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.
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