Kornilov Affair

The Kornilov affair was not a simple coup that destroyed itself; it was a week in which the crisis of the front, the rear and the capital came together. In the summer of 1917 the Provisional Government was losing popular support through the war and the collapse of the front. The Kerensky Offensive failed, and after the July Days the new premier, Kerensky, made Kornilov, who had been calling for faith in a strong hand, commander-in-chief. The officer corps demanded the abolition of soldiers' committees and political commissars and the restoration of the death penalty at the front, and Kornilov too aimed to impose discipline in the ranks and remove the Bolsheviks.

The demand for a strong hand and the limits of negotiation

Kornilov took up the post on the condition that he answered only to his own conscience and to the people, not to the government. On 3 August he submitted to Kerensky a programme placing rear troops and civilians under military-revolutionary courts, extending the death penalty, restoring commanders' disciplinary power and narrowing the committees' activity, but Kerensky put him off, asking that it be coordinated with other drafts. The same demands continued after the government had already restored the death penalty at the front on 12 July, and on 4 August the substance of the note was printed in Izvestia, opening a broad campaign against Kornilov.

The corps that marched on Petrograd and the railways

In late August Kornilov sent Aleksandr Krymov's 3rd Cavalry Corps and the 'Savage Division' towards Petrograd. English Wikipedia dates the march to 10–13 September 1917 (O.S. 28–31 August) and records that it collapsed through Bolshevik agitation and the sabotage of railway workers. Kerensky's dismissal telegram only hastened the advance. On 29 August railway workers tore up the track in the Vyritsa–Pavlovsk sector, and the soldiers, also cut off from communications, were persuaded by agitators to give up their weapons. The bloodless ending was close to a round trip.

Arrest, and a camp split again

Kerensky proclaimed Kornilov a traitor and appealed to the Soviet to defend the capital, using this to buy time against the junior officers and Cossack units. Krymov shot himself after a meeting with Kerensky. Those imprisoned at Bykhov were enraged by Kerensky's repression, and in October the forces he had moved against did not defend him.

The question of December, the outcome of 1917

The cost of the suppression was large. The soviets were armed, the Bolsheviks regained the prestige lost in the July Days, and figures such as Trotsky were released. The Provisional Government was powerless, and the men who put down the revolt were about to take power. Kornilov, for his part, had made himself commander-in-chief and then a traitor. Historians still dispute responsibility for the affair.