Kornilov coup

• Before the October revolution, the Kornilov-affair, named after General Lavr Kornilov, took place during the six months reign of Alexander Kerensky’s provisional government.
• The Kornilov-affair, which aimed to purge any Bolshevik elements from Russia’s capital, Petrograd, paradoxically paved the way for the Bolsheviks to seize power.
• During the First World War, Russia was in complete shambles, with two million Russian soldiers dead on the European Eastern front and food shortages at the home front.
• In March nineteen-seventeen, the February Revolution, or the Democratic Bourgeois revolution, erupted.
• Tsar Nicholas II sought to rally a favourable political consensus and bodies of troops that were loyal to him, but even his most loyal advisors and captains recommended he abdicate, and eventually on the fifteenth of March he did so.
• Before Nicholas abdicated, on the second of March, the provisional government had already formed.
• The provisional government, a coalition of predominantly middle-class liberal-socialists, decided it would be provisional until full, representative elections could be held and a political composition could be made up.
• Prince Georgi Lvov, a liberal member of the Duma, accepted the post as first prime minister, while Alexander Kerensky, a Socialist Revolutionary, became the first minister of justice.
• The months ahead were rather chaotic, but amidst the chaos Kerensky rose through the ranks.
• On the eighteenth of May, Kerensky became minister of war, and on the twenty-first of July he became prime minister.
• On the first of August, Kerensky replaced General Alexei Brusilov, the one from the Brusilov offensive, with General Lavr Kornilov as commander-in-chief of the Russian army, an appointment he would soon regret.
• On the third of August Kornilov, with the support of Russian officers such as Denikin, Lukomsky, Romanovsky and Markov, decreed a state of emergency throughout the entire country, reinstated capital punishment for civilians, militarized the railroads and issued the illegality of strikes and meetings between labourers.
• Kerensky constented to the idea, and Lvov traveled towards Kornilov’s base in order to confront him.
• When Lvov returned he declared Kornilov was planning on becoming the dictator of Russia, though Kornilov later denied this.
• Kerensky, upon hearing this news, fired Kornilov as the commander-in-chief via telegram.
• The telegram convinced Kornilov that Petrograd had fallen to the Bolsheviks who supposedly forced Kerensky to fire him as commander in chief, and his army was required in order to restore order and drive out the Bolshevik menace.
• Kornilov was a war hero who managed to escape after being taken as a prisoner of war by the Austro-Hungarians.
• Vladimir Lvov, a former parliamentarian, approached Kerensky and told him Kornilov and the army command were making plans to murder him.
• Kornilov believed the soldier ‘soviets’, committees of soldiers, ought to be constrained in their power and meetings between soldiers ought to be forbidden, in order to restore discipline in the army that was losing at the Eastern, and home front.
• Kornilov ordered troops, under command of lieutenant-general Alexandr Krymov, to station themselves near Petrograd, which he did in order to force the provisional government to meet his demands.
• On the twenty-ninth of August, Kornilov issued a manifesto, stating his intention to invade Petrograd in case the Bolsheviks were to launch a coup.
• Kornilov supported a military dictatorship to restore peace and order in Russia, as during the six months of Kerensky’s provisional government there was utter chaos throughout the country, not in the least from the Bolsheviks under Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky, whose abortive attempt at a revolution in July, known as the ‘July days’, was a preview of what was to come.
• The Bolsheviks would seize power a couple of weeks after the coup.
• Krymov agreed to talks with Kerensky, where he would attempt to convince him that he had orders to protect the Provisional Government against the Bolsheviks.
• Kerensky ordered Krymov and his 3rd Cavalry Corps to capture Petrograd.
• Kerensky opened the arsenals to arm the Petrograd Soviet, among which the Bolsheviks, who promptly called on all loyal adherents to erect field emplacements at key points controlling the city.
• Krymov’s troops were ordered to protect the Provisional Government, whereas it seemed they were going to instigate a coup.
• Kerensky was well-aware of an advancing army under Krymov, and was convinced that the army was out to oust him and commit a coup.
• Some soldiers, after being convinced by Soviet deputies, arrested their own officers.
• Kerensky didn’t believe him and told Krymov he was to have him stand trial at military court for an attempted coup.
• A Bolshevik, who was imprisoned previously, was released and aided the Petrograd Soviet in preparing and organizing the defences of the city.
• The Provisional Government survived the coup, but it lost credibility and the image of a government that was able to maintain control.
• The Kronstadt sailors entered Petrograd to protect the Soviet and the Provisional Government, and railroad workers sabotaged trains and the tracks.
• The Russian civil war would wage on for multiple years, seeing millions of casualties from war, hunger and executions, but that’s a story for another time.
• Leon Trotsky was among the groups of agitators that met Krymov’s troops as they marched onto Petrograd, and through fraternization had soldiers desert, while others became demoralized, slowing down the advance.
• Kornilov had achieved the exact opposite of what he meant to.
• Krymov committed suicide, and while the coup attempt didn’t see much bloodshed, Kornilov and the officers that supported him, Denikin, Lukomsky, Romanovsky and Markov, along with seven-thousand other officers, were arrested.