Kornilov Stalls

 

One hundred years ago today, plus three, only two days after it had started, General Kornilov’s advance on the capital began to peter out. Then socialist agitators went to work – they even brought some of the Cossacks over to the revolution!

Read about it here. Or read the whole chapter on Kornilov’s Insurrection here. Or read the whole story from the beginning by following this link.

 

Kornilov Advances

 

One hundred years ago yesterday, plus three, General Kornilov’s troops continued their advance on the capital. Or tried to. They wanted to go by rail, but the railroads were controlled by workers sympathetic to the socialist revolution. Soon things were not going smoothly at all.

Read about it here. Or read the whole chapter on Kornilov’s Insurrection here. Or read the whole story from the beginning by following this link.

Kornilov’s Manifesto

 

One hundred years ago today, plus three, plus two days (September 9, new style), General Kornilov issued a manifesto of accusations against the Provisional Government and the Bolsheviks that was the signal for a counter-revolutionary insurrection. Then, contrary to his fellow plotter Prime Minister Kerensky’s wishes, he ordered troops he had previously placed in position to move towards Petrograd.

 Read about it here. Or read the whole chapter on Kornilov’s Insurrection here. Or read the whole story from the beginning by following this link.

 

Kornilov Makes a Move

One hundred years ago today, plus three, General Lavr Kornilov, recently made commander-in-chief of the Russian armed forces facing the Germans and Austrians, ordered movements apparently unconnected with the conduct of that war. He put Cossack cavalry nearer to Petrograd on the north and south; the southern force was joined by a division of mountain troops from the Caucasus.

 

Read about it here. Or read the whole chapter on Kornilov’s Insurrection here. Or read the whole story from the beginning by following this link.

 

November 7 – October 25, 1917: Inside the Winter Palace

The Provisional Government – minus Kerensky – is getting nowhere in its efforts to find reinforcements while the insurrection’s encirclement is still fairly porous. General Polkovnikov was too discouraged to act. General Alexiev, once commander in chief under the tsar, came to headquarters as an advisor. He soon realized the game was up and left.

That morning insurrectionary troops had not yet encircled the Winter Palace, nor had they occupied the streets nearby or the square in which it stood. They’d watched Kerensky’s car drive off and let Stankevich pass in and out again. Now they were stopping cars and dispossessing the riders. Somehow they missed the cars of the ministers summoned to the palace for a cabinet meeting. Only one minister was stopped and arrested, and he was later released.

The cabinet was thus able to meet and try what Polkovnikov could not find the energy for. At about 11:00 a.m., finding no-one else in the cabinet willing, they appointed Kishkin, a Cadet and a civilian, to coordinate the defense. Trotsky observes this can hardly have induced troops from the front, who hated the Cadets, to come to the cabinet’s rescue. Kishkin relieved Polkovnikov and appointed an equally ineffective replacement.

If he wanted more defenders, Kishkin would have to find more junkers and persuade the Cossacks to come in. The defense also needed armored cars, they had six, but five departed and did not return. Fortunately the palace still had a direct wire to district military headquarters. There was also a telephone line the insurrection had overlooked.

At noon the palace was defended by ensigns from two junker schools and a section of field artillery from a third, an engineering school. The junkers piled up cordwood in the courtyard as a barricade for their riflemen.

Difficulties arose. Passers-by brandished revolvers and disarmed the surprised sentries. There did not appear to be sufficient rations for the day, much less for a siege. Agitators so played on their nerves that the junkers demanded a council of war with the ministers. Konovalov granted it; the whole cabinet was there with him.

An hour’s meeting gave reassurance. The chief of the engineering school took command of the whole junker contingent; his actions made the defense seem more substantial. So did rifle fire from behind the barricades, meant to clear the square. This gave the Military Committee pause. Deciding to bring up more reserves, mainly the still-expected Kronstadters, the committee called off a planned advance.

Now there was time to bring in more defenders too. Note that the encirclement had to face both ways: inward to hold the defenders, and outward to prevent reinforcements. Neither circle was complete. The Cossacks, after much internal debate, resolved to send in two squadrons of cavalry and some machine gun crews. They arrived towards evening. Shortly afterwards some forty Cavaliers of St. George, crippled war veterans, came up, and after them a company of the Women’s Battalion, widows of men killed in the war. If this was their infantry support, the Cossacks did not like the looks of it. At no time, Trotsky estimates, did the garrison defending the palace number more than 2,000.

November 6-7 – October 24-25, 1917: The Winter Palace Defended

When Kerensky returns to the Winter Palace from the Pre-Parliament (the session of November 6 – October 24), he finds Commissar Stankevich there, back from headquarters at the front. Stankevich was skeptical about whether an insurrection was actually taking place – too quiet. Kerensky thought it was; he was waiting on the resolution of the Pre-Parliament before taking certain steps against it. Stankevich went to Mariinsky Palace to see how things stood there.

Kerensky did not like the news Stankevich brought back at about 9:00 p.m. – particularly the resolution demanding that the Pre-Parliament should run the fight against the insurrection through its own committee of public safety. Kerensky summoned the Pre-Parliament’s leaders to a cabinet meeting at the palace, at which he threatened to resign – again. Avksentiev explained that the resolution was “purely theoretical” and admitted that maybe the wording wasn‘t apt. The Menshevik Dan wanted the government to proclaim it had proposed peace negotiations to the Entente, and publish it on posters throughout the city.

A delegation of Cossack officers came in next. They believed their three regiments of cavalry would be willing and able not only to defend the government, but also to destroy the Bolsheviks. Kerensky seems to have liked this pretty well, but said he regretted he had not arrested Trotsky before then.

Of course none of this was based on the realities of the situation. After the meetings broke up at 2:00 a.m. (November 7 – October 25), Kerensky was left alone with his deputy Konovalov. General Polkovnikov came in with a plan to capture Smolny, but he could not specify what forces he intended to use. Maybe the commander in chief could find them. Only then did Kerensky realize that all Polkovnikov’s reports on the preparedness and loyalty of the garrison were not just mistaken, but self-deluded.

Further proof that the situation was more dangerous than imagined came from a commissar of the city government: ships of the Baltic Fleet in the Neva, bridges taken, Bolshevik movements “meeting nowhere the slightest resistance….” Now Kerensky and his deputy knew they needed troops – lots of them, and fast.

They went to Polkovnikov’s nearby headquarters and found it stuffed with officers hiding from troops they could no longer command. Not much help. Kerensky telephoned his party’s headquarters; maybe the Social Revolutionaries could arm the membership. Miliukov observes that this was sure to alienate military elements aligned with the right. But unlike the Bolsheviks, the Social Revolutionaries had made no effort to arm the party rank and file.

Now it was time to call in the Cossack regiments. But cavalry cannot operate without support, the Cossacks said. They must have armored cars, machine guns, and especially infantry to back them up. Kerensky promised these things, but they were things he could not deliver. Only squadrons, not regiments, of Cossacks ever came to the defense of the Winter Palace.

People in headquarters and at the palace were beginning to sense an oncoming fiasco.

Kerensky summoned a War Ministry official to headquarters. He was stopped, taken to the barracks of the Pavlovsky Regiment, then permitted to go on his way. Commissar Stankevich too was allowed to pass into headquarters during this time (later going on his mission to the telephone exchange). That at least was something.

It was 5:00 a.m. New conversations with the headquarters of the Northern Front brought new promises and assurances. But troops were not arriving. Kerensky and Konovalov returned to the palace to rest, only to find the phones had been cut off. And there in the river, across the courtyard from the palace, revolutionary marines stood guard on the Dvortsovy bridge.

November 2 – October 20, 1917: Military Revolutionary Committee at Work

The Military Revolutionary Committee, with Trotsky presiding, begins preparations for defending the Congress of Soviets. Delegates aligned with the Compromisers boycotted the meeting, leaving the Bolsheviks, with their new left Social Revolutionary allies, completely in control. The Social Revolutionary Lazimir continued in charge of operations; Sverdlov assumed a role corresponding to that of chief of the general staff.

The committee assigned commissars to all the units of the garrison. Among their responsibilities was taking control of stores of arms; distributions of weapons were to take place only by consent of the commissars. In this way, the commissar for Peter and Paul fortress prevented a shipment of 10,000 rifles to the Cossacks of the Don, as well as distributions to junkers and other counter-revolutionary organizations in the capital.

The typographical workers came forward to report an increase of Black Hundreds propaganda to the committee. Such reports gave the committee an opportunity to control counter-revolutionary agitation.

The rumors about a Bolshevik insurrection that day proved again to be untrue. Nevertheless the government continued its own preparations, which it still considered adequate. The Petrograd Soviet, in a preparation of its own, announced that on Sunday the 22^nd (November 4, new style), it would conduct a review of its forces. The counter-revolution responded by promising a religious procession on that day.

Also on this day, Kerensky’s Minister of War, Verkhovsky, made the mistake of advocating a separate peace to a committee of the Pre-Parliament. Even people who might have agreed in private that this was advisable attacked him publicly, coupling his policy to that of Trotsky. The Minister had to take an enforced vacation.

Finally, as the nationalities question in Russia extended to the Cossacks, on this day they declared the unity of their armies with the Caucasian mountaineers and the people of the steppes. This proved to be the foundation for the Cossack state formed to oppose the Bolshevik government the following spring.

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.

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.

August 19 – August 6, 1917: The Counter-Revolution Mobilizes

The Union of the Twelve Cossack Armies passes a resolution against removing Kornilov from command. The League of Cavaliers of St. George passed a similar resolution during this time, one that included the threat of union with the Cossacks.

On the same day a letter appeared in the party paper of the Social Revolutionaries detailing the insults and abuses, including arbitrary executions, of the junkers (army officers drawn from the rural aristocracy and military preparatory academies) at and behind the front. All three incidents reflect the mobilization of the military forces of the counter-revolution.

Meanwhile the narrow composition of the Bolshevik Central Committee selected the party’s Secretariat from its membership. And before the Central Executive Committee of the Soviets, Kamenev advocated attendance at the Stockholm Conference. But the previous April, considering it an instrument of imperialism and not internationalism, the Bolshevik party conference had voted against participation. Though Kamenev stated he was speaking only for himself, this was nevertheless considered a breach of party discipline. Lenin’s response came from exile in Finland about ten days later, strongly insisting that Kamenev had no right to speak for himself and in contradiction to the party’s democratically determined position.

July 29 – July 16, 1917: Kerensky to the Front

Kerensky, now Prime Minister as well as War Minister, returns to the front to confer with his generals. Commander-in-Chief General Brussilov reported the “complete failure” of the offensive. On the bright side, some 90,000 replacements were expected at the front once the militant formations of the Petrograd garrison were disbanded.

Former Commander-in-Chief Alexiev wanted to abolish the soldiers’ committees elected by troops, excluding officers, at the company and regimental levels. These committees had made important contributions representing the peasants (most enlisted men in the Russian armies came from the peasantry) in the soviets. In this connection, Brussilov, oddly, claimed that officers are “real proletarians.”

General Kornilov, a Cossack by birth, was not present, as the German advance against his command on the Southwestern Front continued. But before returning to Petrograd, Prime Minister Kerensky sacked General Brussilov and appointed General Kornilov commander-in-chief. Kornilov put conditions on his acceptance of the appointment:

·         Responsibility only to “his own conscience and the people”

·         Power to appoint senior commanders

·         Restoration of the death penalty in the rear. It had already been restored “at the front,” over soldiers in direct contact with the enemy.

The condition about responsibility troubled Kerensky; it made no mention of responsibility to the government. Finding he couldn’t fire Kornilov, Kerensky extracted an oral statement to the effect that by “the people,” the general meant the “Provisional Government.”

July 17 – July 4, 1917: The Reaction Takes Shape

War Minister Kerensky being at the front, it fell to Prime Minister Prince Lvov, with help from the Menshevik Tseretilli and two of Kerensky’s War Ministry assistants, to organize countermeasures to the manifestation. The only loyal forces immediately at hand were a few hundred Cossacks; the regiments of the garrison that had not joined the demonstration remained neutral. Nevertheless General Polotsev, commanding the government forces, announced that morning that he would “cleanse” the city of demonstrators; to that end, he ordered, citizens loyal to the government should remain indoors.

But what the General’s forces could actually do was proportional to their relative strength. They could not confront the militant soldiers and sailors frontally, so contented themselves with ambushing and disarming small detachments.

Some of the ambushes offered gunfire. The first attack struck at the rear of the column of marchers. Others soon followed. In one incident, reported by Izvestia, a church bell tolled, to signal fire from the neighboring rooftops. The march was disrupted, marchers wounded; return fire was disorganized, as the targets were uncertain; order was with difficulty restored. The march resumed, in a much grimmer mood.

Trotsky is not sure who the gunners were; the marchers themselves could hardly be sure. Some of them might have been government troops, others former officers who had organized into right-wing clubs. The Compromisers in the Petrograd Soviet later alleged German agents were involved. Bolsheviks on the scene found evidence suggesting agents provocateur had fired at the Cossacks to induce them to attack the demonstrators.

For at about 8:00 p.m., two squadrons of Cossacks rode up drawing artillery behind them. On General Polotsev’s orders, they were to defend the Tauride Palace. The Cossacks began by seizing armored cars and disarming whomever they could. At the Liteiny Bridge they came up against a barricade, behind which the resistance was well-organized. Both sides opened fire. The Cossacks retreated. Their cannon fired three volleys, but was also dispersed by long-range rifle fire.

The battle, which Trotsky says was the “biggest military episode of the July Days,” left about a dozen killed and forty wounded in all, about equally divided between the two sides. The demonstrators were now in control of the grounds of the Tauride Palace.