Kornilov becomes commander-in-chief

On 31 July 1917 (18 July in the Julian calendar) the Russian Provisional Government dismissed the commander-in-chief, General Aleksei Brusilov, and appointed in his place General of Infantry Lavr Kornilov, commander of the South-Western Front. The decision was pushed through by Alexander Kerensky, prime minister for ten days, who also kept the portfolio of minister of war. The dates in the sources differ slightly. Kerensky later wrote that the appointments were made on 18 July Old Style, whereas Kornilov himself in his testimony before the commission of inquiry, and after him General Anton Denikin and most Russian studies, give the date of the government’s order as 19 July Old Style, that is 1 August.

A hard-line general

Brusilov had commanded the Russian army for less than two months. The Kerensky offensive he had prepared collapsed after its first successes, and from 19 July the Germans and Austrians chased the broken Eleventh Army across Eastern Galicia as far as the Zbruch. Brusilov, who wanted to run the army in agreement with the soldiers’ committees, had in the government’s eyes failed. Kornilov was his opposite. The 46-year-old son of a Siberian Cossack, taken prisoner by the Austro-Hungarians in 1915 and famous for his escape from captivity, he had commanded the Petrograd Military District in March, but resigned during the April Crisis, not wishing to stand by and watch the soviet corrupt the army. His Eighth Army was the only one to achieve a clear success in July, breaking through the front at Stanislau and taking Halicz and Kałusz.

As the front was crumbling, Kerensky, despite Brusilov’s objections, gave Kornilov the whole South-Western Front around 20–21 July (7–8 July Old Style). The new commander at once demanded the restoration of the death penalty at the front, abolished after the February Revolution. “An army of maddened ignorant people, whom the authorities did not protect from systematic demoralisation and disintegration, who have lost their sense of human dignity, is fleeing,” he telegraphed on 24 July (11 July Old Style). A day later the government restored the death penalty and revolutionary military courts at the front. An influential advocate of Kornilov was the government commissar with the South-Western Front, Boris Savinkov, a former Socialist Revolutionary terrorist, who urged Kerensky to bet on this general.

The conference at Mogilev

The change was decided by a conference at the Stavka in Mogilev on 29 July (16 July Old Style). There Kerensky heard from the generals, among them Brusilov, the commander of the Western Front Denikin and the former commander-in-chief Mikhail Alekseyev, bitter accusations against revolutionary policy towards the army. Denikin spoke most sharply, listing for the minister how the committees and the declaration of soldiers’ rights had destroyed discipline. Kornilov could not leave the front and sent his proposals by telegraph, but his programme was similar: the death penalty in the rear as well, a reduced role for the committees, and the restoration of the authority of commanders. Kerensky left Mogilev convinced that Brusilov was not in control of the situation. According to Denikin, Kerensky bet on Kornilov in an act of desperation: he did not agree with his views on the army, but he could no longer see anyone else.

Conditions

Kornilov did not accept the appointment without discussion. In a telegram to the government he declared that he would lead the nation to victory and a just peace only on condition that he was answerable “to his own conscience and to the whole nation”, that the government would not interfere in his operational orders or in appointments to the higher commands, that the measures introduced at the front would also cover the rear, where the reserve units were stationed, and that the proposals he had sent to Mogilev would be adopted. The telegram reached the press. Kerensky wanted to dismiss at once the general who was issuing an ultimatum, but the government did not agree. Simultaneously with Kornilov’s appointment the government appointed General Vladimir Cheremisov (PL) commander of the South-Western Front, which Kornilov refused to accept. He declined to go to the Stavka until the matter was settled.

The dispute dragged on for several days. In the end Cheremisov was removed, the South-Western Front went to General Pyotr Baluyev, and the government commissar informed Kornilov that his proposals had been accepted in principle. According to Denikin, the new commander-in-chief took up his duties in Mogilev only on 9 August (27 July Old Style). General Alexander Lukomsky remained chief of staff.

Who commands the army

The appointment delighted the officers and the right, who saw in Kornilov a man capable of halting the disintegration of the army and the state. The left and the soviets regarded him with growing mistrust. Between the prime minister, who wanted to save both the revolution and the army at once, and the general, who demanded a free hand and set conditions for the government, conflict began to grow from the very first day. At the beginning of September it led to the Kornilov affair, the march of troops on Petrograd and the arrest of the commander-in-chief.