Revolutionary Russia, History Repeats Itself
The Kornilov Affair reminds us that military coups can often have unexpected consequences.
It was Karl Marx who once proclaimed that “Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.”
In a period of turmoil in Russia, this maxim seems more accurate than ever. With Yevgeny Prigozhin’s Wagner mercenary group brazenly challenging the direct authority of the Kremlin, we must look to history as a guide to the ramifications of this affair.
This is not the first time that an ambitious military leader has challenged the authority of Moscow in the midst of a war and looked to seize power for himself. In August 1917, Russia found itself in a dire situation. Facing a rapid German advance and calamity on the front lines, the Provisional Government — formed earlier in the year by a contingent of liberal and left-wing parties after the Romanov dynasty disintegrated — was directly challenged by a growing atmosphere of chaos.
With the war effort struggling and the city of Riga falling to the Germans, disorder on the home front risked a complete collapse of the Russian state and a direct challenge to the leader of the Provisional Government, Aleksandr Kerensky.
With the disintegration of civil society seemingly imminent, a challenge was made to the authority of Kerensky’s government by a hardline military leader, who looked to restore order and discipline. The Kornilov Affair, as the attempted coup would come to be known, can help us to understand the situation in Russia today — and provide us with an insight into how Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine may transpire in the wake of the Wagner Group mercenary uprising.
The rise of Kornilov
Lavr Kornilov was a hero to the conservative and authoritarian forces in Russia: an intelligence officer during the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905), Kornilov had risen through the ranks to become a divisional commander during World War One.
Despite being captured by the Austrians at Przemyśl in 1915 and imprisoned, Kornilov had escaped and returned to the front lines, which only served to bolster his reputation, commanding the military district of Petrograd (St. Petersburg) after the February Revolution.
Kornilov was a committed Tsarist who despised socialism and resented the Provisional Government, which he saw as weak and ineffective, and he championed the old order and its belief in discipline, authoritarianism, and conservatism above democracy. Despite his fraught relationship with the Russian Government, he was one of the most able Russian generals of the war, and this made him indispensable to the Provisional Government.
His first clash with the Provisional Government came in April 1917, when Kornilov — as commander of the Petrograd Garrison — asked for approval to send troops on to the streets to disperse antiwar protests. After his request was denied, Kornilov resigned his post in protest and returned to the front lines to fight against the Central Powers, but his self-imposed absence would not last for long.
Russia in turmoil
Kornilov’s opportunity would come only months later. In July, a failed offensive in Galicia by the Russian commander-in-chief Aleksei Brusilov saw him removed from his post by Kerensky. Owing to his proven track record of competence, Kerensky appointed Kornilov as his replacement — and he immediately looked to restore order and authority to the Russian war effort.
Kornilov aimed to end the growing sense of disorder and indiscipline on both the front line and the home front, re-establishing the death penalty within the military, abolishing solders’ committees and clamping down on strikes that were disrupting the war effort. However, he also wanted to take his plans one step further and target the state itself — overthrowing the Provisional Government and destroying the Bolsheviks once and for all.
At a conference in August, which he attended alongside Kerensky, Kornilov began secretly gathering supporters for his coup among the Russian elite, meeting a group of wealthy businessmen and bankers aboard his train. Gathering in a conspiratorial atmosphere, Kornilov told his audience, who shared his hatred for the Bolsheviks, “I am not asking you about your political convictions. You are Russian people. The army is falling apart. Everything is going to rack and ruin.”
He complained that “As long as the Bolsheviks are sitting in the Smolny, nothing can be done” and hatched a daring plan to liquidate them: “In agreement with Kerensky, I am dispatching a corps to Petrograd to disperse the Bolsheviks! But it is not enough to disperse them; they must be arrested. In order that the Bolsheviks do not scatter from Smolny, and in order to avoid street fighting, a movement must be organized in Petrograd.”
Kornilov’s pitch to the Russian elite was a success and he received funding for his plan. Whether Kerensky really supported the coup or not is a point of contention, but upon hearing rumors of the coup, on 10 September Kerensky sacked Kornilov and ordered him to return to Petrograd — which points heavily to the latter. The sacking only hastened preparations for the coup, as Kornilov and his men feared that Petrograd would soon fall under Bolshevik control.
The affair also attracted the attention of the British: Kornilov established contact with the British military attaché, who discussed the proposal with Foreign Office officials. The British interest was driven by cold realpolitik, as they believed a Kornilov-led government could keep Russia in the war against Germany and prevent a collapse of the Russian war effort.
As the bloody stalemate of the First World War continued on the Western Front. Russian internal politics would remain a key point of concern for British policymakers — with a possible return to Tsarist autocracy offering a potential advantage to His Majesty’s Government.
The counter-revolution begins
With rumors swirling about Kornilov’s plans, the Petrograd Soviet broke into a frenzy of defensive preparations, with the Bolsheviks in particular reacting much more decisively than the Provisional Government.
On 11 September, The Committee for Struggle Against Counter-revolution was formed to resist the coup, with Bolsheviks comprising its most prominent members. Kerensky realised that, despite his rivalry with the Bolsheviks, his government had found itself reliant on their support — and they began arming the Red Guards and releasing Bolshevik prisoners (including Leon Trotsky) to defend the city.
Kornilov ordered General Aleksandr Krymov’s 3rd Cavalry Corps to seize Petrograd and “establish the order”, but his advance immediately faced resistance. The defenders worked with rail unions to block the advance of Kornilov’s men, whilst infiltrators convinced others to desert and withdraw their support for the coup — and soon Cossack troops began organizing their own soviets and freely fraternizing with the general population.
By 13 September, the coup had well and truly run out of steam. Krymov, faced with certain defeat, opted to shoot himself after hearing of the revolution’s failure, whilst Kornilov was quickly stripped of his command and imprisoned with 30 other officers. Kornilov’s coup would end bloodlessly and in abject failure, with the flames of his revolution burning out almost as quickly as they were lit.
The British assessment of the situation was one of both criticism and concern. George Buchanan, British Ambassador to the Russian Empire, described the coup as “Kornilov’s ill timed venture” that had “put a complete stop to the progress” that had been made under Kornilov’s watch regarding military discipline.
However, Kornilov’s story would not end here— he eventually escaped from prison and fought against the Bolsheviks during the Russian Civil War, where he was eventually killed in battle in April 1918. The coup may have failed spectacularly, but Kornilov’s opposition to the Bolsheviks would remain until the end of his life.
Political implications
Kornilov’s uprising failed for one clear reason: he misjudged the appetite of his soldiers for his political vision for Russia, with many having a great deal of sympathy for the Bolsheviks. After years of bloody conflict during the First World War, and faced with economic and political chaos on the home front, a return to tsarist autocracy was not the vision that his troops had in mind — and without this commitment, the coup was doomed to melt away at the first sight of resistance.
Despite its failure, the attempted coup would undoubtedly have important political implications within Russia. The coup highlighted the weakness of Kerensky’s Provisional Government, which relied on the support of the Petrograd Soviet and the Red Guards to suppress the uprising: arming the Bolsheviks may have ultimately worked, but it left the Provisional Government looking fragile and inefficient. The Provisional Government had, in effect, saved itself for the time being but sealed its eventual defeat in the months to come.
For the Bolsheviks, the Kornilov Affair had the opposite effect — presenting them with a crucial opportunity to consolidate their own power base. They were left empowered and armed, ready to seize control during the October Revolution as their membership base swelled from 24,000 members at the beginning of 1917 to over 400,000 by the end of September, driven by their staunch opposition to the war.
The whole affair is shrouded in mystery and confusion, with contemporaries differing in their views of Kerensky’s involvement. Some claimed that he was directly involved in the plot but later changed his mind, whilst others have agreed with Kerensky — who himself maintained that it was a right-wing coup. Given Kerensky ordered the arrest of Kornilov at the outset of the coup, the evidence seems to point to his innocence.
Regardless, the whole affair left Kerensky completely isolated: the left viewed him as a counter-revolutionary, whilst the right believed he had betrayed Kornilov and the army. The Kornilov Affair provides a timely reminder of the unexpected consequences of a Russian uprising, as by destabilizing one leader, Kornilov had inadvertently strengthened the position of the very enemy he hoped to save Russia from — the Bolsheviks.
As we try to understand the present situation in Russia today, the events of 1917 can help inform our understanding of the future. For Yevgeny Prigozhin and his army of Wagner mercenaries, the effects of his challenge to Putin may equally have unforeseen consequences — potentially uniting the forces behind the Russian dictator and consolidating the position of the military hierarchy.
The Kornilov Affair highlights the unpredictable nature of such events, with Kornilov inadvertently strengthening his opponents through an ill-judged and mistimed uprising, and parallels can certainly be drawn between his coup in 1917 and Prigozhin’s attempted mutiny in June. Time will only tell if Prigozhin has unwittingly offered the same opportunity to Vladimir Putin’s enemies as Kornilov presented to the Bolsheviks.
