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.
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