When the provisional government was again compelled to reorganize in July, Kerensky, who adhered to no rigid political dogma and whose dramatic oratorical style appeared to win him broad popular support, became prime minister. Despite his efforts to unite all political factions, he soon alienated the moderates and the officers' corps by summarily dismissing his commander in chief, General Lavr G. Kornilov (Kornilov, Lavr Georgiyevich), and personally replacing him (September); he also lost the confidence of the left wing by refusing to implement their radical social and economic programs and by apparently planning to assume dictatorial powers.
Consequently, when the Bolsheviks seized power (October Revolution, 1917), Kerensky, who escaped to the front, was unable to gather forces to defend his government. He remained in hiding until May 1918, when he emigrated to western Europe and devoted himself to writing books on the revolution and editing émigré newspapers and journals. In 1940 he moved to the United States, where he lectured at universities and continued to write books on his revolutionary experiences.
Kornilov, Lavr Georgiyevich
▪ Russian general
born August 30 [August 18, Old Style], 1870, Karkaralinsk, Western Siberia, Russian Empire [now Qargaraly, Kazakhstan]
died April 13, 1918, near Ekaterinodar [now Krasnodar], Russia
Imperial Russian general, who was accused of attempting to overthrow the provisional government established in Russia after the February Revolution of 1917 and to replace it with a military dictatorship.
An intelligence officer for the Imperial Russian Army during the Russo-Japanese War (1904–05) and a military attaché in Beijing (1907–11), Kornilov became a divisional commander during World War I. Captured by the Austrians at Przemysl (March 1915), he escaped in 1916 and was placed in command of an army corps.
After the February Revolution Kornilov was put in charge of the vital military district of Petrograd (St. Petersburg) by the provisional government. His determination to restore discipline and efficiency in the disintegrating Russian Army, however, made him unpopular in revolutionary Petrograd. He soon resigned, returned to the front, and participated in the abortive Russian offensive in June against the Germans in Galicia. On August 1 (July 18, Old Style) Prime Minister Aleksandr Kerensky (Kerensky, Aleksandr Fyodorovich) appointed him commander in chief, but conflicts developed between Kornilov and Kerensky, owing to their opposing views on politics and on the role and nature of the Army. At the end of August, Kornilov sent troops toward Petrograd; Kerensky, interpreting this as an attempted military coup d'état, dismissed Kornilov and ordered him to come to Petrograd (August 27). Kornilov refused, and railroad workers prevented his troops from reaching their destination; on September 1 he surrendered and was imprisoned at Bykhov.
Kornilov later escaped, and, after the Bolsheviks seized power (October 1917), he assumed military command of the anti-Bolshevik (“White”) volunteer army in the Don region. Several months later he was killed during a battle for Ekaterinodar.
July Days
▪ Russian history
(July 16–20 [July 3–7, old style], 1917), a period in the Russian Revolution (Russian Revolution of 1917) during which workers and soldiers of Petrograd (Saint Petersburg) staged armed demonstrations against the Provisional Government that resulted in a temporary decline of Bolshevik influence and in the formation of a new Provisional Government, headed by Aleksandr Kerensky (Kerensky, Aleksandr Fyodorovich). In June dissatisfied Petrograd workers and soldiers, using Bolshevik slogans, staged a demonstration and adopted resolutions against the government. On July 3 protestors, motivated in part by the resignation of the government's Kadet (Constitutional Democratic) ministers, marched through Petrograd to the Tauride Palace to demand that the Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies assume formal power. The Bolsheviks, initially reluctant, attempted to prevent the demonstration but subsequently decided to support it.
On July 4 the Bolsheviks planned a peaceful demonstration; but confused armed clashes broke out, injuring about 400 persons. Neither the Provisional Government nor the Soviet could control the situation. But the Soviet refused to take power, and the Bolshevik Party refrained from actually staging an insurrection. Thus, the demonstration was deprived of its political goal, and by nightfall the crowds had dispersed.
To undermine Bolshevik popularity and reduce the threat of a coup d'etat, the government produced evidence that the Bolshevik leader Lenin (Lenin, Vladimir Ilich) had close political and financial ties with the German government. A public reaction set in against the Bolsheviks; they were beaten and arrested, their property destroyed, their leaders persecuted. Lenin fled to Finland; but others, including Trotsky, were jailed. The Provisional Government was reorganized, with Kerensky as prime minister. The new government, though largely Socialistic, proved to be only a short-lived concession to the demonstrators' demands for a revolutionary Soviet government. It was subsequently overthrown during the October (November) Revolution.
Socialist Revolutionary Party
▪ political party, Russia
Russian Sotsialisty Revolyutsionery (SR, or ESERY)
Russian political party that represented the principal alternative to the Social-Democratic Workers' Party during the last years of Romanov rule. Ideological heir to the Narodniki (Populists) of the 19th century, the party was founded in 1901 as a rallying point for agrarian socialists, whose appeal was principally to the peasantry. The party program called for the socialization of the land and a federal governmental structure. The SR Party carried out hundreds of political assassinations and never completely abandoned terrorist tactics (V.I. Lenin was wounded by an SR member in 1918).
In 1917 it was the largest socialist group in Russia. Between February and October 1917 its members held powerful political posts (e.g., Aleksandr Kerensky was minister of justice and later prime minister; Viktor Chernov was minister of agriculture) and exercised considerable influence over the provisional governments. The party won 410 seats (compared to the Bolsheviks' 175) in the election for the Constituent Assembly (November 1917) but had divided over the Bolshevik Revolution (October 1917). Its radical wing (Left Socialist Revolutionaries) formed a splinter group that participated in the Bolshevik government until its representatives were expelled in July 1918 at the fifth Congress of the Soviets. The SR was suppressed by Lenin after the Bolshevik victory in the Civil War.
Bolshevik
▪ Russian political faction
Russian“One of the Majority”, plural Bolsheviks, or Bolsheviki,
member of a wing of the Russian Social-Democratic Workers' Party, which, led by Lenin (Lenin, Vladimir Ilich), seized control of the government in Russia (October 1917) and became the dominant political power. The group originated at the party's second congress (1903) when Lenin's followers, insisting that party membership be restricted to professional revolutionaries, won a temporary majority on the party's central committee and on the editorial board of its newspaper Iskra. They assumed the name Bolsheviks and dubbed their opponents the Mensheviks (Menshevik) (“Those of the Minority”).
Although both factions participated together in the Russian Revolution of 1905 and went through periods of apparent reconciliation (about 1906 and 1910), their differences increased. The Bolsheviks continued to insist upon a highly centralized, disciplined, professional party. They boycotted the elections to the First State Duma (Russian parliament) in 1906 and refused to cooperate with the government and other political parties in subsequent Dumas. Furthermore, their methods of obtaining revenue (including robbery) were disapproved of by the Mensheviks and non-Russian Social Democrats.