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.