The Bolsheviks Come to Power - New Edition: The Revolution of 1917 in Petrograd

On July 16, Kerensky, accompanied by Foreign Minister Tereshchenko and by Savinkov and Filonenko, met at General Staff headquarters (Stavka) in Mogilev with the Russian military high command. This emergency council was organized at Kerensky's behest to evaluate jointly the military situation on all fronts in the wake of the enemy's successful counteroffen- sive and to consider ways of halting the disintegration of the army. Because of the particularly unstable situation on the southwestern front, Kornilov had been directed to remain at his post and to telegraph a report to the conference, but most of the other top Russian generals were present, among them the commander-in-chief, General Brusilov; General Denikin, western front commander; General Klembovsky, from the northern front; and Gen­erals Ruzsky and Alekseev, both temporarily unassigned.²⁹ Not unexpect­edly, these officers vented their bitterness at the changes that the revolu­tion had brought to the army. One after the other they blasted the Soviet and the Provisional Government in general, as well as Kerensky personally, for having directly facilitated the army's ruin. At the core of the generals' complaints were incompetent commissars and constantly proliferating, power-seeking committees, which, they felt, had subverted the authority of officers and continually interfered with military operations. As one of the front commanders declared: "There cannot be dual authority in the army. The army must have one head and one authority." General Brusilov articu­lated the seminal importance the generals obviously attached to the army's restoration: "There is only one reason for all the difficulties that the Provi­sional Government has experienced in Petrograd and for all the disasters within Russia—namely, the absence of an army."³⁰

Implicit in the generals' comments was their conviction that the government's permissiveness was primarily to blame for the army's troubles and, concomitantly, that the imposition of strict discipline in the ranks, along with appropriate legal and administrative sanctions, would alone re­store the fighting capacity of the army; the generals made it clear that if Kerensky were unwilling to act decisively in this regard without further delay, they would be compelled to take matters into their own hands. The longest, most impassioned speech was delivered by General Denikin, a dashing, young, much-decorated hero of the early war years, who followed his indictment of Kerensky and postrevolutionary conditions in the army with a series of blunt demands for immediate implementation by the gov­ernment, which subsequently received strong support from most of his col­leagues. Denikin insisted on complete freedom of action for the generals in all military matters. He called for the immediate abolition of commissars and democratic committees, the revocation of the Declaration of Soldiers' Rights,³¹ the restoration in full of the traditional authority of officers, the reintroduction of capital punishment and the use of special military courts to reimpose discipline among units in the rear, and the total prohibition of political activity in the army—in sum, not only a return to the old order among troops in battle zones, but the extension of repressive measures to military forces everywhere in Russia. Beyond this, Denikin demanded the formation of special punitive units for use by commanders to impose their authority by force when necessary.

One of the participants in the July 16 council at Stavka recorded that Kerensky listened to Denikin's indictment in stunned silence, hunched over a table, his head buried in his arms, and that Tereshchenko was moved to tears by the oppressive report.³² "If one may say so, Denikin was the hero of the occasion," General Alekseev later recorded appreciatively in his diary.³³ Compared with Denikin's bombast, Kornilov's report to the coun­cil was relatively mild, no doubt partly because Zavoiko was away at the time and Savinkov and Filonenko had had some influence in its preparation.³⁴ That Kornilov was basically in sympathy with Denikin is attested to by a telegram that Kornilov dispatched to him immediately upon receiving the text of Denikin's speech: "I would sign such a report with both hands. . . ."³⁵

Kornilov's telegraphed report, while affirming the need for the traditional prestige and disciplinary authority of officers to be restored, for strict curbs on political activity in the armed forces, and for the extension of capital punishment and special courts to the rear, at the same time implied that commanders were to some degree responsible for breakdowns in order and discipline. Indeed, Kornilov called for a purge of the officer corps. In con­trast to the other generals' blanket condemnation of commissars and com­mittees, Kornilov's report was silent on the problem of civil interference in military matters. Beyond this, Kornilov actually proposed expanding the role of commissars (an unmistakable mark of Savinkov's influence). Finally, while insisting on the necessity of defining precisely and limiting narrowly the democratic committees' sphere of competence, Kornilov, unlike his fel­low commanders, did not call for their immediate elimination.³⁶

In the course of the train trip back to Petrograd after the July 16 council at Stavka, Kerensky, coaxed by Savinkov and Filonenko, apparently made up his mind to remove Brusilov and promote Kornilov to the post of commander-in-chief; two days later these changes were announced. At the same time, Kerensky named General Vladimir Cheremisov to replace Kor­nilov as commander of the southwestern front. Savinkov was to recall much later that he and Filonenko had urged Brusilov's removal because of his inability to cope with the crisis in the army and had pushed Kornilov as his replacement because of the firmness and coolness under pressure exhibited by the latter during his tenure (one week!) as southwestern front commander.³⁷ This may well be true—at the time, Savinkov and Filonenko were preoccupied with finding a leader who would apply force decisively and unflinchingly against recalcitrant troops. It is harder to understand why, in view of his own personal political ambitions, Kerensky accepted their recommendation. At precisely this time, the new prime minister was engaged in a desperate effort to defend himself against attacks from both the extreme left and right and to piece together a second centrist, liberal- socialist coalition; his prospects for success in this venture were, as yet, uncertain. By now, Kornilov, by virtue of his growing popularity among liberals and conservatives had become a powerful political figure and a natural rival to Kerensky.

Kerensky subsequently claimed that his elevation of Kornilov was dic­tated by the latter's merits as a commander in the field³⁸ and by his enlight­ened position on reform in the army, particularly his view of the future role of political commissars and democratic committees.³⁹ Yet this explana­tion does not ring true. Kornilov's achievements on the battlefield were undistinguished, and, the July 16 telegram notwithstanding, his predilec­tion for the application of massive military force to curb disorder at home and at the front was a matter of record. It was probably Kornilov's reputa­tion for severity and toughness, rather than his alleged readiness to accom­modate revolutionary change, that now made him attractive to Kerensky. What the army needed, Kerensky appears to have concluded, was a strong personality at its head. On this he was basically in agreement with Savin­kov and Filonenko. To the new prime minister, anxiously working to con­solidate his political position, the selection of Kornilov had the added ad­vantage of being extremely popular with disgruntled liberals and conserva­tives and with the nonsocialist press in Petrograd.⁴⁰

It is also well to keep in mind that Kerensky's options in the matter of a new commander were quite limited. That the ineffective Brusilov had to go was by now universally acknowledged. Yet judging by the proceedings of the council at Stavka, most senior Russian commanders were at least as reactionary and personally antagonistic to Kerensky as Kornilov. Kerensky might have considered two relatively junior officers who were not invited to Stavka on July 16: Kornilov's replacement as commander of the Eighth Army, General Cheremisov, and the commander of the Moscow Military District, General Verkhovsky. However, precisely because they rejected the idea that repressive measures alone could restore discipline in the army, and because they were willing to work with committees and commissars and to purge the officer corps of ultrareactionaries, Cheremisov and Ver­khovsky were suspect among many of the elements whose support Kerensky sought to win. As to the danger of independent political action by Kornilov, Savinkov (who now stepped up to the post of deputy minister of war) and Filonenko (who was simultaneously named commissar at staff headquarters) doubtless expected that since they had been able to moderate Kornilov's behavior in the past, it would be possible to continue to do so; very likely they transmitted this assurance to Kerensky.

It immediately became apparent to Kerensky that controlling Kornilov, surrounded in Mogilev by right extremists, would not be easy. The day after his appointment (July 19), in a bluntly worded telegram drafted by Zavoiko and leaked at once to the press, Kornilov made his assumption of command of the army contingent upon Kerensky's acceptance of a series of demands altogether as ominous as those voiced by Denikin at the Stavka council. Kornilov insisted that, as commander-in-chief, he would not be subject to regulation of any kind and that he would be responsible "only to [his] conscience and to the people as a whole." He demanded total indepen­dence in regard to operational directives and appointments of commanders. Special courts and the application of capital punishment to enforce disci­pline were to apply to soldiers in the rear as well as those at the front. Kornilov further demanded government acceptance of all the other recom­mendations he had made to the Stavka council.⁴¹ Additionally, on July 20 the new commander-in-chief wired Kerensky insisting that the appointment of Cheremisov as commander of the southwestern front be rescinded.⁴²

There is evidence that after receiving these telegrams, Kerensky began to have second thoughts about the appointment of Kornilov as supreme com­mander and seriously considered dropping the idea.⁴³ Yet he was now in an extremely awkward position. Kornilov's appointment had been made pub­lic, and, thanks to Zavoiko, the general's "conditions" were also widely known. The Kadets, all other liberal and conservative groups, and the non- socialist press had already formed in solid ranks behind Kornilov. Their attitude was expressed by Novoe vremia on July 20: "It was difficult, in fact probably impossible, to find a more suitable general and supreme comman­der in these days of mortal danger being experienced by Russia. The Provi­sional Government was forced to choose between meetings at the front, the disintegration of the army, the destruction of southern Russia—and the sav­ing of the state. And it found in itself the courage and decisiveness to make the choice." A break with Kornilov at this point probably would have put an end to the delicate negotiations then underway to form a new coalition government with the Kadets. And so a compromise of sorts was hastily arranged between Kornilov and Kerensky. Kornilov, for his part, pledged responsibility to the government and dropped his insistence on the im­mediate implementation of his other conditions. The government, in turn, committed itself to giving the demands of the generals a sympathetic hear­ing and to acting on them with all deliberate speed. Kerensky also agreed to find another post for Cheremisov; although this concession was of no appar­ent import at the time, Kerensky was ultimately to pay very dearly for it.⁴⁴

General Kornilov subsequently made two trips from Mogilev to Petro­grad in an effort to persuade the cabinet to implement his recommendations. The first visit took place on August 3. On this occasion Kornilov brought along a formal proposal (another example of Zavoiko's writing talent) em­bodying most of the demands for the repression of troops at the front and rear and for the restoration of officers' authority that had been made by Denikin and Kornilov at the Stavka council, as well as the conditions pressed by Kornilov on July 19. Although Kornilov no longer insisted on un­limited authority for himself in the August 3 proposal, he now reversed his earlier stand regarding the future role of commissars, calling for strict limi­tation, rather than expansion, of their authority.⁴⁵ He also envisioned a narrower, more tightly controlled role for democratic committees then he had suggested in his memo of July 16. Still, as Kerensky later acknowl­edged, he, Savinkov, and Filonenko were ready, in principle, to support all these measures. They found Kornilov's formal proposal so crude in style and potentially inflammatory in language, however, that all three agreed the document could not be submitted even to a closed session of the cabinet. Filonenko was therefore assigned to rework the proposal in more diplomatic terms for presentation to the government by Kornilov on August 10.⁴⁶ While given an audience by the cabinet before leaving the capital on August 3, Kornilov did not mention his recommendations for reform, restricting his comments to general observations on prevailing conditions in the army.

When the Petrograd press got wind of the contents of Kornilov's proposal⁴⁷ the news set off a fierce and prolonged public controversy be­tween the center and right, staunchly supportive of Kornilov and his pro­gram, and the moderate and extreme left, united once again in opposition (particularly to the extension of capital punishment to the rear and the curb­ing of democratic committees). In an antagonistic front-page editorial on August 4, Rabochaia gazeta, for example, lashed out at the Kadets (and indi­rectly at Kornilov) for advocating a return to the ways of the old regime, complaining that it was precisely this traditionally severe discipline that had made the old army a reliable instrument of the autocracy. "Kadets," the editorial demanded, "tell us directly, which people do you have in mind as military dictators—whom are you preparing for the part of Napoleon?" Among rank-and-file workers, soldiers, and sailors, the alarm over Kornilov's program rekindled the still-smoldering protest against the resto­ration of capital punishment at the front. Thus, on August 7, it will be recalled, the Workers' Section of the Petrograd Soviet adopted a strongly worded resolution demanding that capital punishment be rescinded.⁴⁸

At about this time, it appeared that General Cheremisov, in Petrograd for reassignment, was in close touch with moderate socialist leaders. Izvestiia, on August 4, carried accounts of the press conferences held the previous day by General Kornilov, following his meeting with the cabinet, and by Gen­eral Cheremisov. In response to reporters' questions, Kornilov had once again emphasized the importance of immediate authorization by the gov­ernment of broader repressive measures and deprecated the future role of democratic committees. In contrast, the burden of Cheremisov's comments was that repressive measures alone, "not even mass executions," could re­store discipline—that it would be impossible to do so as long as the soldiers did not understand and accept the necessity, obligation, and duty of carry­ing on the war. In the task of raising the consciousness of the troops, Cheremisov attached great importance to joint efforts by officers and demo­cratic committees. Izvestiia pointedly contrasted the two statements: "Today we bring you accounts of two conferences, with General Kornilov and with General Cheremisov, on the same subject. But just take note of how they differ. At the same time that the first stubbornly insists on all out repressive measures . . . and completely disregards the importance of army organizations, the second puts the center of gravity in the struggle with disintegration in the army on the joint work of the officer staff with organi­zations of soldiers. . . . The sympathy of the democracy is not on the side of Kornilov."⁴⁹

By the second week in August, rumors, not without some foundation, were circulating in the capital that Kerensky had suggested to those around him that Kornilov would not work in the post of commander-in-chief and that Cheremisov might be a suitable replacement. When word of Kerensky's wavering reached Mogilev, Kornilov and his entourage were naturally alarmed. The campaign of liberal and conservative groups on Kornilov's behalf was intensified; nonsocialist papers featured daily pledges of support for Kornilov from organizations such as the Union of Officers, the Union of Cossack Troops, and the Union of Saint George Cavaliers.

Between August 8 and 10, Moscow was the scene of a widely publicized

Conference of Public Figures attended by several hundred specially invited leaders of business, industry, agriculture, the professions, the army, and liberal and conservative political groups. The primary purpose of the con­ference was the adoption of mutually acceptable positions on major issues for presentation to the broader Moscow State Conference, due to open on August 12.⁵⁰ Among the delegates were the wealthy industrialists Riabushinsky, Tretiakov, Konovalov, and Vishnegradsky; a large group of Kadets, led by Miliukov; and a host of top military leaders, including Gen­erals Alekseev, Brusilov, Kaledin, and Iudenich. On August 9 these dig­nitaries interrupted their consideration of broad political issues to adopt a pledge of confidence in Kornilov. This declaration, dispatched to Kornilov and widely circulated the same day, affirmed that all attacks on Kornilov's authority in the army and in Russia were "treachery" and that "all thinking Russia" looked to Kornilov with hope and faith." "May God help you," the resolution concluded, "in your great task of reconstructing a powerful army and saving Russia."⁵¹

While the public furor over Kornilov raged on, Filonenko busied himself with the revision of Kornilov's August 3 proposal for consideration by the cabinet on August 10. Not content merely to recast the document in more moderate language, he introduced some sweeping recommendations for drastic controls over rail lines and factories. Thus, he added a provision that all railroads be placed under martial law; failure on the part of rail workers to fulfill directives was to carry the same penalty as a soldier's refusal to obey orders at the front—that is, summary execution. To implement these measures, he recommended that military revolutionary courts be set up at major railway depots. A further provision added by Filonenko called for the country's coal mines and all factories engaged in defense work (practically speaking, this could be interpreted to include almost all factories) to be placed under military control. In these enterprises, strikes, lockouts, politi­cal meetings, and, in fact, assemblies of any kind were to be prohibited for the duration. Employees would be assigned minimum mandatory work quotas; workers not meeting their quotas would be dismissed summarily and dispatched to the front. "These measures," injected Filonenko at the end of the revised draft, "must be adopted and put into practice im­mediately with iron decisiveness and consistency."⁵²

Savinkov, fully sympathetic to Filonenko's recommendations, pleaded with Kerensky to support them within the cabinet, and even resigned when the prime minister demurred. Kerensky initially rejected Savinkov's resig­nation, later accepted it, and ultimately, partly because of pressure from Kornilov, prevailed upon Savinkov to return to his post.⁵³ Kerensky him­self has acknowledged that to halt the slide of industry and transport into absolute chaos, he would gladly have taken the lead in implementing the steps envisioned by Filonenko. Within liberal and conservative circles, of course, and even among members of the cabinet, the need for such extreme measures had already been widely discussed. In view of the storm from the left that Kornilov's more limited August 3 program had provoked, however, Kerensky was understandably apprehensive about the probable impact of Filonenko's amendments on the leadership of the Soviet, not to mention the workers and soldiers. His conclusion seems to have been that such measures would have brought a decisive rupture with the Soviet, a bloody confronta­tion of uncertain outcome with the Bolshevik-led masses, and at the very best, the establishment of an authoritarian government completely at the mercy of the military. Unlike large numbers of former moderates, Kerensky paused, for the moment, on the brink of such a drastic course.

Kornilov, warned by members of his entourage in Mogilev of plots being hatched against him in Petrograd, tried to beg off coming to the capital on August 10. This was completely agreeable to Kerensky, who, although quite willing to use Kornilov to carry out repression at the front, was un­derstandably nervous about the general's popularity with the right and his potential influence on national politics. Savinkov and Filonenko, to the con­trary, were determined to employ pressure from Kornilov to force Kerensky's acceptance of the revised Kornilov program. They therefore persuaded the commander-in-chief not to cancel his trip. Kornilov remained wary, however, taking with him to Petrograd a bodyguard of Turkoman soldiers armed with machine guns. Shortly after Kornilov's train left Mogilev for the capital, a telegram from Kerensky reached Stavka inform­ing the commander-in-chief that the government had not called him, did not insist on his coming, and, in view of the strategic situation, could not take responsibility for his departure from the front.⁵⁴

Arriving in Petrograd, Kornilov was met at the train by Filonenko and Savinkov, who brought with them the revised report. Giving the document his hasty approval, the general set off at once for the Winter Palace. Petro­grad newspapers the following day carried detailed accounts of his colorful motorcade. Strict military security was observed along the route. Kornilov's car, moving slowly through the streets, was guarded by grim-faced, scarlet-robed Turkoman soldiers jogging alongside, their curved swords dangling unsheaved from their belts; it was preceded and followed by open-top automobiles filled with more Turkomans, armed with machine guns. When the procession neared the Winter Palace, Kerensky, at an upper-story window, watched in amazement and disbelief as the Turko­mans jumped from the cars and dashed to the entrance. Emplacing a machine gun in the main vestibule, they took up positions beside it, pre­pared, if the need arose, to rescue their commander by force.⁵⁵

Such was the extraordinary prelude to a short, predictably icy encounter between Kerensky and Kornilov which served only to exacerbate their dif­ferences and complicate their relations. At the outset, Kornilov formally presented his revised and expanded program, with which Kerensky, as we know, was already familiar. The prime minister's response was reportedly noncommittal, although he may have conveyed the impression that the re­commendations were acceptable in principle, which was actually the case.⁵⁶ Kornilov, who had risked the trip to Petrograd in the conviction that the situation brooked no further delay, was ill-disposed to let the matter drop; he demanded that the cabinet meet that evening to discuss his proposals. Kerensky declined to call a full cabinet meeting, arranging instead an in­formal session to which he invited only his two closest supporters in the cabinet, Nekrasov and Tereshchenko. Excluded were four Kadet ministers who were geared for a decisive struggle on behalf of Kornilov's program and seven moderate socialist ministers who were certain to be unalterably opposed. The upshot of this gathering on the evening of August 10 was that while Kerensky, Tereshchenko, and Nekrasov registered their willingness to support before the full cabinet Kornilov's recommendations relating to the restoration of the army (in substance the recommendations Kornilov first brought to Petrograd on August 3), they firmly insisted on laying aside the new provisions dealing with controls over railways and factories added by Filonenko.⁵⁷

One can well imagine Kornilov's frustration as he left Petrograd for Mogilev late on the night of August 10. His encounters with the prime minister on August 3 and 10 had strengthened his disdain for Kerensky personally. Worse, an incident which had occurred during his meeting with the cabinet on August 3 aroused Kornilov's fears that politics in Petrograd had degenerated to such a point that German agents had direct pipelines into the highest level of government. While Kornilov was delivering his report on the state of the army, Kerensky had quietly cautioned him against being too precise about actual conditions. After the meeting Savinkov ex­plained to the general that while there was no evidence that any ministers were leaking information directly to the enemy, some cabinet members were in close touch with members of the All-Russian Executive Commit­tees, among whom were persons suspected of having German ties.⁵⁸ Kor­nilov must have been genuinely appalled by this incident, which no doubt strengthened his misgivings about Kerensky's government. But above all, his two unsuccessful attempts to get his emergency proposals before the cabinet confirmed his suspicions, initially awakened during his tenure as commander of the Petrograd Military District and constantly fed by the rightist elements surrounding him at Stavka, that the Provisional Govern­ment was too weak and divided to act decisively and that independent military intervention might well be called for if the authoritarian regime necessary to take the country in hand was ever to be established.⁵⁹

On August, 6, three days after his first visit to the capital, Kornilov initiated a request that the Petrograd Military District, heretofore under the control of the Ministry of War, be placed under his direct command. Jus­tified by the likelihood that the Petrograd area would soon be in the zone of military operations, this change, if accepted, would greatly strengthen

Kornilov's hand in a military clash with the government or the left. At the same time Kornilov ordered substantial troop dispositions obviously aimed at their possible use in Petrograd.⁶⁰ To the delight of the right extremists, who had long since been preparing for a coup, such preparations were intensified after Kornilov's second visit to Petrograd. In a conversation with his chief of staff, General Lukomsky, on August 11, Kornilov explained that these actions were necessary because a Bolshevik rising was to be ex­pected and it was "high time to hang the German agents and spies headed by Lenin" and to "disperse the Soviet of Workers and Soldiers in such a way that it would not reassemble anywhere." Commenting to Lukomsky on his appointment of the ultraconservative General Krymov as commander of the troops being concentrated around Petrograd, Kornilov expressed pleas­ure that Krymov would not hesitate, if necessary, "to hang the entire Soviet membership."⁶¹

Of course, all this does not necessarily mean that Kornilov was now ir­revocably committed to direct military action against the government. In view of the unpopularity of the steps envisioned in Kornilov's program among the Petrograd masses and their likely response to its implementation, the troop dispositions made by Kornilov during the first half of August were advisable whether the army ultimately acted alone or in cooperation with Kerensky. It appears that Kornilov, unlike many of his supporters, still held out some hope that the government would take stock of its situa­tion and submit to his authority peacefully.⁶² Lukomsky recalls that Kor­nilov commented to him on August 11 that "he was not planning to move against the government—that he hoped it would be possible to reach agreement with it."⁶³ Nonetheless, it also appears clear that Kornilov was now prepared to act independently, should this prove necessary.

KORNILOV VERSUS KERENSKY

_T

he deepening hostility between Kerensky and Kornilov, the increas­ing polarization of Russian society, and Kerensky's weakness in the prevailing situation became most apparent during the Moscow State Con­ference held August 12 to 14. Originally conceived by Kerensky in late July to familiarize authoritative political figures from all over Russia with the country's grave problems and to mobilize their support for the programs of the newly created second coalition, this conference had no actual legislative function. Among its close to twenty-five hundred participants, "the flower of the Russian population,"¹ were the members of Kerensky's cabinet, top-ranking military officers, deputies from all four State Dumas, and members of the Executive Committees of the All-Russian Congress of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies and the All-Russian Congress of Peasants' Deputies. Present as well were representatives of trade unions, municipal councils, institutions of higher learning, cooperatives, provincial zem- stvos, and various and sundry congresses and committees relating to busi­ness, industry, and the armed forces.²

Politically, the delegates were split between liberals and conservatives, by . and large staunchly supportive of Kornilov and of stringent measures to restore order, and moderate socialists, who recognized the need for firm government but continued to insist on tempering repression with at least modest steps toward reform. The first group had a slight majority; noted one observant reporter, "Representatives of the bourgeoisie seem to over­whelm democratic elements; morning coats, frock coats, and starched shirts predominate over the side-fastening Russian blouses."³

There were practically no spokesmen for the extreme left. The Bolshevik Central Committee initially had planned that party representatives in the All-Russian Executive Committees would accompany their colleagues to Moscow; the Bolshevik delegates would formally repudiate the conference

at the first opportunity and then stage a walkout.⁴ When this intention became known, however, the majority socialist Soviet leadership required that all members of the Soviet conference delegation agree in advance not to speak out at the conference without specific authorization; for practical pur­poses, Bolsheviks going to the Moscow Conference with the Soviet delega­tion were given the choice of accepting the positions of the majority or risking expulsion from the Executive Committees.⁵ Given these circum­stances, the party elected to absent itself from the conference altogether.

The Moscow State Conference convened in an atmosphere of tension. For several days prior to August 12, Moscow had been rife with rumors that troops loyal to Kornilov were converging on the city and that Kornilov and his supporters were about to make a move against the government. Conference delegates arrived in Moscow to find the streets plastered with posters hailing Kornilov; a publicity brochure lauding the "first people's commander-in-chief" circulated widely.⁶ Kornilov himself was not scheduled to make an appearance at the conference until August 14. Nonetheless, so great was the fear of a rightist coup as the conferees assem­bled that on August 12 the Moscow Soviet formed a six-man Provisional Revolutionary Committee to help assure proper protection for the govern­ment and the Soviet. The seriousness with which the possibility of an at­tack by the right was taken at this time is indicated by the fact that the Moscow Bolsheviks Viktor Nogin and Nikolai Muralov, along with two Mensheviks and two SRs, took an active part in the Provisional Revolutionary Committee's work.⁷

In anticipation of the conference the extreme left-oriented Bolshevik Moscow Regional Bureau took the lead in organizing a wildcat protest strike for August 12, the opening day; the strike was subsequently endorsed by trade union leaders, by the more conservative Bolshevik Moscow Commit­tee, and by representatives of Moscow district soviets and district Bolshevik committees.⁸ By a vote of 312 to 284, however, a joint meeting of the Mos­cow Workers' and Soldiers' Soviets opposed such action.⁹ Nonetheless, on the appointed day employees in most Moscow factories did not report for work; many congregated instead at protest meetings. Restaurants and cof­feehouses were shut down, streetcars ceased operation, and, for the most part, cab drivers were nowhere about.¹⁰ Even employees at the buffets in the Bolshoi Theater, where the conference met, went out on strike, forcing conference delegates to serve their own refreshments. That evening all Moscow was dark as employees of the gas works stayed away from their jobs.¹¹

The impact of the strike bore witness to the power and sentiment of the working classes and the resurgence of Bolshevik influence. A writer in the Izvestiia of the Moscow Soviet, whose editorial line reflected the views of the majority socialists, conceded with embarrassment that it was "time to realize that the Bolsheviks are not irresponsible groups but one of the ele-

The Bolshoi Theater, scene of the Moscow State Conference.

ments of the organized revolutionary democracy behind whom stand the broad masses, not always disciplined but, on the other hand, wholly com­mitted to the cause of the revolution."¹²

To judge by formal deliberations at the conference, this message was lost on most delegates. At one of the early sessions, when Miliukov cautioned that the demands outlined by Kornilov should not serve as cause for suspi­cion and voiced great fear that the government was not making sufficient provision for the restoration of order and the security of property,¹³ the Bolshoi exploded with shouts of "Right you are!," loud bravos, and waves of applause. A similar outburst of unrestrained enthusiasm occurred in the right half of the hall when the cossack leader General Aleksei Kaledin de­clared that "the survival of the state requires the continuation of the war to a victorious conclusion above all," and that "the entire life of the country and all the actions of the Provisional Government must be subordinated to this fundamental assumption." Kaledin outlined a series of basic principles upon which the government should act which, in essence, paralleled Kornilov's program. Amid shouts of "Exactly!" from the right and agonized cries of "No!" from the left, Kaledin declared that "the usurpation of state power by central and local committees and by the soviets must be brought to an end immediately and abruptly."¹⁴

When the brilliant orator Vasilii Maklakov, one of the founders of the Kadet Party, took the podium and implored the government "to rely and believe in those at the front" and "to find the courage to take the daring steps necessary to lead the country forward [because] the judgment day is approaching," the right delegates again stood and cheered.¹⁵ But when Chkheidze read aloud the All-Russian Executive Committees' platform,¹⁶ which went a long way toward meeting liberal and conservative demands

for emphasis on law and order and universal sacrifice in the interest of national defense, and embodied only the most modest concessions to mass demands,¹⁷ these delegates sat scowling in their seats.

Trying to walk a tightrope between the left and right, Kerensky in his opening address refrained from commitment to a specific program of action and, typically sought salvation in strong words. Turning to the left, he thun­dered: "Let everyone who has already tried to use force of arms against the power of the people know that such attempts will be crushed with blood and iron." Turning next to the right, he roared with equal vigor (in obvious reference to Kornilov and his supporters): "At the same time let those who think the time is ripe to overthrow the revolutionary government with bayonets, be even more careful. I can make anyone serving me with ultimatums obey the will of the supreme power and myself as its head."¹⁸ Kerensky's frenzied address, at times seemingly uncontrolled and uncom­fortably theatrical, lasted close to two hours. Miliukov later described the event: "By the expression of his eyes, which he focused on the imagined enemy, by the tense gesturing of his arms, by the intonation of his voice which rose to a scream for extended periods of time, then subsided to a tragic whisper, by his measured phrases and calculated pauses, he appeared to want to scare somebody and to create an impression of force and power. . . . In actuality he only engendered pity."¹⁹

Kornilov arrived in Moscow by train on the afternoon of August 13. At the Alexandrovsky (now the Belorussian) Station his followers staged a carefully orchestrated welcome which contrasted sharply with the cool re­ception accorded government ministers upon their arrival in Moscow two days earlier.²⁰ As the moment for Kornilov's arrival approached, an honor guard and band from the Alexandrovsky Military Academy and a detach­ment from the Women's Cadet Academy posted themselves on the plat­form. Also on hand to greet the "first people's commander-in-chief" were a throng of "ladies in gaily colored dresses," bemedaled officers by the dozen, conservative and liberal leaders participating in the state conference, a coterie of municipal authorities, and enthusiastic official deputations from all the patriotic organizations supporting Kornilov. The Moscow Women's Battalion of Death stood at attention on a viaduct overlooking the station, while a mounted cossack detachment was arrayed on the square outside.

As the train slowed to a halt, Kornilov's red-robed Turkoman guards, sabers bared, leaped to the platform and posted themselves in two ranks. While the band played a fanfare and a loud cheer issued from the crowd, Kornilov, resplendent in full-dress uniform, appeared on the steps of his coach. Waving and smiling, he bounded to the platform and made his way through the lines of Turkomans toward the waiting dignitaries. As he passed, the ladies pelted him with flowers, distributed moments earlier by some young officers.

In a brief welcoming speech, the right Kadet Fedor Rodichev conveyed

The "first people's commander-in-chief," General Lavr Kornilov, and Boris Savinkov, front commissar and deputy minister of war, arrive for the Moscow State Conference.

the mood of the moment. ^uYou are now the symbol of our unity," he en- toned. "We are unified, indeed all Moscow is unified in confidence in you. . . . Save Russia and a thankful people will crown you."²¹ To be sure, at least a few of Rodichev's listeners must have observed, as one reporter commented, that there were no common citizens or regular soldiers on hand, but this circumstance, not surprisingly, seems to have escaped the general's notice.

Shortly after his arrival, Kornilov, seated in an open automobile at the head of a long motorcade, made a pilgrimage to the sacred Iversky shrine, where the tsars traditionally worshiped when they visited Moscow. After prostrating himself before the "miraculous" Iversky icon of the Madonna, Kornilov returned to his railway carriage. There, during the remainder of the evening and the following day, he received a stream of visitors, includ­ing a group of influential Kadets, led by Miliukov; the financiers Aleksei Putilov and A. I. Vishnegradsky; the notorious Purishkevich; and Generals Verkhovsky, Kaledin, and Alekseev. Verkhovsky, who, as commander of the Moscow Military District, had formal responsibility for providing se­curity to the Moscow Conference, called on Kornilov to dissuade him from participating in any conspiracy against the government. After the visit he commented that Kornilov's supporters misunderstood the prevailing situa­tion and the mood of the masses to such a degree that "they seem like peo­ple who have just dropped from the moon."²² Kadets who visited Kornilov, reflecting continued nagging doubt about the efficacy of a unilateral coup, may also have urged restraint upon the general. Miliukov, for one, subse­quently claimed to have warned Kornilov that a clash with Kerensky was untimely because the prime minister still had a following in the provinces.²³ On the other hand, numerous civil and military figures sought out Kornilov in Moscow expressly to pledge their unqualified support. Most tangibly, Putilov and Vishnegradsky, representing the Society for the Economic Re­habilitation of Russia, agreed to provide the commander-in-chief with a substantial subsidy to help finance the establishment of an authoritarian, exclusively nonsocialist regime.²⁴

Kerensky, for his part, was becoming increasingly apprehensive about Kornilov's scheduled address to the Moscow Conference on August 14. Would the general try to use the assembly to apply pressure on the gov­ernment to adopt his proposals, or, worse still would he attempt to stam­pede the conference into supporting his personal ambitions? In an effort to dissuade Kornilov from taking any action and to convince him to restrict his remarks at the conference to military operations and the situation at the front, Kerensky dispatched his minister of transport, Petr Iurenev, to see Kornilov on the evening of the thirteenth. Dissatisfied with Kornilov's re­sponse to Iurenev, Kerensky himself telephoned the general later that even­ing with the same admonition, and he repeated his plea at the Bolshoi The­ater the next morning, as Kornilov was about to mount the podium. The general's reply was enigmatic: "I will give my speech in my own way."

To Kerensky's immense relief, Kornilov's address was relatively mild. Still, it was a hollow victory for Kerensky. As far as Kornilov was con­cerned, Kerensky's strictures were further confirmation, if more were needed, of the prime minister's weakness.²⁵ Moreover, as the right roared its approval, Kornilov was followed to the rostrum by speaker after speaker whose expressed aversion to the changes wrought by the revolution and fundamental hostility toward the Provisional Government were by no means similarly restrained.

The Moscow Conference ended on the night of August 15; as a device for uniting diverse elements of Russian society behind the Provisional Gov­ernment, it had been a total failure. Kerensky came away from the ordeal with an increased awareness of his own isolation. "It is hard for me," he anguished aloud at the time, "because I struggle with the Bolsheviks of the left and the Bolsheviks of the right, but people demand that I lean on one or the other. ... I want to take a middle road, but nobody will help me."²⁶ Kerensky left Moscow with an inflated sense of support for a rightist pro­gram. The end of the Moscow Conference coincided with the spreading wave of industrial fires, followed a few days later by the sudden fall of Riga;²⁷ quite apart from the pressure of Kornilov's supporters, these de­velopments impelled Kerensky to reconsider the question of stricter civil and military controls. From this reevaluation, Kerensky finally seems to have concluded that something on the order of the major curbs on political freedom and the thoroughgoing repression embodied in Kornilov's pro­posal of August 10 could no longer be delayed, even if such action precipi-

Kerensky addressing a crowd of military personnel.

tated a decisive break with the Soviet and the masses. On August 17, with a heavy heart, one must assume, he gave Savinkov assurances to this effect and instructed him to draft specific decrees for action by the cabinet.²⁸

Yet, if Kerensky had now moved distinctly closer to Kornilov politically, there remained a crucial difference between the two men which goes far toward explaining the events that followed: Kerensky and Kornilov each viewed himself (and not the other) as the strongman in a new authoritarian government. More than ever, each was contemptuous toward and ap­prehensive of the other. Kerensky was determined to use Kornilov for his own ends, while Kornilov harbored similar intentions regarding Kerensky. Meanwhile, spurred by the Moscow Conference, preparations for a coup by rightist groups at home and at the front were reaching a climax. The stage was set for a final, decisive confrontation.

In the wake of the Moscow Conference, Kornilov continued preparations to concentrate an imposing array of troops from the front around Petrograd. The main units directed toward the capital were the First Don Cossack Division and the Ussuriisky Mounted Division, both belonging to Krymov's Third Cavalry Corps.²⁹ The Russian military high command re­garded these forces as among the most disciplined and politically reliable in the entire army; during the first half of August these units had begun to move from reserve positions on the Rumanian front to the Nevel- Novosokolniki-Velikie Luki region, roughly three hundred miles from Petrograd on the direct rail line. Around August 20, the First Don Cossack Division was transferred to the Pskov area, half the remaining dis­tance to the capital. Simultaneously, the equally crack Savage Division, so called because it was comprised primarily of mountain tribesmen from the

northern Caucasus whose ferociousness and cruelty in combat were legen­dary, was attached to the Third Corps and shipped from the southwestern front to Dno, just east of Pskov.³⁰ Cossack and shock units stationed along the Baltic were earmarked for an eventual role in the pacification of the capital as well. On August 25, General A. M. Dolgorukov, commander of the Finnish-based First Cavalry Corps, was called to Stavka in connection with plans to have one of his main elements, the Fifth Cossack Division, advance on Petrograd from the north, while units of the Third Corps were moving in on the capital from the south. Among other troop relocation orders emanating from Stavka at this time was a directive to the Reval "Shock Battalion of Death" to proceed to Tsarskoe Selo.³¹

As nearly as one can piece together from scattered, sometimes contradic­tory evidence, an elaborate scheme for a rightist putsch in Petrograd to coincide with the approach of front troops was worked out by the Main Committee of the Union of Officers and the Military Section of the Repub­lican Center and Military League.³² This plan appears to have been linked to a series of fund-raising rallies scheduled by the Soviet leadership in Pet­rograd for Sunday, August 27, the six-month anniversary of the February revolution. The conspirators evidently assumed that the rallies would be ac­companied by disorders which could be used as a pretext for proclaiming martial law, wrecking Bolshevik organizations, dispersing the Soviet, and establishing a military dictatorship. To insure that the occasion would not pass without suitable disturbances, the rightist press was to whip up politi­cal tension in the capital, while agitators posing as Bolsheviks were to circu­late in factories, rousing workers. The conspirators also agreed that as a last resort they would stage a leftist rising themselves; at this point, the military forces converging on the capital would be called in to help restore order and establish a strict new regime.³³

As the day designated for action neared, the Main Committee of the Union of Officers, under a variety of pretexts, concentrated inordinate numbers of pro-Kornilov officers in Petrograd. On August 22 the army chief of staff instructed infantry, cavalry, and cossack division headquar­ters on all fronts to send three officers to Mogilev, ostensibly for orientation in the handling of newly developed English trench mortars. Actually, upon their arrival at Stavka these officers were briefed and sent on almost im­mediately to Petrograd.³⁴

To what extent the government was aware of these activities is unclear. In early August Kerensky had received an alarming report on the work of the Union of Officers from the SR Central Committee.³⁵ After the Moscow State Conference, the prime minister's apprehension regarding conspiracies being hatched against him at Stavka became obsessive; at his insistence, the government resolved to forbid the Union of Officers from using staff funds to finance its activities, to remove the union's Main Committee from Mogilev, and to arrest some of its most active members.³⁶ The extent of

Kornilov's personal involvement in and commitment to the realization of his extreme supporters' plans is also difficult to ascertain. Could Kornilov's ap­parent preparations to intervene directly in national politics and his support of rightist activity in the capital have stemmed from a sincere belief, en­couraged by the conspirators with whom he was surrounded, that the Bol­sheviks were on the verge of staging a popular rising which the government would be unable to quell? The evidence on this point is inconclusive. There are indications that even now Kornilov held out hope that ultimately Kerensky would recognize the need for a tougher government free of Soviet influence and would cooperate in its establishment.

Kornilov's hope that Kerensky might prove cooperative was strengthened to some extent by discussions at Mogilev between the general and the dep­uty minister of war, Savinkov, representing the prime minister, during the afternoon and evening of August 2 3 and the following morning.³⁷ These conversations touched on a number of sore points between Kornilov and Kerensky. A central issue was what was to be done about those provisions of Kornilov's program relating to the rear that had been rejected by Kerensky on August 10. By this time, the civil control decrees that Kerensky had asked Savinkov to prepare on August 17 had been drafted. In sum, they embodied many of Kornilov's demands; Kornilov evidently ex­pressed approval of the decrees, and Savinkov voiced confidence that they would be adopted "in the next few days." How the government would respond to the storm of popular protest these decrees were certain to trigger was a matter of mutual concern. Savinkov suggested, no doubt wishfully, that the Bolsheviks and perhaps also the Soviet would rebel against them and that the government would deal mercilessly with such opposition. To strengthen the government's hand as it embarked on this tough new course, Savinkov proposed that the Third Corps be dispatched to the capital and placed at the War Ministry's disposal. He insisted, however, that for "polit­ical reasons" the reactionary General Krymov be removed as commander of the Third Corps, and that a regular cavalry unit be substituted for the Savage Division prior to the Third Corps's move to the capital.³⁸

Kornilov agreed to these conditions at the time, although subsequently he simply ignored them. In effect, the government was sanctioning troop dis­positions which the commander-in-chief had initiated some weeks earlier on his own. It was decided that Kornilov should notify Savinkov by telegraph two days before the Third Corps was in place. The government would then declare martial law in Petrograd, after which the new regulations would be issued.³⁹

Savinkov and Kornilov tentatively reached this understanding at their first meeting on the afternoon of August 2 3, despite the fact that the meet­ing had evidently gotten off to an unpromising start. Kornilov had com­plained about Soviet socialists in the cabinet and had heaped abuse on Kerensky personally. Savinkov noted later that Kornilov declared directly

that the Provisional Government was, quite simply, "incapable of adopting a firm course," that "for every step in this direction, it was necessary to pay with a portion of the fatherland."⁴⁰ But after Kornilov had read Savinkov's draft decrees and received authorization to send troops to Petrograd, his mood warmed considerably.⁴¹ Thus, when Savinkov attacked the Union of Officers and asked Kornilov to prevent his staff from aiding it materially and to make the Main Committee transfer its operations to Moscow, Kor­nilov agreed to do so.

Still another potentially sticky issue now tentatively settled was whether the government or the General Staff would have primary command author­ity over the Petrograd Military District. In a telegram to Kerensky on August 19, Kornilov had reaffirmed his desire to have troops of the Petro­grad garrison placed under his direct command. Cabling the government to report on the fall of Riga a few days later, he had reiterated this demand.⁴² At the same time, Kornilov also insisted that more garrison troops be shipped to defense positions on the northern front. The removal of radical­ized soldiers from the capital had been, of course, one of the government's goals since the July days. Consequently, the cabinet had responded with alacrity to Kornilov's demand, and the level of transfers between the capital and the front had increased significantly towards the end of August. Placing all garrison soldiers under Kornilov's control, however, was quite another matter; Kerensky later remarked that if this had been done, "we could have been eaten alive at any moment."⁴³ Hence, Savinkov, in Mogilev, was under instructions to persuade Kornilov to accept command of the Petrograd Military District, minus those troops actually in the city and its immediate suburbs. When this issue was raised midway in the Savinkov- Kornilov talks, Kornilov agreed to Savinkov's proposal with little argument.

At the close of their discussions, Savinkov questioned General Kornilov about his attitude toward the government. In response, Kornilov, with dubious sincerity, pledged loyalty to Kerensky.⁴⁴ Still, Savinkov's visit may have led Kornilov to conclude that events were finally bringing Kerensky around to his own point of view and hence that it might not be necessary to utilize force against the government. In any case, Kornilov had every reason to be relieved and encouraged—if there were further problems in establishing a strong national government in Petrograd, in which the influence of Soviet socialists would be eliminated and the army would have the leading voice, reliable troops under the uncompromising Krymov soon would be in a position to deal with them. The meetings in Mogilev must also have been reassuring to Savinkov: Kornilov and Kerensky, it seemed, were finally about to act in concert to reestablish order—the goal that Savinkov had sought all along. There appeared to be hope that the threat of Bolshevism and meddling by the Soviet would soon be ended and that Russia could proceed with the primary task of restoring the war effort.

On the evening of August 24, shortly after Savinkov's departure for Pet- rograd, General Krymov received instructions from Kornilov to push on to Petrograd upon receiving word of a "Bolshevik rising." He then left Mogilev to be with his soldiers.⁴⁵ The following day the Third Corps was placed on alert, and Krymov drafted a directive to be distributed by the corps upon its entry into the capital. In this order, Krymov placed the entire Petrograd Military District, including Finland and Kronstadt, under strict martial law. A curfew was imposed between 7:00 p.m. and 7:00 a.m. With the exception of groceries and pharmacies, all commercial enterprises were ordered closed. Strikes and meetings of any kind were forbidden. Civilians possessing firearms were to turn them in immediately. Strict cen­sorship of all periodicals was proclaimed. Persons caught violating any of these regulations (with the exception of the censorship rule) were to be shot. "I warn everybody," Krymov cautioned in the directive, "that by the in­structions of the commander-in-chief, the troops will not fire into the air."⁴⁶

That night, August 25, Krymov received supplementary orders to begin his move northward on the morrow'. In this connection, the northern-front commander, General Klembovsky, was instructed that the Ussuriisky Mounted Division, still in the Velikie Luki region, was to be placed aboard trains which would proceed to the capital via Pskov, Narva, and Krasnoe Selo. Simultaneously, the other main elements of the Third Corps—the Savage Division at Dno and the First Don Cossack Division at Pskov—were to embark for the suburban towns of Tsarskoe Selo and Gatchina, respec­tively. Moreover, each of the major units of the Third Corps received specific assignments in connection with the military occupation of Petro­grad. The Savage Division, in spite of Kornilov's promise to Savinkov that it would not be sent to Petrograd, was to occupy the Moscow, Liteiny, Alex­ander Nevsky, and Rozhdestvensky districts; disarm workers and all troops of the Petrograd garrison, except the personnel of cadet academies; organize guard and patrol duty; assume responsibility for guarding prisons; take charge of railroad stations; and, utilizing whatever force was required, crush any and all disturbances and incidents of disobedience. At the same time, Kornilov dispatched the prearranged telegram to Savinkov: "The corps will be in place in the suburbs of Petrograd by evening of August 28. I request that Petrograd be proclaimed under martial law on August 29."⁴⁷

In Petrograd at this time, while Savinkov was preparing to bring his new civil control decrees to a vote in the cabinet, right extremists, either oblivi­ous to the arrangements worked out between Savinkov and Kornilov or simply ignoring them, doggedly continued to set the stage for a putsch. The rightist press trumpeted daily warnings of left-inspired "massacres" which, allegedly, would take place on the twenty-seventh. In the Soviet, majority socialists and Bolsheviks alike were troubled by a rash of reports of insurrectionary appeals to workers made by "strangers in soldiers' tunics."

At this juncture, there occurred a startling series of events which shat­tered all illusions that Kornilov and Kerensky would work together, and simultaneously undermined preparations for a putsch. It began with a meet­ing at the Winter Palace on August 22 between Kerensky and Vladimir Nikolaevich Lvov, a well-meaning though naive and muddleheaded busy­body who had been a liberal deputy in the Third and Fourth Dumas and had served without distinction as chief procurator of the Holy Synod in the first and second post-February cabinets. Lvov shared the conviction of many industrial, business, and agrarian leaders in Moscow, with whom he had ties, that Russia's survival was dependent on the creation, by peaceful means, of a law-and-order-directed 'national cabinet" which would include representatives of all major patriotic groups. Unlike many of Kornilov's avid supporters, however, Lvov retained a measure of respect for Kerensky, with whom he had become acquainted in the Duma and the cabinet. He assumed that both Kerensky and Kornilov were working selflessly toward the same end—the establishment of an authoritarian regime. Hearing with alarm of the preparations afoot at Stavka to seize power, Lvov thought it his duty to do what he could to help avert a clash between the prime minister and the commander-in-chief. Casting himself in the role of intermediary between the two men, Lvov hastened to Petrograd, where he gained an interview with Kerensky on the evening of August 22.⁴⁸ Affirming mys­teriously that he had come on behalf of "certain groups with significant strength," Lvov painted a bleak picture of the government's situation and volunteered to sound out key political figures, presumably starting with Kornilov, regarding the basis upon which a "national" government might be formed.

If one is to believe Lvov's memoir account of this conversation, Kerensky responded by giving him full authority to conduct political negotiations on his behalf, even suggesting his willingness to step down as prime minister.⁴⁹ Kerensky later denied vehemently Lvov's version of the conver­sation and suggested a different interpretation: suspecting from the start that Lvov was involved in a conspiracy and seeing in his proposal an oppor­tunity to smoke out his enemies' intentions, he had not opposed Lvov's undertaking informal soundings—nothing more.⁵⁰ The more plausible of the two accounts, it would seem, is Kerensky's. There is no other evidence that Kerensky was at any time genuinely willing to share power with Kor­nilov; moreover, in view of Kerensky's continuing obsession with con­spiracies against him, the use of Lvov for intelligence purposes had a certain logic. As to Lvov's version, it is difficult to say whether, in his enthusiasm, he misunderstood Kerensky, or whether, carried away by self-importance and a sense of urgency, he consciously exceeded his authority and then sought to conceal that fact.⁵¹

At any rate, Lvov left Petrograd at once, and, after stopping briefly in Moscow, where he circulated word that Kerensky was amenable to the re­construction of the government, the creation of a "national cabinet," and, if

necessary, his own resignation, he boarded the next available train to Mogilev, arriving at Stavka on August 24. From the outset of his conversa­tions with Kornilov, Lvov very likely conveyed the impression that he had been empowered by Kerensky to help form a new cabinet with or without Kerensky's participation. Meeting with Kornilov initially on the evening of August 24, he invited the general to state his position on the character and makeup of a new government. Kornilov's initial response to this approach was noncommittal, in part, no doubt, because he had not yet consulted Zavoiko. It is clear, however, that to Kornilov, and, even more, to ex­tremists like Zavoiko, Lvov's appearance at Stavka, coming as it did on the heels of Savinkov's visit, was a further indication of Kerensky's weakness and readiness to compromise.⁵² Significantly, Zavoiko and other rightist leaders in Mogilev now began intense, open discussions of candidates for ministerial posts in a new government.

Kornilov, accompanied this time by Zavoiko, did not mince words when he made his demands known to Lvov at their second meeting, on August 25. Petrograd would have to be placed under martial law, he stated. The commander-in-chief of the army, "whoever he might be," would have to be given supreme civil, as well as military, authority everywhere in the coun­try. In the new government, Kornilov went on, there would be room for Kerensky as minister of justice and Savinkov as minister of defense. For their own protection, he urged that both men come to Mogilev no later than August 27. According to Lvov, when Kornilov mentioned Kerensky as a possible minister of justice, Zavoiko, "in a tone that teachers use toward

pupils," bluntly rejected the idea, proposing instead that Kerensky be named deputy prime minister.⁵³

That these terms did not strike Lvov as outlandish testifies strongly to his simplemindedness. He responded by suggesting only that leading Kadet, business, and industrial figures be invited to Mogilev to participate in the formation of a new cabinet. Nevertheless, some remarks made by Zavoiko as Lvov was about to board the train for the return trip to Petrograd raised doubts in his mind about Kerensky's probable fate in the event that he actually placed himself in Stavka's hands; Zavoiko had said casually: "Kerensky is needed as a name for the soldiers for ten days or so, after which he will be eliminated."⁵⁴

Late on the afternoon of the twenty-sixth, weary but apparently undeflated by the results of his negotiations, Lvov was back in the Winter Palace to report to Kerensky. Shortly before Lvov was admitted to see the prime minister, Savinkov had confidently assured Kerensky that Kornilov would support him in every way possible. This helps explain Kerensky's reaction when Lvov officiously enumerated Kornilov's terms, insisted that they be brought before the government at once, and compassionately im­plored Kerensky to quickly set as much distance as possible between him­self and Petrograd in the interest of sparing his life! Thinking Lvov was joking, the prime minister erupted in laughter. "This is not a time for jokes," Lvov interjected, begging Kerensky to yield to Kornilov.

Kerensky was later to acknowledge that at this point he found himself pacing back and forth in his study, unable to absorb what was happening. In a state of shock, he suggested that his visitor put Kornilov's demands in writing, which Lvov promptly did.⁵⁵ Moreover, seeking further confirmation of Kornilov's treachery and a firmer basis upon which to in­itiate action against him, Kerensky arranged to converse directly with Kor­nilov by teleprinter. What followed was at once one of the most tragic, ludicrous, and by now familiar moments in 1917 Russian politics. The episode is sufficiently illuminating to warrant its reproduction in some de­tail. To converse directly with Kornilov, it was necessary to utilize the communications equipment in the War Ministry. Lvov agreed to meet Kerensky there at half-past eight. Lvov was late for the appointment, but this did not deter the prime minister, now close to hysteria; he put through the call to Kornilov and simply pretended that Lvov was by his side:

kerensky: "Good day, General. V. N. Lvov and Kerensky at the ap­paratus. We beg you to confirm the statement that Kerensky is to act according to the communication made to him by Vladimir Nikolaevich." kornilov: "Good day, Alexander Fedorovich; good day, Vladimir Nikolaevich. Confirming again the description of the present situation of the country and the army as it appears to me which I requested V. N. to convey to you, I declare again that the events of the past days and of those that I can see coming imperatively demand a definite decision in the shortest possible time." kerensky: "I, Vladimir Nikolaevich, ask you whether it is necessary to act on that definite decision which you asked me to communicate privately to Kerensky. Without your personal confirmation, Alexander Fedorovich hesitates to give me his full confidence." kornilov: "Yes, I confirm that I asked you to convey to Alexander

Fedorovich my urgent plea that he should come to Mogilev." kerensky: "I, Alexander Fedorovich, understand your answer as confirmation of the words conveyed to me by V. N. To do that and leave here today is impossible. I hope to depart tomorrow. Is it neces­sary for Savinkov to go?" kornilov: "I beg urgently that Boris Viktorovich shall come with you. What I said to V. N. refers in equal degree to Savinkov. I beg you earnestly not to put off your departure later than tomorrow. Believe me, only my recognition of the responsibility of the moment makes me so persistent in my request." kerensky: "Shall we come only in case of an outbreak, of which there are

rumors, or in any case?" kornilov: "In any case."

kerensky: "Good-by. We shall soon see each other." kornilov: "Good-by."⁵⁶

One can easily imagine the unrestrained glee at Stavka that must have followed this conversation; hopes were raised that Kerensky would submit without a struggle to the construction of a new government under Kornilov. Meanwhile, Kerensky's worst fears seemed about to materialize. Although the conversation by teleprinter had verified concretely only that Kornilov wanted Kerensky and Savinkov to come to Mogilev, Kerensky now con­cluded that he had been double-crossed and that Stavka was bent on dis­pensing with him entirely. A jumble of thoughts rushed through his mind. He had shifted, during the past w eek, to a rightward course which, if fully revealed, would be gravely compromising in the eyes of the moderate socialists. Would it be realistic, then, to rely on their support in a conflict with Kornilov? And how would the volatile Petrograd masses, the very elements he had hoped to suppress, react to this new crisis? No doubt they could be mobilized to fight Kornilov. But would this not lead naturally to a rejuvenation of the left? In combating Kornilov would he not be defeating himself and dealing a further blow to hopes of restoring order and the fighting capacity of the army?

With such considerations in mind, Kerensky seems to have concluded that the wisest course of action was to forestall Kornilov's sympathizers in the cabinet from attempting to compromise with the general at his expense and to keep the left uninformed about the developing crisis, while at the same time removing Kornilov as commander-in-chief before the Third

Corps reached the outskirts of Petrograd. In fact, for almost twenty-four hours Kerensky's imbroglio with Kornilov was not disclosed to the press or even to the Soviet leadership.

Late on the night of August 26, after having Lvov arrested and locked in a back room of the Winter Palace, Kerensky consulted with Nekrasov, his closest associate, as well as with Savinkov and other high officials of the War Ministry. He then interrupted a cabinet meeting in the Malachite Room (it is ironic that the ministers were in the process of discussing Savinkov's decrees) and broke the news of Kornilov's "treachery." As proof, he read aloud the tape of his conversation with the general and circulated it for all to see. Kerensky next requested his fellow ministers to grant him unlimited authority to deal with the emergency as he saw fit. He observed that the developing situation might require a "restructuring of the cabinet"; in view of what was to follow, it appears that Kerensky was considering the possible creation of a Directory (a powerful national executive body com­posed of less than a half-dozen top leaders, like the one that existed in France from 1795 to 1799). Information about what happened next is murky. Apparently the Kadets Kokoshkin and Iurenev, long since disgrun­tled with Kerensky's leadership and apprehensive that he would misuse "ex­traordinary powers," vehemently expressed their opposition, threatening to resign if his proposal were granted. The majority of the cabinet, however, supported the prime minister, and to give him a completely free hand in forming a new government they dutifully tendered their resignations. Kerensky apparently accepted the resignations but requested the cabinet members to remain at their posts as "acting ministers" pending construction of a new government. Only Kokoshkin refused to stay on.⁵⁷

This last official meeting of the second coalition dragged on until close to 4:00 a.m. (August 27). Upon its conclusion, Kerensky dispatched a terse telegram to Kornilov commanding him to yield his post to the chief of staff, General Lukomsky, and to proceed at once to Petrograd. Upon reception of the cable in Mogilev four hours later, a dumbfounded Lukomsky im­mediately wired back: "It is too late to halt an operation started with your approval. ... In order to save Russia, you must go along with Kornilov. . . . Kornilov's dismissal would bring horrors the likes of which Russia has never seen. ... I cannot accept General Kornilov's post."⁵⁸

Lukomsky's response, of course, dashed Kerensky's hope of quickly removing Kornilov and preventing the conflict from erupting openly. Moreover, the front troops dispatched by Kornilov were continuing their advance toward Petrograd. Hence by midday, August 27, Kerensky had begun to make plans for the defense of the capital; in this connection he ordered that Petrograd be placed under martial law and that Savinkov, who could be counted on to struggle with the extreme left as well as with Kor­nilov, be installed as governor-general of Petrograd in overall charge of military preparations. Kerensky also prepared a public announcement on the crisis, the release of which was delayed several hours while first Savin­kov, and then Maklakov, tried unsuccessfully, over the teleprinter, to per­suade Kornilov to step down.⁵⁹ In the meantime, Kerensky sought to divert Kornilov's troops from the capital. "I order that all echelons moving toward Petrograd and its outskirts be stopped and redirected to their previous stations—Petrograd is completely calm and no insurrections are expected," stated the cable which he now sent to, among others, the commanders of the northern front and the Third Corps, and Kornilov.⁶⁰

The order fell on deaf ears. And so in the early evening Kerensky's an­nouncement was made public and a copy sent to Kornilov. All things con­sidered, the proclamation was relatively restrained. The movement of hos­tile troops from the front toward the capital was not mentioned. The public was simply informed that Kornilov had dispatched Lvov to the Provisional Government with a demand for the surrender of all civil and military power, that this act reflected a desire on the part of certain circles to "estab­lish a regime opposed to the conquests of the revolution," and that in view of this the government had empowered Kerensky to take prompt and reso­lute countermeasures. Among these, it was announced, were the firing of Kornilov and the proclamation of martial law in Petrograd.⁶¹

As the poet Zinaida Gippius speculated in her diary at the time, Kornilov's initial reaction to this announcement "must have been that someone had gone completely mad; the next moment he must have been enraged."⁶² Kornilov had neither sent Lvov nor, to his mind, threatened the government. Late that night Zavoiko drafted an impassioned, if typically ineptly worded, response which was sent to all military commanders and read immediately to reporters; it stated in part:

The first portion of the Minister-President's telegram is full of lies. It was not I who sent Vladimir Lvov to the Provisional Government but he who came to me as the envoy of the Minister-President. . . . Thus a great provocation has taken place which jeopardizes the fate of the motherland.

People of Russia! Our great motherland is dying. The hour of her death is near. Forced to speak openly, I, General Kornilov, declare that under the pressure of the Bolshevik majority in the Soviets, the Provisional Gov­ernment acts in complete harmony with the plans of the German general staff and simultaneously with the forthcoming landing of the enemy forces on the coast of Riga; it is killing the army and undermines the very founda­tion of the country.

The heavy sense of the inevitable ruin of the country commands me in this ominous moment to call upon all Russian people to come to the aid of the dying motherland. . . .

I, General Kornilov, son of a cossack peasant, declare to all and each that I want nothing for myself, except the preservation of a Great Russia, and I vow to bring the people by means of victory over the enemy to a

Constituent Assembly, where they themselves will decide their fate and choose their new form of government. . . .

August 27, 1917 General Kornilov⁶³

After issuing this declaration of war, Kornilov instructed his subordinates to continue the movement of troops along the rail lines to Petrograd. For the time being, the general's confidence that troops of the Third Corps would follow their commanders appeared justified. On August 27 echelons of the Savage Division boarded trains at Dno to begin their advance on the capital; the next morning lead elements of the division neared Vyritsa. Meanwhile, the Ussuriisky Mounted Division, having reached Pskov, was continuing on to Narva-Iamburg, while the First Don Cossack Division had moved from Pskov to Luga.⁶⁴

A significant portion of the military high command now quickly regis­tered solidarity with Kornilov. Among those to do so were Generals Klem- bovsky and Baluev, commanders of the northern and western fronts, re­spectively; General Shcherbatov, deputy commander of the Rumanian front; and General Denikin, commander of the southwestern front. The latter wired Kerensky:

At a conference with members of the Provisional Government on July 16, I pointed out that by virtue of a whole series of military enactments, the government had ruined and corrupted the army and trampled our campaign banners in the mud. . . . Today I received word that General Kornilov, proposing certain demands which could still save the country and the army, is being removed from the post of commander-in-chief. Viewing this as the government's return to its former policy of the sys­tematic destruction of the army and, consequently, of the country, it is my duty to inform the government that I will not join it in this course.⁶⁵

The Main Committee of the Union of Officers circulated telegrams to all army and naval headquarters proclaiming that the Provisional Government "could no longer remain at the head of Russia" and urging officers every­where to be "tough and unflinching" in their support of Kornilov.⁶⁶

On August 28 prices on the Petrograd stock exchange shot upward in anticipation of a victory by Kornilov. To many government officials, Kerensky's situation appeared hopeless. Typical of the ominous reports which were now in circulation was a telegram to Tereshchenko from the Foreign Ministry's representative in Mogilev, Prince Grigorii Trubetskoi. Reported Trubetskoi: "A sober appraisal of the situation forces us to admit that the entire commanding personnel, the overwhelming majority of the officers, and the best combat units in the army will follow Kornilov. In the rear, the entire Cossack host, the majority of the military schools, and the best combat units will go over to Kornilov's side. Added to this physical strength is the superiority of the military organization over the weakness of the government organs. . . . The majority of the popular and urban masses have grown indifferent to the existing order and w ill submit to any cracking of the whip."⁶⁷

Subsequent events would reveal how mistaken was this estimate of the situation. Almost from the start of the Kornilov crisis, socialist leaders, with a better sense of the mass mood, were confident that the forces bent on the creation of a strong military dictatorship would ultimately be rebuffed.⁶⁸ It even may be, as Sukhanov recalls, that among some political leaders with close ties to workers and soldiers, news of Kornilov's advance brought a sense of "relief, . . . excitement, exultation, and the joy of liber­ation." Hopes were raised that "the [revolutionary] democracy might take new heart, and the revolution might swiftly find its lawful course."⁶⁹ But this mood was scarcely Kerensky's. As Kornilov's columns, led by Krymov, appeared to have Petrograd in a vise, and as the forces of the right and left seemed poised for a head-on clash, the prime minister finally grasped the depth of his own isolation. Caught between two fires and ex­pecting reprisals regardless of who won, Kerensky despaired; it appeared virtually certain that his political career was at an end.

THE BOLSHEVIKS AND KORNILOV'S DEFEAT

_P

etrograd awoke to near-perfect weather on Sunday, August 27, the day designated for celebrating the six-month anniversary of the February revolution. It was seasonably warm and the air was crystal clear. Placards in bold type, prominently displayed throughout the city, reminded citizens of the fund-raising rallies scheduled that day in the capital's largest meeting and concert halls. The morning papers contained no hint of the open strug­gle that had erupted between Kornilov and Kerensky. The front page of Izvestiia was given over to an appeal for donations for the Soviet's upkeep: "The duty of every worker, soldier, and peasant, the duty of every respon­sible citizen in these critical black days, is to support the legitimate organ of the all-Russian revolution," admonished the headline. For the second con­secutive day Rabochii cautioned workers and soldiers not to respond to pro­vocative appeals for revolutionary action. "Sinister people are circulating rumors of a rising set for today and allegedly being organized by our party," the paper warned. "The Central Committee implores workers and soldiers not to yield to provocations, to maintain restraint and calm, and not to take part in any action today."

Most of the top Soviet leadership spent Sunday morning circulating through the districts of Petrograd, making speeches at fund-raising rallies. Toward midday, garbled rumors of the rift between Kornilov and Kerensky began to circulate through the Smolny Institute, the former ex­clusive boarding school for daughters of the nobility which since early Au­gust had been serving as central headquarters of the Soviet.¹ The gravity of the emergency facing the government did not become apparent to Soviet deputies until mid-afternoon. At that point, leaders of the various parties represented in the Soviet began rounding up their colleagues for emergency fraction meetings. But it was not until eleven-thirty that evening, more than twenty-four hours after Kerensky had concluded that Kornilov was intent on overthrowing the government, that the All-Russian Executive Commit­tees convened in a closed joint plenary session to consider the crisis.

With interruptions, the Executive Committees, gathered in the majestic, high-ceiling assembly hall of Smolny, deliberated through the night and well into the morning of August 28. Two difficult, interrelated problems confronted the deputies. In the first place, in view of the apparent alliance and subsequent conflict between Kerensky and Kornilov, the foundering of the second coalition, and Kerensky's intention of establishing a Directory, the Soviet needed to adopt a position regarding the future of the Provisional Government. In addition, the deputies were forced to cope with the more immediately pressing task of helping to organize the military defense of the capital.

Debate on the government question was heated. A spokesman for the Bolsheviks, Sokolnikov, took the position that the revolutionary democracy could have no confidence in the existing government, implying that it should be removed immediately. "The Provisional Government created conditions for counterrevolution," he asserted; "only the realization of a decisive program—a republic, peace, and bread—can instill in the masses confidence in the government." Yet, for the time being, the Bolsheviks did not offer a formal resolution on the government question. The moderate socialists, for their part, accepted at face value Kerensky's version of his differences with Kornilov, namely, that at hand was a carefully planned conspiracy against the revolution and the legitimate government. In these circumstances, they saw no choice but to support the prime minister. Thus, S. L. Vainshtein, on behalf of the Mensheviks, declared early in the pro­ceedings: "We must acknowledge that the only person who can form a gov­ernment at this time is Comrade Kerensky. An attack has been made on Kerensky and the Provisional Government, and if they should fall, the revolutionary cause will be lost."

The Executive Committees at first emphatically rejected an oblique sug­gestion by the SR representative, V. N. Rikhter, that it might be necessary to go along with Kerensky on the creation of a Directory; a majority was obviously more sympathetic to Martov's claim that "all directories spawn counterrevolution." The deputies passed a resolution stipulating that the form of government was to remain unchanged and granting Kerensky au­thority to fill the vacancies in the cabinet left by the withdrawal of the Kadets with "democratic elements." At the same time, they agreed to work for the convocation at an early date of yet another "state conference," this one to be made up exclusively of representatives of those democratic or­ganizations which had supported the Soviet's platform at the Moscow State Conference. It was understood that this conference would reevaluate the government question and also that the Provisional Government would be responsible to it until the convocation of the Constituent Assembly. Significantly, the Bolsheviks abstained rather than vote against the resolu­tion calling for retention of a coalition under Kerensky, and they actually sided with the Mensheviks and SRs on the question of convening another state conference, requiring only that the assembly be "revolutionary," i.e., composed entirely of socialist groups.

During a break in the Executive Committees' deliberations, members of the Presidium made a brief trip to the Winter Palace to inform the govern­ment of the preceding decisions. Kerensky, however, was adamant about the immediate creation of an all-powerful six-man Directory. Only a gov­ernment small in number and totally unified in outlook, he contended, would be capable of acting swiftly and decisively enough to deal effectively with the attack from the right. Upon the delegates' return to Smolny, Kerensky's posture triggered a fresh round of acrimonious debate. Speaking for the Bolshevik fraction, Lunacharsky, for one, ignoring the decisions of the Sixth Congress, proclaimed that "the moment has come for the Soviet to create a national government." He introduced a resolution branding as counterrevolutionary both the Kornilov movement and the Provisional Government and calling for the creation of a government of workers, peas­ants, and soldiers (interpreted by Lunacharsky's listeners to mean transfer of all power to the soviets). This government would decree a "democratic republic" and speed convocation of a Constituent Assembly.² Evidently this proposal was not put to a vote.

As night turned to morning the existing danger to the revolution was presented to the deputies in ever more alarming terms. Many now learned for the first time of the immediate military threat posed by Krymov's ad­vancing Third Corps and also of the fact that generals on several fronts were openly siding with Kornilov. In this tension-charged atmosphere, wild rumors acquired instant credence: "There is fighting in Luga!" "The rail station at Dno has been blown up!" "Soldiers loyal to Kornilov are even now disembarking at the Nikolaevsky Station!" Under the pressure of such reports the bleary-eyed deputies gradually swung to Kerensky's side, ulti­mately adopting a resolution proposed by Tsereteli pledging full support to the prime minister. The resolution left the form of government completely up to him, provided only that he pursue the struggle against Kornilov with vigor. Notably, even the Bolsheviks, while vehemently protesting the grant­ing of such prerogatives to Kerensky, nonetheless announced that if the government were genuinely committed to fighting the counterrevolution, they would "form a military alliance with it." ³

Addressing themselves to the immediate military threat, officials of the Soviet issued emergency appeals and instructions to key institutions and groups—to army and front committees, provincial soviets, postal-telegraph and railroad workers, and soldiers of the Petrograd garrison. According to the Soviet's directives, orders emanating from Stavka were not to be obeyed, the movement of counterrevolutionary forces was to be watched closely and impeded, correspondence and communications between ele­ments hostile to the revolution were to be disrupted, and orders of the Soviet and the Provisional Government were to be carried out without hesitation.⁴ To help organize and direct the struggle against Kornilov's forces, the Executive Committees created an extraordinary military defense organ—the Committee for Struggle Against the Counterrevolution—which began to function on the afternoon of August 28.

As first envisioned, the Committee for Struggle Against the Counter­revolution was to include, among others, three Menshevik representatives, three SRs, and even three Bolsheviks, the presence of the latter signifying grudging acknowledgement of the stature and growing influence of the Bol­sheviks among the masses. But would the Bolsheviks really join actively with the moderate socialists and the government in the fight against Kor­nilov? As counterrevolutionary forces approached and the capital braced for battle, this was a crucial question in the minds of moderate socialist leaders. The Menshevik-Internationalist Sukhanov later pointed out the importance of the Bolsheviks at this time.

The committee, making defense preparations, had to mobilize the worker-soldier masses. But the masses, insofar as they were organized, were organized by the Bolsheviks and followed them. At that time, theirs was the only organization that was large, welded together by an elemen­tary discipline, and linked with the democratic lowest levels of the capital. Without it, the committee was impotent. Without the Bolsheviks, it could only have passed the time with appeals and idle speeches by orators who had lost their authority. With the Bolsheviks, the committee had at its dis­posal the full power of the organized workers and soldiers.⁵

For the Bolsheviks, mapping a suitable program of action during the Kornilov crisis was no simple matter. Although several top officials jailed in July had already been freed (Kamenev, for instance), Trotsky, who was soon to play a decisive role in the party's fortunes, was still languishing in prison. Lenin and Zinoviev remained underground, the former hiding in Finland, the latter in a Petrograd suburb. Lenin dispatched directives relat­ing to the struggle against Kornilov to his colleagues in Petrograd as quickly as he could, but his instructions, written on August 30, did not reach the capital until the first days of September, well after the crisis had passed.⁶ To be sure, the party leadership had as a practical guide the bitterly de­bated resolutions on tactics adopted four weeks earlier by the Sixth Con­gress. But, as we have seen, these were highly ambiguous: while the congress's statement "On the Political Situation" encouraged collaboration with all elements dedicated to fighting counterrevolution, the resolution "On Unification," which expressly declared that the Mensheviks had "de­serted to the camp of the enemy of the proletariat for good," seemed to preclude cooperation in any form between Bolsheviks and moderate socialists.⁷ Did this*mean that the party could not join with the Mensheviks and SRs, not to speak of the government, in defense measures against Kor­nilov, but rather that it would have to strike out on an entirely independent revolutionary course?

On the night of August 27-28, Petrograd Bolshevik leaders had every reason to suppose that Lenin's assessment of the situation would conform to the views expressed in "On Unification." Apart from his unequivocal pro­nouncements of mid-July and his instructions to the Sixth Congress, of direct relevance were supplementary instructions to the Bolshevik Central Committee and an article, "Rumors of a Conspiracy," which Lenin wrote on August 18-19.⁸ He had been prompted to prepare these statements after reading in Novaia zhizrf of August 17 a report of collaboration between Bolsheviks and moderate socialists in the Provisional Revolutionary Com­mittee organized by the Moscow Soviet during the Moscow State Conference.⁹ From this dispatch, Lenin correctly surmised that to ward off an expected counterrevolutionary military attack, Moscow Bolsheviks had allied closely with local Mensheviks and SRs. This news had enraged Lenin—here was further evidence of the reluctance of many of his most influential associates to break decisively with the Mensheviks and SRs and, to the contrary, of their inclination toward working with "compromisers" in pursuit of common goals. Lenin was apprehensive that such predilections within the party would hamper the prospect of its acting boldly to take power at an opportune moment; hence, he attacked the Moscow Bolsheviks unmercifully.

Starting from the assumption that the Provisional Government and the majority socialists were no less hostile to the revolution than "Kornilov and his cossacks," Lenin contended that the counterrevolutionary scare of mid-August had been artfully contrived by the Mensheviks and SRs to hoodwink the masses into believing that they were champions of the revolu­tion.

The political scheme of the Menshevik and defensist traitors is as clear as can be. . . . It is hard to believe that among the Bolsheviks there are fools and scoundrels who would enter into a bloc with the defensists now. . . . The congress resolution ["On Unification"] being what it is, any Bol­shevik who came to terms with the defensists . . . would, of course, be expelled immediately and deservedly from the party. . . . Even in the event that a counterrevolutionary attack appeared genuine, not a single honest Bolshevik who had not taken leave of his senses completely would agree to any bloc. ... In these circumstances a Bolshevik would say "our workers and soldiers will fight the counterrevolutionary troops." . . . They will do so not to defend the government . . . but independently, to protect the revolution as they pursue their own aims. ... A Bolshevik would tell the Mensheviks: "We shall fight, of course, but we refuse to enter into any political alliance whatever with you [and] reject expression of the least confidence in you."

In the instructions appended to "Rumors of a Conspiracy," Lenin re­quested that the Central Committee launch an official inquiry into the be­havior of local Bolshevik leaders during the Moscow State Conference and demanded that any party officials found guilty of participating in a bloc be removed from the Central and Moscow committees. Implying that the popular protest stimulated by the Moscow Conference indicated that an uprising on the order of the July days was not far off and that when this occurred the party would have to take power into its own hands, he in­sisted, "It is absolutely essential to have people at the helm in Moscow who will not swerve to the right, who will not form blocs with the Mensheviks, and who will understand the new tasks of the party and the new slogan of seizing power."¹⁰

Information on the initial responses of top Bolshevik leaders in Petrograd to news of Kornilov's attack on the Provisional Government is fragmentary; it appears that not until August 30 did the Central Committee meet as a body to take account of the latest developments.¹¹ The Bolshevik fractions in the All-Russian Executive Committees, among whom were several Cen­tral Committee members, first met in connection with the developing crisis on the early evening of August 27. They probably caucused again after midnight during an extended break in the Executive Committees' delibera­tions. It is well to bear in mind that within the party Soviet fractions, the influence of moderates such as Kamenev was strong throughout the summer of 1917. The right wing of the party had rejected Lenin's radical revolution­ary course at the April Conference and later, with less energy, at the Sixth Congress. It did so again the night of August 27-28. At the start of the All-Russian Executive Committees' meeting just described, Bolshevik spokesmen did not present a formal resolution on the government question. Subsequently the party supported the Mensheviks and SRs in calling for another broad national conference to reassess the political situation. After Kerensky's firmness on the matter of establishing a Directory became known, Lunacharsky insisted not only that the Soviet break decisively with the government, but that it take upon itself the responsibility for forming a new government. His resolution, envisioning the declaration of a demo­cratic republic and the immediate convocation of a Constituent Assembly, was fully consistent with the theoretical outlook of the moderates. Worse yet from the point of view expressed in "Rumors of a Conspiracy," in the heat of the moment a Bolshevik representative actually had offered a formal alliance with the government in defense of the revolution.

At about the time the Bolshevik Soviet fractions first met at Smolny, the Petersburg Committee was in emergency session across the city in the Narva District.¹² Ironically, the meeting had been scheduled three days earlier at the insistence of Bolshevik militants from the Vyborg District, disgruntled by what they perceived to be the failure of higher party bodies to respond adequately to the growing threat of counterrevolution. It began

with a report on the latest developments by the Central Committee's An­drei Bubnov. A revolutionary activist since his student days in Ivanovo- Voznesensk and a veteran of some thirteen arrests and five prison terms, the thirty-four-year-old Bubnov was a relatively recent arrival in Petrograd, having moved from Moscow to the capital after his election to the Central Committee at the Sixth Congress. In Moscow Bubnov had been associated with a group of young radicals centered in the party's Moscow Regional Bureau.¹³ In early October he would appear before the Petersburg Com­mittee to support Lenin's plea for organization of an immediate armed up­rising, against advocates of more cautious tactics.¹⁴ And to the thirty-six local party officials assembled on the night of August 27 he proposed a significantly more independent, militant course than that being pursued by party leaders at Smolny. Obviously familiar with Lenin's "Rumors of a Conspiracy," he warned the Petersburg Committee against repeating the mistakes of some Moscow Bolsheviks during the Moscow State Conference and collaborating with the Mensheviks and SRs. In Moscow, he observed, "first the government turned to us for help and then we were spat upon." Totally rejecting Bolshevik participation in mutual-defense organs of any kind, he insisted that "there must be no interaction with the Soviet major­ity." Instead, he urged that the Bolsheviks work to control the actions of the masses themselves while pursuing their own interests and helping neither Kerensky nor Kornilov.¹⁵

When Bubnov had finished, Kalinin challenged the idea that the party had little stake in the outcome of the conflict between the government and the general staff, contending that if Kornilov appeared on the verge of de­feating Kerensky, the Bolsheviks would have to intervene on Kerensky's side. Disagreeing with Kalinin's moderate stance, a succession of speakers vented their hostility to the moderate socialists and the government, as well as to Kornilov. In their frustration, these speakers also lashed out at higher party authorities—at Bolshevik moderates in the Executive Committees for an excess of "defensism," at the leadership of the Military Organization for elusiveness, and at the Central Committee for "operating in a fog" during the July crisis. The Central Committee as well as the Executive Commission of the Petersburg Committee were chided for "cooling" the masses too long, for acting arbitrarily and independently, and for a "philistine outlook." On the other hand, somewhat contradictorily, the two party committees came in for criticism for not exerting enough leadership, particularly for devoting insufficient attention to keeping lower party bodies and the masses abreast of changes in the political situation. Observed the Vyborg District's always irreverent Latsis, "recently the Bolshevik central organs have made one ap­prehensive about the future of the party."

Midway in the meeting sentiment against the Executive Commission was so strong that it appeared the entire commission might be ousted on the spot; ultimately, it was agreed that new elections for the commission would be held at the next meeting. Although a few Petersburg Committee mem­bers must have been wondering privately whether it was not high time to organize a mass armed uprising, it is apparent that, to the bulk of the com­mittee, discussions along this line were, as Kalinin said, "nonsense." At one caustic moment in the debate, an unidentified district committee represen­tative abruptly shifted attention to practical matters. "We have vermicelli here," he shouted. "Consideration of the current moment is mixed up with pot shots at the Executive Commission! Let's get down to concrete defense measures!"

Despite these recriminations, there was little doubt within the Petersburg Committee about the necessity of drawing upon the full resources of the party and rallying mass organizations, as well as workers, soldiers, and sailors generally, for a life-and-death struggle against Kornilov. Committee members now turned their attention to preparations for battle. It was be­latedly acknowledged, even by Bubnov, that for "purposes of information" the party would have to maintain contact with the defense organ established by the leadership of the Soviet. An emergency communications network was established, with representatives from each district to be stationed at Petersburg Committee headquarters and round-the-clock watches to be maintained at the headquarters of district and factory-shop committees. The Executive Commission was made responsible for preparing leaflets calling workers and soldiers to arms, and for contingency military planning. It was decided that all party agitators would be mobilized for action in working-class districts the next day. Most important, individual Bolsheviks were designated to coordinate defense preparations with those of major mass organizations in the capital. In short, though fully conscious of the differences between their own goals and those of Kerensky, and also wary of close collaboration with the moderate socialists, members of the Peters­burg Committee joined their efforts with those of other left groups and directed their organizational talents and vast resources and energy to the fight against Kornilov.

There are some signs that during the Kornilov emergency the impulse for an immediate rising against the Provisional Government, as well as against Kornilov, may have been stronger within the Bolshevik Military Organiza­tion than within the Petersburg Committee. The relative militancy of at least a segment of the Military Organization is reflected in a one-page extra edition of Soldat which appeared on August 29 and in several editorials in the regular August 29 edition.¹⁶ The lead editorial in the August 29 extra edition portrayed the situation in the following terms:

The conspiracy is revealed. . . . The terrible thing is not so much the two Savage Divisons located at Dno . . . [but] the powerful military machine which is in Kornilov's hands and which he can employ against the revolution by means of crude provocations. We witnessed how this can be done in Petrograd. Why did Kornilov need malicious rumors about distur­bances allegedly being prepared by the Bolsheviks on the half-year an­niversary of the revolution? This was [Kornilov's] work. If the provocation had been successful, if shots had again been heard on Petrograd streets, neither Kerensky nor the Soviet leaders would have hesitated for a mo­ment appealing to Kornilov for help, and he would have appeared here at the head of his Chetniks and Ingushes as an angel of mercy. . . .

The power of the counterrevolution is simply enormous, and very nearly its most important source of strength lies in the readiness of the government to yield to Kornilov rather than permit the full development of the revolution. Only the full development of the revolution, only a consis­tently revolutionary government, will not make a deal with Kornilov or the Kadets or the Germans. The full development of the revolution means transfer of all power into the hands of the revolutionary workers and poorer peasantry and the w aging of an uncompromising struggle against all enemies of the people.

Exactly as is the case here now, when the enemy stood at the walls of Paris in 1871 the bourgeoisie preferred to deal with the enemy rather than compromise with the workers. The workers overthrew the bourgeoisie, took power into their own hands, and yielded only because they were ousted by the overwhelming force of government troops. They were de­feated because they were isolated.

Now the situation is different. The workers' revolution, the government of the revolutionary people, the dictatorship of the working class and poorer peasantry, will not disappear without a trace in a country in the sixth month of revolution. Revolutionary Petrograd, as revolutionary Paris never did, will carry with it the entire country. And there is no other way out.

As nearly as one can tell, Military Organization militancy during the Kornilov crisis did not go beyond such journalistic endeavor. On the night of August 28, Military Organization leaders met with their representatives in most units of the garrison. Sverdlov, who had been appointed by the Central Committee to oversee Military Organization operations after the July uprising, chaired the meeting. In the resolution adopted by the assem­bled soldier-Bolsheviks, "compromisers in the Soviet" were blamed for facilitating the consolidation of the counterrevolution. The resolution called for the formation of a "people's government," but, by implication, "com­promisers" could be included in this government. As a sign that the moder­ate socialist majority in the Soviet was genuinely ready to break with the counterrevolutionary bourgeoisie, the resolution demanded, among other things, the liberation of Bolsheviks jailed following the July uprising, the arrest of counterrevolutionary officers, the preparation of the Petrograd garrison for battle, and, with participation by representatives of soldier organizations, the formulation of plans for defeating and suppressing counterrevolutionary forces. The resolution also advocated the arming of the workers and the abolition of capital punishment at the front.¹⁷

After their meeting, the Military Organization representatives returned to their respective units and did not reassemble until the crisis was over. The relevant sources furnish very little evidence of further activity on the part of the Military Organization or its bureau, as independent organiza­tions, in the struggle against Kornilov.¹⁸ This does not mean, however, that members of the Military Organization were not of key importance at this time. Rather, what appears to have happened is that in the sudden emergency occasioned by the advance of Kornilov's forces, Military Or­ganization leaders, like their counterparts in the Petersburg Committee, channeled much of their effort to help defend the revolution through spe­cially created organs such as the Committee for Struggle, other nonparty mass organizations, and the soviets. Working within these institutions, Bol­shevik Military Organization members played a prominent role in helping to mobilize and arm large numbers of workers, soldiers, and sailors, and giving programmatic and tactical direction to their efforts. The party's official stance in the crisis was summed up in a policy directive which the Central Committee cabled to twenty key provincial Bolshevik committees on August 29: "In the interest of repulsing the counterrevolution, we are working in collaboration with the Soviet on a technical and informational basis, while fully retaining our independent political position. . . ,"¹⁹

Ad hoc revolutionary committees similar to the Committee for Struggle had been created all over Russia during the February revolution; on a more limited scale such institutions had reappeared at the time of the June and July crises and during the counterrevolutionary scare of mid-August. The vast majority of these committees remained in existence for only a short time, which distinguished them in part from the more permanent soviets. Uniting representatives of all left groups, such ad hoc committees filled the need for authoritative military-revolutionary organizations capable of acting expeditiously in emergencies. In response to the Kornilov crisis, revolution­ary committees sprang up like mushrooms after a late summer rain; be­tween August 27 and 30 more than 240 of them were formed in various parts of Russia, often by urban and rural soviets.²⁰ In the Petrograd area alone, in addition to the Committee for Struggle, established by the All- Russian Executive Committees on the night of August 27-28, ad hoc com­mittees to mobilize and organize the masses, procure weapons and ammuni­tion, assure the maintenance of essential services, and in general to direct and coordinate the defense of the revolution were hastily created by the Petrograd Soviet; the Interdistrict Conference; several district soviets; and naval soviets in Reval, Helsingfors, and Kronstadt.

In part because of the isolation and lack of authority of the Provisional Government within those sectors of the Russian population most hostile to Kornilov, and no doubt also because many high government officials were secretly sympathetic to Kornilov and hence, at best, passive in the cam­paign against him,²¹ the Committee for Struggle, above all its Military Sec­tion, willy-nilly became the national command post for combating the right. As formed on August 28, the committee was composed of three rep­resentatives each of the Bolsheviks, Mensheviks, and SRs, five repre­sentatives each from the All-Russian Executive Committees; and two representatives each from the Central Trade Union and Petrograd Soviets; a representative of the Interdistrict Conference was added to the commit­tee the next day. In addition to its Military Section, the Committee for Struggle had a political commissariat and an information section.²² The com­mittee issued a constant stream of emergency bulletins which, through the Petrograd telegraph agency, gave wide publicity to appeals and directives from the government, soviets, and other mass organizations, and kept citi­zens everywhere abreast of late political and military developments. The committee also facilitated the distribution of arms and ammunition to garri­son units in need of reinforcement, initiated steps to protect food supplies, dispatched a number of influential soviet officials to meet and harangue enemy forces, and, in the meantime, working through rail and communica­tions workers' unions, sought to disrupt Kornilov's advance toward the capital.²³

Nonetheless, the decisive moments of the Kornilov emergency occurred so quickly that effective coordination of the campaign against the right, even in the Petrograd area, proved impossible. It was also unnecessary. Spurred by the news of Kornilov's attack, all political organizations to the left of the Kadets, every labor organization of any import, and soldier and sailor committees at all levels immediately rose to fight against Kornilov. It would be difficult to find, in recent history, a more powerful, effective dis­play of largely spontaneous and unified mass political action.

The initiative, energy, and authority of the Petrograd Interdistrict Con­ference of Soviets²⁴ during the Kornilov days emerge with particular clar­ity from the relevant documents. As early as August 24, the conference (still directed by the Menshevik-Internationalist Alexander Gorin but strongly influenced by the Bolsheviks), fearful that an attack by the coun­terrevolution was imminent, had passed a resolution which demanded that the government immediately declare Russia a democratic republic and an­nounce that Russian war aims (presumably as defined by the Petrograd Soviet in March) were immutable. The resolution insisted on the immediate breakup of counterrevolutionary headquarters and formal recognition of the authority of democratic committees within the army, demanded an end to the persecution of leftists, and called for the immediate formation of a "Committee of Public Safety" and fighting squads of workers and unem­ployed to defend the revolution.²⁵

Consequently, the Interdistrict Conference was fully primed to take prompt action when, a few days later, Kornilov's intentions were disclosed. At an emergency session of the conference on August 28, the assembled district soviet representatives voted to delegate a representative to the

Committee for Struggle and to each of its sections, to remain in permanent session, to take the lead in organizing an armed workers' militia under the political responsibility of the Interdistrict Conference and district soviets, to impose control by district soviets over the actions of local government commissars, to send out roving patrols charged with detaining counter­revolutionary agitators, and to establish close contact between soviets and dumas in all districts.²⁶ These were not mere statements of intent: the In­terdistrict Conference at once dispatched to all district soviets in and around Petrograd specific directives relating to the recruitment, organization, and arming of a workers' militia.²⁷ For the duration of the Kornilov emergency, the Interdistrict Conference's offices at Smolny and the headquarters of each district soviet became directing centers for the preservation of rev­olutionary order and for mass action against the counterrevolution.²⁸

The activities of the Peterhof District Soviet are illustrative of the initia­tives taken by other district soviets. On August 28 Mikhail Bogdanov, a Bolshevik construction worker who represented the Peterhof Soviet in the Interdistrict Conference, reported to his soviet, erroneously as it turned out, that loyalist forces in Luga were suffering reverses. Bogdanov also in­formed the Peterhof deputies of the Interdistrict Conference's plans for the organization of a workers' militia. Bogdanov's listeners responded to this news by quickly agreeing to arrange factory meetings where measures for coping with the existing emergency would be discussed and to form a "Cen­tral Revolutionary Committee" to organize and direct a "Red Guard."²⁹

The following morning a proclamation from "the Peterhof Central Rev­olutionary Committee, the Peterhof District Soviet, and factory-shop committees in the Peterhof District" was posted throughout the district. It announced that "military conspirators, headed by the traitor General Kor­nilov and supported by the blindness and lack of political consciousness of some divisions, are moving toward the heart of the revolution— Petrograd." Counterrevolutionary supporters, this proclamation con­tinued, "are attempting to stab in the back revolutionary forces defend­ing Petrograd, circulating provocatory rumors and appeals aimed at stimulating panic among the populace, and bringing workers into the streets prematurely." "Don't be taken in by such provocations," the proclamation warned. "Don't permit drunkenness. . . . Rely on your own power to maintain revolutionary order. Don't undertake mass action in the absence of our call. . . . Let us concentrate all our power on the fight against the counterrevolution. . . . Maintain calm, restraint, and discipline." At the direction of the Peterhof Central Revolutionary Committee, large numbers of factory workers were armed and sent to dig trenches, erect barricades, and string barbed wire along the southern approaches to the city; simul­taneously, other workers were made responsible for keeping tabs on the activities of potential rightist supporters, protecting factories, and helping to preserve order.³⁰

Other organizations, among them the Petrograd City Duma, the Petro­grad Trade Union Soviet,³¹ the Central Soviet of Factory-Shop Committees, and individual trade unions and factory committees, were similarly active in the struggle against Kornilov. On August 28 an emergency session of the City Duma, in which the Bolsheviks were now the second largest party, voted to prepare appropriate appeals to Kornilov's troops and to the popula­tion of Petrograd. The deputies also formed a commission to work with the authorities in assuring the procurement and distribution of adequate food supplies and selected a team of deputies to go to Luga to win over Kornilov's troops.³²

On August 26 the Petrograd Trade Union Soviet and the Central Soviet of Factory-Shop Committees, meeting jointly, had endorsed the Interdis- trict Conference's call for a "Committee of Public Safety" to help organize the defense of the capital. Now, at an unscheduled session on August 28, the Petrograd Trade Union Soviet's Executive Commission, in which Bol­shevik influence was strong, responded to an invitation to appoint a rep­resentative to the Committee for Struggle by choosing the Bolshevik Vasilii Shmidt for the post. The next morning, after hearing an alarming report on food supply stocks in the capital from the head of the food supply adminis­tration, the full Trade Union Soviet formed a food supply commission of its own composed of representatives from the transport workers' union; the flour mill workers' union; restaurant, food store, and food industry workers; and the Trade Union Soviet.³³ On August 29 the Central Soviet of Factory-Shop Committees met with factory-shop committee representatives from industrial plants throughout the capital to evaluate preparations for battle and to help coordinate the distribution of arms to workers. That evening the Trade Union Soviet and the Central Soviet of Factory-Shop Committees held a joint session. After hearing a progress report by Shmidt on the work of the Committee for Struggle, the participants in this meeting agreed to support it in every way possible and to coordinate their own defense efforts with those of the committee. They also voted to insist on the liberation of revolutionaries still in jail and on the adoption of decisive measures to suppress the rightist press and arrest counterrevolutionaries. Moreover, after reevaluating the question of distributing arms to workers, they enthusiastically endorsed such action.³⁴

The Petrograd Union of Metalworkers, which, as spokesman for over 200,000 workers, was far and away the most powerful labor union in Russia, allocated fifty thousand rubles from its treasury, as well as the services of its large, experienced staff, to the Committee for Struggle. The Left SR-controlled chauffeurs' union announced that the government could count on all of the transport and maintenance services it could provide, while the printers' union, dominated by Mensheviks, ordered typesetters to boycott presses that published newspapers supporting Kornilov.³⁵

Of the individual trade unions, the most important during the Kornilov crisis was, inevitably, the Union of Railway Workers. On August 28 and 29 the Soviet Central Executive Committee had warned rail personnel that it was their responsibility to prevent needless bloodshed. Rail workers were directed to monitor the progress of military forces being moved toward Petrograd, to obey without hesitation orders of the government and soviet in regard to the holding up and redirection of these troops, and to ignore instructions coming from Kornilov. An analogous telegram was dispatched at about the same time by Kerensky to supervisors on all rail lines in the rear and at the front and to all rail committees. Significantly earlier, on August 27, the Ail-Russian Executive Committee of Railway Workers (cus­tomarily designated by its Russian acronym, Vikzhel) had formed a special bureau for struggle against Kornilov's forces.³⁶ On August 28 Vikzhel sent telegrams to key points along the entire Russian rail network directing that "suspicious telegrams" be held up and that Vikzhel be kept informed of the size and destination of all suspect military forces traveling on rail lines. Rail personnel were authorized to interrupt the movement of counterrevolu­tionary forces by any and all means, including withholding rail cars, absent­ing themselves from their posts, and, if need be, dismantling tracks and blocking the right of way. They were also encouraged to halt shipment of provisions to areas occupied by Kornilov's supporters. Implementation of these directives began immediately.³⁷

Within hours after public announcement of the Kornilov emergency, alarm whistles were sounded in factories throughout Petrograd. Acting on their own, without instructions from higher authorities, workers reinforced security around plant buildings and grounds and began to form fighting detachments. On August 28—29 long lines of workers could be seen in the factory districts, waiting to enroll in these detachments, referred to with increasing frequency as "Red Guards."³⁸ To help arm these recruits, per­sonnel in the cannon shops at the Putilov factory speeded production of a variety of weapons which were dispatched directly to the field without even a test-firing; metalworkers simply accompanied their products and adjusted the weapons on the spot. The factory committee at the sprawling Ses­troretsk weapons factory funneled a few⁷ thousand rifles and limited quan­tities of ammunition to the newly formed workers' Red Guards. Other weapons were obtained from the arsenal in the Peter and Paul Fortress and from garrison soldiers, but the demand for arms far outran the supply. During the Kornilov days, many of the newly recruited Red Guards re­ceived training in the handling of arms from soldiers assigned to this task by the Bolshevik Military Organization. After a hasty indoctrination, Red Guards were dispatched, some to man hurriedly constructed defense fortifications in the southern Narva and Moscow districts and on the Pul- kovo heights, others to lay barbed wire, dig trenches, or help tear up track along the rail lines leading to the capital, and still others to meet General Krymov's advancing troops.

Most soldiers in the partially dismantled Petrograd garrison responded to the crisis with equal dispatch. Soon after news of Kornilov's ultimatum to the government began to circulate on August 27, unit committees and has­tily organized mass meetings of soldiers in military barracks throughout the capital and its suburbs had passed resolutions condemning the counter­revolution and voicing their readiness to help defend the revolution. Garri­son soldiers strengthened communications with neighboring military units and with such institutions as the Committee for Struggle, the Soldiers' Sec­tion of the Petrograd Soviet,³⁹ district soviets, and the Bolshevik Military Organization. Garrison units suspended leaves, increased the number of soldiers assigned to guard duty, took stock of existing supplies of arms and ammunition, and formed delegations of agitators and composite fighting detachments for service at the front.

The Litovsky Guards Regiment declared in a resolution of August 28: "All troops not involved in work details or without valid medical excuses are required to participate in the detachment [now] being formed. Officers and men refusing to do their duty will be subject to revolutionary trial." The Sixth Engineers quickly organized a six-hundred-man detachment to aid in the construction of defense fortifications. The Petrograd Carters' Battalion pledged the five hundred carts at its disposal to help supply military units defending the Soviet. Between the night of August 28 and the following evening, detachments of armed soldiers from all the guards and reserve infantry regiments and numerous artillery and technical units in the capital, often accompanied by their officers, moved out to Gatchina, Tsarskoe Selo, Krasnoe Selo, and other strategic points, established themselves in trenches—some of which had been dug hours earlier by factory workers —and nervously awaited the enemy. (Within the Petrograd garrison, only cossack troops and military school cadets did not join at once in the cam­paign against the counterrevolution; the former remained neutral, while the latter sided openly with Kornilov.)⁴⁰

Baltic Fleet installations dealt with the emergency in much the same way. On August 28 the Soviet in Reval, meeting with the Executive Committee of the Estonian Soviet and with army and fleet committees and representa­tives of the major socialist parties, organized a United Executive Committee to direct the fight against the counterrevolution; among other things, this organization brought garrison and naval units in the Reval area to battle readiness and instructed revolutionary forces to occupy key rail points nearby. In Helsingfors on the same day a joint emergency meeting of the Regional Executive Committee of the Army, Fleet, and Workers in Fin­land; the Executive Committee of the Helsingfors Soviet; members of Tsen- trobalt; the Regional Committee of Finnish Peasant Soviets; and representa­tives of local army and ship committees (altogether some six hundred leftist political leaders, soldiers, sailors, and workers) began with the passage of a resolution branding Kornilov and his supporters "traitors to the revolution and the state," and demanding the transfer of governmental power to ^uthe revolutionary democracy" and the immediate shutdown of all bourgeois newspapers and presses. The meeting culminated in the creation of a revolutionary committee with unrestricted powers to prevent counter­revolutionary action and to maintain order in Finland. Launching opera­tions promptly, this committee helped to paralyze the activities of several large Finnish-based cossack and cavalry units which Kornilov had counted upon for support and dispatched a composite fifteen-hundred-man combat force from Vyborg to Petrograd. "Comrades! A terrible hour has struck —the revolution and all its achievements are in the gravest danger," began the Helsingfors Revolutionary Committee's proclamation of its supreme political authority in Finland. "The time has come when the revolution and the country need your strength, your sacrifices, perhaps your lives; because of this the revolutionary committee appeals to all of you to come to the defense of the revolution and freedom with closed ranks, ... to deal a crushing blow to the counterrevolution, nipping it in the bud."

Initially, word of the Kornilov crisis was brought to Kronstadt during the night of August 27 by some sailors from the cruiser Aurora, then undergo­ing capital repairs in Petrograd. The Executive Committee of the Kronstadt Soviet (under its newly elected chairman, Lazar Bregman, a Bolshevik) im­mediately took control of all communications facilities, weapons stores, and private and port vessels; dispatched commissars to military headquarters and nearby naval forts at Ino and Krasnaia Gorka; and created a "Military-Technical Committee." This committee, which included the overall commander of all the Kronstadt naval units, the Kronstadt fort commander, the head of the Kronstadt militia, and representatives of all major parties in the Executive Committee, assumed, for practical purposes, full command authority over all military elements in Kronstadt. After re­ceiving an urgent request for troop support from the Committee for Strug­gle, the Military-Technical Committee shot back a demand for the release of "our comrades, the finest fighters and sons of the revolution who are at this minute languishing in prison"; at the same time it declared unequivo­cally that the entire Kronstadt garrison, "as one man," was ready to come to the defense of the revolution. Three thousand well-armed sailors, a high percentage of whom had been to Petrograd last as participants in the July uprising, departed for the capital in the early morning of August 29. After disembarking at the quays along Vasilevsky Island, they were dispatched to help protect rail stations, bridges, the main post office, the telegraph and telephone station, the Winter Palace, and other key government buildings.⁴¹

The overwhelming superiority of the left over the pro-Kornilov forces was quickly evident. Steps taken by the moderate socialists and Bolsheviks to insure that factory workers would not be deceived by rightist agitators achieved their aim. Petrograd newspapers during the Kornilov days con-

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Members of the Bolshevik Kronstadt Committee. Bottom row , left to right: B. A. Zhem- chuzhin, I. D. Sladkov, F. F. Raskolnikov, S. G. Roshal. Second row: B. A. Breslav, I. P. Flerovsky, S. Pelikhov, L. N. Stahl, A. M. Liubovich. Third row: D. N. Kondakov, V. I. Deshevoi, S. L. Entin, L. A. Bregman, P. I. Smirnov, I. N. Kolbin.

tained reports of scattered rightist agitation among the masses, but in no case did these incidents lead to the large-scale civil disorders hoped for by the conspirators. After the crisis erupted on August 27, conducting open counterrevolutionary agitation anywhere in Petrograd became very hazard­ous. In addition, swift action by rail and telegraph workers initially pre­vented rightist leaders in the capital from establishing communications with advancing counterrevolutionary forces.

Within units of the Petrograd garrison, the relatively few officers with

the temerity to register sympathy for Kornilov, or even reluctance to op­pose him, were simply ignored, to be dealt with when time permitted. In the Helsingfors area some officers suspected of harboring counterrevolu­tionary sentiments were lynched. In Vyborg, several high-level officers who refused to acknowledge the authority of a commissar sent to their unit by the Helsingfors revolutionary committee were immediately arrested; a mob of soldiers later broke into their place of detention and killed them. Aboard the battleship Petropavlovsk, based in Helsingfors, the entire crew partici­pated in a vote to decide whether or not to execute four young officers who declined to pledge their allegiance to "democratic organizations." Sentiment was overwhelmingly against the officers and they were slaughtered, the firing squad carrying out the sentence having been selected by lot.⁴²

On August 29 fourteen officers allegedly connected with the Kornilov conspiracy were rounded up in the Hotel Astoria, in the center of Petro­grad. That day as well, a number of the junior officers who had been tem­porarily transferred from the front to Petrograd, supposedly for "training in the handling of newly developed English trench mortars," were discovered and detained aboard trains bound for the capital. It appears that most right­ist leaders in Petrograd, among them Colonel V. I. Sidorin (chief liaison officer between Stavka and conspiratorial groups in the capital), Colonel Desimeter (head of the Republican Center's Military Section), and P. N. Finisov (a vice-president of the Republican Center) spent much of their time on August 27 and 28 simply waiting for word of Krymov's whereabouts; they passed the intervening hours downing quantities of vodka in private rooms at two popular Petrograd nightspots—the Malyi Iaroslavets and Villa Rode. On the evening of the twenty-eighth, Desimeter and Finisov set off toward Luga to locate Krymov. Sidorin remained behind to super­vise the concoction of a "Bolshevik riot" upon receipt of a coded message from Desimeter: "Act at once according to instructions." Such a signal was dispatched to Sidorin on the morning of August 29 and was received in Petrograd that evening; but by that time the futility of the rightist cause was obvious. Sidorin reportedly was pressured out of proceeding with a simulated rising by General Alekseev, who threatened suicide unless the conspirators' plans were aborted.⁴³ In the end, Sidorin simply disappeared, allegedly taking with him a considerable sum of money put up by Putilov and the Society for the Economic Rehabilitation of Russia to finance a military coup.⁴⁴

As for the forces under General Krymov's command, it will be recalled that on August 27 Kornilov directed elements of the Third Corps to con­tinue their advance toward Petrograd and to occupy the city. The next day troop trains carrying these forces were strung out for hundreds of miles along the major rail lines leading to the capital—the Savage Division on the Moskovsko-Vindavo-Rybinskoi line between Dno and Vyritsa, the Us- suriisky Mounted Division on the Baltic line between Reval and Narva and

Narva and Iamburg, and the First Don Cossack Division on the Warsaw line between Pskov and Luga.

Units of the Savage Division posed the most immediate threat to the capital. On the evening of August 28 elements of the Ingushsky and Cher- kessky regiments reached Vyritsa, only thirty-seven miles from the capital. But rail workers there had blocked the right of way with lumber-filled rail­way cars and had torn up the track for miles beyond. Not only were the troops unable to progress further by rail, it was impossible for them to communicate effectively with other elements of the division or with Gen­eral Krymov, Stavka, or Petrograd. While the division's officers fumed helplessly, the soldiers were harangued by a stream of agitators, among whom were emissaries from the Committee for Struggle, several Petrograd district soviets, and a number of Petrograd factories, as well as from garrison military units then digging in for battle outside Tsarskoe Selo further north. Also on hand were a team of nearly a hundred agitators selected by Tsentrofiot (the Central Executive Committee of the Navy) from among sailors in the Second Baltic Fleet Crew who previously had been attached to the Savage Division as machine gunners, and a smaller, all-Moslem, delega­tion, dispatched by the Executive Committee of the Union of Moslem Soviets, which included a grandson of the legendary Shamil.

At times, echelons of the Savage Division were encircled by local work­ers and peasants who berated them for betraying the revolution. The troops had not been told the real reason for their movement northward, and, as it turned out, most had little sympathy for Kornilov's objectives and no desire to oppose the Provisional Government and the Soviet. On August 30 the troops hoisted a red flag inscribed "Land and Freedom" over their head­quarters and arrested the headquarters commandant when he protested. They then formed a revolutionary committee to prevent any further move­ment toward Petrograd, to inform other units in the division about how they were being "used" by the counterrevolution, and to organize a meeting of representatives of all units in the division. When such a meeting, at­tended by the Moslem delegation, was convened the next day, it voted to send a delegation to Petrograd at once with a pledge of loyalty to the Provi­sional Government.⁴⁵

The Ussuriisky Mounted Division found itself in a similar situation. On August 28 railway workers in Narva delayed its forward progress for some seven hours. Late that night lead elements of the division reached Iamburg but could go no further, since the track beyond had been blocked and wrecked. On August 29 and 30 crowds of agitators from the Narva and Iamburg soviets and from factories, military units, and mass organizations in Petrograd, as well as a delegation from the Committee for Struggle led by Tsereteli, circulated among the troops. As in the case of the Savage Division, the Ussuriisky soldiers were quickly persuaded not to obey their officers' orders and to pledge loyalty to the Provisional Government; all that was necessary to win over some unit committees was a reading of Kerensky's initial public proclamations of Kornilov's treachery.⁴⁶

Probably the most difficult force to neutralize was the First Don Cossack Division, with which General Krymov and his staff were traveling. Ele­ments of the division had reached Luga the night of August 27, but here, too, speedy measures by railway workers, acting in concert with the Luga Soviet, stymied further advance by rail; the railway workers held back rol­ling stock, wrecked bridges and track, and effectively blocked communica­tions between Krymov's forces. Subsequently, the trains carrying the First Don Cossack Division were surrounded by soldiers from the twenty- thousand-man Luga garrison. Deputies from the Luga Soviet and the Pet­rograd City Duma, as well as worker-soldier representatives from the capi­tal, swarmed around the wagons, haranguing the occupants through the train windows. Officers in the division protested the presence of Bolshevik agents, but to no avail. Krymov, upon receiving orders from Kornilov to continue his advance on Petrograd regardless of the obstacles, weighed the possibility of marching his troops the remaining fifty-seven miles to the capital. He rejected this course when it became clear that the soldiers from the Luga garrison would resist such action by force and that the cossacks would not oppose the soldiers.

Actually, there were almost no skirmishes between Kornilov's forces and those on the government's side during the entire affair. In the case of the First Don Cossack Division, agitators were soon drawing the troops to mass rallies before Krymov's very eyes. With relatively little difficulty they won soldier-representatives in most units to their point of view, and by August 30 some cossacks were expressing their readiness to arrest Krymov. Finally, late on the afternoon of August 30, a government emissary, Colonel Georgii Samarin, invited Krymov to accompany him back to Petrograd for talks with Kerensky. Given firm assurances of his personal safety, Krymov reluc­tantly acquiesced.⁴⁷

Krymov, who had just received word from Finisov and Desimeter that disorders would break out in the capital momentarily, seems to have left Luga with some hope that Kerensky might still turn to him for help in suppressing the left. His hope, however, was shortlived. Arriving in Pet­rograd by car the night of August 30-31, Krymov found the city altogether quiet; it was plain by now that the affair was all but over. The bulk of the army had remained loyal to the government and the Soviet. On the south­western front the outspoken General Denikin had been incarcerated by his own troops. The aging commander of the northern front, General Klem- bovsky, who had disobeyed Kerensky's order to take Kornilov's place as supreme commander, quietly resigned and was soon replaced by the leftish General Cheremisov. Commanders of the other major Russian fronts now belatedly pledged their loyalty to the government. Kerensky named himself supreme commander, and the conservative General Alekseev emerged from retirement to become chief of staff.⁴⁸ Because of his former close association with Kornilov, Savinkov was stripped of his posts as governor-general and acting war minister; his replacement in the latter capacity was General Verkhovsky, the commander of the Moscow Military District. A high-level commission appointed by Kerensky, much like the body created several weeks earlier to hand up indictments in connection with the July uprising, was about to begin an investigation of the conspiracy.

The public figures who had hailed the "people's commander-in-chief" at the time of the Moscow⁷ Conference now hastened to put distance between themselves and Kornilov. Declared Rodzianko sanctimoniously: "All I know about the evils of the day is what I read in the papers. . . . To start internecine warfare and argument now is a crime against the motherland." Vladimir Lvov, still seemingly in a daze, expressed genuine pleasure at the outcome of the affair. On August 30, from his jail cell, he penned the following note to Kerensky: "My dear Alexander Fedorovich. From the bottom of my heart I congratulate you and am happy that I delivered a friend from Kornilov's clutches. Yours always and everywhere, V. Lvov."⁴⁹

General Krymov met with Kerensky in the Winter Palace on the morn­ing of August 31. According to all reports, their conversation was ex­tremely heated, although information on precisely what transpired is con­tradictory. Krymov evidently insisted that his troops had not been directed against the Provisional Government, that his only object was and had al­ways been to help facilitate the maintenance of order. Hearing this after he had read Krymov's August 26 order regarding the imposition of military rule in Petrograd, Kerensky grew livid and berated Krymov fiercely for his duplicity. For Krymov the experience was understandably trying. A courageous commander who took great pride in the traditional military vir­tues of patriotism, straightforwardness, and decisiveness, he had hoped since February to help halt the revolution and reestablish a strong central government, in the belief that otherwise Russia was doomed. Yet now he was forced to lie to save himself and his associates, accused of crimes against the state by a man who for some time had been privately voicing similar convictions. Ahead lay further interrogation, the necessity for more deception, and the ignominity of arrest, prosecution, and prison. Krymov, in despair, left Kerensky at around 2:00 p.m. with the understanding that he would appear at the Admiralty for further questioning later in the after­noon. From the Winter Palace, he went to the apartment of a friend, where, to no one in particular, he observed dejectedly, "The last card for saving the motherland has been beaten—life is no longer worth living." Then, retiring to a private room, ostensibly for a rest, he scribbled a brief message to Kornilov and shot himself once through the heart.⁵⁰

THE QUESTION OF A NEW GOVERNMENT

_T

he quick collapse of the Kornilov movement brought to the fore the thorny problem of what kind of government should replace the defunct second coalition. At the start of the Kornilov emergency a temporary un­derstanding had been reached between Kerensky, who was bent on creating a strong Directory, and leaders of the Soviet, who, although uniformly opposed to the formation of such a government, were for the moment con­cerned primarily with shoring up the revolution's defenses. According to the political resolution passed by the All-Russian Executive Committees the night of August 27-28, Kerensky was to be given leave to form whatever government he wished, provided only that it remain fully dedicated to lead­ing an all-out fight against Kornilov.¹

On August 28, when it seemed likely that Krymov's forces would enter the capital and that a bloody clash between the forces of the right and the left would inevitably ensue, it appeared for a time that Kerensky might not act in accordance with the Executive Committees' resolution. At the height of the crisis, the Kadet Party leadership sought to forestall civil war by convincing Kerensky to yield his post to an authoritative figure with whom Kornilov would be willing to deal before Krymov's legions reached Petro­grad.

The candidate selected by the Kadets as potentially acceptable to both Kornilov and Kerensky was General Alekseev. On the afternoon of the twenty-eighth, Miliukov offered his services to Kerensky as an intermediary between the government and the General Staff. Shortly afterward, another high-ranking Kadet, Nikolai Kishkin, sounded out Kerensky specifically on the question of his resignation in favor of Alekseev. That evening, a major­ity of Kerensky's acting ministers apparently agreed on the advisability of substituting Alekseev for Kerensky, and many of them made their views known to the prime minister. Allied representatives in Russia, led by

Britain's George Buchanan, also attempted to persuade Kerensky to negotiate with Kornilov. It is clear that Kerensky, under the weight of such pressure, came very close to yielding his post. But the leadership of the Soviet categorically opposed negotiation; upon its insistence, Kerensky, at the eleventh hour, rejected the course pushed by the Kadets.²

Of course, by the next day, August 29, the Kornilov bubble had burst. For Kerensky, there was no longer any question of coming to terms with the generals. One might have expected that at this point, having suffered so badly at the hands of the right and having witnessed the enormous power of the left, the prime minister would have taken pains to retain the support of the latter. Yet, obsessed more than ever by fear of the extreme left and still intent on somehow strengthening the war effort, Kerensky now behaved almost as if the Kornilov affair had not happened. To be sure, he insisted on Kornilov's arrest and on the immediate resignation of Savinkov, and he now proclaimed Russia a republic. But in a charge to the chairman of the commission set up to investigate the Kornilov conspiracy, Kerensky stipu­lated that the inquiry, as it pertained to the military establishment, should be limited as much as possible to the complicity of the main participants.³ In addition, Kerensky appointed General Alekseev, the Kadet candidate for prime minister, to the post of chief-of-staff. In accepting his new position, Alekseev, whose views on the changes in the army brought about by the revolution coincided with those of Kornilov and Denikin, acknowledged privately that his primary motivation was to ease the fate of Kornilov and his supporters.⁴ Most telling of all, as soon as the Kornilov threat sub­sided, Kerensky began laying plans to form an authoritarian government oriented toward law and order—a right-socialist-liberal coalition cabinet in which the influence of the Kadets would be stronger than ever.

Meanwhile, the exigencies of the struggle against Kornilov had pulled the moderate socialists leftward into conflict with the government and toward closer alliance with the extreme left. After the July days, most Mensheviks and SRs had actively supported Kerensky in his attempts to disarm workers and suppress the Bolsheviks; during the Kornilov emergency, on the other hand, the Committee for Struggle Against the Counterrevolution was forced to endorse and facilitate the formation of armed workers' detach­ments.⁵ Although it is difficult to estimate how many workers first obtained arms and became organized for violent political action at this time, it is safe to say that whatever limited progress had been made earlier in pacifying the Petrograd masses was instantly undone.

One of the Bolsheviks' most insistent demands as the price of their par­ticipation in mutual defense organs (a plea echoed during the crisis by a myriad of mass organizations) was that Bolshevik leaders still in prison on suspicion of having been involved in the July uprising be released without further delay. On August 29, when a group of soldier-Bolsheviks broke out of their place of detention in the Second District Militia headquarters, evi­dently with the help of some sympathetic guards, the Committee for Strug­gle agreed that they should be allowed to remain free "in order to partici­pate in the common struggle against the counterrevolution." Pressure to do something about the prisoner issue mounted when leftist officers held in the First District Militia headquarters issued a public demand to be allowed to help in the fight against Kornilov and emphasized their demand by pro­claiming a hunger strike. Yielding to this pressure, which was strengthened by intervention on the prisoners' behalf by the Committee for Struggle, the authorities released a few Bolsheviks at the height of the Kornilov scare. Some other leftist leaders were freed in the first half of September. Thus on September 4 prison gates swung open for Antonov-Ovseenko and Dybenko. Trotsky was released the same day, his bail furnished by the Petrograd Soviet of Trade Unions.⁶ Several of the Bolshevik officers in­volved in the hunger strike in the First District Militia headquarters, among them Military Organization leaders Krylenko, Dashkevich, Kudelko, and Ter-Arutuniants, won their freedom a week later. All of these liberated Bolsheviks were to play active roles in the subsequent de­velopment of the revolution.⁷

Preparing to combat Kornilov, officials of the Committee for Struggle became alarmed that officers in the headquarters of the Petrograd Military District, supposedly participating in the defense of the city, were surrep­titiously trying to aid the general. There were numerous indications that these officers were dragging their feet in mobilizing, arming, and properly provisioning garrison units; upon their directives, some of the units ulti­mately dispatched were deployed so as to be sitting ducks for the attacking forces. When the sabotage by the military staff became apparent, the Committee for Struggle sent its own commissars to oversee the staff's operations.⁸

On August 28, when Kerensky had appeared on the verge of stepping down in favor of General Alekseev, the moderate socialists had brought pressure to bear upon Kerensky to prevent such a step. In the aftermath of the Kornilov experience many prominent Mensheviks and SRs were cool to Kerensky's aim of forming another coalition with the Kadets. This was partly because the Kadets were now a symbol of antirepublican, an- tireform, and prowar sentiment, and hence popular opinion in Petrograd was hostile to continued Kadet participation in the government. It was also because of genuine concern among the Menshevik and SR leaders them­selves about the Kadet role in the Kornilov conspiracy.

A joint plenary meeting of the All-Russian Executive Committees, primarily to consider the government question, was quickly scheduled for the evening of August 31, soon after Kerensky's political intentions became known. Meanwhile, a hastily assembled emergency meeting of the Men­shevik Central Committee adopted a resolution stating that "participation in the government of elements that had sympathized with the counterrevolu­tion or whose intention had been to paralyze the fight against the counter­revolution was impermissible." As to the status of the Kadets, the resolu­tion declared specifically that they could not longer be included in the Pro­visional Government.⁹ A meeting of the SR Central Committee adopted an analogous position. These views were conveyed immediately to Kerensky, who at this juncture temporarily shelved plans to construct another coali­tion and instead announced the formation of a "caretaker" five-man Direc­tory from which Kadets were excluded. Headed by Kerensky, the Direc­tory was made up of Tereshchenko, still handling foreign affairs; two younger, relatively progressive military officers, Admiral Dmitrii Ver- derevsky and General Verkhovsky, heading the naval and war ministries respectively; and Aleksei Nikitin, an undistinguished right Menshevik who had been minister of labor in the second coalition, as minister of post and telegraph.

In formulating a stance on the government issue, the moderate socialists were faced with a situation reminiscent in many ways of the July days. At that time massive numbers of workers and soldiers had taken to the streets to protest the policies of the Provisional Government and to demand that the Soviet assume power; their cry had been "Down with the Ten Minister-Capitalists!" "All Power to the Soviets!" Now, in the first flush of their triumph over Kornilov, the local-level mass organizations and the fac­tory workers, soldiers, and sailors who had joined in the anti-Kornilov movement expressed their views regarding the nature, makeup, and pro­gram of the future government in a torrent of letters, resolutions, and politi­cal declarations; these revealed that at bottom the demands of the masses at this time differed little from what they had been two months earlier.

Some representative examples will serve to convey the tenor of these ap­peals. Workers from the machine shop of the Petrograd pipe factory, after discussing "the current moment" on August 28, declared: "In view of the emerging bourgeois counterrevolutionary movement, as well as the attacks on freedom and on all the democratic gains of the Russian proletariat by former tsarist oprichniki [police thugs], all power must be transferred to the soviet of workers', soldiers', and peasants' deputies."¹⁰ The same day eight thousand workers in the Metallist factory approved a declaration of no confidence in the "minister-socialists," presumably for their willingness to cooperate with the bourgeoisie. These workers demanded the immediate creation of a "forceful revolutionary government." On the twenty-ninth an angry meeting of several thousand workers in the mammoth Putilov factory agreed that "the future government has to be composed solely of representa­tives of the revolutionary classes," adding that "any negotiations regarding the creation of a coalition government at a time when the bourgeoisie and its representative Kornilov are making war on the people will be considered treachery to the cause of freedom." Meanwhile, employees of the Novo- Admiralteisky shipbuilding plant, after considering the existing political

Factory workers gathered for a political meeting.

situation, insisted that "state power must not remain in the hands of the counterrevolutionary bourgeoisie a minute longer. It must be put into the hands of the workers, soldiers, and poorer peasantry and be responsible to the soviets of workers', soldiers', and peasants' deputies."¹¹

Public declarations adopted in the wake of the Kornilov affair by virtu­ally all units of the Petrograd garrison were similarly explicit. Thus at an emergency meeting on August 28, twenty-five hundred soldiers from four key military units based in the capital—the Preobrazhensky, Litovsky, and Volynsky guards regiments, and the Sixth Engineer Battalion—passed a resolution insisting that the government be drawn exclusively from rep­resentatives of the revolutionary classes. On August 31 the same soldiers, after reasserting the call for a government made up representatives of the

workers and poorer peasants, proclaimed bluntly than ^aany coalition . . . will be fought by all loyal sons of the people just as they fought Kornilov." No less outspoken were the soldiers of the Second Machine Gun Regiment, who the same day expressed their views about Kornilov and the immediate tasks of a new government in the following terms:

We brand Kornilov and his supporters traitors. . . . We haven't had any confidence in Kornilov since April 21, when that "brave" general di­rected artillery to be rolled out on the Palace Square to quiet our comrade workers. . . . This conspiracy must be crushed with all possible severity and we machine gunners place ourselves completely at the disposal of the Central Executive Committee. . . . We insist on the immediate arrest and trial of the counterrevolutionary commanding staff and the abolition of capital punishment, to become effective after the execution of General Kornilov and his supporters. We demand the restoration of revolutionary regiments that have been broken up and the dissolution of counter­revolutionary shock battalions, the Union of Saint George Cavaliers, the Union of Officers of the Army and Navy, the Military League, etc. . . . The only way out of the present situation lies in transferring power into the hands of the working people.

We demand the immediate liberation of our comrades arrested on July 3-5 and their replacement [in prison] by the conspirators, for example: Guchkov, Purishkevich, and the counterrevolutionary officers. As regards foreign affairs, we insist on a decisive break with both Russian and allied imperialism and a campaign for peace without annexations and indemnities on the basis of the self-determination of nations. Soldiers' pay should be increased to twenty rubles. . . . The necessary funds should be obtained by confiscating excess profits from plant and factory owners. We will fight for all of these revolutionary measures to the last machine gunner, and the government that carries them out will have our full support.¹²

On September 1, two hundred soldiers assigned to the Electro-Technical Officers' School resolved that "the replacement of Kornilov with Alekseev changed nothing" and that "the politics of compromise with the bourgeoisie and landowners must and did lead inevitably to the Kornilov conspiracy." In order to avert another counterrevolutionary attack, these soldiers insisted on the necessity of transferring all power to "representa­tives of the workers, soldiers, and peasants under the control of their elected organizations." A mass meeting of soldiers from the Petrogradsky Guards Regiment two days later called for the creation of a new cabinet "made up exclusively of socialists who have suffered in prisons for the people's cause and who have wasted the best years of their lives in far-off Siberia." Like the Second Machine Gun Regiment, the soldiers from the Electro-Technical School and the Petrogradsky Guards Regiment also de­manded death for Kornilov and his followers.¹³

Not surprisingly, bitterness toward Kerensky and the desire for an im­mediate change in government after the Kornilov experience were nowhere stronger than among the radicalized Baltic sailors. On August 30 the crew of the Petropavlovsk, who had voted earlier to execute officers refusing to pledge loyalty to the revolution, agreed that "death is the most appropriate punishment for Kornilov." The resolution they adopted asserted that "only the democracy, in the person of its finest representatives—the Executive Committees of the Soviets of Workers', Soldiers', and Peasants' Deputies —can save the country; consequently, all power must be transferred into the hands of the soviets. Experience has shown," the resolution continued, "that coalitions of responsible ministries of any kind are incapable of leading the country out of the critical situation in which it finds itself. It is the direct responsibility of the Soviet to take power into its hands, and we will gladly submit to such a government and obey all its orders with pleasure."

Distinctly more critical of the moderate socialists was a resolution on "the current moment" adopted overwhelmingly at a joint meeting of the Hel­singfors Soviet; the Regional Executive Committee of the Army, Fleet, and Workers in Finland; and representatives of army and ship committees from the Helsingfors area on September 2. Concluded the resolution: "Up to now, not only has the Central Executive Committee neglected to pursue a policy of furthering the revolution—by supporting the politics of com­promise with the bourgeoisie, it has strengthened the position of the coun­terrevolution. This kind of behavior must cease. We emphatically insist that the Central Executive Committee refrain from pledging confidence to any coalition ministry (w ith the bourgeoisie) and that it immediately convene the Second All-Russian Congress of Workers', Soldiers', and Peasants' Deputies," i.e., to create a soviet regime.¹⁴

To register their protest against Kerensky's proclamation of a nondemo- cratic republic while forming a Directory and conducting negotiations with the bourgeoisie, members of nineteen Baltic Fleet ship's committees, meet­ing jointly on September 6, recommended that ships of the fleet fly red battle flags "until the promulgation of all reforms associated with a demo­cratic form of government." Tsentrobalt endorsed this method of protest the following day, after which the red flags were raised.¹⁵ The mood of the Baltic sailors at this time was also expressed in a lead editorial entitled "Enough of Past Errors," by V. Maslenikov, in Izvestiia Kronshtadtskogo soveta.

The politics of compromise with the bourgeoisie is what has brought us to this tragic pass. The compromisers had faith in people who wailed hypocritically about the impending ruin of the country and who did every­thing according to their own recipe. ... All the warnings of the pro­letariat and of the parties which did not abandon it proved justified . . .

[yet] it turns out that this is not enough. . . . What is this—political blindness or a conscious attack on the revolution? . . . This cannot be. Our task now is to say emphatically: "We have had quite enough com­promise! All power to the working people."¹⁶

On August 29 the Kronstadt Soviet adopted a set of demands to be pre­sented in the Central Executive Committee by Kronstadt's representative there. Drawn up by the Bolsheviks and immediately endorsed by the SR- and Menshevik-Internationalists (the main SR and Menshevik factions in Kronstadt), these demands were patterned after the moderate resolution "On the Current Moment," which Lunacharsky had introduced at the Ex­ecutive Committees meeting the night of August 27-28 and which had called for a decisive rupture with the capitalists; the transfer of power into the hands of revolutionary workers, peasants, and soldiers; and the creation of a democratic republic.

Kronstadt's ideal remained a democratic soviet government in which all socialist groups would work together effectively in pursuit of a revolu­tionary program, precisely as the socialists had been doing locally, in the Kronstadt Soviet, since March. The Kronstadt sailors were heartened by the prospect that the Kornilov experience might serve to bring the moderate socialist leadership of the All-Russian Executive Committees back into the revolutionary fold. This hopeful attitude was expressed by deputies to the Kronstadt Soviet in their response to a report on the latest developments in Petrograd presented to them by Kolbin on August 29. After lashing out at Kerensky for indecisiveness in combatting Kornilov, Kolbin, in the course of his account, related that when Tsereteli had declared to the Central Ex­ecutive Committee that this was a time not for compromise but for strong military action, Chernov had embraced him in a gesture of solidarity. The Kronstadt deputies greeted with stormy applause this sign of moderate socialist unity in defense of the revolution.¹⁷

It is worth noting that even workers in industrial plants that heretofore had been Menshevik and SR strongholds, as well as soldiers in some of the more politically restrained regiments of the garrison—for example, those which initially had remained neutral and subsequently had taken the lead in helping to suppress the July uprising—now turned against the government. What is more, even some of the military personnel rushed from the front to the capital after the July days now joined the ranks of the opposition.

The political resolutions passed at this time were inspired by no single party or organization. Some were proposed by Bolsheviks, others by Menshevik-Internationalists or Left SRs, and still others by individuals or representatives of interest groups with no identifiable political affiliation. These statements varied greatly in regard to specifics. Some called for the creation of a government representing workers, soldiers, and peasants; others, perhaps a majority, insisted on transfer of power to the soviets or creation of a revolutionary government responsible to the Soviet, often cou­pling such demands with a call for another national Congress of Soviets. However, common to virtually all were concern that Kornilov and his sup­porters be dealt with harshly so as to avoid further attacks by the "counter­revolution," aversion to political collaboration with the propertied classes in any form, and attraction for the immediate creation of some kind of exclu­sively socialist government which would bring an end to the war. It is evident that to many, including Bolsheviks, the swift defeat of Kornilov appeared to confirm the immense potentialities of all socialist groups work­ing together. Such a large representative number of statements are available for study, either in the contemporary press or in published document col­lections, and they are corroborated so strongly by other kinds of evidence, that it is fair to conclude that among Petrograd workers and soldiers and Baltic sailors who expressed themselves politically in any way, these senti­ments were by now nearly universally shared.

Such were the pressures under which members of the All-Russian Execu­tive Committees labored as they assembled to consider the government question late on the afternoon of August 31. This session, which with ad­journments lasted until the early morning of September 2, merits considera­tion as one of the most important meetings of the Soviet leadership between February and October 1917. Prior to the October days, at any rate, this seems to have been the moment when the Mensheviks and SRs came closest to breaking with the liberals and adopting much more radical policies, which might significantly have altered the revolution's course.

Early in the discussion Kamenev proposed that the deputies adopt a broad policy statement, "On the Government Question," which, while rela­tively moderate in content and tone, nonetheless constituted a fundamental, decisive break with previous Soviet policy.¹⁸ Kamenev himself had com­posed the statement, and it had been endorsed at an earlier caucus of Bol­shevik Central Committee members with representatives of the Bolshevik fractions in the All-Russian Executive Committees and the Petrograd Soviet. It began with a forthright repudiation of the politics of "com­promise" and "irresponsibility," which "made it possible for the military high command and the institutions of government to become breeding grounds for the instrument of a conspiracy against the revolution." The statement called for the exclusion from the government of the Kadets and all representatives of propertied elements, and affirmed that the only viable course open to the democracy was to create a national government made up of "representatives of the revolutionary proletariat and peasantry," whose first task would be to proclaim a "democratic republic." Other basic tasks of this new government would be confiscation of manorial lands without com­pensation and their transfer to peasant committees in advance of the Con­stituent Assembly, proclamation of workers' control over industrial produc­tion, nationalization of key branches of industry, and the proposal of a uni­versal democratic peace. Among measures for immediate implementation, the resolution called for an end to all repression directed against the work­ing class and its organizations, abolition of capital punishment at the front and restoration of full freedom for political agitation and activity on the part of democratic organizations in the army, a purge of the counterrevolution­ary commanding staff within the military, recognition of the right to self- government of minority nationalities living in Russia, immediate convoca­tion of the Constituent Assembly, and abolition of all class privileges.

The resolution's emphasis on the formation of a revolutionary govern­ment to create a democratic republic, rather than a dictatorship of the pro­letariat and poorer peasantry, was obviously Kamenev's work and repre­sented an accurate reflection of programmatic views regarding the devel­opment of the revolution consistently held by Bolshevik moderates.¹⁹ At the same time, Kamenev's statement was a succinct and powerful formulation of the political aspirations of Petrograd workers and soldiers as expressed in the wake of the Kornilov experience. In presenting the resolution to the Executive Committees, Kamenev appealed for the maintenance of the unified revolutionary front which had emerged in the course of the struggle against Kornilov. Placing particular emphasis on the crucial role of the soviets, which had served as "the mortar binding all fundamentally demo­cratic forces" during the crisis, he contended that "no one can say that there exists at the present time any organization more powerful than the soviets."

It is extremely important to note that while the policy statement pro­posed by Kamenev was universally interpreted as an appeal for transfer of political power to the soviets, Kamenev himself did not insist on this, evi­dently envisioning the possibility of a socialist cabinet which would include representatives of such "democratic" institutions as the trade unions, zem- stvos, municipal dumas, and cooperatives which were not nominally part of the Soviet. As he observed toward the close of his remarks: "The Bolshevik fraction is concerned not with the purely technical aspects of forming a government but rather with the elements to be included in such a government—are they of like mind in their understanding of the immediate tasks and will they be able to march in step with the democracy?"²⁰

Because of a conflict with a previously scheduled session of the Petrograd Soviet, the Executive Committees meeting was adjourned at 7:30 p.m. without having voted on the Kamenev resolution; further discussion of the government question was tabled until the following evening.

Kamenev's resolution was next presented at the late-night meeting of the Petrograd Soviet on August 31,²¹ the first meeting of that body in ten days. Political attitudes in the Petrograd Soviet had been shifting leftward throughout the month of August; this was a reflection both of the growing misgivings on the part of incumbent deputies regarding the existing political situation and of the changing composition of the Soviet, as moderately in­clined deputies elected in March and April were recalled and replaced by

A meeting of the Petrograd Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies.

factory and garrison representatives with more militant views.²² This trans­formation was immediately apparent on August 31. The agenda opened with reports on the latest political developments. Boris Bogdanov, a Men­shevik, brought the deputies up to date on the work of the Committee for Struggle Against the Counterrevolution. Responding to the anger and im­patience of his listeners, Bogdanov focused on the committee's efforts to strengthen and unite the left and to prevent the government from coming to terms with Kornilov. At each indication of forcefulness on the committee's part, both in counteracting Kornilov and in dealing with Kerensky, the deputies burst into applause.

On the question of a new government, Tsereteli publicly acknowledged, for the first time, the difficulty of including Kadets in the cabinet; however, he defended in the strongest terms coalition with representatives of other bourgeois groups. The democracy by itself would be helpless to deal with economic disintegration, he argued, and this situation would play into the hands of the counterrevolution.

Tsereteli's remarks were frequently interrupted by vociferous protests and jeers which prompted the chairman, Chkheidze, finally to blurt: ^uThe Soviet still has enough power to throw disrupters out the door." Kamenev, by contrast, was spiritedly cheered when he presented his policy statement and repeated the attack on coalition politics that he had made earlier to the Executive Committees. Steklov also brought the deputies to their feet when he expressed solidarity with Kamenev. The SR spokesman Boldyrev broke with previous moderate socialist policy by proposing that the Executive

Committees construct a new cabinet. Boldyrev introduced a resolution which provided that such a government might include representatives of some bourgeois groups, although not the Kadets, and that it would be re­sponsible to a "Provisional Revolutionary Parliament." But even this com­promise was coolly received.

After several hours of further heated debate on the pros and cons of creating an exclusively socialist government, at about 5:00 a.m., September 1, the deputies rejected the resolution of the SRs and adopted as a political platform the statement offered by Kamenev. The vote on the Kamenev proposal was 279 deputies in favor, 115 opposed, with 51 abstentions. In assessing the significance of this Bolshevik success, it is important to note that the number of deputies present and voting on this occasion constituted a relatively small fraction of the Petrograd Soviet's total membership. This was at least partly because many military representatives were still on duty with their regiments, defending the capital against Kornilov. It is also true that many rank-and-file left Mensheviks and SRs with no organizational loyalty to the Bolsheviks sided with the Bolsheviks on this issue. Nonethe­less, as suggested earlier, the vote of the Petrograd Soviet on August 31 reflected a gradual, although by no means negligible, leftward shift in the deputies' orientation.

It is worth recalling in this connection that on March 2 a Bolshevik reso­lution opposing assumption of power by the Provisional Government re­ceived a mere 19 votes in the Petrograd Soviet, while a resolution sponsored jointly by the Mensheviks and SRs pledging qualified support for the gov­ernment attracted 400 votes. On April 2, when membership in the Petro­grad Soviet more nearly approximated its full strength, a Bolshevik resolu­tion opposing endorsement of the liberty loan drive—in effect, a referen­dum on the war—received 112 votes, while a Menshevik-SR resolution supporting the drive received 2,000 votes. In the wake of the April crisis a month later, when the deputies had to adopt a position on socialist partici­pation in the cabinet, 100 deputies voted for a Bolshevik resolution which opposed participation, while Menshevik-SR strength held firm at 2,000. Popular support for the Bolshevik program rose on the eve of the July days, and this was reflected, to a limited extent, in the Petrograd Soviet; thus on June 20 a moderate socialist resolution endorsing the Kerensky offensive received 271 negative votes, with 39 abstentions.²³ But the August 31 ses­sion marked the first occasion on which a clear majority of the deputies present voted with the Bolsheviks on any political issue.

Adoption of the Kamenev resolution, which embodied a fundamental reorientation of priorities and goals, necessitated reorganization of the entire Petrograd Soviet leadership, a factor of immense subsequent importance to the development of the revolution. In the short run, however, inasmuch as the direct authority of the Petrograd Soviet was limited to the capital, the still uncertain decision of the All-Russian Executive Committees on the government question was naturally of more far-reaching significance. Re­sponsibility for the immediate fate of the government was in their hands.

The All-Russian Executive Committees resumed their discussion of the government question late on the evening of September 1, at about the time Kerensky announced the creation of a Directory.²⁴ Yet, despite the popular desire for a reorientation of Soviet politics which passage of the Bolshevik resolution in the Petrograd Soviet represented, and the fact that Kerensky, in announcing the formation of the Directory, had presented the Executive Committees with a fait accompli, the continuing reluctance of the moderate socialists to break altogether with the existing regime was established from the outset. A procession of leading Mensheviks and SRs, among them Skobelev and Bogdanov, spoke against the Bolshevik position and urged that the existing government be supported, at least until the Democratic State Conference.

The right Menshevik Mark Liber ridiculed the very notion that the democracy could go it alone, declaring: ^uThe Kadets have been thrown from the chariot, but let us take heed lest we end up in it by ourselves." Avksentiev actually hailed the Directory and asked that it be supported in every way possible. Chernov declared emphatically that no SR would join a government which included Kadets; he did not, however, dismiss the pos­sibility of forming a coalition with representatives of other bourgeois cir­cles. Sergei Znamensky, on behalf of the Trudoviks, also defended the principle of coalition, insisting: "We should not create a purely socialist ministry. . . . There are social and political groups apart from the Kadets that can walk arm in arm with us."

Besides the Bolsheviks, only Martov adopted a significantly more radical stance; he espoused the creation of an all-socialist ministry responsible to a democratic parliament.

Riazanov and Kamenev attempted to rebut the moderate socialists. With reference to a comment made earlier by Skobelev, Riazanov remarked:

It has been argued there that the mood in Petrograd is not representative of the rest of Russia. But people in the provinces watch what is going on in Petrograd closely . . . and when we tighten the noose around the neck of the counterrevolution, there is no doubt we will find broad support among them. ... If one rejects coalition with the Kadets, we are left with the commercial, industrial, and banking circles, which, as is now evident, nourished the yellow press. . . . It is high time to take into consideration the fact that the soviets represent the majority of the Russian people. . . . Let the soviets select a Provisional Government responsible to them which would lead the country to a quick convocation of the Constituent Assem­bly. Only the Constituent Assembly can conclude peace, enact necessary reforms, and bring us closer to a socialist restructuring of society.

For his part, Kamenev, referring to the announcement of a Directory, complained acidly that the Executive Committees "have been hit with another blow from Kerensky. Their significance has been reduced to noth­ing. ... I would hope," he continued, "that you will repel this blow as you repelled Kornilov's attack. . . . Political duty demands that we declare that this government is not intended to serve the needs of the democracy but of Kerensky. . . . We see in what has occurred the consequences of a regime based on personal dictatorship and total irresponsibility. The pro­letariat, peasantry, and army must state that there is no place for this in the Russian revolution."

Tsereteli attempted to counter these arguments with the comment that "we are convening a broad democratic conference . . . and if it turns out that apart from us there are no other vital elements in the country, we will take power into our own hands." This was as close as Tsereteli and his supporters were to come toward acknowledging the possibility of forming an exclusively socialist government.

In the early-morning hours of September 2 the exhausted deputies voted upon and rejected the declarations of both the Bolsheviks and Menshevik- Internationalists and adopted, instead, a resolution sponsored jointly by the Mensheviks and SRs. The approved resolution endorsed the early convoca­tion of a Democratic State Conference to arrive at a final decision on the government question and, in the meantime, called for continued support of the existing regime as formed by Kerensky.²⁵

Although in retrospect the Executive Committees' decision to go along, temporarily, with the Directory appears to have been a particularly fateful step, it would obviously have been very difficult for the moderate socialists to have acted otherwise. Support for the course proposed by the Bolsheviks would have required the Mensheviks and SRs to repudiate their policies of the preceding six months and abandon their ideal of creating a democratic government representing all classes. It would have signified willingness on their part to form a new political regime and to take full responsibility for maintaining civil order, administering the economy, providing essential food and fuel supplies and services, and satisfying mounting mass demands for immediate social reform and peace; further, adoption of the Bolshevik resolution would have indicated the moderate socialists' readiness to at­tempt these tasks without the help of, indeed faced with certain opposition from, liberal political leaders, industrialists, and large landowners, as well as the military command. Finally, for the Mensheviks and SRs to have united with the Bolsheviks, as Kamenev and Riazanov eloquently advo­cated, would have meant forming an alliance with elements of dubious re­liability whose political goals were often less compatible with their own than were those of the liberal bourgeoisie. If one takes into consideration the Bolsheviks' past behavior, coupled with the German military threat and the prevailing economic and social chaos, it is perhaps not so difficult to understand why the main body of Mensheviks and SRs, despite their by now almost universal disdain for Kerensky, resisted popular pressures for an immediate change in government.

The political effects of the Kornilov experience were enormous. For the time being, the rightist movement was, of course, shattered. Kornilov, the darling of the right, was under house arrest in Mogilev. Because of their behavior both before and during the crisis, the Kadets were widely sus­pected, to some extent unfairly, of having been in league with Kornilov. In the aftermath of the affair, they were temporarily excluded from the cabinet, much maligned, and deeply demoralized. Miliukov and Kokoshkin departed for the Crimea "as if fleeing arrest," Maklakov became ambassador to France, and numerous other Kadets retreated to their summer homes in the country. Kadet politics virtually ground to a half.²⁶

Because of internal disputes in regard to the nature and makeup of the future government, the Mensheviks and SRs were scarcely in better shape. Fundamental differences of opinion on the key political issues of the day among leading Mensheviks emerged with particular clarity at a meeting of the Bureau of the Central Executive Committee on September 4. In the course of an acrimonious debate on the goals of the Democratic State Con­ference, scheduled to open in mid-September, the defensist Bogdanov joined the Menshevik-Internationalists Martov and Sukhanov in arguing the case for the formation of an exclusively "democratic" regime. The coming conference must be turned into a Constituent Assembly for the democracy, insisted Bogdanov, and the government formed there made responsible to the conference.

Such ideas seemed preposterous to Chkheidze, the Central Executive Committee chairman. Along with Liber, he underscored the importance of including at least some representatives of propertied elements in any future government, as well as at the Democratic State Conference. Dan and Tsereteli took a middle position between the Bogdanov and Chkheidze fac­tions, acknowledging that the primary purpose of the conference was to arrive at a definitive solution to the government question and expressing readiness to abide by the conference's decision on the matter, whatever it might be. Tsereteli, who personally preferred a coalition, voiced regret that an assembly of all the "democratic" groups to be represented at the confer­ence had not been convened earlier, adding that "if the vote is for a soviet regime, then we can risk it."²⁷

Similar arguments were also tearing the SRs apart at this time. Thus, while a still-influential conservative SR faction headed by Avksentiev in­sisted on the necessity of preserving a broadly representative coalition gov­ernment including Kadets, the former minister of agriculture, Chernov, wanted nothing more to do with the Kadets. Yet Chernov was equally op­posed to the idea of an exclusively socialist government, sharing with many right Mensheviks the hope of attracting into the cabinet representatives of the bourgeoisie, excepting the Kadets, who would be willing to cooperate with socialists in realizing a meaningful reform program.²⁸ Meanwhile, well to the left of Chernov was an increasingly vocal and powerful Left SR faction, now almost an independent party, which adamantly rejected any kind of coalition with the bourgeoisie. During the second week in Sep­tember, the Left SRs gained control of the local SR committee in Petrograd;²⁹ simultaneously they launched a campaign for the convocation of a national Congress of Soviets and the creation of a homogeneous socialist government responsible to the democracy.³⁰ The SR organization, to use Oliver Radkey's words, "had entered the final stage of dis­integration."³¹

Not surprisingly, the Kornilov affair also made a shambles of whatever modest success Kerensky had achieved since early July in restoring gov­ernmental authority and strengthening the army. The soviets, now dis­tinctly more radical in outlook, emerged from the crisis with their popular­ity among the masses immeasurably enhanced. Revolutionary Russia was more widely saturated than ever before with competing grass roots political organizations and revolutionary committees. Workers had become more militant and better organized, and significant numbers of them had ob­tained weapons. At the same time, democratic committees in the army, by vir­tue of their leading role in organizing soldiers against the Kornilov move­ment, were rejuvenated. Within the Petrograd garrison, control of many regimental committees passed from more moderate elements into the hands of the Bolsheviks.³² Whatever moral authority officers still possessed among the troops was badly damaged by the Kornilov experience. During the first half of September a second purge of officers suspected of harboring coun­terrevolutionary sentiments was carried out in many units, and, in the meantime, the execution of even the simplest orders became very difficult.³³

The government endeavored to reverse these developments. On Sep­tember 1, for instance, Kerensky issued a directive to all military command­ers, commissars, and army organizations to put a halt to political activity among the troops, but the order seems to have had no discernible impact. Three days later Kerensky published a decree dissolving all ad hoc rev­olutionary committees established during the Kornilov crisis, which in­cluded the Committee for Struggle Against the Counterrevolution.³⁴ The decree served merely to exacerbate relations between Kerensky and the Soviet leadership. No sooner had the order become public than the Com­mittee for Struggle went into session (this in itself an act of civil disobedi­ence) and adopted a carefully worded resolution expressing confidence that, in view of the still-threatening situation, all local revolutionary committees would continue to operate with their previous energy and restraint.³⁵

While the government strived in vain to cope with these difficulties, the disintegration of the economy continued apace. In Petrograd the prob­lems of unemployment, food and fuel shortages, and inflation now became significantly more acute. During these days as well, Kerensky's personal reputation was virtually destroyed. To the defeated right, it appeared that because of either personal ambition or lack of courage Kerensky had be­trayed Kornilov. Meanwhile, to the left and to the masses of Petrograd workers and soldiers, it appeared that Kerensky was part and parcel of the counterrevolution. In a valuable unpublished memoir, Woytinsky, then commissar of the northern front, focused attention on this factor, recalling that every soldier knew that the conflict between Kerensky and Kornilov had been preceded by negotiations between them, and that discussed in these negotiations were the imposition of capital punishment, the curbing of soldiers' committees, the return of power to officers, in short, a return to the ways of the "old regime." Consequently, to the average soldier, the Kornilovshchina appeared as a conspiracy against himself and against the rev­olution on the part of the military high command and Kerensky.³⁶

Among the competitors for power in 1917, then, it is clear that the win­ners in the Kornilov affair were the Bolsheviks. The defeat of Kornilov testified to the great potential power of the left and demonstrated once again the enormous attraction of the Bolshevik program. Yet it seems questiona­ble to argue, as some do, that Kornilov's defeat made Lenin's victory inevi­table. The mass mood was not specifically Bolshevik in the sense of reflecting a desire for a Bolshevik government. As the flood of post- Kornilov political resolutions revealed, Petrograd soldiers, sailors, and workers were attracted more than ever by the goal of creating a soviet gov­ernment uniting all socialist elements. And in their eyes the Bolsheviks stood for soviet power—for soviet democracy. In any case, the July upris­ing and the subsequent reaction had demonstrated the risks inherent in rely­ing on the mood of the masses. Moreover, the entire history of the party from the February revolution on suggested the potential for programmatic discord and disorganized activity existing within Bolshevik ranks. So that whether the party would somehow find the strength of will, organizational discipline, and sensitivity to the complexities of the fluid and possibly ex­plosive prevailing situation requisite for it to take power was, at this point, still very much an open question.

"ALL POWER TO THE SOVIETS!"

_T

hrough these last critical days of August Lenin remained underground in Helsingfors, the capital of Finland. In Finland, part of the Russian empire since 1809, national aspirations complicated and greatly intensified the ferment which followed the collapse of the tsarist regime. Helsingfors was also the main base of the Baltic Fleet, within which the Bolsheviks were especially active and influential. As elsewhere in Russia, political and social antagonism and popular support for extreme left programs rose sharply in Finland in the late summer and early fall of 1917. The Third Regional Congress of Soviets of the Army, Fleet, and Workers in Finland, which met in Helsingfors on September 9-12, elected a permanent execu­tive committee (the Regional Executive Committee of the Army, Fleet, and Workers in Finland) made up almost exclusively of Bolsheviks and Left SRs. Under the chairmanship of the ultraradical Bolshevik Ivar Smilga, this committee proclaimed itself the highest political authority in Finland.

During his stay in Helsingfors, Lenin had some contact with local social democratic leaders. And it seems that the strength of the left and the in­creasingly explosive political situation in Finland helped to shape his think­ing about the further development of the revolution generally. But for the most part Lenin remained absorbed by revolutionary politics in Petrograd. Shortly after the move from Razliv to Finland on August 9 he had been able to arrange fairly reliable communications with the Central Committee, as well as delivery of newspapers from Petrograd, which usually arrived toward evening the day after publication. Apart from devouring and reflecting on the news, he seems to have divided his time between completing The State and Revolution and writing political commentaries for the Bolshevik press.¹

Lenin first learned of General Kornilov's threat to Petrograd on August 28. Not until late on the twenty-ninth did he obtain the previous day's

papers containing initial substantial accounts of the developing crisis. Even then, he had not received copies of the Bolshevik Rabochii, so that he was almost completely in the dark regarding his party's behavior. Nonetheless, on the morning of the thirtieth, as he anxiously awaited further news from Petrograd, he drafted a letter formulating tactical recommendations to the Central Committee which foreshadowed a significant, albeit temporary, shift in outlook on the development of the revolution. Lenin's initial response to the threat of a rightist dictatorship was that the existing political situation had suddenly been fundamentally altered and that the tactics of the party would have to be revised accordingly. No longer did he dismiss rumors of a counterrevolutionary conspiracy as "a carefully thought out ploy on the part of the Mensheviks and SRs," as he had during the Moscow Conference. Instead, Lenin urged Bolsheviks to join in the fight against Kornilov. Re­maining silent on the crucial question of how closely it was permissible for party members to cooperate with majority socialists in defense prepara­tions, he cautioned merely that Bolsheviks ought neither to support Kerensky directly nor, for the time being, to seek to overthrow him. Rather, they were to use every opportunity to expose Kerensky's weak­nesses and shortcomings and to apply pressure on the government to fulfill such "partial demands" as the arrest of Miliukov, the arming of workers, the summoning of naval forces to Petrograd, the dissolution of the State Duma, the legislation of land transfers to the peasants, and the introduction of workers' control in the factories.

Both the tacit acceptance of coordination with other groups to combat Kornilov and the emphasis on applying pressure for the fulfillment of "par­tial demands" were departures from Lenin's previous insistence that the Bolsheviks remain aloof from the Mensheviks and SRs and that the organization of the direct seizure of power by the proletariat at the earliest possible date was the party's primary task. As we have seen, this was pre­cisely the position adopted during the last days of August by most party leaders in Petrograd. Lenin's unexpected approval of their course of action was reflected in a postscript which he added to his letter to the Central Committee late on the evening of the thirtieth, after receiving a new batch of papers from Petrograd, including copies of Rabochii. "Having read six issues of Rabochii after this was written," he appended, "I must say our views fully coincide."²

The shift in Lenin's thinking that followed the outbreak of the Kornilov affair was even more pronounced in an article, "On Compromises," which he wrote on September 1 and which was received in Petrograd two days later. Indeed, it is difficult to interpret this essay as anything other than a retreat from the major assumptions underlying Lenin's directives to the Sixth Congress—the demise of the soviets as revolutionary institutions, the irrevocable bankruptcy of the Mensheviks and SRs, and the absolute neces­sity for the seizure of power by force. Stimulated by Kerensky's obvious weakness and isolation, impressed by the power demonstrated by the soviets in the struggle against Kornilov, and intrigued by the apparent growth of hostility to further collaboration with the Kadets among Men­sheviks and SRs, Lenin now endorsed the possibility of returning to the "peaceful" pre-July tactical program urged all along by party moderates. Specifically, he proposed a compromise with the majority socialists which went roughly as follows: For the time being the Bolsheviks would give up their demand for the transfer of power to a government made up of rep­resentatives of the proletariat and poorer peasantry and officially return to the pre-July slogan "All Power to the Soviets." In return, the Mensheviks and SRs would take power into their own hands and form a government responsible to the Soviet. Political power would be transferred to local soviets everywhere in Russia. The Bolsheviks would remain outside the government and would be guaranteed full freedom to campaign on behalf of their own program. In essence, "On Compromises" was an expression of readiness to forego the use of armed force and instead to compete for power within the soviets by political means if the Mensheviks and SRs broke with the bourgeoisie. Lenin now maintained that such a course "could in all probability secure the peaceful advance of the whole revolution, and pro­vide exceptionally good chances for great strides in the world movement towards peace and the victory of socialism."