In July 1916, Kornilov, disguised as an Austrian soldier, managed to escape and returned to Russia. Largely because of publicity in the Russian press, thirsting for triumphs, however small, during this militarily bleak period, Kornilov became a national hero overnight. Kornilov's escape, more than anything else, fostered the aura of courage and bravery which surrounded him by the time of the February revolution; apart from this, his military record was undistinguished, a fact that once prompted General Brusilov to comment brusquely: "He was the commander of a mounted partisan detachment and nothing more."12
After the February events, Kornilov made a rapid, if superficial, adjustment to the changed political atmosphere. Appointed commander of the Petrograd Military District at the urging of Duma leaders in search of a well-known and authoritative figure to help restore order and calm,13 Kornilov commented to reporters upon his arrival in the capital on March 5 that the revolution "insures victory over the enemy."14 Shortly afterward, having paid a dutiful call on the Executive Committee of the Petrograd Soviet, Kornilov set off for Tsarskoe Selo to arrest the Empress Alexandra. Yet for all this outward display of revolutionary zeal, Kornilov remained very much an officer of the old school; national political issues interested him only insofar as they affected the primary task of restoring the army. He was described by Martynov as "an absolute ignoramus in the realm of politics" and by General Alekseev, who also knew him well, as "a man with a lion's heart and the brains of a sheep."15
Kornilov understood very little about the conflicting concerns of the various political groups and classes within Russian society. He drew little distinction, for example, between the moderate socialist leadership of the Petrograd Soviet, which, while working for a negotiated compromise peace, nonetheless steadfastly supported the Russian defense effort, and the Bolsheviks, who condemned the war and the defense effort altogether. After all, was not the Soviet responsible for initiating the breakdown of traditional military discipline in the armed forces and for all those meddlesome committees and political commissars? During the height of the April protests, Kornilov, his patience exhausted, had called out his artillery with the intent of using it against demonstrating workers and soldiers, but this order was immediately countermanded by the Petrograd Soviet.16 In response, Kornilov abruptly resigned his command and departed for the southwestern front, bristling with antagonism toward the Soviet, and hostility and bitterness toward the Provisional Government for what he considered its spinelessness in dealing with Russia's "internal enemies."
From this moment, Kornilov was understandably suspect in Soviet circles, while among workers and soldiers in Petrograd his name was fast becoming synonymous with repression and counterrevolution. At the same time, Kornilov's tough approach to the problem of controlling civil disorder attracted the attention of conservatives, who began to look upon him as the potential strongman to head a more authoritarian government. Indeed, members of an embryonic Petrograd rightist organization formed in mid- March by Vasilii Zavoiko and E. P. Semenov began to focus on Kornilov as a potential dictator in April.17 At that time, a member of the Zavoiko- Semenov circle initiated discussions with Kornilov, who expressed his willingness to work with the group. In order to maintain a liaison after the general's unexpected departure for the front, Zavoiko himself enlisted in the army and became Kornilov's orderly.18
Zavoiko, a shady character later universally condemned as a political intriguer of the worst sort, quickly acquired enormous influence over Kornilov.19 The general subsequently testified that Zavoiko's services to him were mainly literary. "Since Zavoiko wielded a skillful pen," he affirmed, "I had him draw up orders and papers requiring a particularly strong, artistic style."20 It is obvious however, that the functions performed by Zavoiko went significantly beyond those of a literary nature. The relationship was defined more accurately by Martynov: "With such a flimsy store of knowledge, Kornilov was in need of guidance, and Zavoiko became his personal guide, one would say mentor, on all state matters."21 From the moment of his appointment to Kornilov's staff, Zavoiko fed Kornilov's anxieties about the government in Petrograd, nurtured his superior's personal ambitions, worked unceasingly to further Kornilov's popularity as a potential national leader, and, as time went on, stood at the center of all the political intrigues constantly swirling around the general.
The beginning of the June offensive found Kornilov in command of the Eighth Army on the southwestern front. W7hen the Germans reinforced Austrian troops there and launched a powerful counterattack, the Eighth Army was soundly battered. But for a short time—between June 23 and 29—Eighth Army forces made some gains, taking the ancient Galician town of Halicz, moving on toward Kalusz, and in the process capturing some twelve thousand enemy soldiers and two hundred artillery pieces ("Kornilov's trophies," they were proudly dubbed by the press). This occurred at a time when the Russian advance in other areas had been reversed, and jingoistic papers in Petrograd reacted jubilantly. More than any other officer, Kornilov received personal credit for Russia's short-lived military successes. Subsequently, in no small part because of Zavoiko's talents as a publicity agent, Kornilov attracted wide notice for his "willingness to trade space for lives" and, even more, for his insistence that spontaneously retreating soldiers be fired upon as a means of restoring discipline. At the same time, the Russian commander-in-chief, General Brusilov, and, of course, the Bolsheviks were made to bear the onus for Russia's defeats.
All this publicity increased Kornilov's popularity with the right; it also brought the general's qualities to the attention of Maximilian Filonenko, a right SR and government commissar with the Eighth Army, and Boris Savinkov, commissar for the southwestern front and ultimately a figure of no small historical importance. Savinkov was a revolutionary extremist who turned rabid chauvinist under the impact of the Great War. Political conspirator par excellence, Savinkov had been one of the most flamboyant and notorious figures in the famous terrorist SR Battle Organization between 1903 and 1905. He had, in fact, taken a prominent part in the sensational killings of numerous tsarist officials, among them Nicholas II's hated minister of the interior, Viacheslav Plehve, and the Grand Duke Sergei. After 1905, Savinkov spent much of his time abroad where he busied himself writing a number of popular novels once uncharitably described by Woytinsky as "a mixture of pulp magazine technique with revolutionary yarns and a cheap imitation of Dostoevsky generously spiced with eroticism imported from France."22 At the outbreak of World War I, Savinkov enlisted in the French army, and in April 1917 he returned to Russia and placed himself at the disposal of the Provisional Government. In the early summer, Savinkov, who was close to Kerensky, then minister of war, was appointed government representative on the southwestern front.
As a front commissar, Savinkov had witnessed firsthand the virtual disintegration of Russian combat units. On July 9, in great anguish, he had apprised Kerensky by telegraph of the horrors then unfolding.23 In his approach to the problem of the army, Savinkov naturally differed from those who repudiated in toto the changes in the armed forces wrought by the revolution. Rather, he emphasized the crucial role of civil commissars in overseeing the behavior of officers and in smoothing relations between them and the mass of radicalized soldiers.24 With somewhat less vigor, he defended the role of democratic committees, albeit with strictly limited and well-defined competence. Nonetheless, Savinkov was also a strong advocate of severe measures to restore order at home and on the front—an outlook which Filonenko shared.25 There is some evidence that in late July Savinkov had sounded out Miliukov about the possibility of establishing a military dictatorship;26 at the same time, both he and Filonenko began to look to Kornilov for leadership in halting the flood of desertions from the front and for help in pressuring Kerensky to acquiesce in the creation of an authoritarian regime.