Kornilov’s revolt was over. On the following day, 1 September, Alexeev took control at Stavka, and Kornilov himself was placed under house arrest, and then transferred to the Bykhov Monastery, near Mogilev, where he was imprisoned with thirty other officers suspected of having been involved in the ‘counter-revolutionary conspiracy’. But if Kerensky had hoped to bolster his own authority by defeating Kornilov, then he achieved precisely the reverse. The Kornilov Affair, as it came to be known, turned out to be a nail in his own coffin. It merely accelerated the social and political polarization which had been eroding the base of the Provisional Government since the early summer, and in this sense brought the revolution closer to its October dénouement.
On the one hand, Kerensky had fatally spoiled his relations with the Right, which by and large remained faithful to Kornilov and condemned Kerensky for betraying his cause. Kornilov became a political martyr for all those who blamed Kerensky’s regime for the growing chaos in the country at large. In this respect, the Kornilov Affair had its greatest political impact after it was over. The word ‘Kornilovite’ began to enter the political vocabulary as an out-and-out opponent of the Kerenshchina (Kerensky’s rule). The Bykhov Monastery was evidently run by sympathizers with the Kornilov movement, since prison conditions there were extremely relaxed. ‘We had the impression that everyone was rather embarrassed at having to act as our “jailors”,’ Anton Denikin recalled. Kornilov was allowed to retain his faithful Turkoman bodyguards; he issued ‘military orders’ to the rest of the prison; the officers’ families visited twice a day (Denikin’s fiancée practically lived in the jail); and there were even secret links with the General Staff, where the Kornilov movement continued to enjoy much support.83 The Bykhov prisoners were later to become the founding nucleus — and Kornilov and Denikin the leaders — of the Volunteer Army, the major White force of the civil war. It was in Bykhov that the draft programme of the Volunteer Army was written. It was just as much a rejection of Kerensky as it was of the Bolsheviks. Indeed, during the Bolshevik seizure of power none of these elements came to defend the Provisional Government.
Kerensky’s standing on the Left, meanwhile, had been equally weakened. The mass of soldiers and workers who had rallied to the defence of the Provisional Government during the Kornilov crisis nevertheless suspected that Kerensky had himself somehow been involved in the Kornilov movement. Many saw the whole affair as a personal feud between the two would-be Napoleons (and in this they were not far wrong). But others believed that Kerensky had been in league with Kornilov, or else had tried to implement his own ‘counter-revolutionary’ plans through him. This conviction was strengthened by Kerensky’s failure to pursue a more democratic course once the crisis was over. For one thing, there was no real enquiry into the affair, and this merely fuelled the popular suspicion that Kerensky had something to hide. His continued support for a coalition with the Kadets (who had clearly been associated with the Kornilov movement) and his appointment of Alexeev (who was widely suspected of having sympathized with it) were seen as added reasons to suspect Kerensky’s intentions. The phantom nature of this ‘counter-revolution’ only made it seem more powerful, a hidden force behind the government, not unlike the shadow of treason which hung over the tsarist regime in 1916.
