The Russian Revolution полностью

In the middle of August the Germans launched the expected assault on Riga. The undisciplined and politicized Russian troops fell back and on August 20–21 abandoned the city. To Kornilov this was ultimate proof that Russia’s war effort had to be urgently reorganized, or else Petrograd itself would soon share Riga’s fate. To understand the atmosphere in which the Kornilov affair unfolded, the military backdrop must never be left out of sight: for although contemporaries as well as historians have treated the Kornilov-Kerensky conflict exclusively as a struggle for power, for Kornilov it was first and foremost a critical, possibly final effort to save Russia from defeat in the war.

In the middle of August, Savinkov received from reliable French intelligence sources information that the Bolsheviks planned another putsch for the beginning of September: the information was published on August 19 in the daily Russkoe slovo.* The date coincided with what headquarters believed to be the next phase of German operations, an advance from Riga on Petrograd.²⁷ The origin of this intelligence is not known: it appears to have been faulty for there is nothing in Bolshevik sources to indicate preparations for a coup at this time. Savinkov conveyed this intelligence to Kerensky. Kerensky seemed un-fazed: then, as later, he thought a Bolshevik coup a figment of his opponents’ imagination.²⁸ But he quickly realized the utility of information on an alleged Bolshevik putsch as an excuse to disarm Kornilov. He requested Savinkov to proceed immediately to Mogilev to carry out the following missions: (1) liquidate the officer conspiracy at headquarters reported on by Filonenko; (2) abolish the Political Department at Army Headquarters; (3) obtain Kornilov’s consent to have Petrograd and its environs transferred from his command to that of the government and placed under martial law; and

(4) request from General Kornilov a cavalry corps for the purpose of imposing martial law in Petrograd and defending the Provisional Government from any and all assaults, and, in particular, from an assault of the Bolsheviks, who had already rebelled on July 3–5 and who, according to information of foreign intelligence, are once again preparing to rise in connection with German landings and an uprising in Finland.²⁹

This fourth task particularly deserves being kept in mind because Kerensky’s subsequent claim that Kornilov had sent the cavalry against Petrograd to overthrow his government would provide grounds for charging the general with treason.

The purpose of Savinkov’s mission to Mogilev was to abort a counterrevolutionary conspiracy allegedly being hatched there and to do so under the pretext of preparations against a Bolshevik putsch. Kerensky later obliquely admitted that he had asked for military units—that is, the Third Cavalry Corps—to be placed under his command because he wanted to be “militarily independent of headquarters.”³⁰ Withdrawing the Petrograd Military District from Kornilov’s command served the same end.

Savinkov arrived in Mogilev on August 22 and stayed there until August 24.³¹ He began his first meeting with Kornilov saying that it was essential for the general and the Prime Minister, for all their differences, to cooperate. Kornilov agreed: while he considered Kerensky weak and unfit for his responsibilities, he was needed. He added that Kerensky would be well advised to broaden the political base of the government by bringing in General Alekseev and patriotic socialists like Plekhanov and A. A. Argunov. Turning to Kornilov’s reform proposals, and assuring him that the government was prepared to act on them, Savinkov produced a draft of the latest reform project. Kornilov found it not entirely satisfactory because it retained the army committees and commissars. Would these reforms be acted on soon? Savinkov responded that the government did not want as yet to make them public for fear of provoking a violent reaction from the Soviet. He now informed Kornilov that the government had information that the Bolsheviks were planning fresh disturbances in Petrograd at the end of August or the beginning of September: the premature release of the military reform program could spark an immediate uprising of the Bolsheviks, in which the Soviet, which also opposed military reforms, could make common cause with them.