Lavr Georgyevich Kornilov
The
general who became identified with resistance to
the Russian revolution in 1917. When the
Provisional Government seemed unable to keep order or maintain military discipline, the conservatives and nationalist liberals who had rejoiced at the fall of Tsar
Nicholas II looked to the dashing Kornilov to take a stand against the socialists they blamed for Russia's inability to continue fighting. His attempted coup, however, only succeeded in strengthening the
Bolsheviks, as the workers of
Petrograd rallied in the revolution's defence.
Kornilov was born in
Siberia in
1870. His father was a
Cossack officer, and the young Lavr followed in his footsteps, spending his military career until World War I in central Asia, apart from four years when he served as the military attaché in
Beijing. The image that the general propagated in 1917 frequently played on his central Asian origin, and he was accustomed to surround himself with a bodyguard of
Turkoman soldiers in their traditional scarlet robes.
The Great Escape
While Kornilov's bravery could not have been doubted during the war, a cool head was not one of his attributes. He first came to the attention of the Russian public after he escaped from an
Austro-Hungarian prisoner of war camp, where he had spent nearly a year, in
1916. Disguised as a Hungarian soldier, he made his way back to the Russian border, the event which cemented his reputation as a man of courage. The flurry of publicity provoked by his return played down the fact that he had only been captured because he had disobeyed the order of his superior officer, General
Alexei Brusilov, to pull his division back from the front.
Kornilov's exploits, which in more recent times would have merited a
TV movie of their own, were gratefully received by those sections of Russian society who still looked favourably on the war. The Russian army had been forced into a chaotic retreat in 1915, the rather more successful
Brusilov Offensive the next year had not been properly followed up, and the military reported calamitous shortages of ammunition, clothing and boots.
Popular opinion pinned all the army's deficiencies on Nicholas and his German-born wife
Alexandra, who enjoyed nothing more than continually rotating ministers at
Rasputin's behest. If the
February Revolution had not taken place when garrison soldiers in Petrograd mutinied, it is likely that conservative politicians like
Aleksandr Guchkov would have organised a palace coup to be rid of the incompetent, or traitorous, Tsar.
Although the workers, soldiers and peasants expected the February Revolution to improve their own conditions, privileged society supported it, and put up with the socialists of the
Petrograd Soviet purporting to oversee it, primarily because they expected it to improve Russia's prosecution of the war. Kornilov shared this opinion, and himself helped to arrest the Tsarina, the old régime's most hated figure. As the self-proclaimed 'son of a Cossack peasant', his less than exalted background might have made him a democratic poster boy.
A Whiff of Grapeshot
Kornilov's revolutionary honeymoon ended in April, during the crisis over the
Miliukov Note. This letter, written by the liberal foreign minister
Pavel Miliukov, appeared to commit Russia to the Tsar's old war aims, chiefly the annexation of
Constantinople, and was the first suggestion to Petrograd's workers that they and the liberals of the
Provisional Government were at cross-purposes. Although the workers were prepared to support a defensive war at this stage, they rejected expansionism outright.
As the new commander of the
Petrograd garrison (an appointment which Guchkov may have secured), Kornilov intended to fire on crowds at the height of the demonstrations, but the Soviet - which in practice had the allegiance of the garrison's rank and file - immediately forbade him from so doing. A devotee of
Napoleon, whose works he had apparently spent his prison time reading, Kornilov put much faith in the idea of a
whiff of grapeshot, and the Soviet's interference convinced him that the revolution would end in anarchy and - more importantly to him - Russia's submission to Germany.
He resigned his position and was assigned to the
South-Western Front, where his own unit acquitted themselves well during the generally disastrous
June offensive, which the war minister
Aleksandr Kerensky had ordered in an ill-judged attempt to inject Russia with
French-style revolutionary élan.
As perhaps befitted a man who had spent his entire upbringing in the barracks, Kornilov paid little attention to politics for their own sake, but was passionately concerned with the restoration of army discipline. The notorious
Order No. 1, issued by the Petrograd Soviet during the February insurrection, had undermined officers' authority by referring all orders to committees that soldiers themselves set up in every unit.
The order may only have been intended to apply to Petrograd's immediate circumstances, but was quickly circulated throughout the army, where common soldiers resented the condescension and brutality with which they were customarily treated. In practice, as Kornilov had seen first-hand in April, these provisions gave the Soviet, rather than the provisional government,
authority over the army.
Commander in Chief
Kornilov refused to allow committees in units under his command, a stance which earned the approval of business leaders and nationalists who, after Kerensky's offensive had failed, despaired of the Provisional Government. Indeed, it even won him respect from the unlikely source of
Maria Bochkareva, the founder of the
Women's Battalion of Death, an idea which Kerensky had embraced in May under the impression that the revolutionary vision, and his personal charisma, would mobilise the entire population. Her support for Kornilov was but one indication that Kerensky's idealism had become bankrupt.
Indeed, Kerensky himself was so alarmed by the collapse of his offensive that he appointed Kornilov his new commander-in-chief in late July; Kornilov accepted on condition that the army reintroduced the death penalty. He had probably been recommended to Kerensky by
Boris Savinkov, the political
commissar of Kornilov's front during the offensive, who was not entirely opposed to a military dictatorship if this were the only way to restore order to the army and society.
The extent of Kornilov's demands once the controversial appointment had been publicised appeared to give Kerensky second thoughts, but he could not have reversed the decision without ruining the coalition he was attempting to form with the so-called
Kadets, Miliukov's liberals.
Right-wingers had already approached Kornilov as a potential
strongman in April, and one,
Vasili Zavoiko, had himself appointed Kornilov's orderly and speechwriter. The hard-liner became all the more attractive to Russian nationalists now that the entire army was under his command, while they attributed the collapse of the army to the committee system and therefore to Kerensky, who had identified himself thoroughly with the dual authority of the Government and the Soviet.
The animosity between the prime minister and his commander was increased after the
Moscow State Conference in mid-August, at which Kornilov thoroughly upstaged Kerensky, both on the podium and with the entrance he made. A rapturous assortment of Cossacks, Turkomen and the Moscow detachment of the Women's Battalion attended his arrival in the city, a level of pageantry in which Kerensky would have taken great pleasure in other circumstances. Meanwhile, rumours that Kornilov might use the occasion to stage a coup were so widespread that the Soviet in Moscow started a committee to organise armed opposition should it be necessary.
The Kornilov Affair
The Moscow workers' fears were confirmed two weeks later, after what became known as the
Kornilov Affair, in which - according to Kerensky - the general finally attempted his coup by sending the loyal Third Corps to Petrograd. Under the command of General
Aleksandr Krymov, the Corps had been informed that the capital was in the grip of a Bolshevik uprising. Kornilov, in fact, may only have been trying to pressure Kerensky into declaring
martial law after the fall of
Riga on 21 August suggested that extreme measures were urgently required.
By now, Kerensky had convinced himself that Kornilov hoped to unseat him, and tried to elicit a confession from him during a bizarre conversation by telegraph in which Kerensky pretended to be a minor minister,
V. N. Lvov, who had been the two men's intermediary. The inconclusive 'evidence' empowered Kerensky to dismiss Kornilov, which he announced on 27 August.
In response, Kornilov issued a now celebrated communiqué in which he accused Kerensky's government of collaborating with Germany and attempted to present himself as a man of the people in his own right. (He did, indeed, like to
ride a white horse.) If Kerensky was going to accuse him of a coup, a coup was what he resolved to carry out. The declaration was a telling reflection of the gulf in understanding between Russian society and the workers and peasants, who by now could hardly have cared less for the war effort or Kornilov's love of the
Great Russian motherland.
Petrograd too had been rife with rumours of a Kornilov coup ever since his appointment as commander, and workers and soldiers enthusiastically responded to the alarm whistles which called them to defend the city. The Bolsheviks' experience in organising an armed uprising was of particular value in mobilising the workforce, and the party regained the credibility it had lost after the
July Days demonstrations when Kerensky had had it rumoured that they were German agents. Indeed, Kerensky now released the Bolsheviks he had imprisoned in July, and furnished the defenders with arms they would use in the
October Revolution.
Sailors from the nearby
Kronstadt naval base, a Bolshevik stronghold, joined in, and the railwaymen's union instructed its members across the country to obstruct counter-revolutionary troop movements in any way they could. Agitators blocked the railways with timber-filled carriages, and local agitators informed the waiting soldiers of the real reason why they had been sent to Petrograd, at which several divisions refused to advance. By the time Kornilov arrived in Petrograd on 30 August, the city was quiet and Krymov had received such a dressing-down from Kerensky that he had shot himself with his
service revolver.
The Ice March
Kornilov himself was imprisoned in the
Bykhov monastery, although his gaolers gave him the run of the prison, allowed him to retain his Turkoman bodyguard and even turned a blind eye to his continued contacts with some of the
General Staff. His fellow inmate,
Anton Denikin, had berated Kerensky in July regarding military discipline, and the men imprisoned in Bykhov became the nucleus of the
Volunteer Army, one of the largest 'White' forces opposing the Bolsheviks in the
Russian civil war.
The Volunteers were released from Bykhov in the chaos after the October Revolution, and fled to
Novocherkassk, a town on the
Don from where Cossacks, Kornilov's kinsmen, were traditionally recruited. Most of the officers had travelled incognito, but Kornilov had typically refused to conceal his identity until his regiment came under fire from a Bolshevik armoured train which shot away his white horse. He completed his journey in peasant dress.
Kornilov was responsible for much of the growth of the Volunteer Army, and inspired an almost fanatical devotion in soldiers who were similarly inclined. In 1917, some of his officers had taken to tattooing his portrait on their arms. In command of the army, however, he frequently clashed with General
M. V. Alekseev, who had replaced him as Kerensky's commander in chief; unlike Alekseev, Kornilov believed that any form of terror tactics would be acceptable if it defeated the Bolshevik revolution. His narrow military outlook, and the extent of repression that he countenanced, are reminiscent of the
Spanish insurgent officers of
1936.
In February 1918, the Bolsheviks advanced along the Don, and the Volunteers were forced to retreat to the
Kuban across the frozen steppe. With the bourgeoisie of the city of
Rostov trailing behind them, 4,000 of Kornilov's soldiers embarked on the so-called
Ice March, torching a number of supposedly Bolshevik villages as they went. The arduous expedition was perfectly suited to Kornilov's suicidal heroism, as was the final operation he commanded, besieging
Ekatarinodar when the Volunteers were outnumbered two to one. His only regret might have been that he died, not in the heat of battle, but when his headquarters were hit by a shell.
Had Kornilov managed to establish his dictatorship, in 1917 or thereafter, he would hardly have been alone. The failed
Communist revolution in
Hungary in
1919 was followed by the rule of the authoritarian admiral
Miklós Horthy, and
Miguel Primo de Rivera came to power in Spain after several years of left-wing unrest. It cannot be known, however, whether the Spanish or Hungarian leftists, would have been so active or so feared if the Russian Revolution had been interrupted.
Read more:
Orlando Figes, A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution 1891-1924
Richard Pipes, The Russian Revolution, 1899-1919
Alexander Rabinowitch, The Bolsheviks Come to Power
Yes, there's a General Kornilov floating around. But ease of use.