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 26th
(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.
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