Kornilov, ignorant of Kerensky's interpretation of their telegraphic exchange, proceeded to help the government suppress the anticipated Bolshevik power grab. At 2.40 a.m. he cabled Savinkov:
The [Cavalry] Corps is assembling in the environs of Petrograd toward evening August 28. Request that Petrograd be placed under martial law August 29.17
The receipt on the morning of 27 August of Kerensky's cable dismissing Kornilov threw the generals into utter confusion.
Their initial reaction was to treat it as a forgery not only because it made no sense in terms of the conversation the two men had had the previous night but also because it was improperly formatted. On second thoughts, the generals decided that the cable was perhaps genuine but sent under duress, possibly because the prime minister was a prisoner of the Bolsheviks. Kornilov, therefore, decided to ignore the cable's orders and commanded General Krymov to accelerate the advance of his cavalry corps to the capital.
That afternoon Savinkov contacted Kornilov who told him he was convinced that Kerensky's order dismissing him had been issued under the pressure of the Soviet: he further said that he would not leave his post and asked to meet Kerensky and Savinkov to clear up what he called a 'misunderstanding'.
Kerensky, in the meantime, issued to the press a communique over his signature of the following contents:
On August 26, General Kornilov sent to me Duma Deputy Vladimir Nikolaevich Lvov to demand that the Provisional Government transfer to General Kornilov full civil and military authority with the proviso that he himself, at his own discretion, would appoint a new government to administer the country. The authority of Duma Deputy Lvov to make such a proposal was subsequently confirmed to me by General Kornilov in a direct wire conversation.18
Kerensky's accusation threw Kornilov into uncontrollable rage. After reading it, he no longer thought of the prime minister as a captive of the Bolsheviks but as the initiator of a despicable provocation intended to discredit him and the armed forces. He responded by sending to all front commanders a counter appeaclass="underline"
The telegram of the Prime Minister ... in its entire first part is an out-and-out lie. I did not send Duma Deputy Vladimir Lvov to the Provisional Government - he came to me as a messenger from the Prime Minister . Thus, there occurred a grand provocation which gambles with the destiny of the Fatherland ... Russian people: our great homeland is dying! The moment of death is near!
Compelled to speak out openly, I, General Kornilov, declare that the Provisional Government, under pressure from the Bolshevik majority in the Soviet, acts in full accord with the plans of the German General Staff...
I, General Kornilov, the son ofa Cossack peasant, declare to each and all that personally I desire nothing but to save Great Russia. I swear to lead the people through victory over the enemy to the Constituent Assembly, where it will decide its own destiny and choose its new political regime.19
This, at last, was open mutiny. Kornilov later stated that he had decided on an open break with the Provisional Government because this government had accused him of rebellion.
Kerensky responded to this challenge by enjoining military commanders to ignore orders from Kornilov and by lying about the reason the Third Cavalry Corps was approaching Petrograd, namely that he himself had requested it. He ordered Krymov to stop his advance - an order which the general obeyed because he realised that the capital was not in Bolshevik hands. Kerensky invited him to a meeting during which Krymov explained that he had moved his cavalry units to help him: as soon as he had learned of a misunderstanding between the government and headquarters he ordered his men to halt. Kerensky went into no explanations. Refusing to shake hands with the general, he ordered him to report to a military-naval court. Krymov instead went to a friend's apartment and put a bullet through his heart.
During the days that followed, Kornilov tried but failed to rally public support for his cause. Confused by disinformation spread by Kerensky, which depicted the general as a mutineer and traitor, the public ignored his pleas. On 29 August, Izvestiia reported that Pavel Milyukov, the leader of the liberal Constitutional Democrats (Kadets), offered his services as an intermediary between Kerensky and Kornilov but the prime minister rejected this offer on the grounds that 'there can be no talk of reconciliation'.20
Despondent, Kornilov did not resist when he was placed under arrest. He escaped his prison and helped found the Volunteer Army. Half a year later, in April 1918, he was killed by an artillery shell that struck his headquarters. When the Bolsheviks occupied the region where he was buried they dug out his corpse, dragged it on the streets and then tossed it on the local dump.
Was there a Kornilov 'conspiracy'? All the evidence indicates that there was none. The term implies secrecy and Kornilov did everything above board. Rather there was a Kerensky 'conspiracy' whose aim was to discredit the popular general and elevate the prime minister to a position of unrivalled popularity. The source of the problem was Kerensky's obsessive conviction that the threat to his regime and democracy in Russia came from the right, not the left. As he would tell a commission appointed to investigate the Kornilov affair on 8 October 1917, that is, some two weeks before the Bolsheviks would seize power in Petrograd, and which they would hold for most of the century, 'I knew for sure there would be no Bolshevik campaigns [vystuplenia]'.21 This commission exonerated Kornilov. It concluded that Kornilov's military initiatives had been intended not to topple the Provisional Government but to defend it from the Bolsheviks. The commission accused Kerensky of 'deliberately distort[ing] the truth in the matter of Kornilov from lack of courage to admit guilt for the grandiose mistake' he had committed.22 This author may add his opinion that, had Kerensky retired and bestowed dictatorial powers on his commander-in-chief, there is a good chance Kornilov would have crushed the Bolshevik coup of October.
There is no evidence that Kornilov craved personal power: he was prepared to serve Kerensky or assume authority, whichever would save Russia from the Germans and their Bolshevik allies. In the words of an English journalist who observed these events at first hand:
[Kornilov] 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 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.23
Peter Struve, an outstanding Russian intellectual who over the course of his career progressed from socialism to liberalism, and from liberalism to conservatism, in a speech delivered in Prague on the fifth anniversary of Kornilov's death had this to say:
With criminal thoughtlessness [the Provisional Government], instead of supporting the only force capable of joining the battle
against Bolshevism, repelled and repulsed him, to face alone the Bolsheviks and its own weakness. The accusation that Kornilov and his associates were guilty of state treason was not only singular infamy but also the grandest political stupidity.24