The Socialist Revolutionary official who pressed the revolutionary government toward coercive order
Filonenko later testified that "General Kornilov, under the sway of his staff and the circulating rumours, feared some unforeseen action against himself."
Maxim Filonenko was a lawyer and Socialist Revolutionary who, as government commissar at Supreme Headquarters in 1917, worked with Kornilov and Savinkov to restore the death penalty and tighten military discipline. He sided with Kerensky during the Kornilov crisis, then joined anti-Bolshevik underground activity before emigrating to work as a lawyer and professor of law.
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1906–1913Studied shipbuilding at the Saint Petersburg Polytechnic Institute
- 1914Entered the First World War as a sub-lieutenant in the Life Guards Grenadier Regiment
- 1917.06Provisional Government commissar with the 8th Army
- 1917.07–08Government commissar under Supreme Commander Kornilov
- 1917.08Tried to mediate between Kornilov and Kerensky, then supported Kerensky
- 1917–1918Participated in anti-Bolshevik underground activity in Petrograd
- 1918–1919Member of the Arkhangelsk city duma under the Northern Region provisional government
- 1933–1940Professor of Roman law at the University of Brussels
Related historical events
- 1917.02–07The February Revolutioncommissar who pushed for the death penalty's restorationAs Kerensky's commissar to the front, he joined Kornilov and Savinkov in driving the repressive turn of July 1917.
- 1917.10–1918.01The October RevolutionAnti-Bolshevik underground activistAfter the October insurrection, he joined the anti-Bolshevik underground in Petrograd.
Moscow power plans and the anti-Bolshevik underground
Filonenko's anti-Bolshevik orientation was already clear before the Kornilov crisis. After Kornilov reached Moscow on 13 August 1917, plans circulated in the capital for reshaping the form of state power. One draft proposed a Council of National Defence to head the country, chaired by Kornilov with Kerensky as his deputy and Alekseyev, Kolchak, Savinkov, and Filonenko among its members; another envisioned a small military Directory led by Kerensky, placing Kornilov, Savinkov, and Filonenko within it. Filonenko never actually sat on such a body, but these drafts mark the place he had come to occupy, beside Savinkov, within Kornilov's circle. After the October insurrection Filonenko joined the anti-Bolshevik underground in Petrograd. An anonymous letter sent to the Council of People's Commissars by former SR members after the Volodarsky assassination claimed that Filonenko, with Savinkov and Kolosov, was preparing a series of terrorist acts against leading party and Soviet figures and had even plotted to bomb a session of the All-Russian Congress of Soviets. The letter also tied this group to the killing of Petrograd Cheka chairman Moisei Uritsky by Filonenko's cousin Leonid Kannigiser. Historians have nonetheless treated this 'Filonenko terrorist organisation' version with caution. The historian Genrikh Ioffe notes that at the time of the Uritsky killing (late August 1918) Filonenko was in Arkhangelsk under the Northern Region provisional government, not in Petrograd, and that Kannigiser himself testified that no organisation ordered the act and it was personal; on this basis Ioffe judges the version unable to survive even superficial analysis.