Was there a “Kornilov plot”? Almost certainly not. All the available evidence, rather, points to a “Kerensky plot” engineered to discredit the general as the ringleader of an imaginary but widely anticipated counterrevolution, the suppression of which would elevate the Prime Minister to a position of unrivaled popularity and power, enabling him to meet the growing threat from the Bolsheviks. It cannot be a coincidence that none of the elements present in a genuine coup d’état ever came to light: lists of conspirators, organizational charts, code signals, programs. Such suspicious facts as communication with officers in Petrograd and orders to military units are in all instances perfectly explicable in the context of the anticipated Bolshevik putsch. Had an officer plot been hatched then surely some generals would have followed Kornilov’s appeals to join in his mutiny. None did. Neither Kerensky nor the Bolsheviks have ever been able to identify a single person who would admit to or of whom it could be demonstrated that he was in collusion with Kornilov: and a conspiracy of one is an obvious absurdity. A commission appointed in October 1917 completed in June 1918 (that is, already under Bolshevik rule) an investigation into the Kornilov Affair. It concluded that the accusations leveled at Kornilov were baseless: Kornilov’s military moves had been intended not to overthrow the Provisional Government but to defend it from the Bolsheviks. The Commission completely exonerated Kornilov, accusing Kerensky of “deliberately distorting] the truth in the matter of Kornilov from lack of courage to admit guilt for the grandiose mistake” he had committed.* 81
Kornilov was not a particularly complicated person and his behavior in July–August 1917 can be explained without resort to conspiracy theories. His first and foremost concern was with Russia and the war. He was alarmed by the vacillating policies of the Provisional Government and its dependence on the Soviet, which with its meddling in military matters had made the conduct of military operations all but impossible. He had reason to believe that the government was penetrated by enemy agents. But even though he considered Kerensky unfit for his post, he felt for him no personal animosity and regarded him as indispensable in the government. Kerensky’s behavior in August caused him to doubt whether the Prime Minister was his own man. His inability to carry out the military reforms which Kornilov knew Kerensky wanted convinced Kornilov that the Prime Minister was a captive of the Soviet and the German agents in it. When Savinkov told him of the impending Bolshevik putsch and asked for military assistance to suppress it, Kornilov saw a chance to help the government liberate itself from the Soviet. He had every reason to expect that after the putsch had been liquidated an end would be put to the “duality of power” and Russia would receive a new and effective regime. Of this he wanted to be a part. General Lukomskii, who was at his side throughout these critical days, provides what sounds like a reasonable explanation of Kornilov’s thinking during the brief interval between Savinkov’s visit to Mogilev and his break with Kerensky:
I presume that General Kornilov, being convinced of Bolshevik action in Petrograd and of the necessity of suppressing it in the most ruthless manner, assumed that this will naturally lead to a governmental crisis and the creation of a new government, new authority. He decided to participate in the formation of that authority along with some members of the current Provisional Government and major public and political figures on whose full support he had apparently reasons to rely. From his words I know that General Kornilov had discussed the formation of the new government, which he would join in the capacity of Commander in Chief, with A. F. Kerensky, Savinkov, and Filonenko.82
It is hardly justified to define as “treasonous” efforts by the Commander in Chief to revitalize the armed forces and help restore effective government. As we have seen, Kornilov rebelled only after having been accused, without cause, of being a traitor. He was the victim of Kerensky’s boundless ambition, sacrificed to the Prime Minister’s futile quest to shore up his eroding political base. A fair summary of what Kornilov wanted and failed to achieve is provided by an English journalist who observed the events at first hand:
He wanted to strengthen the Government, not to weaken it. He did not want to encroach upon its authority, but to prevent others from doing so. He wanted to compel it to be what it had always professed to be but [had] never really been—the single and unchallenged depository of administrative power. He wanted to emancipate it from the illicit and paralyzing influence of the soviets. In the end, that influence destroyed Russia, and Kornilov’s defiance of the Government was a last desperate effort to arrest the process of destruction.83
If it is correct that Kerensky provoked the break with Kornilov to enhance his authority, he not only failed but achieved the very opposite. The clash fatally compromised his relations with conservative and liberal circles without solidifying his socialist base. The main beneficiaries of the Kornilov Affair were the Bolsheviks: after August 27, the SR and Menshevik following on which Kerensky depended melted away. The Provisional Government now ceased to function even in that limited sense in which it may be said to have done so until then. In September and October, Russia drifted rudderless. The stage was set for a counterrevolution from the left. Thus, when Kerensky later wrote that “it was only the 27th of August that made [the Bolshevik coup of] the 27th of October possible,” he was correct, but not in the sense in which he intended.84
As noted, Kerensky never carried out any serious punitive actions against the Bolsheviks for the July putsch. According to the chief of his counterintelligence, Colonel Nikitin, on July 10–11 he even deprived the Military Staff of the authority to arrest Bolsheviks and forbade it to confiscate weapons found in their possession.85 At the end of July, he looked the other way as the Bolsheviks held their Sixth Party Congress in Petrograd.
This passivity derived in large measure from Kerensky’s desire to appease the Ispolkom, which rallied to the Bolsheviks. As we have seen, on August 4 it adopted a resolution, moved by Tsereteli, to stop further “persecution” of those involved in what was delicately called the “events of July 3–5.” At the August 18 session, the Soviet voted to “protest decisively the illegal arrests and excesses” committed against the representatives of the “extreme currents of the socialist parties.”86 In response, the government began to release one by one prominent Bolsheviks, sometimes on bail, sometimes on the guarantee of friends. The first to be freed (and cleared of all charges) was Kamenev, who regained freedom on August 4. Lunacharskii, Vladimir Antonov-Ovseenko, and Alexandra Kollontai were set free shortly afterward. Others followed.
In the meantime, the Bolsheviks were reasserting themselves as a political force. They benefited from the political polarization which occurred during the summer when the liberals and conservatives gravitated toward Kornilov and the radicals shifted toward the extreme left. Workers, soldiers, and sailors, disgusted with the vacillations of the Mensheviks and SRs, abandoned them in droves in favor of the only alternative, the Bolsheviks. But there was also political fatigue: Russians who had gone in droves to the polling stations in the spring grew tired of elections which did nothing to improve their condition. This held especially true for conservative elements who felt they stood no chance against the radicals, but it also applied to the liberal and moderate socialist constituencies. This trend can be demonstrated by the results of the municipal elections in Petrograd and Moscow. In the voting for the Petrograd Municipal Council on August 20, one week before the Kornilov incident, the Bolsheviks increased the share of the votes they had gained in May 1917 from 20.4 percent to 33.3 percent, or by more than one-half. In absolute numbers, however, their votes increased only by 17 percent due to the drop in the number of those casting ballots. Whereas in the Spring elections, 70 percent of those elegible had gone to the polls, in August the proportion dropped to 50 percent; in some districts of the capital city, half of those who had previously voted abstained.* 87 In Moscow, in the September municipal elections the decline in voter participation was even more dramatic. Here, 380,000 ballots were cast compared to 640,000 the previous June. More than half of them went to the Bolsheviks, who picked up 120,000 votes while the socialists (SRs, Mensheviks, and their affiliates) lost 375,000 voters; most of the latter presumably had chosen to stay home.