Chapter One
On 2 March 1917, in the face of mass popular demonstrations which had been endemic since mid-February, and near universal desertion by the elites of Old Russia, Tsar Nicholas II abdicated. After a bitter struggle, which had begun for some of the participants nearly fifty years earlier, democracy had triumphed. Liberal politicians from the Duma, the national assembly established by the Tsar after the 1905 Revolution, had established a Provisional Government even before the abdication and set themselves the task of administering the country until a Constituent Assembly could be summoned. The Constituent Assembly would then adopt a constitution for the new democratic Russia and elect a new government, an essential task since the Tsar’s Duma was not a democratic body and gave little representation to the mass of Russia’s workers and peasants. These, the vast majority of Russians, since they were denied fair access to the Duma, had formed their own alternative assemblies known as soviets; the Petrograd Soviet held its first formal session on 27 February. Yet despite these twin sources of political authority in post-Tsarist Russia – the dual power of which contemporaries spoke – March was a month of euphoria, and the soviet at first endorsed the Provisional Government, having little reason to doubt its commitment to democratic advance.
By April 1917, however, the honeymoon was over. The leaders of the great mass of Russians represented in the soviets and the members of the Provisional Government, the Duma politicians elected from the property-owners of Tsarist Russia, first realized that they could not necessarily trust each other since their visions of the future of democracy in Russia were essentially very different. The Duma politicians longed for an idealized vision of the British parliamentary system, but without a monarchy, a society which would welcome them retaining their wealth and privilege. The soviets wanted a new democracy, ill-defined but closer to the people, and a society where all privilege and wealth were a thing of the past. It was the realization that in a democratic Russia the soviet vision would ultimately be the one to triumph when all Russians were able to vote which prompted the first moves towards an anti-democratic counter-revolution, the opening gambit of the Whites in the future White versus Red civil war.
In April 1917, within two months of the Tsarist regime being overthrown, counter-revolutionary groups within the Russian Army began to plot how best to overthrow the new democratic government. Six months later, they made their first serious attempt to stem the revolutionary tide when General Lavr Kornilov, Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Army, staged an abortive coup d’état. The plots which developed between April and August involved many of those generals who were to become key players later in the civil war, but that was not their true significance: the essence of these plots lay in their inability to attract any widespread support. Even politicians superficially sympathetic to the generals’ aspirations soon began to question their methods, for those politicians in contact with the generals quickly learned that the military’s programme had no place for democracy but was simply one of counter-revolutionary dictatorship.
Kornilov in April
Firm action by the military was first mooted at the end of April 1917, during the first major political crisis faced by the Provisional Government, a crisis which saw the leader of the liberal Kadet Party P.N. Milyukov forced to resign as Minister of Foreign Affairs, and the political complexion of the government transformed by the appointment of new ministers from Russia’s moderate socialist parties, the Mensheviks (Social Democrats) and Socialist Revolutionaries (SRs), Russia’s peasant socialist party. At the height of this crisis, street fighting occurred in Petrograd, fighting which saw the future White General Kornilov keen to flex his political muscles for the first time.
The crisis related to the vexed question of war aims. The Russian Revolution made it possible to argue that the First World War was a war between the democracies of Russia, Britain and France (joined by the USA) against the imperial powers of Central Europe; but it also raised the question of how tied the new democratic Russia was to the secret imperial war aims of the Tsar agreed with Britain and France, namely expansion in the Balkans. In an infamous note to the Allied governments, the Foreign Minister in the Provisional Government, P.N. Milyukov promised ‘fully to observe the obligations taken with respect to our Allies’, a promise which contradicted the widespread view of the Russian people, reflected in numerous soviet resolutions, that the war Russia was then fighting was a war for a peace ‘without indemnities and annexations’. Milyukov’s concern for the ‘obligations taken with respect to our Allies’ meant honouring commitments to annex the Ukrainian population of Austria-Hungary and occupy Constantinople and the Dardanelles straits. This war aims crisis encapsulated the differing political visions of liberal and soviet politicians. Milyukov seemed to be arguing that the Tsar had gone but Russia would carry on much as before; soviet politicians wanted radical change, especially where war aims were concerned, for only idealism could inspire a war-weary army to remain in the trenches. The crisis created such popular excitement that the Bolsheviks were able to stage their first demonstrations against the government; it presented anti-democratic forces with their first opportunity to discuss counter-revolution.
Many of the soldiers who participated in the first anti-Milyukov demonstration of 20 April were so angry at his action, and so sure that the Petrograd Soviet would support them that they were unaware that the demonstration had been inspired by Bolshevik agitators and had not been endorsed by the soviet. Although armed, this demonstration by members of the Finland and Moscow regiments was accompanied by brass bands, and the rally outside the Mariinskii Palace, where the Provisional Government was then based, dispersed peacefully at 5 p.m. after being addressed by both the Petrograd Soviet leaders A.R. Gots (an SR) and M.I. Skobelev (a Menshevik), and by General Kornilov, then the Commander of the Petrograd Military District. The soviet leaders argued that the crisis could be resolved peaceably, while Kornilov explained:
It is your legitimate right to voice your needs peacefully and in order; but that does not mean coming forward with weapons in hand, you must wait in your barracks for the legitimate resolutions to be made by your legitimate representatives.1
Trouble began the following day, 21 April, when workers rather than soldiers marched to both the Mariinskii Palace and the Tauride Palace, where the Petrograd Soviet was based, and vociferously repeated the demand for Milyukov’s resignation. They were joined by some sailors from the naval base at Kronstadt and various armed Red Guards, and, unlike on the 20th, were met by a counter-demonstration organized by Milyukov’s Kadet Party. It was a confusing day, with three separate groups of anti-government demonstrators taking to the streets, to be confronted by one group of pro-government demonstrators; the result was two outbreaks of street fighting. Subsequent police reports established that the first incident began around 3 p.m. when the first group of workers, protected by armed guards, crossed the Pdver Neva from the working-class district of the Vyborg Side and marched towards the main shopping street of Nevskii Prospekt. As they approached the corner of Sadovaya Street and Nevskii Prospekt, a group of officers and critical bystanders tried to block their path and prevent them turning into Petrograd’s main shopping street. When they tried to grab a banner with the legend ‘Down with the Provisional Government’ – a slogan never endorsed by the Petrograd Soviet – there was a scuffle, sabres were drawn, and revolvers pulled from their holsters; at that moment a shot rang out from somewhere down Sadovaya Street and the procession forced its way onto Nevskii Prospekt and on towards the Admiralty building.
Angered by the success of the workers at forcing their way on to Nevskii Prospekt, counter-demonstrating officers and officials assembled outside one of Nevskii Prospekt’s premier shopping arcades, the Passage. A second workers’ demonstration was spotted turning into Nevskii Prospekt from Sadovaya Street and the counter-demonstration went to confront it. The two groups met near the Kazan Cathedral, a banner was seized and as the workers began to retreat some of the armed guards moved off the street and onto the pavement, drew their guns and fell to the ground. Three or four shots rang out from the workers’ side, though the counter-demonstrators had soon captured some of the workers’ weapons, and a further exchange of fire took place before the counter-demonstrators let the demonstrators past.
The counter-demonstrators then held the day: they organized a pro-government rally at the Mariinskii Palace, they then marched to a house on the Moika River where the government was meeting in emergency session - the Defence Minister A.I. Guchkov was too ill to move from his bed, so the government met in his bedroom – and organized another pro-government rally outside the Kazan Cathedral. As this started to disperse at around 6 p.m. a third workers’ demonstration arrived, this time entering the centre of town from the Vasilevskii Island district and starting to march up Nevskii Prospekt from the other, Admiralty end. This prompted a second armed clash.
All seemed to be going peacefully, until the demonstrators reached the junction with Sadovaya Street at about 10 p.m. Here counter-demonstrators tried to prevent the demonstrators turning into Sadovaya Street. After talks, in which the workers promised to disperse, they were let through, but the tail end of the demonstration became isolated from its armed guard. The temptation was too much for some pro-government counter-demonstrators who seized a banner from the outraged workers. In the confusion the workers’ armed guards came running back up Sadovaya Street and turned into Nevskii Prospekt with their arms drawn, some firing as they came. These took up positions by the public library, diving to the ground, and shots were exchanged with counter-demonstrators by the Gostinyi Dvor shopping arcade. At least ten shots were fired over a period of some five minutes, before the workers began to disperse. The police later ruled out the theory that this second outbreak of firing had been started by a counter-demonstrating agent provocateur. Although the counter-demonstrators had acted in a provocative manner, it was the ill-disciplined Red Guards who had opened fire first during each incident, and General Kornilov was determined to take what he saw as appropriate action.2
Kornilov, however, did not get his way, and his climb-down was witnessed by another future White general, Admiral A.V. Kolchak. The April street fighting coincided with government moves to complete the work of the so-called Polivanov Military Commission, established after the Tsar’s abdication to try and systematize the network of army committees which soldiers had been establishing throughout the Russian Army. In mid-April the government began to summon key commanders to the capital to discuss various drafts of the proposed Declaration of Soldiers’ Rights, and among the officers summoned to Petrograd at this time was Admiral A.V. Kolchak, the man in charge of the Black Sea Fleet. He was very concerned at the effect sailors’ committees were having on discipline in the navy and made his views clear not only to the Defence Minister Guchkov but to any prominent politician he met; on 21 April he was holding talks on this subject with the veteran Menshevik leader G.V. Plekhanov, the founder of Russian Marxism whose so-called Unity Group of Mensheviks was vociferously in favour of the war, when news of the street fighting reached him. Kolchak rushed from Plekhanov’s house to Guchkov’s house, where the Provisional Government was meeting, and arrived at the very same moment that General Kornilov asked for permission to use force against the armed demonstrators. Kolchak therefore witnessed the clash of wills between Kornilov and the Provisional Government. Justice Minister A.F. Kerensky and Prime Minister Prince G.E. Lvov opposed the use of force and insisted on a negotiated settlement. When Kornilov nonetheless ordered troops to gather outside the Mariinskii Palace, the Petrograd Soviet banned all troops from leaving their barracks without its agreement; it was the soviet not Kornilov that the troops obeyed, a slight Kornilov never forgot.3
Kornilov, as Commander of the Petrograd Military District, had already made clear that he felt a firm line should be taken towards the Petrograd Soviet. Just prior to the April demonstrations he had twice intervened to clip its wings. He successfully prevented Kerensky appointing the Bolshevik A. Taras-Rodionov to the post of Commandant of the Peter-Paul Fortress, and he succeeded in securing military control over the soviet’s radio station. The latter incident was resolved only after extensive negotiation, but once Kornilov had explained to a soviet delegation led by Skobelev that the demand for all radios to be put under military control stemmed from the security hazard implicit in the soviet’s devil-may-care attitude to the use of military codes, it was agreed to compromise; the existing communications director, chosen by the soviet, would be reappointed by order of Kornilov. With this background of difficult relations between Kornilov and the Petrograd Soviet it was no wonder that on 21 April Kerensky and Kornilov should clash at Guchkov’s house. And Kolchak saw at first hand how Kornilov was forced to abandon his firm line as the Provisional Government embarked on what both Kolchak and Kornilov saw as a climb-down. It was the soviet which resolved the crisis by negotiation, and in the process formed a new coalition government on 5 May 1917 in which the ‘soviet parties’, the Mensheviks and the SRs, joined the liberals in government.4
The negotiations leading up to the formation of the coalition government saw not only the resignation of Milyukov as Foreign Minister, but also of Guchkov as Defence Minister. Shortly before he resigned on 30 April, Guchkov asked the then Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Army, General M.V. Alekseev, to appoint Kornilov Commander-in-Chief of the Northern Front, so that he would be ‘in the immediate vicinity of Petrograd in view of future political developments’. To Guchkov’s fury Alekseev declined; he felt that this would mean passing over other experienced officers.5 Guchkov was not alone among those who identified Kornilov as the man most likely to serve the cause of counter-revolution. From April onwards, a whole series of counter-revolutionary organizations were formed – the Military League by Guchkov himself – and all looked to Kornilov, or if not him Kolchak, as potential leaders.
The first group of counter-revolutionary plotters assembled on 5 April, a fortnight before the Milyukov crisis. The chief instigator was V.S. Zavoiko, the son of an admiral rewarded with a large landed estate for his services to the Tsar. Zavoiko had worked in the oil industry in Baku for the firm Nobel and in other mineral extraction industries in Turkestan and Western Siberia for firms supported by British capital; he also served on the board of the Russo-Asiatic Bank. To a meeting held in his flat Zavoiko invited B.A. Suvorin, owner of the mass circulation newspaper Novoe vremya; B.N. Troitskii-Senyutovich of the International Bank; and Colonel V.D. Pletnev, Kornilov’s adjutant. They debated possible candidates for the post of strong man to save Russia and all agreed that Kornilov was the man for the job. Zavoiko contacted Kornilov four days later and dramatically resigned his lucrative business posts to join the army as Kornilov’s orderly and de facto secretary. He did not, however, abandon his press interests; on 23 April he helped launch the patriotic pro-war weekly Svoboda v borbe, and the ability to manipulate the press would later serve Kornilov’s cause well.6
Zavoiko’s business contacts were extensive. He was a relative of A.F. Rafalovich of the Russian Foreign Trade Bank, who was a friend of Russia’s premier industrialist A.I. Putilov. Zavoiko took care to inform Putilov and his fellow magnate A.I. Vyshnegradskii of the results of the 5 April meeting. Putilov and Vyshnegradskii were already in the process of establishing their own pressure group composed of representatives from the big banks and insurance companies which adopted the name the Society for the Economic Rehabilitation of Russia and comprised the dominant figures on the pre-revolutionary Council of Congresses of Representatives of Trade and Industry, whose members had all once looked to the Tsar for protection and now looked instinctively to the army. The primary purpose of the society was to raise funds to support candidates from the propertied classes in the Constituent Assembly election, then, wrongly, seen to be imminent; it also sought to combat the influence of socialists at the front and it was on this that the society concentrated once, after his resignation, Guchkov agreed to take over as its head.7
Kolchak in July
The members of the coalition government formed in May – liberals, Mensheviks and SRs – had little enough in common, but what kept them together was a determination to launch a summer offensive on the Eastern Front. Kerensky took over as Minister of War and set himself the twin tasks of preparing for the offensive and democratizing the army’s command structure. It was this second ambition which led to conflict with the army and won new recruits to the cause of counter-revolution.
Officers began to organize themselves to defend what they saw as their own, and the country’s, vital interests. The Supreme Army Command, GHQ, was based not in Moscow or Petrograd, but near the front in Mogilev. By the start of May the officer corps at GHQ had begun to draw up plans for an Officers’ Union which would defend officers against the angry and frequently violent attacks of rank and file soldiers and their committees. The men most active in this campaign were Lieutenant-Colonel V.A. Lebedev – who in November 1918 became Admiral Kolchak’s Chief of Staff - and Lieutenant-Colonel Pronin. The army command at GHQ was initially hostile to the idea; it was hard enough to cope with political organizations among the rank and file let alone among the officer corps. However, by the first week in May 1917 GHQ had changed its mind and the Officers’ Union held its founding congress in Mogilev from 7–22 May; the main committee, elected by the delegates, was headed by the former Kadet deputy to the old Tsarist Duma, Colonel Novosiltsev. The high point of the congress was an emotive address by the Supreme Army Commander General M.V. Alekseev, in which he stated ‘Russia is perishing’. In response Novosiltsev, Lebedev, Pronin and Colonel V.I. Sidorin organized a secret session of delegates at which Alekseev was cast in the role of Russia’s saviour and future military dictator. In public the officers used the thirteen sessions to bemoan the insults heaped upon them by the rebellious soldiery, and decided ‘putting all political aims to one side, to raise the military might of the army in the name of saving the Motherland’.8
Away from GHQ, officers’ organizations were proliferating by early May, and, the first attempt to co-ordinate their activities came from an organization established on 8 May and known as the Republican Centre. The Republican Centre established a military section which included in it representatives from all the variously named underground officers’ groups: thus the Military League was represented by General I. Federov, the Officers’ Union by Colonel Novosiltsev and Colonel Pronin, the Union of Cossack Troops by Colonel A.I. Dutov, and the Union of Military Duty by Colonel Finberg; the Union of Knights of St George was also represented. The Republican Centre itself was not a military organization, but an organization of industrialists. Unlike the Society for the Economic Rehabilitation of Russia formed by Putilov, it represented the interests of firms based on Russian capital, firms which had not held the Tsarist system in such high regard since they had never been favoured in the way foreign firms had. The first meeting of the Republican Centre was held in the home of F.A. Lipskii, on the board of the Siberian Bank, and all its leading members were officials in either the Siberian Bank or the Mayak Timber Company. Far from being associated with the leading politicians of the ancien régime, the dominant personality was K.V. Nikolaevskii, a member of one of the smaller moderate socialist parties, the Popular Socialists - they had broken away from the SRs after the 1905 Revolution and preferred constitutional struggle to revolutionary struggle.9
Casting around for a nationally known figure to head the Republican Centre’s military section, Kolchak was immediately approached. He had resigned his post in command of the Black Sea Fleet after Kerensky had been appointed War Minister, because he could not accept the new discipline system being established. So, for six weeks, from early June to 20 July, he was based in Petrograd, waiting to finalize arrangements for a mission he had been asked to head in America as advisor for a planned attack by the United States Navy on Turkey through the Dardanelles. Shortly after his arrival in Petrograd he was almost besieged by counter-revolutionary groups wanting to adopt him as their leader. Not only did the Republican Centre make him the head of its military section, but Novosiltsev of the Officers’ Union approached him to discuss his possible role as future dictator of Russia. The leader of Novosiltsev’s party, the Kadet Party leader and former Foreign Minister Milyukov, also approached Kolchak at this time and had conversations on the same theme, as did another Kadet P.B. Struve and M.V. Rodzianko, President of the Tsar’s Duma; and, forgetting its support for Kornilov in April, in late June the right-wing press launched a campaign calling for the resignation of Prince Lvov as Prime Minister and his replacement by Kolchak.10
This campaign reached its height during the political crisis of early July. The First Coalition Government, formed in May, duly launched its offensive on 18 June, but ten days later it had degenerated into a retreat, in parts a rout, with anti-war demonstrations breaking out both at the front and in the rear. The cement holding the coalition together had crumbled and on 2 July the liberal Kadet ministers withdrew from the government. The following 48 hours saw repeated Bolshevik demonstrations initially in protest at plans to transfer reserve army units to the front, but as the strength of working-class opinion became apparent, to capitalize on the resignation of the Kadets from the government. The First All-Russian Congress of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Soviets had met in Petrograd from 2–24 June and elected an executive for the whole of Russia; the Bolsheviks argued that their street demonstrations could force the Soviet Executive to establish a government comprising the socialist parties alone.
The government survived this so-called July Days crisis, and, its position strengthened, branded the Bolshevik leaders traitors and started criminal proceedings against them, forcing Lenin into hiding and putting Trotsky in prison. The crisis did indeed lead to Prince Lvov’s resignation, but he was not replaced by Admiral Kolchak as the counter-revolutionary plotters had hoped but by the socialist Kerensky, who began the tortuous process of negotiating the formation of a Second Coalition Government. This took nearly three weeks to achieve, and during this interregnum Kolchak’s conspirators were actively trying to broaden their enterprise. About the middle of July the two main anti-government organizations got in touch with one another for the first time. The Republican Centre was contacted by Putilov, the leader of the Society for the Economic Rehabilitation of Russia, and, as requested, sent a representative to the Crimea where Putilov was on holiday; after this initial contact the Republican Centre leader Nikolaevskii held talks with Putilov, and they agreed to cooperate. It was, in many ways, an unequal relationship: the 1,500,000 roubles raised by the Republican Centre was dwarfed by the funds at the disposal of the Society for the Economic Rehabilitation of Russia; the Siberian Bank could not compete with the Russo-Asiatic Bank; the poorer Republican Centre soon became the client of the richer Society for the Economic Rehabilitation of Russia.11
Kornilov’s Plotting Begins
As the time came for Kolchak’s departure for the USA, the plotters’ attention shifted back to Kornilov. When on 15 July Kerensky held talks with the Kadet Party, trying to woo them back into the government, they proposed that the new Minister of War should be Kornilov; as a partial concession to this demand Kornilov was appointed Supreme Commander-in-Chief on 18 July. This did not end the row about the personal composition of the Second Coalition Government. As a more overt concession to Kadet opinion Kerensky wanted to make S.N. Tretyakov Minister of Trade and Industry; Tretyakov was president of the Moscow stock exchange committee and a leading member of the council of the All-Russian Union of Trade and Industry. Unable to get agreement to this and other new appointments, Kerensky resigned on 21 July; this demagogic manoeuvre succeeded in ‘banging heads together’ and the Kadets, Mensheviks and SRs finally formed the Second Coalition Government on 24 July. Kerensky was nominally his own Minister of War, but in practice divided these functions between his Acting Minister of War B.V. Savinkov and his Navy Minister V.I. Lebedev; both would later play a significant role in the Red versus Green civil war of 1918. However, for the counter-revolutionaries it was Kornilov’s appointment which transformed the situation; he again became their great hope.12
As soon as Kornilov’s appointment was made public, the anti-government right-wing press began a campaign to popularize Kornilov and his demands, the most outspoken of these being the restoration of the death penalty for serving soldiers. In this press campaign the figure of Zavoiko re-emerged; he used his press contacts to publicize the daring exploits of Kornilov as an army commander, including a little hagiographical pamphlet about him. Unlike in April when no established politicians had associated themselves with Kornilov in this way, in July the council of the All-Russian Union of Trade and Industry issued a statement saying that ‘only a radical break by the government with the dictatorship of the soviets’ could save Russia, while a private session of the State Duma, chaired by Rodzianko, heard speeches from liberal as well as conservative politicians urging the Duma to act against the growing power of the soviet. At the end of July Rodzianko was contacted by General Alekseev, who reported that the view of all army commanders was that the government should cease its attack on officers, leave all military legislation to the Supreme Commander-in-Chief, end politics in the army by abolishing committees and commissars, and restore the death penalty throughout the army. The Officers’ Union took up this campaign for the restoration of the death penalty when on 22 July it issued a special proclamation on the subject.13
While this public clamour in support of Kornilov was underway, further moves were being taken to try and weld together the disparate officers’ organizations. On 31 July the Military League organized a meeting attended by its own representatives and representatives of the Union of Knights of St George, the Union of Military Duty, the Union for the Honour of the Motherland, the Union of Volunteers for Popular Defence, the Union for the Salvation of the Motherland, the 1914 Society, and the Republican Centre. The meeting decided to try and co-ordinate future activity and quickly agreed to send a telegram of support to Kornilov. However, although an umbrella organization called the Union of People’s Defence was set up, on which all the groups were represented in proportion to their membership, nothing very tangible came from this initiative.14
At this stage Kornilov envisaged a fairly straightforward military coup and ruled out any collaboration with groups represented in the Provisional Government. Towards the end of July, or the very start of August, Kornilov held talks with another future White general, General A.I. Denikin. Kornilov told him of his plans: he had, he said, been approached by monarchist plotters, but would have nothing to do with restoring the Romanov dynasty of Nicholas II; on the other hand, he had made clear that he had turned down the suggestion that he join the Provisional Government, since it was too closely linked to the soviet. Kornilov went on:
Give me the authority and then I will lead a decisive struggle. We need to see Russia through to the Constituent Assembly, and then let them do what they like; I would stand aside and be of no hindrance to them.
Denikin promised to support Kornilov in such an enterprise.15
Kornilov’s first meeting with Kerensky since April reinforced his determination to act. The new Commander-in-Chief and the Prime Minister/Minister of War met on 10 August and although primarily to discuss military strategy, Kerensky spent much of the session warning Kornilov what might happen if he should be tempted to stage a coup. He raised the matter of anti-government plots and rumourmongering against the government and blamed the Officers’ Union. Kerensky then lectured Kornilov on how necessary a coalition government was for Russia’s future and warned that if he were removed, Kornilov would be left in thin air since no-one would support him; the railways would stop and the telegraph would cease. Not surprisingly after a meeting held in such a spirit, Kerensky let it be known he might have to replace Kornilov with a left-wing general; after the meeting the left-wing press launched an attack on Kornilov, while the right-wing press rallied to his support.16
Kerensky was well-informed. A few days after Kornilov had arrived at GHQ, he was approached by Novosiltsev who put the Officers’ Union’s plans for a military coup to him; because of Novosiltsev’s high public profile as chairman of the union, it was decided that his deputy Colonel Pronin rather than Novosiltsev himself should act as a go-between. At about the same time Kornilov had been approached by the Republican Centre and agreed to work with them and their military section, headed after Kolchak’s departure by Colonel L.P. Desimeter. Immediately after the August meeting with Kerensky, Kornilov’s plans began to be put into operation. The very same day he sent Zavoiko to hold talks with the cossack commander General A.M. Kaledin, and he held his first meeting with an emissary from Moscow A.F. Aladin, the leader of the Labour Group in the Duma back in 1906.17 Aladin’s arrival would highlight some of the political problems already inherent in Kornilov’s scheme.
By the first week in August the clear outline of a conspiracy was beginning to emerge. On 6 August Kornilov divulged his plans to his Quartermaster General A.S. Lukomskii, and asked him to order General A.M. Krymov’s Third Cavalry Corps to redeploy to the strategically important location of Velikiye Luki, thus putting them in striking distance of Petrograd. Kornilov revealed to Lukomskii that other moves were already underway, that Zavoiko and his adjutant Colonel Golitsyn were involved, and that Colonel Lebedev and Captain Rozhenko were handling the details, in particular the links with underground groups in Petrograd. At Rozhenko’s suggestion, officers were being sent to Petrograd ostensibly ‘on leave’, but actually to take action at a given signal. Sidorin, vice-president of the main committee of the Officers’ Union, was in charge of finance and had already contacted the Republican Centre.18
However, the involvement of the Republican Centre introduced the first element of confusion among the plotters as to what precisely they were trying to achieve; confusion that Kornilov did very little to clear up. When Nikolaevskii of the Republican Centre met Kornilov, it was understood that the establishment of a military dictatorship would not preclude the continued existence of the government; indeed, with certain minor changes, ‘there would be no great shake up in the personnel of the provisional government’ it was concluded. This clearly contradicted Kornilov’s earlier assertion to Denikin that he wanted nothing to do with the Provisional Government, but reflected the fact that the Republican Centre had among its individual members V.L. Baranovskii, head of Kerensky’s war cabinet, who back on 14 July had confided to Novosiltsev and Sidorin that, while it might take slightly longer than the Officers’ Union wanted, Kerensky would soon limit the powers of soldiers’ committees and government commissars. Since both the Chief Government Army Commissar N. Filonenko and Acting War Minister Savinkov supported Kornilov’s key proposals for restoring discipline, the Republican Centre’s proposal did not seem far-fetched.19
Aladin’s arrival added to this confusion about aims. Liberal circles in Moscow were equally concerned at the fate of the government in the proposed military action. On 8–10 August the leading members of Russia’s old social elite gathered in Moscow for what was to become known as the first Meeting of Public Figures, organized at the expense of the All-Russian Union of Trade and Industry and in preparation for the Moscow State Conference. This was to be an assembly of all Russia’s public organizations summoned by Kerensky to mobilize support for his Second Coalition Government. Among those attending the Meeting of Public Figures were some of the most active anti-government plotters. There was Novosiltsev of the Officers’ Union; V.A. Maklakov and Milyukov of the Kadets; Rodzianko of the Duma; P.P. Ryabushinskii and Tretyakov of the Moscow industrial elite; Putilov and Vyshnegradskii of the Petrograd-based Society for the Economic Rehabilitation of Russia; and V.N. Lvov, a right-wing liberal based in Moscow, dropped from the government in July during the negotiations to form the Second Coalition Government. The Meeting of Public Figures elected Rodzianko its president and S.N. Tretyakov its vice-president, with the Petrograd industrialist Vyshnegradskii and the Moscow industrialist Ryabushinskii both being made members of its permanent council.
During the meeting Novosiltsev was approached by Captain Rozhenko, who had been sent by Kornilov’s advisors, and who asked for a secret session to be arranged so that he could outline Kornilov’s intentions. Liberal politicians played a leading role in organizing this session – it took place in the house of the leading Kadet N.M. Kishkin and another leading Kadet A.I. Shingarev, Minister of Agriculture in the Provisional Government, was responsible for issuing at least some of the invitations – which was attended by Rodzianko, Maklakov, Milyukov and N.N. Lvov, V.N. Lvov’s brother. However, the liberal politicians were not impressed with what they heard. Rozhenko explained that the plan so far was to wait for the Bolsheviks to try and prevent the planned Moscow State Conference from opening on 13 August, or for Kornilov to be sacked; a coup would then take place, Petrograd would be seized, the soviet dissolved and a dictatorship established. Not even Novosiltsev was impressed with the ideas of his fellow plotters: to him it was ill-thought out and smacked too much of the rather simplistic right-wing views of Zavoiko; they were trying to force events, and had skimped on such important planning considerations as what to do about radio stations or the telegraph network. His mood at the meeting was shared by all participants: while all sympathized with Kornilov’s aims, this plan would not work. Milyukov was almost alone in responding openly. While most present kept their doubts to themselves and were non-committal, Milyukov dissociated himself from Rozhenko’s proposals, while warmly endorsing the principle of dictatorship; this may have encouraged Rozhenko to think only minor changes were necessary.
Two or three days later a second meeting was held on the same theme to a slightly different audience which this time included Prince G.N. Trubetskoi, head of the GHQ Diplomatic Chancellery. At this meeting Milyukov was again ambivalent. He welcomed GHQ’s decision to take action to end Russia’s collapse and disperse the soviet, but pointed out that for this to succeed, the masses needed to be behind the action; since this could not be guaranteed at that moment the plotters could not rely on the Kadets. His warning was shared by his fellow Kadet leader Maklakov; a direct clash with Kerensky would not work, Maklakov warned Novosiltsev: ‘no-one would support Kornilov, they would all run for cover’. Milyukov’s private view was that more time was needed and a direct clash with the soviet would not be possible until October.20
The hostility of most Kadets to Kornilov’s plans was a severe blow, but it reflected genuine concerns. The heart of Russian liberalism had always been in Moscow, where Russia’s native capitalism was based. Before the abdication of the Tsar there had always been tension between the Petrograd industrialists, gathered in a golden circle around the Tsar and largely dependent on state-funded initiatives, and the home-grown textile magnates in Moscow. This tension had long been there, but had if anything been exacerbated during the war. Thus when the All-Russian Union of Trade and Industry was set up in March 1917 by the leading Moscow industrialists Ryabushinskii, Tretyakov and A.I. Konovalov, it was the result of an initiative dating back to 1916. The new union was seen as a counter-weight to the Council of Congresses of Trade and Industry, dominated by the Petrograd banking and monopoly interests of south Russia; it represented the banking and textile magnates of central Russia.
These tensions did not disappear with the abdication of the Emperor, they ran too deep for that. Although on 1–2 June 1917 a conference was held of Petrograd and Moscow magnates to establish a united voice for Russian capital, these proposals came to nothing. While Putilov and Vyshnegradskii had immediately turned to the military for support, the Union of Trade and Industry established a political department under N.N. Lvov which linked its campaign against ‘anarchy’ to a similar campaign being launched in August by the Duma which, never formally dissolved in March at the time of the abdication, continued to meet in private session under Rodzianko’s chairmanship and was an important reference point for all those on the right. The dividing line was not absolute, for the Union of Trade and Industry donated 25,000 roubles to the Officers’ Union after being approached by Novosiltsev, but it concentrated on political campaigning with sympathetic organizations like the All-Russian Congress of Land-Owners, at whose congress on 1–5 July N.N. Lvov was elected president of the new Union of Land-owners. A flavour of their campaigning style was seen in the speech N.N. Lvov made to a plenary meeting of the main council of the Union of Land-owners when it met on 29–31 July: he denounced the socialists and in particular the leader of the SR Party and opponent of the war V.M. Chernov, and called for anti-socialist co-operation in the Constituent Assembly elections; talks with bankers and industrialists had already started, he said, and would be strengthened by sending delegates to the All-Russian Congress of Trade and Industry on 3 August. At that congress, also held in Moscow, Ryabushinskii denounced the soviet in similar anti-socialist terms.21
Kornilov Changes Tack
When Kornilov came to Petrograd on 10 August for talks with Kerensky, he had other, perhaps more significant meetings with other politicians. Rodzianko both attended the meeting with Kerensky and had lunch with Kornilov; on his return to GHQ Kornilov’s plans had changed significantly. He told General A.S. Lukomskii on 11 August that counter-intelligence reports showed that the Bolsheviks planned a new demonstration on 28–29 August to celebrate six months since the overthrow of the monarchy. As had happened during the demonstrations in April and July, they would demand a soviet government, and even if Kerensky’s government survived these demonstrations, Kornilov went on, it would have to be broadened to ‘include Chernov and the Bolshevik leaders’. It was ‘time to put an end to this’, he asserted and went on:
I am not going to go against the provisional government. I hope that, at the last moment, I shall be able to come to an agreement with them … If I am unable to reach an agreement with Kerensky and Savinkov, then it is possible I shall have to strike the Bolsheviks without their support; but afterwards they will thank me and it will be possible to create the firm authority which Russia needs …22
Kornilov’s plans had significantly changed. He was showing more political acumen and aimed his hostility specifically at the Bolsheviks. Previously he had talked of acting at the Moscow State Conference or if he was dismissed by Kerensky. These were both occasions where his target was, or could easily be interpreted as being, the present government rather than the soviet. This was clearly the case if he acted in response to his own dismissal, but any action during the Moscow State Conference could easily be interpreted as an attack on Kerensky’s government since it had proposed the conference. By choosing the demonstration of 29 August the Bolsheviks were being targeted much more carefully than before. The action was not to be one against ‘reds in general’ but the anti-war Bolsheviks. Even more significantly, in his statement to General Lukomskii, unlike his earlier statement to General Denikin, Kornilov said he would act together with the government rather than against it. Clearly, whatever Rodzianko had said to him over lunch, Kornilov had been listening to a more subtle politician than Zavoiko.
Kornilov’s experience at the Moscow State Conference, held from 13–14 August, reinforced the necessity of acting in a politically more circumspect manner. His officers organized a secret session of those members of the Duma present at the conference; they were informed that plans were well advanced for the overthrow of Kerensky and, if the Duma agreed, the coup would be carried out in its name. The Duma members present were very cautious in their response: after detailed questioning of the officers, most concluded that the plan was simply not serious enough even to warrant talking to Kornilov on the subject; although Rodzianko was overheard promising that the Duma could be used as a parliamentary fig leaf for the new regime if the coup succeeded. As a few days earlier at the Meeting of Public Figures, only Milyukov was in any way committal. He was prepared to visit Kornilov, but told him face to face that there should be no break with Kerensky. In these circumstances Kornilov gave Milyukov no details of his plans, but asked only that the Kadets support his move by calling on their ministers to resign at the crucial moment, something Milyukov declined to do. Milyukov’s views were essentially those the Kadet Central Committee adopted on 12 August: that a dictatorship, while desirable, was still premature. The message coming back to Kornilov was that liberal support could not be guaranteed even if he acted with, rather than against, the government.23
Enthusiastic backing for Kornilov’s venture came only from the Petrograd industrialists. During the Moscow State Conference Colonel Desimeter asked Vyshnegradskii and Putilov to call on Kornilov, who told them of his plans:
I only need order and a firm authority in the country and the army … In agreement with Kerensky I am dispatching a corps to Petrograd to disperse the Bolsheviks [who] must be arrested … A movement must be organized within Petrograd to help General Krymov; money is needed to accommodate and feed people before the action. Can you give the money?
Vyshnegradskii and Putilov agreed to put up the money; some 3,500,000 roubles were already held in accounts of the Russo-Asiatic, Azov-Don, International and Siberian Banks. Significantly, however, when the Moscow industrialist Tretyakov was approached by Putilov for a contribution to this fund, he refused to have anything to do with it. Tension between Petrograd and Moscow industrialists was indeed deep-seated.24
By the end of the Moscow State Conference Kornilov had come to a sort of compromise between his immediate advisors like Zavoiko and the liberal political establishment. To satisfy the first, he would act sooner rather than later, but to satisfy the latter the excuse would be a Bolshevik demonstration not the action of the government; just in case the Bolsheviks did not organize a demonstration Sidorin, Desimeter and Finisov were dispatched to Petrograd to organize one.25 To secure as much support as possible from the liberals, he would try to act in conjunction with the government rather than in opposition to it. Yet this was not a stable compromise. Kornilov was almost besieged by advisors and, not a politician, constantly turned first one way and then the other. Although apparently persuaded of the need to co-operate with the government, as the date of the expected Bolshevik action approached he was gradually persuaded that a purely military dictatorship might, after all, be best. That crucial vacillation was made abundantly clear on 17 August when Kornilov organized a meeting at GHQ of all those involved in the plot. Among those invited was I.A. Dobrynskii. A political associate of the most liberal of the Tsar’s former ministers, the former Minister of Agriculture A.V. Krivoshein, Dobrynskii was on the board of the League of the Knights of St George and rumoured to he capable of mobilizing some 40,000 Caucasian soldiers in the southern town of Vladikavkaz; he was also a close friend of the leading liberal brothers in Moscow N.N. Lvov and V.N. Lvov, and, on being summoned to GHQ, he held talks with the Lvovs and agreed to put the moderate Moscow line at the 17 August meeting with Kornilov.
Dobrynskii’s report back to V.N. Lvov in Moscow on 21 August was alarming. Although at the main session of Kornilov’s meeting on the 17th the idea of a purely military dictatorship had been dropped in favour of action in co-operation with the government, at a secret tête-à-tête with Kornilov, Dobrynskii was informed that Kornilov simply intended to appoint himself military dictator. As V.N. Lvov and Dobrynskii were discussing the situation they were joined by Aladin, who announced that he had just been asked by Zavoiko to inform the Kadet ministers that, for their own good and in order to disrupt the government, they should find some pretext to resign from the Second Coalition Government before 27 August. Appalled at the way things were developing, V.N. Lvov decided to act. He offered to take this instruction to the Kadet Central Committee in Petrograd, and then go in person to Kerensky and try persuading him to ‘reorganize the government in order to calm GHQ down’. With the agreement of Dobrynskii and Aladin he set off, arriving in Petrograd on the morning of 22 August. Having failed to track down Milyukov, he transmitted Zavoiko’s message for the Kadet Central Committee to another member of the Central Committee V.D. Nabokov and then went to see Kerensky.26
Kerensky and Kornilov
At precisely the same moment that V.N. Lvov was waiting outside Kerensky’s study to warn him that, whatever Kornilov might say he was up to, he was actually planning a purely military regime, Kerensky was inside his study with Savinkov, his Acting Minister of War, agreeing terms to be put to Kornilov which would strengthen the military’s role in government and end the mutual hostility and recrimination. Savinkov had resigned his post on 10 August because Kerensky had excluded him from his talks that day with Kornilov. However, on 15 August, after the Moscow State Conference, Kerensky decided he would accept some of the major points in Kornilov’s programme and on 17 August reappointed Savinkov to his post to act as intermediary. On 22 August Kerensky asked Savinkov to visit Kornilov and negotiate an understanding, stressing that the death penalty would be extended from the front to the whole army, thus meeting Kornilov’s major concern on the question of discipline, and that the Petrograd Military District would be put under his direct control, except for the city of Petrograd which the government would rule directly. This was the proposal being hammered out for Savinkov to take to GHQ as Lvov sat waiting to see Kerensky.27
Kornilov received Savinkov on 23 August. As agreed with Kerensky, the meeting addressed a number of issues in dispute between the government and GHQ, and rapidly resolved almost all of them. One long saga had concerned the role of political commissars, government representatives charged with overseeing the actions of officers, and the plans for the establishment of a. political department at GHQ: both seemed resolved when it was agreed that Chief Government Army Commissar Filonenko should head the political department. Since Filonenko was very concerned at the over-politicization of the army, his appointment, GHQ felt, would in practice substantially reduce the powers of the commissars. Another issue was the number of anti-government plots emanating from GHQ: Kornilov agreed that the Officers’ Union should be moved to Moscow and that its funding from GHQ should be curtailed; but he refused to allow Colonel Pronin to be arrested for alleged involvement in such plots. As to the question of coping with possible Bolshevik demonstrations at the end of August, a broad level of agreement was reached. The only dispute was about the planned role for General Krymov. Savinkov felt that in any action against the Bolsheviks it would be inappropriate if General Krymov took part because of his known right-wing views and the popular suspicion of cossack troops; his place would have to be taken by another officer. Otherwise it was quickly agreed that when the Bolshevik demonstration started, Kornilov would tell Savinkov when he was ready, so that Savinkov could declare martial law in Petrograd and its immediate environs. The meeting then discussed the possible political changes resulting from a clash with the Bolsheviks. All agreed that if the soviet supported the Bolshevik demonstration, it too should be dispersed, and that a government reshuffle would be needed. Kornilov suggested that the new government should include the former Commander-in-Chief General Alekseev and pro-war socialists like the Menshevik Plekhanov and the Pdght SR A.A. Argunov. Savinkov insisted that Kerensky would have to stay, but perhaps in the new post of President.28
Understandably, when Kornilov reviewed events after Savinkov had left at 3 p.m. on 24 August, he felt that the government was already in his hands. There would be no need for an armed clash since negotiations seemed to be leading to the same result. The prospects for a negotiated settlement were strengthened when, after Savinkov’s departure, Kornilov received a delegation from the other leading conspiratorial group, the Republican Centre. Its representatives announced that the Republican Centre believed that after the anti-Bolshevik action Kerensky had to stay in government, but should resume his post as Minister of Justice. They then proposed a cabinet which sought to balance all shades of opinion: former Tsarist ministers would sit alongside the former Prime Minister of the Provisional Government Prince G.E. Lvov, with both General Alekseev and Admiral Kolchak being included, alongside socialists like Plekhanov and Argunov. Kornilov raised only the most minor objection to this list, and reassured the Republican Centre that everything would be discussed with Kerensky, indeed everything had already been arranged with Savinkov.29
Kornilov’s parting words to the Republican Centre delegation were that he was about to hold talks with V.N. Lvov, an emissary from Kerensky, on the subject of possible changes in the composition of the government. That was indeed the case. On the afternoon of 22 August Lvov had eventually managed to get to see Kerensky after Savinkov’s departure. He explained that he represented certain groups, both military and other, who felt the time had come to broaden the government by bringing in those to the right of the Kadet Party and patriotic socialists not represented in the soviet. Kerensky was non-committal but agreed to explore the idea, even suggesting to Lvov that his position as Prime Minister was not sacrosanct. He then authorized Lvov to go to GHQ for further talks on the subject and to report back to him. Lvov returned to Moscow for more talks with Dobrynskii and Aladin, and all felt that Kerensky’s apparent willingness to reshuffle the government meant bloodshed could be avoided. Then, on the evening of the 23rd Aladin received another message from GHQ, this time an order from Kornilov for transmission to the Don cossack leader General Kaledin to assemble cossack units for an advance on Moscow.
Lvov hurried to GHQ to try and establish what was really going on, arriving late on 24 August. Thus, immediately after the departure of the Republican Centre deputation, Lvov had two meetings with Kornilov, one at 11 p.m. on the 24th and the other at 10 a.m. on the 25th. What he was told was a version of what the Republican Centre had been told, but different in certain crucial respects. Kornilov was quite open with Lvov: he said that a dictatorship was the only way forward; however, Alekseev or Kaledin or himself could be dictator, in fact his own preference was for a Council of National Defence, chaired by himself, with Kerensky as his assistant and Savinkov, Alekseev, Kolchak and Filonenko as members. Others to be involved in some capacity were the former Tsarist ministers mentioned by the Republican Centre, Aladin, Plekhanov, Prince G.E. Lvov and Zavoiko; he was also planning to summon Rodzianko and Maklakov to GHQ, he said. However, there was no mention in this list of the SR Argunov, and the Republican Centre had never imagined making Zavoiko a minister.30
When his talks with Kornilov resumed on the morning of the 25th, it seemed clear to Lvov that this subtle change in the composition of the planned new government was not pure chance, but the result of the growing influence of Zavoiko. That influence was clear: Kornilov repeated that the Supreme Commander-in-Chief needed to assume power, but that it did not have to be he who occupied that post. Then he added:
I no longer trust Kerensky … I do not trust Savinkov either. I do not know whom he wants to stab in the back. It could be Kerensky, it could be me … However I could offer Savinkov the portfolio of Minister of War and Kerensky the portfolio of Minister of Justice.
At this point Zavoiko interrupted ‘like a school teacher’ and stressed Deputy Prime Minister, not Minister of Justice. As Lvov moved from talks with Kornilov to talks with Zavoiko himself he began to question whether what Kornilov had told him was the whole story.
Although Lvov gave the impression he was going along with the plot, readily agreeing to write a note to his brother N.N. Lvov asking him to encourage public figures to come to GHQ, Lvov was beginning to worry about the true aspirations of Zavoiko. Discussing further details of a future government, he became more and more alarmed. Zavoiko clearly planned to appoint himself Minister of Finance, but was quite cavalier about who should be offered other ministerial posts. He offered Lvov the post of Minister of the Interior, and when Lvov turned it down he cheerfully re-allocated it to Filonenko. Then, as they waited for the train to Petrograd, Zavoiko confided that the government they had been planning together would be a stop-gap, lasting for only three months at most; after that a real government would be established, dominated by representatives of the old financial elite; besides Zavoiko himself as Minister of Finance, there would be his colleague from the very first anti-government conspiracy of April Troitskii-Senyutovich as Minister of Production. Zavoiko also made clear that, whatever was said about guaranteeing Kerensky’s safety, his death was ‘necessary as an outlet for the pent up feelings of the officers’. In Zavoiko’s own words, Kornilov had been ready to make so many concessions on the 24th simply because he (Zavoiko) had been away from GHQ for much of the day; his resolve on dictatorship had been stiffened by his return.31
Lvov returned from GHQ convinced that Kornilov was interested in a bloody coup with any bioadened cabinet serving simply as a temporary fig leaf for a military dictatorship. Zavoiko had urged Lvov to return to Kerensky and persuade him to come to GHQ to discuss the government changes. When Lvov reached Kerensky at midday on 26 August he had a difficult task to perform. He wanted to inform Kerensky that a coup was being prepared, but also to strengthen the position of the liberal politicians in the ensuing crisis. Thus he first fulfilled his promise to Zavoiko and sent a note to his brother N.N. Lvov explaining that Kornilov wanted leading public figures, and Rodzianko in particular, to leave at once for GHQ, then, at 7 p.m., he went to see Kerensky and informed him of the coup attempt.32
It was during this interview with Lvov that Kerensky hit upon a means of proving to the satisfaction of the other members of his cabinet that Kornilov was indeed planning a coup. He persuaded Lvov to accompany him to the War Ministry building and to ask Kornilov, in the presence of a witness, to confirm over the Hughes apparatus, a sort of teleprinter operating between the War Ministry and GHQ, that what Lvov had told him was true. Kornilov, in the light of his conversations with both Savinkov and Lvov about acting in co-operation with the government, was quite happy to confirm that Lvov had been fully authorized to talk to Kerensky on the subjects discussed at GHQ. By this vague wording Kornilov was referring to the plans to act in co-operation with the government, but Lvov’s story of what was actually being discussed at GHQ meant that Kornilov had admitted to planning an assault on the government, thus putting his own head on the block. With this written evidence of a plot, Kerensky decided to act. He dismissed Kornilov on the spot before going to the cabinet to discuss the matter further. That night he received the resignation of all his ministers and cancelled the cabinet meeting planned for 27 August.
Kornilov at first interpreted the Hughes apparatus interview with Kerensky as proof that all had been going well. He promptly telegraphed Lvov, Rodzianko and Milyukov urging them to come to GHQ by the 29th, and telegraphed Savinkov instructing him to introduce martial law on the 29th. He was busy telling Lukomskii how the new government was to be formed and what he would say to Kerensky and Savinkov when he received the telegram informing him he had been dismissed. Kornilov assumed that Kerensky had succumbed to soviet pressure and resolved to take no notice. In deciding to ignore his dismissal and calling on General Krymov to advance, Kornilov was simply reverting to his original plan of a straightforward military coup, encouraged in this by Zavoiko, who dictated the angry response Kornilov sent Kerensky, accusing him of lying and making clear that the gauntlet had been thrown down.33
As Kerensky had predicted when he met Kornilov on 10 August, no-one supported Kornilov; the railways and the telegraph were indeed paralysed by the soviet. Kerensky threw himself on the soviet to resolve the crisis. The liberals, still tempted to make political capital from it, tried to persuade Kornilov to negotiate with Kerensky even after his dismissal. They tried to portray what had happened as a misunderstanding, which if Kornilov backed down promptly, could still result in a reshuffled cabinet. Maklakov told Kornilov on the 27th: ‘Your proposal is understood here as the desire for a coup which would employ force. I am very happy that, apparently, this is a misunderstanding.’34 Maklakov added that Kornilov had been inaccurately informed of the feelings ‘of the popular masses’. As late as 28 August Kerensky was being urged by Kadet politicians to satisfy Kornilov by transferring power to the former Commander-in-Chief General Alekseev. Milyukov in particular backed this idea and persuaded Alekseev to put himself forward as a new head of state. But Kerensky stood firm. He did re-appoint Alekseev Commander-in-Chief, but this was a calculated move to produce calm in the army rather than a concession to the Kadets.35
Thus the Kornilov coup affair, rather than the coup itself, did much to discredit the liberals. Few knew of Milyukov’s caution when approached in secret by Kornilov’s agents, few knew that none of the public figures summoned to GHQ on 27 August ever agreed to go,36 but all could see the way Kadet politicians politicked during the crisis. The distinction between calling for a military dictatorship at once and calling for a military dictatorship sometime in the future was a nice one. In the public mind liberal politicians were involved in a coup attempt, which, if it had not been so serious, would have seemed like a farce. Many of the officers smuggled into Petrograd on the pretext of going on leave or special training simply pocketed their 150 roubles per day and vanished into thin air. Putilov, asked by Sidorin and Desimeter to raise more money for the operation, refused to hand it over when he found them drunk in a restaurant. Indeed the plotters spent much of the crucial hours of the coup drinking to celebrate a victory they mistakenly believed they had already won; when they later tried to revive their planned Bolshevik ‘uprising’, General Krymov had already abandoned his advance on Petrograd.37
As a counter-revolution, Kornilov’s coup was a shambles. However, it highlighted two important truths about the counter-revolutionary right in Russia. First its isolation: the plotters could win no mass support, and the Moscow liberals, well aware of this, tried as a consequence to keep their distance; the only group which did rally unhesitatingly to Kornilov’s cause were the Petrograd industrialists. Kornilov was himself aware of this, for he told a fellow general on the eve of his coup that, while only the industrial elite supported him at that moment, his triumph would bring broader circles to his side.38 Second, it proved a salutary warning to the Republican Centre: whatever might be said by the military in public about co-operating with a broad coalition government, the instinct of military men was for dictatorship pure and simple; the military were opposed not only to the Bolsheviks and the soviet, but to the coalition government as well. The military had been inspired to start its plotting in April 1917 by the entry of socialists into the government, and it was to the pre-April era that they wanted to return. The Tsar did not have to be restored, the precise constitutional arrangements could be left vague, but an authoritarian regime was their goal, decorated perhaps with some liberal public figures. This was what Kornilov had wanted and it would remain the aim of White generals until their defeat at the end of the White versus Red civil war in 1920.
Notes
1. A. Tarasov-Rodionov, February 1917 (Westport CT 1973), p. 359.
2. ‘Aprel’skie dni 1917 g. v Petrograde’ Krasnyi arkhiv vol. 33 (1929).
3. K.A. Popov (ed.), Dopros Kolchaka (Leningrad 1923), p. 54 et seq.; F.I. Rodichev, Vospominaniya i ocherki o russkoi liberalizme (Newtonville 1982), p. 121; L. Schapiro, 1917: the Russian Revolution and the Origins of Present-Day Communism (London 1984), p. 75.
4. Taras-Rodionov, 1917, pp. 310, 333; Popov, Dopros Kolchaka, p. 61.
5. A.I. Denikin, The Russian Turmoil (London 1920), p. 300; E.I. Martynov, Kornilov: popytka voennogo perevorota (Moscow 1927), p. 19.
6. Martynov, Kornilov, p. 20; A.I. Denikin, Ocherki russkoi smuty (Paris 1921) vol. I, p. 195; F.I. Vidyasov, ‘Kontrrevolyutsionnye zamysli inostrannykh imperialistov i Kornilovshchina’ Voprosy istorii no. 5 (1965), p. 60, n. 60; V. Ya Laverychev, ‘Russkie monopolisty i zagovor Kornilova’ Voprosy istorii no. 4 (1964), p. 34; N. Ya Ivanov, Kontrrevolyutsiya v Rossii v 1917 g. i ee razgrom (Moscow 1977), p. 34; see also J.D. White, ‘The Kornilov affair: a study in counter-revolution’ Soviet Studies vol. 20 (1968).
7. Laverychev, ‘Monopilisty’, p. 34, n. 13; Ivanov, Kontrrevolyutsiya, p. 34; R.P. Browder and A.F. Kerensky, Tlie Russian Provisional Government 1917: Documents (Stanford 1961), p. 1527 et seq.
8. N.G. Dumova, ‘Maloizvestnye materialy po istorii Kornilovshchiny’ Voprosy istorii no. 11 (1968), p. 70; Denikin, Ocherki, vol. 1, pp. 106–10; Denikin, Turmoil, pp. 229–31.
9. Ivanov, Kontrrevolyutsiya, p. 42; Dumova, ‘Maloizvestnye’, p. 75; Browder and Kerensky, Documents, p. 1534 et seq.
10. Popov, Dopros, p. 84; Dumova, ‘Maloizvestnye’, pp. 72, 76; V. Vladimirova, Kontr-Revolyutsiya v 1917 (Moscow 1924), p. 46.
11. Browder and Kerensky, Documents, p. 1536; White, ‘Kornilov’, p. 188.
12. White, ‘Kornilov’, p. 196; Martynov, Kornilov, p. 41.
13. Martynov, Kornilov, p. 41; Browder and Kerensky, Documents, pp. 1013, 1016, 1400.
14. Vladimirova, Kontr-Revolyutsiya, p. 41.
15. Denikin, Ocherki vol. 1, p. 197. The monarchist plot seems to have been that of V.M. Purishkevich, see Ocherki, p. 156.
16. Martynov, Kornilov, p. 46.
17. Dumova, ‘Maloizvestnye’, p. 77; Vidyasov, ‘Kontrrevolyutsionnye zamysli’, p. 59; Vladimirova, Kontr-Revolyutsiya, p. 51. Aladin had been attending the Interparliamentary Conference in London in the summer of 1906 as the leader of the Labour Group of Deputies to the First State Duma when that assembly was dissolved by the Tsar. He then stayed in Britain and joined the army in 1914. The precise time of his arrival in Russia is not known, but it was some time in August.
18. A.S. Lukomskii, Vospominaniya vol. 1 (Berlin 1922), pp. 223, 232; Browder and Kerensky, Documents, p. 1536.
19. Dumova, ‘Maloizvestnye’, pp. 73, 77; Z.A. Vertsinskii, God Revolyutsii (Tallin 1929), p. 46.
20. P.N. Milyukov, The Russian Revolution (Gulf Breeze 1984), p. xv; Dumova, ‘Maloizvestnye’, p. 78; N.N. Golovin, Rossiiskaya Kontrrevolyutsiya v 1917–18gg. (Talinn 1937), Part 1 Book 2, p. 39.
21. ‘Soyuz zemel’nykh sobstvennikov v 1917 godu’ Krasnyi arkhiv (1927), p. 97 et seq.; V. Ya Laverychev, ‘Vserossiiskii Soyuz Torgovli i Promyshlennosti’ Istoricheskii Zhurnal no. 70 (1961), pp. 42–6; see also Laverychev, Po tu storonu barrikad (Moscow 1967).
22. R. Abraham, Alexander Kerensky (Columbia 1987), p. 253; Lukomskii, Vospominaniya, p. 228.
23. Dumova, ‘Maloizvestnye’, pp. 33, 79; Ivanov, Kontrrevolyutsiya, p. 99; S.I. Shidlovskii, Vospominaniya (Berlin 1923), p. 141.
24. Browder and Kerensky, Documents, p. 1529. Moscow industrialists had been quite happy to support general requests for financial support: Ryabushinskii had made a donation to the Officers’ Union, for example - Dumova, ‘Maloizvestnye’, p. 72; it was the nature of Kornilov’s plans that put them off on this occasion.
25. Dumova, ‘Maloizvestnye’, p. 89.
26. Browder and Kerensky, Documents, p. 1558 et seq.
27. Martynov, Kornilov, p. 75; G. Katkov, The Kornilov Affair (London 1980), pp. 55, 65.
28. Martynov, Kornilov, p. 80; Katkov, Affair, p. 70; Golovin, Rossiiskaya, p. 22.
29. Lukomskii, Vospominaniya, p. 235; Browder and Kerensky, Documents, p. 1537.
30. Browder and Kerensky, Documents, p. 1563; Martynov, Kornilov, p. 86 et seq.
31. Browder and Kerensky, Documents, pp. 1564–7; Laverychev, ‘Monopolisty’, p. 43. In talks with representatives of the Provisional Government, Kornilov continued to put across a more conciliatory line. On 25 and 26 August he held talks with Filonenko and discussed the possible formation of a Council of National Defence, presided over by himself and with Kerensky as his deputy. See Martynov, Kornilov, p. 90.
32. Martynov, Kornilov, p. 88; Katkov, Kornilov, p. 90.
33. Martynov, Kornilov, p. 111; H. Asher, ‘The Kornilov affair; a reinterpretation’ Russian Review vol. 29 (1970), p. 300.
34. Dumova, ‘Maloizvestnye’, p. 85.
35. Dumova, ‘Maloizvestnye’, p. 89; Ivanov, Kontrrevolyutsiya, p. 137.
36. Laverychev, ‘Monopolisty’, p. 44.
37. Details of these escapades can be found in Browder and Kerensky, Documents, p. 1532 et seq.
38. A.I. Verkhovskii, Na trudnom perevale (Moscow 1959), p. 323.