Historical Dictionary of the Russian Civil Wars, 1916-1926

Eventually, in mid-July, the new socialist prime minister, Alexander Kerensky, was able to tempt the Kadets back into office. The price he paid for this, however, planted another seed of the civil wars. On 8 July 1917, Kerensky named General Lavr Kornilov commander in chief of the Russian Army. Kornilov, one of Russia’s few heroes of the world war, had accepted the abdication of Nicholas II, but was a staunch opponent of socialism and a stern defender of order in the country, which he saw as a sine qua non of military victory. In an extraordinary statement, he accepted his elevated post only on the condition that he be charged with answering to his own conscience (rather than to the government). His conscience, it soon became clear, dictated that he should order the illegal execution of deserters and ignore the views of revolutionary soldiers’ committees. Encouraged by rightist political forces (among whose number could now be counted the Kadets, who had strayed from their radical roots in despair at the manner in which revolutionary disorder had undermined the war effort), he also began to press upon Kerensky plans for stemming the revolutionary tide through the imposition of martial law in factories and on the railroads, the reestablishment of the death penalty, and other such measures. Precisely how close Kerensky was to accepting the Kornilov plan and whether or not the general was deceiving Kerensky and intended to establish himself as a military dictator remain a matter of debate,21 but at the last moment, on 27 August 1917, the prime minister pulled out of any putative deal, denounced Kornilov as a traitor, and had him and many of his supporters arrested and imprisoned at Bykhov. These Bykhov generals—among them, in addition to Kornilov, Generals A. I. Denikin, A. S. Lukomskii, I. P. Romanovskii, and S. L. Markov—were later to form the leadership corps of the future White Volunteer Army in southern Russia. Meanwhile, much of the initial rank and file of that force (chiefly young officers and military students) was being alimented and encouraged to prepare for counterrevolution by none other than the man who had replaced Kornilov at the head of the Russian Army, General M. V. Alekseev.

In its last, post-Kornilov weeks, the Provisional Government in general, and Kerensky in particular, came under increasingly hostile attack from both the Left (who regarded the prime minister’s flirting with Kornilov as a betrayal of the revolution) and the Right (who regarded Kerensky’s arrest of the general as a betrayal of Russia). There were few shots fired in anger at this juncture, but the political battle lines of the civil wars were by then pretty clearly demarcated. National divisions also broadened, as, for example the Ukrainian government, the Rada, voiced its displeasure with the manner in which Kerensky (under pressure from the Kadets and other conservatives) had reneged upon the promises of broad autonomy for the region that had earlier been offered and began moving toward autonomy and independence.22 Seen in this light, the entire period from February to October 1917, in which all significant political, military, and social forces edged further away from compromise but had not yet taken up arms, might best be characterized as a period of phony civil war.

Whether or not the fractious Russian polity would have descended into outright civil war without a deliberate move toward it is unknowable. That move was made, however, and very deliberately, by Lenin’s Bolsheviks in two interrelated acts: the October Revolution of late 1917 and the dispersal of the Constituent Assembly in January 1918.

On the night of 24–25 October 1917, sensing that they had sufficient support in key cities and among the soldiery, the Bolshevik Party broke with other elements of Russia’s democracy; arrested the Provisional Government; and formed a revolutionary cabinet, the Council of People’s Commissars (Sovnarkom).23 This body immediately passed a series of revolutionary laws (transferring all private land to the peasantry and declaring “workers’ control” of factories, for example) and called upon all belligerents to bring an immediate end to the world war. These provocative measures were echoed by Lenin’s refusal to countenance any notion of forming a coalition, all-socialist government, and he immediately set about sabotaging the negotiations toward such a compromise that had been initiated by the powerful railway workers’ union, Vikzhel, as well as by more moderate elements within the Bolshevik Party.24 The fact was that Lenin expected civil war and regarded it as part and parcel of the revolutionary process, not an unfortunate or avoidable addendum. From his point of view—and from ours—the October Revolution is best regarded, therefore, as the ratcheting up of a preexisting and probably unavoidable armed conflict, rather than the moment of its outbreak.25