Accompanied by Dobrynskii, Lvov went to Mogilev. He arrived on August 24, just as Savinkov was departing. Since Kornilov was too busy carrying out Kerensky’s instructions to receive him, he checked in at a hotel, where he claimed to have heard rumors of Kornilov’s plot to kill Kerensky. Horrified, he decided to protect the Prime Minister by pretending to act on his behalf and negotiate a reconstitution of the cabinet. “Although Kerensky had not given me specific authority to conduct negotiations with Kornilov,” he recounted, “I felt that I could negotiate in his name inasmuch as, in general, he was agreeable to the reorganization of the government.”42 He saw Kornilov late that night and again the following morning (August 25). According to Kornilov’s deposition and the recollections of Lukomskii, who was present, Lvov identified himself as a representative of the Prime Minister on an “important mission.”43 With reckless lack of caution, Kornilov neither requested to see Lvov’s credentials nor asked Petrograd to confirm his authority to speak for the Prime Minister, but immediately entered with him into the most sensitive and potentially incriminating political discussions. His mission, Lvov said, was to learn Kornilov’s views on how to assure firm government in Russia. In his own opinion, this could be accomplished in one of three ways: (1) if Kerensky assumed dictatorial powers; (2) if a Directory was formed with Kornilov as a member; (3) if Kornilov became dictator, with Kerensky and Savinkov holding ministerial portfolios.44 Kornilov took this information at face value because he had been officially told some time earlier that the government was contemplating a Directory modeled on the English Small War Cabinet to improve the management of the war effort.45
Interpreting Lvov to mean that Kerensky was offering him dictatorial powers, Kornilov responded that he preferred the third option. He did not crave power, he said, and would subordinate himself to every head of state; but if asked to take on the main responsibility, as Lvov (and, presumably, the Prime Minister) suggested he might, he would not refuse.46 He went on to say that in view of the danger of an imminent Bolshevik coup in Petrograd, it might be wise for the Prime Minister and Savinkov to seek safety in Mogilev and there join him in discussions on the composition of the new cabinet.
The interview over, Lvov at once departed for Petrograd.
Lukomskii, who was politically more astute, expressed suspicions about Lvov’s mission. Had Kornilov asked for his credentials? No, Kornilov replied, because he knew Lvov to be an honorable man. Why had Savinkov not asked his opinions of cabinet changes? Kornilov shrugged off this question.47
On the evening of August 25, Kornilov invited Rodzianko by telegraph to come to Mogilev, along with other public leaders, in three days’ time. Lvov wired a similar message to his brother. The meeting was to deal with the composition of the new cabinet.48
At 6 p.m. the following day (August 26), Lvov met with Kerensky in the Winter Palace.* Just as in his interview with Kornilov he had posed as a representative of the Prime Minister, so he now assumed the role of an agent of the Commander in Chief. Without telling Kerensky that he had asked Kornilov’s opinion of three options for restructuring the government, which he had formulated with his friends but presented as coming from the Prime Minister, he said that Kornilov demanded dictatorial authority. Kerensky recalls that on hearing this he burst out laughing. But amusement soon yielded to alarm. He asked Lvov to put Kornilov’s demands in writing. Lvov jotted down the following:
General Kornilov proposes:
1. That martial law be proclaimed in Petrograd.
2. That all military and civil authority be placed in the hands of the Commander in Chief.
3. That all ministers, not excluding the Prime Minister, resign and that provisional executive authority be transferred to deputy ministers until the formation of a cabinet by the Commander in Chief.
V. Lvov49
Kerensky says that as soon as he read these words everything became clear:50 a military coup was in the making. He might have asked himself why Kornilov had to employ as intermediary the former Procurator of the Holy Synod rather than Savinkov, or better yet, he might have rushed to the nearest telegraph to ask Kornilov or Filonenko whether the Commander in Chief had indeed commissioned Lvov to negotiate on his behalf. He did neither. His certainty that Kornilov was about to seize power was strengthened by Lvov’s insistence that Kornilov wanted Kerensky and Savinkov to depart that very night for Mogilev. Kerensky concluded that Kornilov wanted to take them prisoner.
