September 8, 1917 - The Kornilov Affair: Russian C-in-C Kornilov Marches on Petrograd, Kerensky Denounces Him as Traitor; Arms Workers to Defend the Capital, Releases Trotsky from Prison
Pictured - Kerensky provided weaponry to Petrograd soviet to defend the city against Kornilov’s coup attempt. The left saved the city, but still distrusted Kerensky, and now the political right, which supported Kornilov, abandoned him too. The Provisional Government was safe for a moment but completely without friends afterwards.
Alexander Kerensky was stuck between a rock and a hard place. The Prime Minister’s Provisional Government was made up of liberals and socialists and supported Russian democracy. Kerensky had just declared Russia a republic a few days before. The problem was that Kerensky and his government were caught in the middle of an ever-growing political divide.
Most Russians who supported the February Revolution leaned farther left, towards the workers’ and soldiers’ soviets that gathered in most major cities and challenged the legitimacy of the Provisional Government Duma. Meanwhile the political right and many liberals feared that the revolution needed to be ceased or rolled back, with discipline in the army restored and the soviets abolished.
In July 1917 workers in Petrograd demonstrated against the Provisional Government in favor of a Bolshevik revolution. Kerensky called out loyalist troops to crack down, a brutal suppression that eroded his remaining supported from the left. This forced Kerensky to lean on the right, and in August he appointed a counterrevolutionary, Lavr Kornilov, as Commander-in-Chief of the Russian army. Kornilov was from a middle-class Cossack family and detested the effects of revolution in the Russian army. Soldiers formed their own councils to argue with officers and the death penalty had been abolished, both of which Kornilov cited as deteriorating discipline.
Kornilov peppered Petrograd with telegrams calling for reinstatement of firing squads and an end to army democratization. He purged officers he believed to hold democratic opinions. His opinion of negotiation with dissenters was to send in Cossacks with whips. Meanwhile he was involved in talks behind-the-scenes with Duma politicians seeking to crush the radical socialist soviets.
Whether Alexander Kerensky was complicit in these talks or not is hotly debated. Likely Kerensky did not know the full extent of Kornilov’s plan. Whatever the case, Kornilov met with generals in September and told them he had Kerensky’s backing for a military occupation of Petrograd. “As long as the Bolsheviks are sitting in the Smolny, nothing can be done,” he told them.
When Kerensky heard about the plot he messaged Kornilov to ask him his intentions. Kornilov’s response was cagey, and Kerensky feared correctly that his troops were moving toward the city. The Prime Minister sacked his Commander-in-Chief and denounced him as a traitor. In desperation he looked to his enemy, the Petrograd soviet, to save the city. He opened up the city’s stock of rifles to the people, including troops of Red Guards loyal to the Bolsheviks. More than 40,000 workers and soldiers armed themselves.
Kerensky’s plea for help revealed the weakness of the Provisional Government, which to depend on the same workers it had shot at in July. The Bolsheviks agreed to help on condition that their imprisoned leaders like Leon Trotsky were released. In return they garrisoned key positions outside the city and mobilized railroad workers to halt Kornilov’s movements. The city was saved for the moment, but Kerensky, despised by both the left and now the right, had signed his government’s death warrant.
