on the same day.

September 22 – September 9, 1917: Rising Tide in the Petrograd Soviet

The Petrograd Soviet convenes to reconsider the resolution voted on September 1 (September 14, new style). Each party’s whips made sure all their members attended; at stake was the substitution of the Bolshevik party line for that of the Compromisers.

The Bolsheviks moved to make representation on the praesidium proportional to the party’s share of the vote in the Soviet. This tactic was not favored by Lenin – still proscribed and therefore not present – but in the event Tseretilli would not entertain the motion.

So the Soviet was asked to declare that the resolution of September 1 did not accord with the Soviet’s line (i.e., that of the Compromisers) and that the Soviet still had confidence in its praesidium (consisting mostly of Compromisers). Note that the Bolshevik resolution ruled out coalition government with the representatives of the bourgeoisie.

Trotsky, just released from prison, made an observation: Kerensky was missing from the praesidium. He asked whether the prime minister was still a member. The praesidium, seeing where Trotsky was going with this, reluctantly answered that he was. Trotsky answered that this was not what the Bolsheviks expected. “We were mistaken. The ghost of Kerensky now sits between Dan and Cheidze.” Then he reminded the Soviet that a vote for the policies of the resolution was also a vote for the policies of Kerensky, then among those subject to the Soviet’s investigation for complicity in the plot of Kornilov and the bourgeoisie.

The atmosphere was so tense that it was decided to take the vote by absence or presence. Those against the resolution were to signify opposition by leaving the hall.

It took over an hour, as workers’ and soldiers’ deputies drifted towards the exits amid whispers and shouts. The Bolsheviks thought they would be about 100 votes short of a majority. But when the praesidium made the count, it was 414 for the resolution, 519 against, with 67 abstentions…! Tseretilli offered a parting shot as he left the platform with the rest of the praesidium: After six months, the banner of the revolution had passed into the hands of the Bolsheviks; “We can only express the wish that you may be able to hold it in the same way for half as long!” Taking the chair, Trotsky offered and passed a special resolution denouncing those responsible for the slander against the Bolsheviks of conspiring with the Germans.

Trotsky says, “The Bolsheviks now entered on their inheritance.” But the inheritance did not include the organization’s infrastructure: printing presses, funds, transportation, even the typewriters and inkwells, had all been appropriated to other uses by the former occupants of the praesidium.

This vote was the culmination of increasing Bolshevik strength in the soviets, as well as on the factory committees, in the trade unions, and on the soldiers committees. The party had recovered all it had lost after the July Days and the slander of conspiracy – and more besides. Trotsky devotes two chapters, with much anecdotal evidence, to this account; I have given several of the more prominent examples in separate entries.

September 18 – September 5, 1917: The Bolshevik Resolution in Moscow

The Moscow Soviet votes in favor of a Bolshevik resolution of no confidence in the Provisional Government. The resolution also condemned the Central Executive Committee of the Soviets for its policy favoring coalition with the Cadets in the government. In Moscow, as before in Petrograd, the praesidium of the Soviet therefore resigned.

Bolshevik resolutions of similar import were also passed by regional conferences of soviets in Siberia on this day and in Kiev a few days later. The Baltic Fleet did the same.

A supplementary post follows this one in the chronological order.

September 17 – September 4, 1917: Trotsky Released

Having placed the former War Minister, Guchov, under arrest on suspicion of complicity in Kornilov’s plot, and then released him, the Directory is compelled to address the situation of Bolsheviks arrested after the July Days. Not wanting simply to release them, the Directory instead set bail. Trotsky was released on a “modest” 3,000 rubles bail raised by the trade unions. Other imprisoned Bolsheviks were also freed.

Also on this day, Kerensky ordered the Military Committee set up to oppose Kornilov to halt its activities. This much the compromisist committee might be willing to do, but it nevertheless refused to dissolve itself. It continued “to work with its former energy and restraint.” Kerensky would have to be satisfied with this.

September 16 – September 3, 1917: “On Compromises”

In Rabochy Put (Worker’s Way), a successor to the shuttered Pravda, Lenin writes of an opening for the proletarian revolution created by the defeat of Kornilov’s insurrection. He argued in “On Compromises” that if the Soviet were to reject proposals for coalition with the Cadets in the government, the way would be open for an all-socialist government incorporating the system of soviets.

He described the compromise this way: “The compromise on our part is our return to the pre-July demand of all power to the Soviets and a government of [Social Revolutionaries] and Mensheviks responsible to the Soviets.” And in return: “The Mensheviks and S.R.s, being the government bloc, would then agree … to form a government wholly and exclusively responsible to the Soviets, the latter taking over all power locally as well.”

Of course, as we’ll see, the right-socialists never opened this window.

September 14 – September 1, 1917: The Bolshevik Resolution in Petrograd

The Petrograd Soviet passes a Bolshevik resolution calling for a government of workers and peasants. The margin was so great that the praesidium felt compelled to resign.

On the following day, a joint session of the Russian soviets of Finland also passed a resolution demanding a government of soviets.

September 13 – August 31, 1917: Change in Command, etc.

Prime Minister Kerensky appoints himself commander-in-chief in preference to General Kornilov. General Alexiev was made chief of staff. Kornilov asked for terms; meanwhile, said Kerensky, his orders as against the Germans should be obeyed.

Alexiev was sent to headquarters at Moghiliev. The Compromisers in the Soviet wanted Kornilov’s head; the Moscow Church Council was against it as not Christian. Kerensky placed Kornilov and a few other headquarters conspirators under house arrest instead.

Meanwhile Alexiev was trying to persuade the big bourgeoisie to supply stipends for the conspirators, under the explicit threat that Kornilov was in a position to reveal their conspiratorial roles. For essentially the same reason, Miliukov dropped out of sight; his party, the Cadets, officially explained that he had “gone to the Crimea for a rest.”

On the same day, Kerensky assembled the Directory he had been planning. He kept Tereshchenko as Foreign Minister, and added a general (who had to be promoted from colonel), an admiral, and a Menshevik.

September 12 – August 30, 1917: The Insurrection Collapses

The Central Executive Committee of the Soviets announces the “complete demoralization” of the forces in Kornilov’s insurrection. General Krymov presented himself to Kerensky at the Winter Palace and was treated to a theatrical speech. He shot himself dead on the way back to the war office.

General Krasnov, the commander of Kornilov’s cavalry advance, saw the same thing other Kornilovist officers had been seeing: animated agitators among his troops. These particular troops began to arrest their officers and put themselves under soldiers committees they themselves had elected. Going further, they formed a soviet and sent a delegation to the Provisional Government.

The Kronstadt sailors were also making their views felt. They sent a delegation to the Central Executive demanding representation there, but had to be satisfied with four non-voting seats.

The Bolsheviks in Finland went even further, assuming governmental functions that, Trotsky says, anticipated the October Revolution itself.

Meanwhile Kerensky dismissed Governor-general Savinkov and replaced him with another individual, who himself was dismissed three days later.

September 11 – August, 29, 1917: Kornilov’s Insurrection Stalls

From headquarters in Moghiliev, General Kornilov orders General Krymov, in command of the advance on Petrograd, to concentrate his troops. But this was impossible; Krymov didn’t know where his troops were. The railroad workers had sent them hither and yon on eight different rail lines. Meanwhile, Kerensky telegraphed Krymov telling him Petrograd was quiet, his troops were not needed.

The capital received reports of a battle at Antropshio Station. Maybe this was in fact a reconnaissance in force that Krymov had actually ordered; it retired without engaging revolutionary troops.

The revolutionary Kronstadt sailors docked at Petrograd that morning, adding their numbers to those of the garrison and the armed workers. The sailors had replaced Kornilovist officers with men of their own choosing. Their representatives visited Trotsky in prison, but did not free him. Even though Kerensky had been refusing continuous requests of the Central Executive Committee to free the political prisoners taken after the July Days, Trotsky advised the sailors not to arrest the members of the Provisional Government – yet.

In Vyborg (the city near the Finnish frontier, not the workers’ district near Petrograd), the commanding officer had withheld news of the insurrection from his troops. When they found out, they shot him. Bolshevik-leaning units from the Vyborg garrison were also on the march to Petrograd. In the Baltic Fleet, they shot a number of officers who refused to take oaths of allegiance to the revolution. At Helsinki, the Soviet and fleet brought over the Cossacks of the garrison to the defense of the revolution.

When the railroad workers refused to move the trains at Luga, the garrison there, loyal to the revolution (and not having surrendered, as reported in Petrograd the day before), began to fraternize with Kornilov’s troops stranded there. Here too, even the Cossacks came under the influence of the Bolshevik agitators among the revolutionary soldiery.

Neither was the Savage Division immune. Their officers wanted to arrest the delegation of Moslems the Bolsheviks sent to negotiate, but the soldiers refused this order as lacking hospitality to their co-religionists. In the result, the soldiers set up a red banner bearing the words “Land and Freedom” over a staff car.

Kornilov’s troop concentration near Pskov had also evaporated.

Overnight, September 10-11 – August 28-29, 1917: The Savage Division Stalls

The Savage Division enters the battle unprepared. Some of its arms were still well down the railroad line, supposedly expected at Pskov. Overnight, the division came to a halt.

Two days later, the tracks leading to Pskov had been cut. In the result, the division never engaged troops supporting the Provisional Government at all.

September 10 – August 28, 1917: Kerensky Negotiates

Kerensky summons Commissar Savinkov to the Winter Palace. When he arrived at about 4:00 a.m., General Alexiev and Foreign Minister Tereshchenko were already there. They began talking as if there had been some kind of misunderstanding between Kerensky and Kornilov, thinking to deceive the public with this explanation. Kerensky asked the press not to print anything about his rift with Kornilov, but it was already too late.

The cruiser Aurora sailed to the Winter Palace from Kronstadt that day at about noon. The revolutionary sailors were thus on guard, whether over or for Kerensky was still to be determined.

Towards evening, Miliukov arrived at the palace and offered to mediate between Kerensky and Kornilov. Kerensky seems to have welcomed this, accepting Miliukov’s argument that the balance of power then lay with Kornilov. Miliukov did not disclose that he and his friends on the bourgeois right had Alexiev in mind to succeed Kerensky.

Later still, word came to the palace that Russia’s allies in the Entente were willing, “in the interests of humanity,” to bridge the difficulties between Kornilov and Kerensky. British Ambassador Buchanan had given Foreign Minister Tereshchenko a note to this effect.

Kerensky called the “retired” Cadet ministers to the palace. But before they could reach any decisions, alarming (but false) news that the enemy was nearing the capital was received. So they began to talk again about forming a directory with Alexiev in it. Miliukov’s plan was about to bear fruit.

Then there came a knock at the door. It was Tseretilli, returned from the Soviet to announce its demands. There would be no negotiations with Kornilov; instead the Committee of Defense would continue the struggle. 

Kerensky and his cohorts had no answer for this, no means of compelling the Soviet to abandon its decision. The meeting broke up, the Cadet ministers having resigned the cabinet for good this time. After everyone took his leave, Kerensky spent the night in nearly “complete solitude,” no longer, presumably, singing opera.

Meanwhile Krymov was actually withdrawing from Luga on the evening of the 28^th (September 10, new style). The Committee of Defense took control of the Southwestern Front through the soldiers committees. The Rumanian, Western, and Caucasian Fronts telegraphed the Winter Palace in support of the revolution and against Kornilov. The Northern Front, which Kornilov had suborned, got a new commander who later volunteered for the Red Army.

Kaledin, the Cossack general and political leader, was in the Don steppes, riding around the countryside and testing the mood of the people. Effectively neutral, he was emphatically not forming another front against the Provisional Government. Likewise, the fifth column in Petrograd promised by the League of Officers never showed itself. The provocateurs who were supposed to have drawn the Bolsheviks into the streets left for Finland, taking their allotment of money – what they hadn’t already spent on parties – with them.

September 10 – August 28, 1917: Kornilov Advances

Petrograd receives news about the movement in its direction of General Kornilov’s forces. Reportedly: at 12:30 p.m., General Krymov reached Luga, 87 miles from the capital; at 2:30 p.m., trains loaded with Kornilov’s troops were passing through Oredezh station; at 3:00 p.m., Luga’s garrison surrendered; at 6:00 p.m., troops were advancing past Narva and approaching Gatchina, 28 miles from the capital.

The stock markets actually went up!

Little did the bourgeoisie know, this is what was really happening: Railroad workers were tearing up the tracks on the insurrection’s line of march. They isolated Moghiliev, Kornilov’s headquarters, from the rest of the railroad net. They put the railroad bridges under guard. Rail dispatchers and engineers were sending parts of Kornilov’s units one way, other parts another way, so that troops got separated from commanders and staff, from their own weapons and supplies, and from each other. Telegraph operators were not only holding up messages, but retransmitting them to the Committee of Defense. Other workers dug trenches – in hours instead of days.

And in Petrograd itself, workers eager to join the Red Guard were arming themselves with 40,000 stand of rifles. The workers of the Putilov factory turned out 100 cannon for defense of the city. The chauffeurs union provided transportation and delivered messages for the Soviet’s Committee of Defense. Clerks of the metal workers union prepared and distributed the necessary paperwork. The printers union decided, favorably to the interests of the Soviet, what would go into print. Counter-revolutionary elements were put under arrest.

Governor-general Savinkov had little or nothing to do with the organization of the defense.

Significantly, the Menshevik Dan, on behalf of the Petrograd Soviet, decreed that units of the Petrograd garrison should not carry out any movements unless orders were countersigned by the Committee of Defense. This was the same tactic the Soviet had employed during the April Days. It effectively deprived Kerensky of command over the city’s troops. Not only did he not control resistance to Kornilov on behalf of the Provisional Government, he did not have forces to support his own ambitions as against both Kornilov and the Provisional Government.

I might observe, without revealing too much too soon, that this was all good practice for the October Revolution.

Overnight, September 9-10 – August 27-28, 1917: A Proposal from the Soviet

The joint Central Executive Committee of the Soviets debates its response to the situation created by General Kornilov’s insurrection well into the morning hours. After midnight, the Soviet got word that Kerensky would not agree to democratic reforms. He insisted on the notion of a directory, that is, a reconcentration of power in a smaller cabinet with himself at the head.

Tseretilli nevertheless went from the Smolny Institute to the Winter Palace to submit the Soviet’s proposal. When Kerensky refused it, he returned to Smolny, arriving at about 7:30 a.m. on the 28^th (September 10, new style). Wearied, the Soviet was ready to concede Kerensky’s plan for a directory.

September 9 – August 27, 1917: Kornilov’s Insurrection

On the day set for the movement on Petrograd to begin, Prime Minister Kerensky telegraphs General Kornilov, ordering him to present himself at the capital. Instead Kornilov issued a manifesto declaring that “the Provisional Government, under pressure from the Bolshevik majority in the Soviets, is acting in full accord with the plans of the German general staff,” which, he added, included an advance up the coastline from Riga. So he, Kornilov, was going to do something to save the Provisional Government from itself. At least he was acting consistently with the plans of the conspiracy – though of course the “Bolshevik majority” did not exist and though, even on the six-month anniversary of the February Revolution, the streets of Petrograd were quiet.

Next Kerensky ordered Kornilov to hold up the movements by rail of the Savage Division and cavalry corps towards Petrograd, but Kornilov refused. Kerensky removed him from command. This likewise had no effect on the tendency of events. Next Kerensky issued an order to the Petrograd garrison, saying Kornilov had treacherously removed troops from the front and sent them against the capital. Kornilov answered by saying the traitors were already there, in Petrograd.

There had been nothing about Kornilov’s movements in the morning papers, but word of his manifesto and break with Kerensky spread through the capital. By evening, the Central Executive Committee of the Soviets had formed its Committee of Struggle Against the Counter-Revolution. The committee drew its membership from all three socialist parties including the Bolsheviks, from trade unions, and from the Petrograd soviets generally.

The Mensheviks now began to advocate a program considerably to the left of where they stood before: for declaring a republic, for dissolving the State Duma, and for agrarian reform. The Committee also agreed the cabinet of the Provisional Government should continue, with socialists replacing the resigned Cadets.

The Bolsheviks declared themselves and the Red Guards ready to resist Kornilov’s attempt. Through their Military Organization, they had already issued instructions for the revolutionary troops of the garrison to remain at arms, but not to demonstrate.

On the other side, only the command of the Southwestern Front supported Kornilov. Accordingly, they smashed the printing presses of organizations thought to be loyal to the government.

September 8 – August 26, 1917: The Price of Grain

The Provisional Government doubles the price of grain. This served the bourgeois landowners better than it served the workers. The Petrograd Soviet protested, but the provocation did not, as the plotters of the insurrection must have hoped, bring the Bolshevik masses into the streets. Instead the Central Committee warned against “provocational agitation,” and the Bolsheviks, with their allies in the labor unions and factory committees, all announced that they were not calling for a demonstration.

The Cadet ministers took this opportunity to resign the Provisional Government, as Miliukov says, “without prejudicing…their future participation.” Knowing what was afoot, they preferred to await events. Not knowing, but very suspicious, the Compromiser ministers also sat on the sidelines for the day. The government thus effectively ceased to exist, leaving Kerensky with whatever powers it formerly possessed.

Kerensky later told the story that Savinkov came to him on the night of the 26^th (September 8, new style) and offered to submit himself to arrest for his role in the Kornilov conspiracy. Whether that part of the story is true or not, Kerensky did make him governor-general of Petersburg instead. Thus, Trotsky observes, Kerensky and Savinkov were jointly responsible both for carrying out and for preventing the conspiracy.

Kerensky did not promulgate the decree acceding to Kornilov’s demands, neither on this day, as originally planned, nor afterwards.

Sometime between September 7-8 – August 25-26, 1917: Double-Crossings

Commissar Savinkov returns to headquarters to clear up a few details. General Kornilov listened, and maybe he seemed to agree, but in the end he did as he wished. Against Kerensky’s orders, he put General Krymov in command of the advance on Petrograd and the Savage Division in the vanguard.

Kerensky had also ordered an adjustment to Kornilov’s demand for military control of Petrograd. Kornilov could have command of the military district in which Petrograd was located, but the government would retain control of the garrison in the city itself. Since he figured the balance of forces would still be in his favor when his cavalry got there, this did not bother Kornilov much.

Meanwhile Lvov, a church official (not the former Prime Minister), had also been shuttling between Kornilov’s headquarters and those of Kerensky at the Winter Palace. Lvov began to realize that two plots, not just one, had been hatched. Kerensky’s did not match up with Kornilov’s, particularly on the very important point of who the dictator would be. So Kerensky sent Lvov back to Moghiliev with the proposal that the two camps would together work out a “transformation” of the government. He arrived there after Savinkov had already left the second time.

Kornilov’s camp took the message Lvov delivered as a sign of weakness. Kornilov told Lvov that once the (expected) Bolshevik insurrection had been suppressed, the plotters should seek “the immediate transfer of power by the Provisional Government into the hands of the supreme commander-in-chief,” adding “whoever he may be.” Then he politely suggested that Kerensky and Savinkov seek refuge with him at Moghiliev, to be safe from the Bolsheviks.

When Lvov delivered this proposal, Kerensky immediately telegraphed Kornilov, asking him to confirm it. Then Kerensky replied as though he would be arriving at headquarters the following day. But of course he didn’t. Another Kornilov proposal, that Kerensky become Minister of Justice in a cabinet headed by…someone else, made Kerensky so angry be put the messenger, Lvov, under arrest at the Winter Palace. Trotsky says Lvov spent the evening listening to Kerensky sing opera in the next room.

Back at headquarters, on the same evening (August 26^th, September 8, new style), Kornilov’s camp thought the success of their plot was at hand.

September 7 – August 25, 1917: The Plot is Hatched

Commissar Savinkov returns to Petrograd with news of his success. The agreed plan was to publish the law as Kornilov demanded, await the immediately expected Bolshevik demonstration, and then send in the cavalry to put down the demonstrators and establish martial law. Under martial law, of course, anything could happen, including an emergency dictatorship under (one of) the plotters.

Of course, the Social Revolutionary resolution calling for headquarters to expel members of the League of Officers was ignored. The League was part of the plot; on the appointed day, they were to raise an armed fifth column in the streets of Petrograd.

The date was set for August 27 (September 9, new style), the six-month anniversary of the February Revolution.

In another provocation, the Bolshevik paper Proletarian was suppressed.

September 6 – August 24, 1917: Demand for Democracy

The Central Executive Committee of the Soviets calls for an end to “counter-revolutionary methods” and a transition to democracy. Though details on both steps seem to have been lacking, Trotsky observes, “This was a new language.” It put pressure on Kerensky from the left.

September 5 – August 23, 1917: Kerensky Chimes In

Kerensky offers his contribution to the controversy over the fall of Riga, saying the soldiers were “concealing their cowardice under idealistic slogans.” It might have seemed odd for Kerensky to so harshly criticize troops that might have to defend his government against an insurrection by counter-revolutionary elements in the army, but then again, he was already part of Kornilov’s plot.

The Russian ambassador telegraphed that French President Poincare and his Foreign Minister had many questions about Kornilov at a recent Paris reception. So word of the plot was apparently getting out.

September 4 – August 22, 1917: Kerensky’s Plotter

Prime Minister Kerensky sends the adventurer Savinkov to General Kornilov’s headquarters at Moghiliev to demand that cavalry be placed at the government’s disposal. Of course a corps was already stationed on the railroad net south of Petrograd.

But there was now a quid pro quo for the demand: the proposed law acceding to Kornilov’s political demands for the conduct of the war. (Savinkov had been tasked with drafting it.) This in turn was part of the rationale for the request for troops: the law was among a number of provocations the plotters thought would bring the Bolsheviks into the streets. Then the cavalry would come in, impose martial law, and, for good measure, do away with the soviets.

Trotsky marshals the evidence against Kerensky (including minutes of the headquarters meetings with Savinkov kept by the general staff), and chronicles Kerensky’s actions as the insurrection approached. In fact, Kerensky expected that he, not Kornilov, would be made dictator when the insurrection had finished off the soviets, and Kerensky’s own Provisional Government along with them.

Meanwhile Kornilov took action to discredit the soldiery, issuing orders to shoot “deserters” and requiring commanders to submit lists of Bolshevik officers in their commands.

The soldiers and the officers of the Rumanian Front and Black Sea Fleet protested these kinds of imputations. Izvestia defended the soldiers, and editorialized about the counter-revolutionary clique in the army. A Menshevik conference, without debate, called for abolition of the death penalty. Even Tseretilli felt compelled to hold his silence.

September 3 – August 21, 1917: Riga Falls

German troops march into Riga, having pushed aside the mostly unprepared 12^th Army. The army’s commander defended the performance of his troops, saying the “most thoroughly propagandized” formations fought the hardest. These included a brigade of Latvian sharpshooters who counterattacked under red banners, and the marines of the Baltic Fleet. Bolshevik influence predominated in these formations; moreover, they were fighting to defend their national capital and home port.

But if the 12^th Army was as a whole unprepared, this suited General Kornilov’s plans perfectly well. Trotsky observes that the generals of the Northern Front in Latvia were in on Kornilov’s plot, but didn’t have to do anything affirmative, like ordering withdrawals or conspiring with the Germans, to ensure that Riga would fall. They could just await the expected result.

Nevertheless the bourgeois papers blamed the peasant infantry.

Meanwhile Kornilov assembled the high command at headquarters in Moghiliev and let some of them in on his plot. Among other measures then taken, the cavalry were given grenades, thought to be an effective weapon against urban crowds and buildings.

On the same day, the Provisional Government placed two Romanov grand dukes under house arrest. They needn’t have bothered, Trotsky says, as the counter-revolution had no interest in restoring the monarchy, and the Bolsheviks were not fooled by the gesture.

September 2 – August 20, 1917: Kornilov Orders Movements

A corps of cavalry Kornilov had positioned on the railroad net south of Petrograd before the State Conference edges nearer the capital. A formation of mountaineers from the Caucasus, called the Savage Division because, it was said, they didn’t care whom they killed, had joined them.

Another cavalry division, of Cossacks, was in place north of Petrograd, near the Finnish frontier.

An election to the city Duma of Petrograd took place on this day. The Social Revolutionaries polled 200,000 votes, some 375,000 fewer than in the previous election. The Cadets won 50,000 votes and the Mensheviks 23,000. In a sign of increasing strength, the Bolsheviks matched the 200,000 vote total of the Social Revolutionaries.

Meanwhile Zinoviev wrote in Pravda against insurrection, citing the example of the Paris Commune of 1871. Stalin, editor of Pravda, printed the article without comment or emendation. Lenin responded two weeks later, explaining the mistakes of the Commune and what the Russian Revolution would have to do differently.

September 1 – August 19, 1917: Breach in the Front

The Germans take the offensive, breaching the Russian lines of the Northern Front at Ikskul. (This must have been on the road to Riga, the capital of Latvia, but it appears the place no longer exists.)

Kornilov took this occasion to again demand personal control of the Petrograd garrison.