Kornilov: The Dictatorship That Never Was
General Lavr Georgievich Kornilov with his staff in 1917
At the end of August 1917, a cavalry corps was marching toward Petrograd to impose order on the country with an iron fist. It didn't fire a single shot and disintegrated along the way. And the only force to benefit from this failure were the Bolsheviks.
В previous article The discussion focused on the failure of the summer offensive and how the military catastrophe had given rise to a demand for a "firm hand." The general, whose 8th Army had advanced furthest in June, became Supreme Commander-in-Chief on July 19 (from here on, all dates are according to the old calendar). Within a month and a half, his name would signify the threat of military dictatorship, and a few days later, it would become synonymous with collapse.
Request for a firm hand
After the Tarnopol breakthrough (the German counterattack that collapsed the front following the failed offensive), the country sought a savior. The officer corps, part of the bourgeoisie, the Cadets, the right-wing press—all wanted a man capable of forcibly stopping the army's disintegration and the chaos in the rear. L. G. Kornilov was ideal for this role: a combat general, the son of a Cossack, with a reputation for bravery and strict disciplinarianism.
In August, his popularity reached its peak. At the Moscow State Conference from August 12–15, the right side of the hall greeted the general with applause as a future dictator. Kornilov advanced a program to restore order: the death penalty in the rear, the militarization of railways and defense factories, and the limitation of the power of committees. The extent to which he was an independent politician and how much a figurehead for the circles that stood behind him remains a matter of debate. By the end of August, all hopes for a dictatorship were pinned on him.
A union doomed to break
Kerensky and Kornilov were doomed to both an alliance and a conflict. The prime minister needed military support against the leftists; the commander-in-chief needed government sanction to restore order. At the end of August, the two sides agreed to transfer a cavalry corps to Petrograd, ostensibly to defend the capital from a possible leftist uprising.
And then the darkest part begins storiesThe former Chief Prosecutor of the Synod, V.N. Lvov, assumed the role of mediator. What exactly he conveyed to each side, whether he distorted his words, or whether he acted on his own initiative, remains unclear to this day. The result was a mutual conviction of betrayal: Kerensky decided that Kornilov was presenting him with an ultimatum and demanding full power. Whether this was a genuine conspiracy on the general's part or a provocation blown out of proportion by a misunderstanding remains a matter of debate among historians. On August 27, Kerensky declared Kornilov a rebel and removed him from his post.
The hike that never happened
Kornilov refused to submit and led his corps toward Petrograd. General A. M. Krymov commanded the troops, which included the Caucasian Native Cavalry Division—the famous "Wild" Division. On paper, it was a formidable force, capable of crushing the capital's garrison.
The corps wasn't stopped by the army. It was stopped by words and rails. The Soviet, trade unions, and railroad workers launched a campaign the likes of which had never been seen before. Railroad workers dismantled tracks, stranded trains, mixed up trains, and deprived the corps of supplies. Agitators came out to the stopped units, and the soldiers listened to them more readily than their own officers. A special delegation from the Caucasus—Muslim and Caucasian politicians—was sent to the mountaineers of the "Wild" Division, most of whom didn't speak Russian, urging their fellow countrymen in their native language not to go and stifle the revolution. A few days later, the corps, without having fired a single shot, dispersed along the railway. What had worked was precisely what Order No. 1 of the Petrograd Soviet had legalized in the spring, subordinating military units to soldiers' committees: the soldier's right to discuss orders and decide for himself.
Decoupling
The uprising collapsed rapidly. General Krymov, realizing he had no more troops, shot himself on August 31 after a difficult conversation with Kerensky. Kornilov and the generals who supported him were arrested and imprisoned in the city of Bykhov—this imprisonment would later be known as the Bykhov Siege.
Thus ended the only serious attempt to establish a military dictatorship in 1917. There was almost no bloodshed on the battlefield: the corps was not routed—it simply dispersed along the sidings and ceased to exist as a force. The extent of Kerensky's personal culpability in the provocation that pushed Kornilov to rupture is assessed differently: from the prime minister's calculated intrigue to a series of fatal misunderstandings, but it had no impact on the political outcome.
Kornilovites in Bykhov Prison. The numbers indicate: 3 - A.I. Denikin, 4 - L.G. Kornilov, 8 - I.P. Romanovsky
Who won?
Essentially, everyone lost in this story. Except for the Bolsheviks, but we'll return to them. Kerensky crushed the sham rebellion and simultaneously lost his last support. The officer corps perceived Kornilov's arrest as a betrayal and turned their backs on the prime minister. The right-wingers saw him as the destroyer of the only chance for order. The army, already shattered, lost the last vestiges of respect for its commander-in-chief after the public declaration of his commander-in-chief as a traitor.
Now about the Bolsheviks. To defend Petrograd from Kornilov, the Soviet distributed weapons to the workers—thus the armed Red Army was born, and no one ever took those weapons away from the workers. At the same time, the image of the Bolsheviks themselves was changing: after the July Days, they had been branded traitors and German agents, but now, with the general declared a "traitor," the previous accusations faded, and the Bolsheviks returned to legal politics. Trotsky was released on bail in early September. There was no formal decree releasing left-wing leaders to fight the general, but the crisis itself restored both the Bolsheviks' weapons and their reputation as defenders of the revolution. Kerensky defeated Kornilov with the help of those who would overthrow him two months later.
What will happen next
It's easy to get the dates mixed up here, so I'll make it clear right away. Riga didn't fall because of the Kornilov crisis. The Germans took it on August 21, even before Kerensky's open break with the commander-in-chief. On the contrary, the fall of Riga itself prompted the search for a savior: here's fresh proof that there was no one to hold the front.
We will turn to Riga in the next article in the series. There, on the Northern Front, in August 1917, the Russian army demonstrated what its combat capability had become by the end of the revolutionary year, and said this more clearly than all the rallies and resolutions in the rear.
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