The message makes sense only if Kerensky assumed that Krymov was advancing to Petrograd to quell Bolshevik disturbances. Although confused, Krymov obeyed. The Ussuri Cossack Division stopped at Krasnoe Selo, near Petrograd, and on August 30 swore loyalty to the Provisional Government. The Native Division, apparently on orders of Krymov, also halted its advance. The actions of the Don Cossack Division cannot be determined. In any event, the available sources indicate that the role usually attributed to agitators sent by the Soviet to dissuade the Third Corps from advancing on Petrograd has been considerably exaggerated. The principal reason why Krymov’s forces did not occupy Petrograd was the realization of its commanding officers that the city was not, as he and they had been told, in the hands of the Bolsheviks and that their services were not required.*
62. Soldiers of the “Savage Division” meet with the Luga Soviet.
Krymov arrived in Petrograd on August 31 on the invitation of Kerensky and with a promise of personal safety. He saw the Prime Minister later that day. He explained that he had moved his corps to Petrograd to assist him and the government. As soon as he had learned of a misunderstanding between the government and headquarters, he ordered his men to halt. He never intended to rebel. Without going into explanations and refusing even to shake hands with him, Kerensky dismissed Krymov and instructed him to report to the Military-Naval Court Administration. Krymov went instead to a friend’s apartment and put a bullet through his heart.*
Because the two generals whom he had asked to assume Kornilov’s duties—Lukomskii followed by V.N. Klembovskii—had turned him down, Kerensky found himself in the awkward position of having to leave the military command in the hands of a man whom he had publicly charged with treason. Having previously instructed the military commanders to ignore Kornilov’s orders, he now reversed himself and allowed Kornilov’s strictly military orders to be obeyed for the time being. Kornilov thought the situation extraordinary: “An episode has occurred which is unique in world history,” he wrote, “the Commander in Chief, accused of treason,… has been ordered to continue commanding his armies because there is no one else to appoint.”78
Following the breach with Kerensky, Kornilov fell into despondency: he was convinced that the Prime Minister and Savinkov had deliberately trapped him. Afraid that he would commit suicide, his wife requested him to surrender his revolver.79 Alekseev arrived in Mogilev on September 1 to assume command: it had taken Kerensky three days to enlist him for this mission. Kornilov yielded without resistance, asking only that the government establish firm authority and cease abusing him.80 He was first placed under house arrest at a Mogilev hotel and then transferred to the Bykhov Fortress, where Kerensky incarcerated thirty other officers suspected of involvement in the “conspiracy.” In both places he was guarded by the faithful Tekke Turkomans. He escaped from Bykhov shortly after the Bolshevik coup and made his way to the Don, where with Alekseev he would found the Volunteer Army.
Was there a “Kornilov plot”? Almost certainly not. All the available evidence, rather, points to a “Kerensky plot” engineered to discredit the general as the ringleader of an imaginary but widely anticipated counterrevolution, the suppression of which would elevate the Prime Minister to a position of unrivaled popularity and power, enabling him to meet the growing threat from the Bolsheviks. It cannot be a coincidence that none of the elements present in a genuine coup d’état ever came to light: lists of conspirators, organizational charts, code signals, programs. Such suspicious facts as communication with officers in Petrograd and orders to military units are in all instances perfectly explicable in the context of the anticipated Bolshevik putsch. Had an officer plot been hatched then surely some generals would have followed Kornilov’s appeals to join in his mutiny. None did. Neither Kerensky nor the Bolsheviks have ever been able to identify a single person who would admit to or of whom it could be demonstrated that he was in collusion with Kornilov: and a conspiracy of one is an obvious absurdity. A commission appointed in October 1917 completed in June 1918 (that is, already under Bolshevik rule) an investigation into the Kornilov Affair. It concluded that the accusations leveled at Kornilov were baseless: Kornilov’s military moves had been intended not to overthrow the Provisional Government but to defend it from the Bolsheviks. The Commission completely exonerated Kornilov, accusing Kerensky of “deliberately distorting] the truth in the matter of Kornilov from lack of courage to admit guilt for the grandiose mistake” he had committed.* 81
