Chapter VII

. I spoke of my meeting with Kornilov, then Commander-in-Chief of the Petrograd district. The whole meaning of his occupation of this post lay in the chance of bringing the Petrograd garrison to a sense of duty and subordination. This Kornilov failed to accomplish. A fighting General who carried fighting men with him by his courage, coolness, and contempt of death, had nothing in common with that mob of idlers and hucksters into which the Petrograd garrison had been transformed. His sombre figure, his dry speech, only at times softened by sincere feeling, and above all, its tenour so far removed from the bewildering slogans of the Revolution, so simple in its profession of a soldier's faith--could neither fire nor inspire the Petrograd soldiery. Inexperienced in political chicanery, by profession alien to those methods of political warfare which had been developed by the joint efforts of the bureaucracy, party sectarianism, and the revolutionary underworld, Kornilov, as Commander-in-Chief of the Petrograd district, could neither influence the Government nor impress the Soviet, which, without any cause, distrusted him from the very beginning. Kornilov would have managed to suppress the Petrograd praetorians, even if he had perished in doing so, but he could not attract them to himself.

He felt that the Petrograd atmosphere did not suit him, and when on April 21st, the Executive Committee of the Soviet, after the first Bolshevist attacks, passed a resolution that no military unit could leave barracks in arms without the permission of the Committee, it was totally impossible for Kornilov to remain at a post which gave no rights and imposed enormous responsibilities.

There was yet another reason: the Commander-in-Chief of the Petrograd district was subordinated, not to the Stavka, but to the Minister of War. Gutchkov had left that post on April 30th, and Kornilov did not wish to remain under Kerensky, the vice-president of the Petrograd Soviet.

[Map: The Russian Front till August 19th and after]

The position of the Petrograd garrison and command was so incongruous that this painful problem had to be solved by artificial measures. On Kornilov's initiative, and with General Alexeiev's full approval, the Stavka, in conjunction with the Headquarters of the Petrograd District, drew up a scheme for the organisation of the Petrograd Front, covering the approaches to the capital through Finland and the Finnish Gulf. This Front was to include the troops in Finland and Kronstadt, on the coast, of the Reval fortified region and the Petrograd garrison, the depôt battalions of which it was proposed to expand into active regiments and form into brigades; the inclusion of the Baltic Fleet was likewise probable. Such an organisation--logical from a strategical point of view, especially in connection with the information received of the reinforcement of the German Front on the line of advance on Petrograd--gave the Commander-in-Chief the legal right to alter the dispositions to relieve the troops at the front and behind, etc. I do not know whether this would have really made it possible to free Petrograd from the garrison which had become a veritable scourge to the Capital, the Provisional Government, and even (in September) to the non-Bolshevist sections of the Soviet. The Government most thoughtlessly bound itself by a promise, given in its first declaration, that "the troops which had taken part in the revolutionary movement should not be either disarmed or moved from Petrograd."

This plan, however, naturally failed on Kornilov's departure, as his successors, appointed one after another by Kerensky, were of such an indefinite political character, and so deficient in military experience, that it was impossible to place them at the head of so large a military force.

At the end of April, just before his retirement, Gutchkov wished to make Kornilov Commander-in-Chief of the Northern Front, a post which had become vacant after General Ruzsky's dismissal. General Alexeiev and I were at the Conference with Thomas and the French military representatives, when I was called up to the telegraph instrument to talk with the Minister of War. As General Alexeiev remained at the meeting, and Gutchkov was ill in bed, the negotiations, in which I acted as an intermediary, were exceedingly difficult to carry on, both technically and because, in view of the indirect transmission, it was necessary to speak somewhat guardedly. Gutchkov insisted, Alexeiev refused. No less than six times did I transmit their replies, which were at first reserved and then more heated.

Gutchkov spoke of the difficulty of managing the Northern Front, which was the most unruly, and of the need of a firm hand there. He said that it was desirable to retain Kornilov in the immediate vicinity of Petrograd, in view of future political possibilities. Alexeiev refused flatly. He said nothing about "political possibilities," basing his refusal on the grounds of Kornilov's inadequate service qualifications for command, and the awkwardness of passing over Senior Commanders more experienced and acquainted with the Front, such as General Abram Dragomirov, for instance. Nevertheless, when the next day an official telegram arrived from the Ministry in connection with Kornilov's appointment, Alexeiev replied that he was uncompromisingly against it, and that if the appointment were made in spite of this, he would immediately send in his resignation.

Never had the Supreme Commander-in-Chief been so inflexible in his communications with Petrograd. Some persons, including Kornilov himself (as he confessed to me afterwards), involuntarily gained the impression that the question was a somewhat wider basis one than that of the appointment of the Commander-in-Chief ... that the fear of a future dictator played a certain part. However, this supposition is flatly contradicted by placing this episode in conjunction with the fact that the Petrograd Front was created for Kornilov--a fact that was of no less importance and fraught with possibilities.

In the beginning of May Kornilov took over the 8th Army on the South-Western Front. General Dragomirov was appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Northern Front.

This is the second event which gives the key to the understanding of the subsequent relations between Alexeiev and Kornilov.

According to Kornilov, the 8th Army was in a state of complete disintegration when he assumed command. "For two months," says he, "I had to visit the units nearly every day and personally explain to the soldiers the necessity for discipline, encourage the officers, and urge upon the troops the necessity of an advance.... Here I became convinced that firm language from the Commander and definite action were necessary in order to arrest the disintegration of our Army. I understood that such language was expected both by the officers and the men, the more reasonable of whom were already tired of the complete anarchy...."

Under what conditions Kornilov made his rounds we have already shown in