Lavr
Kornilov was born in Ust-Kamenogorsk, Siberia, in 1870. After
graduating from the Mikhailovsky Artillery Training Corps in 1892
he was commissioned and posted to Turkestan. He also studied at the
General Staff Academy (1895-1898) before being assigned to espionage
duties in Iran and India.
Kornilov
was decorated during the Russo-Japanese War
and served as military attaché in China from 1907 to 1911.
On the outbreak of the First World War he commanded
Infantry divisions on the Eastern Front.
He was captured by the Austro-Hungarian
Army in Galicia in 1915 but escaped the following year and was
given command of the 25th Army Corps on the South-West Front.
When
the Tsar abdicated a Provisional Government,
headed by Prince George Lvov, was formed.
Soon afterwards Kornilov was appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Petrograd
Garrison. Kornilov wanted to use force to deal with the Bolshevik
agitators in the Russian Army. Alexander
Guchkov, the Minister of War, disagreed, and he was sent back
to the Eastern Front.
Kornilov
was appointed Supreme Commander of the Russian
Army by Alexander Kerensky, the
new
Minister of War. The two men soon clashed about military policy. Kornilov
wanted Kerensky to restore the death-penalty for soldiers and to militarize
the factories.
On 7th
September, Kornilov demanded the resignation of the Cabinet and the
surrender of all military and civil authority to the Commander in
Chief. Alexander
Kerensky
responded by dismissing Kornilov from office and ordering him back
to Petrograd.
Kornilov
now sent troops under the leadership of General Krymov to take control
of Petrograd. Kerensky was now in danger and so he called on the Soviets
and the Red Guards to protect Petrograd.
The Bolsheviks, who controlled these
organizations, agreed to this request, but in a speech made by their
leader, Vladimir Lenin, he made clear they
would be fighting against Kornilov rather than for Kerensky.
Within
a few days Bolsheviks had enlisted
25,000 armed recruits to defend Petrograd. While they dug trenches
and fortified the city, delegations of soldiers were sent out to talk
to the advancing troops. Meetings were held and Kornilov's troops
decided to refuse to attack Petrograd.
Kornilov
was arrested but he escaped and became one of the commanders of the
White Army during the Civil War. Lavr
Kornilov
was killed in action during the siege of Ekaterinodar on 13th April,
1918.
(1)
In his book My Reminiscences of the Russian Revolution, Morgan
Philips Price described Kornilov making a speech in Moscow on
25th August, 1917.
A wiry
little little man with strong Tartar features. He wore a general's
full-dress uniform with a sword and red-striped trousers. His speech
was begun in a blunt soldierly manner by a declaration that he had
nothing to do with politics. He had come there, he said, to tell the
truth about the condition of the Russian army. Discipline had simply
ceased to exist. The army was becoming nothing more than a rabble.
Soldiers stole the property, not only of the State, but also of private
citizens, and scoured the country plundering and terrorizing. The
Russian army was becoming a greater danger to the peaceful population
of the western provinces than any invading German army could be.
