Kornilov’s Insurrection

August 30 – August 17, 1917: Kornilov’s Demands. Prime Minister Kerensky orders Commissar Savinkov to draft a law for putting General Kornilov’s demands into effect. The demands were already on the record of the State Conference in Moscow:

·         Militarizing the railroads and factories

·         Permitting the death penalty in the rear

·         Putting the Petrograd garrison under Kornilov’s command

·         Abolishing the soldiers’ committees

August 31 – August 18, 1917: Against the Death Penalty. The Petrograd Soviet demands abolition of the death penalty by a vote of 900 to 4. The four voting against the resolution were among the right-socialists most closely tied to the Compromisers and the Provisional Government: Tseretilli, Cheidze, Dan, and Lieber.

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.

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 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 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 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 6 – August 24, 1917: Demand for Democracy. 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 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.

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 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.

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.

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.