CHAPTER 7

THE IMPLOSION OF RUSSIA

In Petrograd, events had begun to move forward even before the full scale of the catastrophic military defeats became known. Appalled by the manner in which Soviet delegates had been mistreated by front-line soldiers and suddenly aware that the army was disintegrating, the Provisional Government had already agreed to the restoration of the death penalty, but this provoked further unrest in Petrograd, where much of the garrison remained only nominally under the control of either the Provisional Government or the Soviet. Most of the troops were those who had taken part in the February Revolution and had extracted special concessions, such as guarantees that they would not serve at the front. They regarded it as their duty to stay in Petrograd to safeguard the revolution, claiming that they were defending the gains of February from a reactionary backlash, though there was precious little sign of any practical steps towards counter-revolution. These troops had been joined by some of the more undisciplined troops from the front, who had either travelled to Petrograd under their own volition, or had been sent away by exasperated commanders who wanted to remove their disruptive presence from the front line. Whilst this may have reduced agitation and unrest to a small degree in Russia’s field armies, the consequence was a concentration of the most militant soldiers in and around Petrograd.

Aware that there might be trouble, General Peter Alexeyevich Polovtsev, commander of the Petrograd District, had reduced the amount of weaponry available, moving large numbers of machine-guns to the front and reducing stocks of ammunition as part of the preparations for the summer offensive. This in turn triggered further discontent in the garrison, many members of which now feared that, as casualties mounted in the Kerensky Offensive, their exclusion from front-line service might be rescinded. The committees of several formations in and around Petrograd resolved to hold demonstrations to overthrow the government, a move that put the Bolsheviks in a difficult position. On the one hand, many actively supported the move by the soldiers, seeing it as the road to power, but on the other hand, there was concern that the Provisional Government retained considerable support across the country and, if the Bolsheviks were seen to be involved in its overthrow, there would be a major backlash against them. Lenin personally urged caution, drawing on the lessons of the Paris Commune of 1871, which was ultimately suppressed by anti-Communard forces raised in provincial France. But late in June, Lenin left Petrograd to stay in a friend’s dacha in Finland and those in favour of an immediate revolution came to dominate the Petrograd Bolsheviks, albeit in a disorganised and somewhat chaotic manner.

On 16 July, the rebellious troops took to the streets backed by pro-Bolshevik workers, largely from the Vyborg district, and large numbers of Red Guards, the armed militia that had been created in the wake of the February Revolution. Barricades were erected and there were sporadic episodes of firing – mostly at random, but some between the troops and right-wing opponents. In one of the worst incidents, a commandeered car with a machine-gun mounted on it drove down Nevsky Prospekt and fired into some of the gathered crowds. Many civilians were killed and wounded, as were about 40 soldiers from the Pavlovsky Regiment; the rest of the regiment returned to its barracks in some disarray.²²³

Many of the soldiers carried banners demanding that the Soviet took power, and condemning the ‘capitalist members’ of the Provisional Government. They were unaware that the fragile coalition of the Provisional Government had already unravelled, with the Kadets – the ‘capitalists’ – walking out in protest over concessions that the government had been forced to make to the regional government in Kiev. The departure of the Kadets in turn triggered the resignation of Prince Lvov, but this had not been announced to the public yet. Throughout the night there was constant activity as the soldiers prepared for another day of protests, and various Bolsheviks – with little or no central guidance – continued to agitate. Lenin arrived back in haste from Finland, and apparently spent the night in agonised indecision, repeatedly asking Zinoniev and other senior Bolsheviks if this was the moment to try to seize power. Nobody was prepared to give a clear answer – they were all in completely uncharted territory.

The following day, the troops took to the streets again, joined by a large group of sailors who came ashore from a flotilla that had sailed to Petrograd from the naval base of Kronstadt, a hotbed of mutiny since February. They were led by Fyodor Fyodorovich Raskolnikov, the commissar of the Baltic Fleet. Raskolnikov was, according to some accounts, the illegitimate son of a Russian priest, and had adopted the name of Dostoyevsky’s tragic character in place of his surname Ilyin during the February Revolution. Although he told onlookers that the sailors had come to Petrograd to help the garrison in a new revolution, many of the men who accompanied him spent the day promenading along the banks of the Neva accompanied by ‘scantily dressed and high-heeled ladies’.²²⁴

There was growing confusion throughout the day. Whilst pro-Bolshevik soldiers and workers controlled the streets, there was no sign of any overall guiding influence. Alarmed at the turn of events and in particular the demands that it should seize power, the Soviet condemned the armed demonstrations, but at the same time others associated with the Soviet produced leaflets over the signature of the ‘Petrograd Federation of Anarchists’ that denounced Kerensky as a ‘little Napoleon’ who had sacrificed hundreds of thousands of Russian soldiers for no gain.²²⁵ A large group gathered outside the Kshesinskaya Mansion, where Lenin had taken up residence, but when he eventually appeared to speak to them from a balcony, Lenin failed to issue a clear order. Had he told the people who had gathered to march on the Provisional Government in the Tauride Palace, there can be little doubt that the Bolsheviks would have been in power by the evening, though whether they could have held on to power is open to question. Instead he spoke briefly, telling the soldiers and sailors that he was confident that the Bolsheviks would soon take charge. In the absence of clear instructions, the large group wandered off to Nevsky Prospekt, joining with other soldiers, sailors and workers. A small group of soldiers approached the residence of Prince Lvov and informed his staff that they were there to arrest him, but when they were invited to send a number of their party into the building to talk to the prince, they lost their nerve and contented themselves with making off with Lvov’s car.

Meanwhile, the masses that had gathered in Nevsky Prospekt began looting nearby shops. At about the same time, groups of Cossacks appeared to confront them. The Cossacks had repeatedly been deployed during the days of the tsars to suppress dissent, and they were now sent into action by the Soviet; they charged a group of sailors in the streets near the Neva, killing some and scattering the rest. However, when they attempted to take away their prisoners, other pro-Bolshevik troops intervened, as Knox witnessed from the safety of the British Embassy:

In a few minutes two Cossacks returned on foot, escorting a prisoner, who appealed to a crowd of idle Pavlovsky men to rescue him. One Cossack dropped him, but the other, a big fellow, held on to him like a man. He was one against 20, and the cowards surged round him and overpowered him. The prisoner got free and at once bolted. A hero of the Pavlovsky drew the Cossack’s sword, and while the others held back, gave him a swinging blow with it on the head …

The Cossack, however, was only stunned for a moment, and then collected himself and ran off after his squadron. The other man ran in the opposite direction, and the insurgents fired several shots at both, but without hitting either.

A few minutes later there was a stampede of riderless horses down the quay, and some five of them fell on the pavement at the corner in front of the Embassy. We learned later that the squadron had been ambushed and had suffered several casualties from machine-gun fire.

I read in the paper next day that a motor conveying dead and wounded Cossacks across the bridge was stopped by the crowd, all the bodies were thrown out, and the wounded were beaten.²²⁶

As the day drew to a close, it began to rain, which helped disperse many of those still in the streets. Hundreds had been killed, largely by random fire or when the massed soldiers attacked civilians they regarded as ‘bourgeois’. Maxim Gorky was appalled by what he saw during the unrest, as he wrote in a letter to his wife, Yekaterina Peshkova:

The worst of it all was the crowd, the philistines, the ‘worker’ and soldier, who is in fact no more than a brute, cowardly and brainless, without an ounce of self-respect and not understanding why he is on the streets, what he is needed for, or who is leading him and where. Whole companies of soldiers threw away their rifles and banners when the shooting began and smashed the shop windows and doors. Is this the revolutionary army of a free people?

It is clear that the crowds on the street had absolutely no idea of what they were doing – it was all a nightmare. Nobody knew the aims of the uprising or its leaders. Were there any leaders at all? I doubt it.²²⁷

It is surely more than slightly disingenuous to blame the soldiery for being leaderless – it was the responsibility of people like Gorky and Lenin to step into that role. Unless they were prepared to take a strong lead, they should have used their authority over the men to persuade them to return to their barracks; not to do so, and then to complain about their behaviour, highlights more than anything else the unpreparedness of the Bolshevik leadership.

The Provisional Government and the Soviet remained in the Tauride Palace, surrounded by tens of thousands of hostile armed men; only 18 soldiers were assigned to defend the palace, not even enough to man all the guard posts. Kerensky himself had departed by train to visit the front line, and the remnants of his cabinet were ensconced in the magnificent General Staff Building that faced the Winter Palace, protected by a small group of Cossacks. Even without firm leadership, the collapse of the government seemed imminent. When the restive soldiers and sailors penetrated into the Tauride Palace and seized Viktor Mikhailovich Chernov, the agriculture minister, Leon Trotsky – who was at that time a member of the Soviet – confronted them and urged them to release him. It was perhaps the only decisive moment of leadership and authority shown by any senior Bolshevik figure during the entire crisis.

At this stage, an infantry regiment appeared through the heavy rain, marching up from Tsarskoe Selo. The exact purpose for which it had been summoned was not clear to anyone – its small group of officers had been told that they were to march to the Tauride Palace to protect the revolution, though against whom was not specified. If the Bolsheviks were too unsure to seize the moment the same was not true of others; Fyodor Ilyich Dan, a leading Menshevik member of the Soviet, promptly ordered the newly arrived regiment to take up defensive positions around the palace. The moment in which the pro-Bolshevik soldiers might have overthrown the government had passed, and the following day, the remnants of the pro-Bolshevik troops and workers faded away as other military units arrived, this time with clear orders to prevent a Bolshevik seizure of power. Raskolnikov and his sailors from Kronstadt briefly seized the Peter and Paul Fortress, but as preparations began for the pro-government forces to storm it, they agreed to evacuate it on condition that they were allowed to return to their naval base. The unrest was over, at least for the moment.

The orthodox Soviet-era account of this episode describes it as a spontaneous uprising, but some believed that the Bolshevik leadership had intended to seize control; this seems unlikely, as there were several moments when even the most rudimentary instructions to the massed protesters would have resulted in the fall of the government. Instead, their indecision – and the contrasting opportunism of individuals like Dan – prevented such an outcome, though as will be seen later, there was considerable post facto rationalisation of their failure to seize the moment. The mood of many of the pro-Bolshevik elements in the garrison changed when the justice ministry published and distributed leaflets alleging that the Germans were financing the Bolsheviks. Whilst this was strictly true – the Bolsheviks received funds from Germany throughout this period – the amount involved was not great, and there was no evidence that the Bolsheviks were shaping their policies to suit the Germans. Nevertheless, it was sufficient to turn the mood against Lenin who was forced to flee, ultimately to Finland. As other Bolsheviks were arrested or turned against their former comrades, it seemed as if the failure of the Bolsheviks to seize the moment might have doomed their movement to oblivion.

For the Soviet, the fallout of the ‘July Days’ was particularly difficult. On the one hand, the members of the Soviet who had condemned the behaviour of the troops and other protesters were happy to blame the entire episode on the Bolsheviks, but on the other hand, many other members were fearful that suppression of the Bolsheviks would lead to a more widespread right-wing reaction against the revolution – in effect, the very counter-revolution that the rowdy garrison regarded as its duty to prevent. In another letter to his wife, Gorky acknowledged that the Bolsheviks were to blame for the unrest, but added that there was also undoubted evidence of agitation by German agents, and that the Kadets had somehow orchestrated the entire business. Many members of the Soviet felt an instinctive loyalty to their fellow socialists and were reluctant to allow an anti-Bolshevik witch-hunt to develop; they now claimed that right-wing groups were using the events of July as an excuse to try to dismantle the entire revolution. Foremost amongst these right-wing groups were those known as the ‘Black Hundreds’, who had been in existence since the beginning of the century. With a strong commitment to traditional Russian values, members of the Black Hundreds had been involved in violence against Jews and pro-independence Ukrainians, and had openly expressed their support for the tsar prior to his abdication – Nicholas even produced telegrams from members of the Black Hundreds as proof for Rodzianko that he retained popular support.²²⁸ The Black Hundreds were outlawed after the February Revolution, but they remained a potent symbol against which all Russian socialists could unite.

On 19 July, Kerensky returned to Petrograd, happily accepting credit for having dispatched troops to the capital to prevent a Bolshevik takeover. Following the collapse of the coalition government, he was the only candidate to replace Prince Lvov as prime minister. The prince handed over power with a sense of relief; his hopes of taking Russia peacefully into a new post-tsarist era had always been optimistic, and were now looking ever more unlikely. A few days after officially stepping down, he contacted the writer Tikhon Ivanovich Polner, and told him:

The only way to save the country now is to suppress the Soviet and fire on the people. I cannot do that. But Kerensky can.²²⁹

Kerensky’s rise had been rapid, and there can be little doubt that he was now far above a level to which his experience and expertise were suited. Despite the disasters of the Kerensky Offensive and the collapse of the governing coalition, he was widely hailed as the man to unite all of the factions of Russia, and the expectations and adulation of so many parts of Russian society removed any personal doubts that he might still have held about his abilities. He moved into the Winter Palace, sleeping in the quarters once used by Tsar Alexander III and adopting many of the trappings of the tsars – guards were changed outside his apartments with pomp and ceremony several times a day, and the flag above the Winter Palace – red, in deference to the revolution – was raised and lowered depending on whether he was in residence. It took him three weeks to assemble a new coalition, which saw the Kadets return to office and effectively sidelined the Soviet; although several members of the new cabinet were members of the Soviet, they were there ostensibly on their own merits rather than as nominees of the Soviet, which was forced to move out of the Tauride Palace to the Smolny Institute a short distance away. Feeling that this represented a betrayal of the arrangements that had existed since the February Revolution, Tsereteli – who was suffering from tuberculosis – refused to be part of the new government.

One of the conditions stipulated by the Kadets for their return to government was the appointment of Kornilov as commander-in-chief of the army. Brusilov’s star was already declining, and the increasingly imperious Kerensky was offended when Brusilov did not meet him personally when his train arrived in Mogilev. As a result, the pressure to sack Brusilov and replace him with Kornilov was irresistible. Regardless of those who were lining up behind Kornilov, Kerensky had need of a strong figure to further his own ambitions to run Russia effectively as a dictator, but almost immediately Kornilov placed conditions on his appointment. He wanted the death penalty – recently restored to the front line, and implemented by Kornilov even before it once more became law – to be extended to the rear areas. Furthermore, he told Kerensky that he would act according to his conscience and in the interests of Russia, rather than being subordinate to the Provisional Government. This seems to be because, despite the sidelining of the Soviet, he remained convinced that the government was overly dependent upon compromises made with the Soviet; although he was unable to persuade Kerensky to agree to this demand, further requirements followed, many of them apparently penned by Savinkov, the former terrorist who played a part in Kornilov’s meteoric rise and who was now deputy war minister. These included further extensions of the death penalty, the effective elimination of soldiers’ committees, the imposition of martial law throughout Russia, and increasingly strict controls over the railways and war-related industries. Many of these would have created something similar to the state of affairs in Germany, where Hindenburg and Ludendorff effectively headed a military dictatorship.

There can be little doubt that Kornilov firmly believed that these demands were vital to prevent Russia from falling under the control of the Soviet – the events of the July Days had shown how easy it would be for the left to seize control of Petrograd. After his experiences in the front line, Kornilov was also acutely aware of the disastrous state of the Russian Army, and as an authoritarian conservative it was not surprising that he believed the only way of restoring discipline in both the army and the nation was through strict discipline. This made him increasingly attractive to those who wished to reverse the revolution, even to restore the tsar to power – the Union of Officers, for example, consisted of current and former middle-to-senior army figures who were plotting a military coup d’état in collaboration with right-wing industrialists and members of the Kadets. If there was any coordinating mind behind this group, it was Vasily Zavoyko, who had made considerable money as a property speculator and industrial financier and according to some sources became Kornilov’s main political advisor.²³⁰ Shortly after taking up his post as commander-in-chief, Kornilov summoned other senior commanders to Stavka for a conference, and spoke privately to Denikin, who had just been transferred to take command of Southwest Front:

Kornilov … said to me, almost in a whisper: ‘It is necessary to struggle, otherwise the country will perish. N. came to see me at the front. He is nursing his scheme of a coup d’état and of placing the Grand Duke Dmitri on the throne. He is organising something or other, and has suggested collaboration. I told him flatly that I would take no part in any Romanov adventures. The government itself understands that it can do nothing. They have offered my joining in the government … No, thank you! These gentlemen are far too much entangled with the Soviets, and cannot decide on anything. I have told them that if authority is given me I shall carry on a decisive struggle. We must lead Russia to a constituent assembly, and then let them do what they like. I shall stand aside and not interfere in any way.’²³¹

For the moment at least, Kornilov was distancing himself from the plotters. Kerensky and Kornilov were unlikely allies, and there was friction in their relationship from the start, particularly when Kerensky made little if any move to implement Kornilov’s demands. In the words of General Yevgeny Ivanovich Martynov, who wrote a biography of Kornilov after the war:

Kerensky assumed a high-and-mighty tone in his relations with the older generals. A humble hard worker like Alexeyev, or the diplomatically inclined Brusilov, could permit this treatment. But such tactics would not go down with the self-complacent and touchy Kornilov, who … for his part looked down on the lawyer, Kerensky.²³²

Savinkov too noted the hostility and mistrust between the two men; he later wrote that he had disagreements with Kerensky almost daily after becoming deputy war minister, and Kerensky repeatedly spoke about removing Kornilov from command.²³³

On 23 August, the commander-in-chief appeared in Petrograd and demanded to meet the government to discuss the lack of progress. A meeting between Kornilov and Kerensky, the latter accompanied by two close political allies, degenerated rapidly into shouting and recrimination, and that evening Kornilov dined with Rodzianko. He told the former prime minister – who was trying with Guchkov to establish a new liberal political party – that unless Kerensky agreed to implement his demands, he would dispatch troops to Petrograd. The following day, he ordered III Cavalry Corps to move to Velikiye Luki, from where the troops could travel rapidly by train to Petrograd if required. The precise reason for this move was at the time not clear; it could be interpreted either as a threat against Kerensky’s government, or the deployment of troops who would be available to support it in the event of further pro-Soviet or pro-Bolshevik unrest. Within days though, Kornilov gave explicit orders to the commander of the cavalry corps: in the event of a further Bolshevik uprising in Petrograd, the troops were to move to the capital, arrest the Bolsheviks, and disarm pro-Bolshevik troops and workers.

In an attempt to bring together the increasingly fragmented representatives of Russian politics, Kerensky called a meeting in Moscow commencing on 25 August. He may have been disappointed, but hardly surprised, when it got off to a poor start – the Bolsheviks refused to take part and called out workers on strike paralysing Moscow’s trams and closing all cafeterias and restaurants, even those in the Bolshoi Theatre where the conference was taking place. Even within the conference, there were clear signs of disagreement and entrenched positions when delegates from right and left took up seats on the right and left of the theatre, clearly opposed to each other. Kerensky’s opening address laid down open challenges to those who might oppose him. When he told the conference that he would suppress any attempt to overthrow the government with blood and iron, he was enthusiastically applauded by many of those present; but when he went on to condemn those who presented him with ultimatums, the right-wing delegates listened in stony silence.²³⁴ But few could deny the realities of what was happening on the front line. Alexeyev condemned the effect of soldiers’ committees on discipline and order; he described to the delegates how during the recent disastrous offensive, one regiment’s committee refused to obey orders to advance. As a result, the attack was launched by 28 officers, 20 NCOs, and just two soldiers, nearly all of whom were killed while the rest of the regiment watched and took no action.²³⁵

What was desperately needed was someone who could capture the imagination of all those present, perhaps with a fiery speech or persuasive rhetoric, and with his track record of such speeches in the past, Kerensky must have believed that this was truly his moment to rise up as Russia’s saviour. But on the second day of the conference, Kornilov arrived from Stavka to a tumultuous reception. Women bombarded him with flowers when he disembarked from his train at the Alexander Station in the west of the city, and a cheering crowd of army officers and right-wing supporters carried him on their shoulders to a waiting motorcade. In a deliberately symbolic gesture, Kornilov drove to the Iversky Shrine near the Kremlin, the traditional destination of all new arrivals in Moscow and most importantly a location that the tsars had always visited when they reached the city. Rather than proceeding to the conference in the Bolshoi Theatre, he returned to his railway carriage where he received a series of visitors, including Miliukov and other members of the Kadets, important financiers, and several generals including Alexeyev and Kaledin. Some of his visitors urged him to take decisive action to arrest the growing chaos, particularly the financiers Putilov and Vishnegradsky, who offered to provide substantial funding. Many of those in Kornilov’s entourage openly spoke about overthrowing the Provisional Government; Alexander Ivanovich Verkhovsky, the commander of the military district, was worried by such talk and urged restraint. He left the railway station alarmed that Kornilov’s supporters were completely out of touch with the huge spectrum of opinion in Russian society, and commented that ‘they seem like people who have just dropped from the moon’.²³⁶

Kerensky was deeply troubled by the reception that Kornilov was given. The two men were of the same mind that what Russia needed was a strong man; their difference of opinion was that each believed himself to be that strong man. Kornilov was tabled to speak to the delegates at the conference on 27 August, and Kerensky was fearful that, at the very least, the speech would cement the general’s position as the man to restore order. He dispatched a personal envoy to meet Kornilov and to urge him to restrict his speech to military affairs; when Kornilov refused to give the envoy any such assurance, Kerensky telephoned him personally to repeat the plea. Kornilov’s response – that he would give the speech in his own way – cannot have helped calm Kerensky’s nerves.

When the speech was delivered, it proved to be remarkably bland, though it contained a warning that the Germans would attack and capture Riga, potentially opening the way for an advance on Petrograd, unless order was restored in the army. Kornilov was followed by several other speakers who demanded changes that amounted to a counter-revolution, turning back many of the changes since the February Revolution. Perhaps more important was the weakening effect that the exchanges had on Kerensky’s personal authority; his personal plea to Kornilov left the general with the strong impression that Kerensky’s position was weak. This increased his belief, fed by those on the right wing of Russian society, that it would be Kornilov, not Kerensky, who would be Russia’s saviour. To make matters worse, Kerensky’s closing address to the conference fell far short of his usual rhetorical flourish and degenerated into a muddled attempt to justify his own position; he appeared to lose the thread of what he was trying to say, and when he paused to collect his thoughts mid-sentence, the delegates brought the conference to an end by standing and applauding. As one of his supporters wrote: ‘At the very end of his speech one could hear not only the agony of his power, but also of his personality.’²³⁷

While the Russians struggled to create a workable and sustainable system of power and command, the Germans made further gains in the front line. Ever since German troops had penetrated into Lithuania in 1915, there had been repeated suggestions from Ober Ost for a decisive drive to capture Riga, which ranked alongside Warsaw as an important city outside the strictly Russian parts of the tsar’s empire. As will be described later, there had been repeated attempts to ‘Russify’ the Baltic States with only limited success, and Riga was not only the centre of Latvian nationalist thought, it was also one of the most industrialised cities in the Russian Empire. In August 1915, the Germans mounted a naval operation into the Gulf of Riga as a possible preliminary step to seaborne operations; a force consisting of two dreadnought battleships, two pre-dreadnoughts, three battlecruisers, and a large number of smaller vessels attempted to force their way through Russian minefields with the intention of engaging and destroying elements of the Russian Baltic Fleet. Like so many naval operations of the era, the action was indecisive, with both sides taking damage (the German battlecruiser Moltke was torpedoed by a British submarine and narrowly escaped destruction when the British torpedo struck a torpedo store aboard the German warship, but failed to detonate any of the explosives aboard the ship).²³⁸ Even as the successful counteroffensive of 1917 began to wind down, Hoffmann turned his attention once more to this tempting target, just beyond the front line.

With his job of coordinating the initial artillery bombardment completed in the south, Bruchmüller was summoned to the north to begin preparations. General Otto von Below, the local German army commander, had already identified the best point to force a crossing of the River Daugava. Slowly, forces began to move north from the successful counteroffensive, but throughout the preparatory phase Hoffmann watched anxiously as fighting raged on the Western Front in the Third Battle of Ypres, fearing that Ludendorff would demand that the troops be sent west. On 21 August, he recorded in his diary:

Early yesterday, Ludendorff telephoned: ‘I’m very sorry, I need troops.’ So nothing will happen [here]. I dispatched the appropriate orders. During the afternoon, he phoned back: ‘Perhaps I will be able to make do!’ I cancelled all orders. At midday today there were apparently further counter-orders. I can’t accuse Ludendorff of anything, he really would like to allow me to carry out my plans and wants to leave the troops with me. But of course it is more important that the Western Front absolutely holds firm.²³⁹

Ultimately, Ludendorff was able to give Hoffmann unequivocal permission to proceed. Prince Leopold had made a point of being present personally when the troops of Ober Ost attacked, and this was no exception; he travelled first to the headquarters of General Oskar von Hutier’s Eighth Army, then to the troops preparing for the assault. Shortly after 9am on 1 September, Bruchmüller’s guns began their preparatory fire near Ikšķile, about 18 miles (30km) upstream from Riga on the banks of the Daugava. The balance of firepower was hugely in favour of the Germans, who deployed over 1,100 guns against 66 Russian guns, which were rapidly silenced. Troops from the German 19th Reserve Division and 202nd and 203rd Infantry Divisions crossed the river in small boats, securing a bridgehead against almost no opposition. Engineers immediately set to work constructing three pontoon bridges, which were completed in the early afternoon; Prince Leopold personally led one of the first bodies of men to cross the river.

The Russian defenders in this part of the front line were the men of Lieutenant General Dmitri Pavlovich Parsky’s Twelfth Army. Aware that a German attack was coming, Parsky had already started to withdraw his men from Riga and the remaining areas held by the Russians on the west bank of the Daugava. Although his troops were badly affected by the widespread demoralisation in the army, he had little choice but to order a counterattack, and had concentrated four divisions in readiness, together with the 2nd Latvian Rifle Brigade. This group, designated XLIII Corps and commanded by General Vasily Georgiyevich Boldyrev, now began to move against the bridgehead from Ropaži, 11 miles (18km) to the northeast.

By the end of 1 September, the Germans had reached the River Jugla, an advance of about 5 miles (8km), meeting no significant resistance. It was an encouraging start, and German reconnaissance flights brought reports of large numbers of Russian troops withdrawing from Riga and the surrounding area. The operation was rapidly turning into a race – if it was to be entirely successful, the advance had to trap a large number of Russian troops and prevent their withdrawal. To that end, Hutier reorganised his army. Julius Riemann’s VI Corps would advance along the east bank of the Daugava towards Riga, Albert von Berrer’s LI Corps would drive northeast to intercept the retreating Russians and prevent their withdrawal, and Hugo von Kathen’s XXIII Reserve Corps would guard against any Russian attacks from the east.

The almost effortless advance of 1 September might have left the Germans believing that the operation was going to be little more than a rapid march against a fleeing enemy, but this illusion was broken the following day. Parsky decided that the Germans had gained too much ground for his planned counterattack to succeed; the German advance had effectively rendered any defence of Riga impossible, and he ordered the abandonment of the city. Instead of attacking the German bridgehead, XLIII Corps was to stop the German advance for as long as possible in order to allow the rest of Twelfth Army to withdraw towards the northeast. During the night, a front line of sorts was established by the Russians along the Jugla by Boldyrev’s troops, and the following morning every attempt by LI Corps and XXIII Reserve Corps to force crossings met with determined resistance, despite further heavy artillery bombardments. Even the use of the newest weaponry – gas shells, aerial attacks and flamethrowers – made little impression and the Russian defenders fought stubbornly, particularly the men of the Latvian Rifles. It took until the afternoon for the Germans to secure bridgeheads.

On the northern flank of the German advance, the German VI Corps advanced relatively smoothly towards Riga and reached the outskirts at dusk, advancing about 10 miles (16km). Riemann issued orders for a formal assault on the city the following day, coordinating with the German LX Corps, which held the line to the west of Riga. The Russian troops in this sector had put up little resistance, and continued to melt away in the night; on the morning of 3 September, German forces entered Riga unopposed. It was a major gain, for a variety of reasons: Riga was a major industrial centre; it was one of the largest cities in the fast-collapsing former Russian Empire with a large non-Russian population; and it moved the front line directly towards Petrograd. When the German Army entered Riga, many of its residents greeted its arrival with enthusiasm, but others – probably the majority – remained silent. For the landowning Baltic German aristocracy, there was hope that the establishment of German rule would preserve the privileged status they had enjoyed under the tsars; for the Latvians, whose nationalist aspirations were growing steadily, it remained to be seen whether the Germans would be better or worse overlords than the Russians.

A little to the southeast, the resistance of the Russian XLIII Corps was coming to an end. Its troops may have been the best available to Parsky, but they were still in poor shape – weak in artillery and ammunition, weak in terms of rear area support – and once the hard core of soldiers who were determined to fight was gone, the corps disintegrated as rapidly as the rest of Twelfth Army. The Latvian Rifle Brigade had suffered particularly, losing more than half its strength, but XLIII Corps had bought enough time for at least the personnel of Twelfth Army to escape. As the Germans advanced, they came across large quantities of military supplies and abandoned guns – much of Parsky’s artillery was abandoned by the fleeing troops, and in any case the shortage of fodder for horses, due to the chaotic state of the Russian railways, meant that even if the soldiers had been inclined to take their guns with them, they often lacked the means – but comparatively few prisoners were taken. Hoffmann recorded in his diary:

The retreat [of Parsky’s Twelfth Army] seemed to have become a rout when we walked through the area. Everywhere there were guns, vehicles, field kitchens, and materiel of all types. It was only in prisoners that our gains were unfortunately less than we had hoped for, as the bulk of their troops, which I had hoped to cut off, had already been withdrawn from the bridgehead.

Of course, we would dearly have wished to continue the advance towards Petersburg. Unfortunately, we had to call a halt, as with the best will, Ludendorff could no longer leave the divisions [that had earlier been sent east] with us. They were needed in the west and in Austria; we therefore had to release them.²⁴⁰

About 9,000 prisoners were taken, and over 260 guns were captured. German losses in the battle were about 4,200, compared to total Russian losses of over 25,000. Despite Hoffmann’s disappointment, it was still a substantial victory, and only the alacrity with which Parsky abandoned the substantial bridgehead to the west of Riga prevented a far greater defeat for the Russian Army. Nevertheless, the loss of Riga was a severe blow to Russian morale and prestige, even if the front line had moved only a modest distance. The newspaper Novoye Vremya published an editorial that accurately summarised the situation:

The loss of Riga was prophesied. The Riga region was abundantly equipped with arms, artillery, military provisions, and a large garrison. Its fortifications were the last word in battlecraft. Under the circumstances one could expect that an attempted assault by the Germans would receive a severe rebuff. And yet experienced military leaders warned that nothing could be achieved unless military discipline was restored in the northern army.

This prediction was correct. Riga surrendered at the first onslaught, after a few hours. Nothing helped – neither the strong defences, nor the powerful artillery, nor the numerous defenders. Everything was in vain because the northern army, devoid of military discipline, was no army at all but a simple collection of armed men. Even if it consisted to the last man of heroes prepared for any sacrifice but not united into a single body of combat responsible to the single will of its commander, it could not have held Riga against the enemy’s attack. Acting each at his discretion, the heroes would have been destroyed one by one and their heroism would have been no help.²⁴¹

Whilst almost everyone heaped blame upon the Russian Twelfth Army for its inability to put up sufficient resistance to hold Riga, the ‘Executive Committee of the Soviet of Soldiers’ Deputies of Twelfth Army’ sent a telegram of protest to the Soviet in Petrograd:

A section of the press has started a brazen agitation in connection with the retreat on the Riga front. Malicious attacks have been recommenced against the army organisations which are blamed for the nonexistent deterioration of our army. They cast aspersions on the soldiers who are heroically fulfilling their weighty duty. They are blaming them for the absence of moral fortitude in Twelfth Army, they are inflicting treasonable stabs in the back of Twelfth Army at a time when it is sacrificing thousands of lives for the defence of Russia. All the officers and commanders confirm in one voice the amazing staunchness and the dauntless courage of the men in enduring the unprecedented drumfire, who retreated only after suffering enormous losses and failing to receive reinforcements. The frequent counterattacks of our infantry are sufficient confirmation of the complete falseness of the assertion about its demoralisation. In spite of heavy losses our units often rushed into combat, expressing regret when they received the order to retreat. It is criminal to speak of the retreat of our forces as a disorderly flight … And at this time, when the long-suffering army has every right to expect moral support from the whole country, it is being slandered and attacked …

On behalf of the entire Twelfth Army, the Executive Committee rises to the defence of the soldier who has been slandered and disgraced by the enemies of the revolution and appeals to all the rear forces of the country … to uphold the honour and dignity of the truly revolutionary army.²⁴²

The misrepresentation of events in this telegram is breathtaking in its scale. There was almost no resistance when the Germans secured crossings over the Daugava, and almost no counterattacks at any stage – XLIII Corps fought doggedly for a day to hold up the German advance, but almost no other formation showed any fortitude or determination. In an attempt to resolve the huge disparity between the reports from Stavka, which clearly blamed the lack of discipline in the army for the German successes at Tarnopol and Riga, and the protestations of soldiers’ committees, the newspaper Delo Naroda called for the establishment of a commission of enquiry.²⁴³ Whilst such a commission might be in keeping with the democratic principles of openness that had been established after the February Revolution, it would take time to conduct investigations and report to the government, and even more time for any action to be taken. In the meantime, there was no hiding the fact that the Germans were measurably closer to Petrograd, and there was much agitation that the line of the Daugava, long regarded as one of the strongest positions at which the Germans might be halted, had been breached.

But even if Ludendorff had been able to leave troops in the east, an advance on Petrograd was surely out of the question. There were reasonable roads running through Latvia and Estonia, but if Hoffmann had tried to reach the Russian capital, the forces of Ober Ost would have found themselves struggling through swampy terrain between the Estonian city of Narva and Petrograd at a time when the weather would be rapidly deteriorating. The effect of any such attempt on the Russian Army is difficult to measure; on the one hand the northern armies were particularly badly affected by the post-revolutionary turmoil, but on the other hand a direct threat to the cradle of the revolution would have taken events into completely uncharted waters. The combination of Anglo-French pressure in the west and the exigencies of the Italian Front ensured that this potentially ultimate test of revolutionary resolve never came to pass.

Far from the front, after the Moscow conference, Kerensky had little doubt that the future belonged to Kornilov and that his hold on power was slipping away. He told a friend:

I am a sick man. No, I have died. I am no more. At the conference, I died.²⁴⁴

The Bolsheviks appeared to have missed their opportunity to seize power in July, and with Kerensky’s star declining as rapidly as it had arisen, it seemed as if it was purely a question of when Kornilov and the right wing would step forward and assert themselves. Denikin’s assessment of the situation is a good summary:

The spectre of the ‘General on the White Horse’ became more and more clearly visible. And the eyes of many, suffering at the sight of the madness and the shame now engulfing Russia, were again and again turned to this spectre. Honest and dishonest, sincere and insincere, politicians, soldiers and adventurers, all turned to it. And all with one voice cried out, ‘Save us!’

He, the stern and straightforward soldier, deeply patriotic, untried in politics, knowing little of men, hypnotised both by truth and flattery, and by the general longing expectation of someone’s coming, moved by a fervent desire for deeds of sacrifice – he truly believed in the predestined nature of his appointment. He lived and fought with this belief, and died for it on the banks of the Kuban.

Kornilov became a sign and a rallying point. To some, of counter-revolution; to others, of the salvation of their native land.²⁴⁵

At the moment when Kerensky’s fortunes appeared to be in terminal decline, there occurred an unlikely intervention by a man named Vladimir Nikolayevich Lvov. First elected to the Duma in 1907, he was appointed chair of a commission looking at the affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church, where he soon clashed with Rasputin and his allies. He became a member of the Provisional Government after the February Revolution and was appointed Procurator of the Holy Synod, and conducted a purge of those identified – with varying degrees of accuracy – as former supporters of Rasputin. He was a man of contradictory opinions; on the one hand, he supported pro-democracy and reformist members of the clergy, but on the other hand he was regarded by many as being autocratic and domineering. Partly due to this, he was dismissed from his post as procurator in July and found himself moving amongst many of those who were now gathering around Kornilov.

On 4 September, Lvov arrived unannounced at Kerensky’s offices with a warning that there was a plot in military circles to overthrow him, and offering himself as an intermediary between Kerensky and the plotters. Kerensky’s account, written two years later, suggests that the conversation was rather vague:

I do not now remember the details of the conversation, but the gist of it was that Lvov tried to show that I ‘had no support’, whereas he had something or somebody behind his back. He kept on repeating; ‘We can do this. We can do that.’ I asked him who ‘we’ were, what he could do, in whose name he was speaking. To these questions he replied: ‘I have no right to tell you. I am only authorised to ask you whether you are willing to enter into discussion.’ … He emphasised the following: ‘I am instructed to ask you whether you are willing or not to include new elements in the Provisional Government, and to discuss the question with you.’ I replied: ‘Before I give you an answer, I must know with whom I am dealing, who are those you represent, and what they want.’ ‘They are public men.’ ‘There are various kinds of public men,’ said I. At last I said: ‘Well, supposing I have no support, what can you offer, what are the actual forces you rely upon? I can imagine of whom your group consists, and who those public men are.’ He then hinted that I was mistaken, that ‘they’ were backed by a considerable force which nobody could afford to ignore.

… He asked: ‘Will you negotiate if I tell you [who I represent]?’ I replied: ‘Tell me more definitely what you want to learn from me and why.’ He said ‘Goodbye’ and departed. That was the end of it. Headquarters [Stavka] was not even mentioned.²⁴⁶

Two days later Lvov appeared in Mogilev and spoke to Kornilov, claiming to be Kerensky’s representative. Somewhat oddly, Kornilov did not question this, nor did he ask for any documentary credentials; Savinkov had just left Stavka after discussions with Kornilov, and was clearly the person who would be expected to act as an intermediary between Kornilov and Kerensky. Lukomsky, Kornilov’s chief of staff, even remarked that it was decidedly odd that Savinkov had made no mention of Lvov before he left – despite which, both Kornilov and Lukomsky acted as if Lvov’s role was an official one. However, they interpreted events as a sign that Kerensky was acting in an underhand manner, and agreed to proceed cautiously.²⁴⁷

Lvov asked Kornilov what measures might be taken to strengthen the government, and suggested that a dictatorship was required; he added three possibilities, with either Kerensky or Kornilov appointed as dictator or the two men holding the post together. Kornilov told Lvov that he would prefer to take the post himself, but was prepared to act as Kerensky’s subordinate if this had widespread support; he concluded the meeting by suggesting that Kerensky should visit Stavka to discuss the proposals further. This final suggestion, Kornilov added, was also intended with a view to safeguarding Kerensky against any attempt against his life should the Bolsheviks attempt to seize power. Perhaps it is significant that when he boarded his train at the end of his visit, Lvov was accompanied by Zavoyko, a central figure in military right-wing circles, who stressed to him that he had to remember just three things: Petrograd was to be placed under martial law; Kornilov was to be dictator; and the cabinet was to resign.²⁴⁸

When he returned to Petrograd, Lvov informed Kerensky that Kornilov had demanded the post of dictator. He added that Kornilov demanded martial law in Petrograd, the transfer of all civil authority to the army commander-in-chief, and the resignation of all ministers – once he was established as dictator, Kornilov would appoint a new government. It seems that both the suggestion to Kornilov of a military dictatorship and Kornilov’s demand to Kerensky were the products of Lvov’s imagination, but the messages that Lvov delivered to the two men were broadly in keeping with their own views and expectations, and from their individual perspectives were therefore entirely credible. Lvov’s motivations for such a blatant misrepresentation of his conversations were never explicitly stated, but it seems likely that he was strongly influenced by the right-wing circles in which he had moved since being dismissed as procurator, and by the words of Zavoyko when he left Mogilev; acting in the wake of the Moscow conference, he probably believed that Kornilov was the man to bring about the changes that would save Russia, and this motivated him perhaps to try to force Kerensky’s hand. His actions were therefore an attempt to bring about the state of affairs that he desired, far from the role of ‘honest broker’ in which he had cast himself. It is also quite possible that he was manipulated by one of the right-wing factions of which Zavoyko was a member.

Kerensky was stunned by this demand. Since the Moscow conference, he had been increasingly inclined to heed the right-wing agenda for sterner measures to restore order and was indeed planning to take decisive action against the Bolsheviks, but had no desire to allow Kornilov to take the lead in this process. That evening, he used the Hughes apparatus in the war ministry to contact Kornilov. Claiming to be Lvov, he told Kornilov that Kerensky wished for confirmation that the message he had delivered was correct. He did not specify what message had been delivered, and Kornilov replied in the affirmative, repeating the suggestion he had made to Lvov that Kerensky should travel to Mogilev for further talks.

The two men now took further steps based upon their incomplete knowledge of the intentions of the other. Kornilov believed that a dictatorship had been suggested, and all that remained to be settled was its composition; he discussed this at length with Lukomsky, his chief of staff, and speculated on whether Kerensky and Savinkov should be offered ministries in the new government. In Petrograd, Kerensky convened a late-night meeting of his cabinet and presented the demands that Kornilov had allegedly sent via Lvov, together with the teleprinter transcript, in which Kornilov confirmed that he had indeed asked Lvov to deliver a list of proposals. It is arguable that Kerensky genuinely believed that Kornilov was demanding dictatorial powers, but it is equally plausible that he deliberately avoided telephone contact or a more explicit teleprinter exchange purely in order to create an apparent case against Kornilov.

Kerensky placed Lvov under arrest and demanded the authority to move against what he portrayed as a plot against the government, but some members of his cabinet, led by Savinkov, felt that there was at least the possibility of a misunderstanding and suggested direct contact with Kornilov. Even at this late stage the matter might have been resolved, but the majority of the cabinet backed Kerensky, who argued that if he was confronted, Kornilov might appear to withdraw his demands while continuing plans for a coup d’état. At the end of the meeting, all ministers resigned and handed their power to Kerensky, thus effectively appointing him dictator. Kerensky then sent a telegram to Kornilov, telling him that he had been dismissed.

The degree to which Kornilov was plotting to overthrow the government is open to more than one interpretation. Denikin later wrote that he received an emissary from Stavka about a week before Lvov’s fateful intervention, advising him that there was reliable intelligence that the Bolsheviks would attempt to seize power at the end of the month; the emissary added that III Cavalry Corps would move immediately to crush the rising, martial law would be declared, and the army would take control. Denikin was asked to send a number of reliable officers to Stavka immediately so that they could take part in the planned thwarting of the Bolsheviks.²⁴⁹ When the telegram from Kerensky arrived on 9 September announcing that Kornilov was dismissed and that he should hand over power to Lukomsky, there was widespread alarm in Stavka. Lukomsky wrote a lengthy response to Kerensky, concluding:

In the interests of the salvation of Russia you must work with General Kornilov and not dismiss him. The dismissal of General Kornilov will bring upon Russia as yet unheard-of horrors. Personally, I decline to accept any responsibility for the army, even though it be for a short period, and do not consider it possible to take over the command from General Kornilov, as this would occasion an outburst in the army which would cause Russia to perish.²⁵⁰

Kornilov rejected his sacking, acting on the basis that Kerensky could not dismiss him personally; his appointment and therefore his dismissal was in the power of the government, not its leader. The telegram dismissing him was signed only by Kerensky, and did not make clear that the cabinet had resigned and handed over power to Kerensky. Assuming that Kerensky was acting illegally – and was perhaps already under the control of the Bolsheviks, who had been rumoured to be making an attempt to seize power at the end of August – Kornilov ordered III Cavalry Corps to proceed to Petrograd to take control. Even at this stage, direct communication between the two men might have averted disaster, but Kerensky believed that he had one last, best chance to strike down the man who was his rival as the figure who would save Russia. He ordered the Petrograd newspapers to publish a special edition condemning Kornilov as a traitor determined to overthrow the government and reverse the gains of the revolution.²⁵¹

Kornilov now turned to the army for support, knowing that he had the backing of many senior officers. Denikin was amongst the first to respond, sending a telegram to Petrograd:

I am a soldier and am not accustomed to play hide-and-seek. On 16 July, in a conference with members of the Provisional Government, I stated that by a series of military reforms, they had destroyed and debauched the army, and had trampled our battle honours in the mud. My retention as commander-in-chief [of West Front at that time] I explained as being a confession by the Provisional Government of their deadly sins before the Motherland, and of their wish to remedy the evil they had wrought. Today I receive information that General Kornilov, who had put forward certain demands capable yet of saving the country and the army, has been removed from the supreme command. Seeing herein a return to the planned destruction of the army, having as its consequence the downfall of our country, I feel it my duty to inform the Provisional Government that I cannot follow their lead in this.²⁵²

From Northern Front, Klembovsky – who had been in command since June – advised Petrograd that he regarded a change in the supreme command at that moment as ‘extremely dangerous’, and Baluev, commander of West Front, declared that the overall situation required Kornilov to be retained in power. Shcherbachev, too, the commander of the Romanian Front, warned that Kornilov’s dismissal would be fatal to the army. Emboldened by the support he received, Kornilov issued a general proclamation stating that he had not instigated the exchanges in which Lvov took part. Declaring that the Provisional Government was acting in a manner that would destroy Russia, he called for support:

The solemn certainty of the doom of our country drives me in these terrible times to call upon all Russians to save their dying native land. All in whose breasts a Russian heart still beats, all who believe in God go into the churches, pray to Our Lord for the greatest miracle, the salvation of our dear country.

I, General Kornilov, son of a peasant Cossack, announce to all and everyone that I personally desire nothing save the preservation of our great Russia, and vow to lead the people, through victory over our enemies, to a Constituent Assembly, where they themselves will settle their fate and select the form of our new national life.²⁵³

Kerensky was also moving to bolster his position. Unable to persuade any general to take Kornilov’s place, he appointed himself commander-in-chief on 11 September, with Alexeyev as a reluctant chief of general staff. He also then sent an immediate order to Krymov, commander of III Cavalry Corps, to halt his march on Petrograd. The Soviet had been unsure about whether they should support Kerensky’s assumption of dictatorial powers, but the arrival of the leading elements of Krymov’s troops in the southern part of Petrograd tipped its members into making a decision. Declaring that the workers and soldiers had to defend the revolution against the forces of reaction, the Soviet called upon its supporters to prepare for battle. Perhaps 40,000 workers were given weapons and the sailors of the Baltic Fleet returned to the capital, this time to protect the Provisional Government that they had intended to overthrow in July.

The power and authority of generals depends upon the fighting power, discipline and loyalty of their men. Despite the attempts of Denikin and others to isolate their men from contact with Petrograd, word spread rapidly that the generals were attempting to overthrow the Provisional Government. In Southwest Front, the head of the soldiers’ committee in Berdichev, the location of Southwest Front’s headquarters, declared that he was taking authority and ordered the arrest of officers; in some cases, they were executed without any attempt to assess where their loyalties lay:

The nervous tension increased, the streets were full of noise. The members of the committee became more and more peremptory and exigent in their relations with Markov [Denikin’s chief of staff]. Information was received of disorders which had arisen on the Lyssaya Gora [in Berdichev]. The staff sent officers thither to clear up the matter … One of them … was attacked by Russian soldiers, one of whom he wounded slightly. This circumstance increased the disturbance still more.

From my window I watched the crowds of soldiers gathering on the Lyssaya Gora, then forming in column, holding a prolonged meeting, which lasted about two hours, and apparently coming to no conclusion. Finally, the column, which consisted of a troop of orderlies (formerly field military police), a reserve sotnia [company], and sundry other armed units, marched on the town with a number of red flags and headed by two armoured cars. On the appearance of an armoured car, which threatened to open fire, the Orenburg Cossack sotnia, which was on guard next to the staff quarters and the house of the commander-in-chief, scattered and galloped away. We found ourselves completely in the power of the Revolutionary Democracy.²⁵⁴

If Kornilov was to have any chance of success, all depended upon Krymov’s III Cavalry Corps. Pro-Bolshevik railwaymen disrupted the movement of the troops towards the capital, and deputations from Petrograd hurried to meet the troops. The men of the cavalry corps had been told by Krymov that they were marching on Petrograd to protect the Provisional Government from a Bolshevik coup d’état, and when they realised that the Provisional Government was still intact, they began to drift away from their trains with the soldiers who had been sent to meet them. Some mounted a red flag on their trains, others arrested many of their officers. On 12 September, a representative of Kerensky’s government arrived in Luga, about 84 miles (135km) south of Petrograd where Krymov’s train was stranded. The commander of III Cavalry Corps agreed to go to Petrograd; the following day, he tried in vain to explain to Kerensky that he had been ordered to proceed to the capital to protect the government, not overthrow it. Kerensky dismissed him and told him that he would face a court martial. Krymov went to the home of a friend in the city, a broken man. He told his friend:

The last card for saving the Fatherland has been beaten – life is no longer worth living.²⁵⁵

He then went into a separate room, wrote a letter to Kornilov, and shot himself.

Kornilov was placed under arrest the following day. Together with Denikin and other supporters, he was confined – under fairly lax terms – in the Bykhov Monastery near Mogilev. At the same time, many of the Bolsheviks who had been arrested after the July unrest were released.

Any lingering trust between officers and men in the front-line army evaporated and desertions multiplied at an alarming rate. Many army and front commanders and other senior officers were dismissed. Some were placed under arrest, only to be released shortly afterwards, while others languished in varying degrees of confinement awaiting some form of trial. Vasily Gurko had been placed under arrest in August for a letter that he sent to Tsar Nicholas immediately after the February Revolution, but was once more at liberty during the days of the Kornilov Affair, at the end of which he was again arrested. During his first arrest, he was offered the opportunity of leaving the country for Sweden, but it proved impossible to arrange for him to depart via Russian Finland. After a week or so of renewed captivity after Kornilov’s fall, he was allowed to depart for Archangelsk, where he boarded a British warship that took him to England.²⁵⁶

The sailors of the Russian Baltic Fleet had been prominent supporters of the Bolsheviks from the days of the February Revolution, and many now stepped up their protests. There was violent unrest in Vyborg, between Petrograd and the Finnish border resulting in the deaths of many officers, as Knox described:

Poor Neverdovsky [a colonel in the Guards and an old acquaintance of Knox] came to see me at the embassy yesterday [20 October]. He and his wife escaped from Vyborg by the skin of their teeth. The massacre of officers lasted two days, and was organised by sailors who came from Helsingfors [Helsinki] and called the local garrison ‘Black Hundred Reactionaries’ because they had not shed any officer blood.

At 2pm on the first day a few of his men came to Neverdovsky and asked him to explain Kornilov’s movement. When Neverdovsky complied, one man said: ‘All the officers say that they are for the government, but they are all secretly for Kornilov. They should all be wiped out.’ Another man said: ‘Come along and don’t talk,’ and they all went out.

Two hours later he saw some 40 soldiers running with rifles, and soon afterwards he heard that General Oranovsky, the commander of the troops in Finland, General Vasiliev, the general quartermaster, and General Stepanov, the commandant of the fortress, had been arrested. Later a lady came in to say that they had all been murdered. They were thrown over the bridge and shot in the water.

Neverdovsky spent the night in a house with friends. He was about to go to his office in the morning but was implored by his officers to wait while a junior officer spied out the land. This boy soon returned with the news that it had been decided to murder all officers of field rank. Neverdovsky managed to find a hired carriage, which took him for an exorbitant fare to the house of a colonel he knew some 20 miles off. There he hid six days before venturing to escape to Petrograd. The Finnish peasants helped him and gave him a rifle, saying: ‘The Russian soldiers are bad men. We will defend you.’

General Marushevsky … told me later that he had warned the government as early as July that this massacre was coming at Vyborg. Twenty-six officers were murdered.²⁵⁷

The aftermath of the Kornilov crisis was effectively the end of the army as a fighting force. In addition to the breakdown of trust between officers and men, the rank and file lost any lingering faith in any government to bring the dreadful war to an end and simply decided that they would no longer take part in it. If the Germans were to gather sufficient forces for a further offensive, there could be little doubt that they would advance almost unopposed, and a test of what remained of the fighting power of the Russian Army came not long after.

Ober Ost might not have sufficient troops to mount a major drive, and in any event it was late in the year to be considering a new offensive, but with an eye on a future campaign in the Baltic region, perhaps even with a view to reaching Petrograd, the Germans turned their attention to the archipelago of islands off the coast of Estonia. If the three islands – Saaremaa, Hiiumaa and Muhu (Ösel, Dagö and Moon to the Germans) could be captured, the maritime approaches to Petrograd would be open for the German Navy, and it might be possible to support a drive into Estonia from the sea, both militarily and logistically. To that end, a substantial naval force was dispatched to the eastern Baltic, consisting of the battlecruiser Moltke, ten battleships, nine light cruisers, and a large number of smaller vessels. Once the warships had secured control of the sea, Lieutenant General Ludwig von Estorff’s reinforced 42nd Infantry Division would be landed on the islands.

Even if the Russian forces in the region had not been disintegrating as a consequence first of the February Revolution and then the Kornilov Affair, they would have been hugely outmatched, particularly at sea. The Russian Navy had never recovered from the loss of its Pacific and Baltic Fleets during the Russo-Japanese War, and could deploy only two elderly battleships, three cruisers, and several smaller ships to oppose the German force. The size of the overwhelming naval force deployed by Germany was probably dictated by more than just a desire to ensure military success. There had been considerable unrest in the German Navy during 1917, and it was probably felt that a successful campaign would do much to restore morale and discipline. There was also open resentment in naval circles of repeated criticism from Ludendorff and others, who felt that it was the army that was carrying the burden of war while the navy failed to show any aggressive spirit. The deployment of such a powerful force for the operation, codenamed Albion, would bring such criticism to an end.

The Russian garrisons of the islands were at least as numerous as the German troops being sent against them, and consisted primarily of the reinforced 107th Infantry Division. The commander of the garrison of the islands was Rear Admiral Dmitri Alexandrovich Sveshnivov, and his men occupied well-constructed defences. However, the formations were badly under-strength as a result of desertions. Many of the men were more interested in looting the countryside than fighting, resulting in one regiment that had been earmarked for the islands being left in Estonia rather than risking open mutiny if the men were ordered to embark.²⁵⁸ The coastal batteries, many of which were armed with powerful 6-inch guns, were the most formidable weapons available to Sveshnivov, and at least their crews were fairly reliable.

German preparations for Albion were complete by 24 September, with troops and ships gathered in ports on the Latvian coast. In the face of bad weather, the operation was postponed, and preparation was limited to air raids against the coastal batteries. One such raid by army Zeppelins late on 30 September triggered an explosion in the magazine of the battery at Zerel, the southern tip of Saaremaa; the resulting explosion killed more than 110 men and destroyed several guns.²⁵⁹

The sea around the islands was heavily mined by both sides, and the success of the operation would require the clearance of suitable channels for the German ships to move into position. Even before the main force set sail, German minesweepers were active, and the dangers that the operation faced were highlighted by the loss of several small vessels and serious damage to the Cladow, a larger ship providing logistic support. There was an obvious tension between ensuring that mine-free lanes had been secured before deploying the larger ships and losing any chance of surprise, and this caused major debate amongst the senior officers involved. Ultimately, Admiral Reinhard Scheer, commander of the German Navy, ruled in favour of speed: the longer the delay, the greater the risk of bad weather forcing the abandonment of the entire operation.

Although the Zerel battery in the south of Saaremaa had been badly degraded, the plan was to approach the island from the northwest and put troops ashore in Tagga Bay. At the same time, a second landing would be made farther east at Pamerort; the four infantry regiments of Estorff’s infantry division would advance south and southeast to secure the island, while a bicycle-mounted brigade would advance swiftly east to capture the causeway linking Saaremaa with Muhu. The Russians were aware of the suitability of areas like Tagga Bay for landings, but lacked the troops to defend all such positions. Instead, they intended to defend the few roads on the island in order to hold up an invading force as long as possible, until a combination of winter weather and the arrival of reinforcements from the mainland turned the tide in their favour.²⁶⁰

Late on 10 October, the German battleships left their anchorage near Danzig and sailed north. The transport ships carrying 42nd Infantry Division joined them as they passed the Latvian coast. In heavy seas, the force laboured on with minesweepers in the lead; eventually, mine-clearing operations had to be suspended. There was a further debate about whether or not to proceed, but Vice-Admiral Ehrhardt Schmidt, aboard the battlecruiser Moltke, ordered the ships forward despite the risk. The decision was vindicated – only one small vessel struck a mine, and other ships were able to take off all its crew and the soldiers it was carrying.²⁶¹

Early on 12 October, the German battleships entered the area of water to the north of Tagga Bay. Almost immediately, the fears of those who had wanted more time to clear the minefields seemed justified when Bayern and Grosser Kurfürst both struck mines. Nevertheless, the gunfire of the ships rapidly silenced the shore batteries and the transport ships were able to begin disembarking their troops in Tagga Bay. Despite being alerted to German preparations for an amphibious operation, the defenders put up little resistance other than some desultory shelling. Originally, Estorff had intended to secure the landing area and bring ashore all of his division’s heavy equipment, but when it became clear that the Russian infantry was fleeing from even the most cautious German probes, he ordered his men to proceed into the interior of the island without delay. There were running fights throughout the day, and repeated exchanges of fire between the lighter vessels in the German naval force and Russian destroyers in the shallow waters between Saaremaa and Hiiumaa, but by the end of the day the bicycle brigade had reached and blocked the causeway to Muhu. At this stage, the German naval commanders received reports of several Russian submarines entering the area, and the valuable battleships were ordered to withdraw; Bayern was unable to move at speed because of mine damage and dropped anchor in Tagga Bay.

The Russians desperately tried to catch up with events. The garrison of Saaremaa was ordered to withdraw to the Muhu causeway – the leadership was apparently unaware that the German bicycle brigade had already cut off this line of retreat. At the same time, Russian destroyers were to secure the Soela Strait between Saaremaa and Hiiumaa, after which the area would be blocked by sinking the small freighter Lafviya and laying mines. Before this operation could begin, disaster struck: the train carrying the mines to the port of Rogekul (now Rohoküla) was derailed in an accident. The resulting explosion destroyed all the mines, as well as causing considerable damage to the surrounding area. The minelayer Pripyat was in danger of being engulfed in the resulting inferno and had to set sail hastily. There was widespread suspicion that the train had been derailed by German agents.²⁶²

On the morning of 13 October, the Russian ships attempted to block the Soela Strait. Before it could reach the location where it was to be sunk, the blockship Lafviya ran aground and had to be abandoned, and the crew of the minelayer Pripyat – perhaps still unsettled by the explosion of the night before – refused to continue unless their safety could be assured. The escorting eight destroyers pressed on but were twice driven back by gunfire from the German cruiser Emden. On Saaremaa, the German advance proceeded at pace; the administrative capital of Arensburg (now Kuressaare) in the south of the island was captured without a fight late in the day. At the Muhu causeway there was chaos as retreating Russian units, often accompanied by rear area formations and even the families of many of the troops, ran into the German forces blocking their line of retreat. Any hope of escape disappeared as the approach road became choked with abandoned vehicles and dead horses. Eventually, the German bicycle brigade pulled back a short distance due to lack of ammunition and some of the Russians were able to escape to Muhu. Here, they encountered Russian reinforcements attempting to move in the opposite direction; the panic and demoralisation of the retreating elements of the Saaremaa garrison swept most of them away.²⁶³

To date, Albion had gone well for the Germans. On 14 October, with most of Saaremaa under their control, the Germans turned their attention elsewhere. Minesweepers were at work clearing the Irbe Strait to the south of Saaremaa, which would allow German shipping to move freely into the Gulf of Riga, and it was decided to carry out landings on Hiiumaa, the most northern island in the archipelago, as soon as possible. Supported by the battleship Kaiser, the German cruiser Emden moved forward to clear the Soela Strait of Russian warships so that mine-clearing operations could proceed; after a brief firefight, four Russian destroyers were driven off. Once the mines in the Soela Strait had been cleared, German torpedo boats and destroyers moved into the shallow water between the three islands of the archipelago. Once more, the Russian destroyers attempted to intervene, supported by two older armoured vessels. Already damaged earlier in the day by a direct hit from the main armament of the battleship Kaiser – fortunately, the shell failed to explode – the Russian destroyer Grom was hit repeatedly and lost power. Attempts to tow it to safety failed and the ship was abandoned, sinking later that afternoon.

Finally, German warships were able to start providing fire support for the forces that were still attempting to block the Muhu causeway. A ‘battalion of death’, raised from volunteers of the Russian Baltic Fleet, had adopted the same title as the women’s battalion and proved to be one of the few units capable of fighting energetically but, like its German opponents, a mixture of exhaustion and ammunition shortages brought its activities to an end. With the guns of the German torpedo boats sweeping the causeway, the remaining Russian troops on Saaremaa were definitively isolated.

Throughout the day, German minesweepers dodged shells from the Russian battery at Cape Zerel, clearing several lines of Russian mines. During the afternoon, the battleships König Albert, Kaiserin and Friedrich der Grosse opened fire on the Russian battery. Despite firing over 120 rounds, they scored few hits and did little damage. Nevertheless, many of the gun crews abandoned their posts and headed for the interior of the island – only to find their line of retreat cut by the German forces pressing down from the north. In an attempt to avoid further unnecessary fighting, the Germans called on the Russians to surrender, offering them favourable terms but threatening to fight to the death if the offer was rejected. The Russians made no reply and fierce fighting erupted, supported by the German battleships off the coast. As the hopelessness of their situation became increasingly apparent and rumours of the German offer of surrender spread, many of the Russian troops slipped away to surrender individually.

On 15 October, the Germans planned to overwhelm the Russian forces trapped in the peninsula that stretched down to Cape Zerel. The soldiers’ committee of the Russian regiment had issued a radio plea for help the previous night, and in response to this the Russians dispatched a substantial naval force. The leading vessel was the battleship Grashdanin, built in France at the turn of the century and completely outclassed by the German battleships. The other vessels, three destroyers and the armoured cruiser Admiral Makarov, did little to improve the balance of power. As the Russian group sailed forth, German minesweepers clearing the last of the mine barriers across the Irbe Strait spotted the smoke from the funnels of the leading destroyers. At the same time, German battleships moved to open fire on the Zerel battery, unaware that the Russian troops had abandoned it. Their fire was more accurate than the previous day, not only knocking out several of the remaining guns but also disrupting attempts by Lieutenant Bartinev, a gunnery officer in the battery, to set off demolition charges.

The Russian naval force approached the southeast coast of Saaremaa during the afternoon. Organised resistance was clearly coming to an end, and several ships reached the small fishing port of Möntu, a short distance to the northeast of Cape Zerel. Large numbers of desperate Russian soldiers had gathered here and attempted to board the destroyers in order to escape. After bombarding some of the abandoned positions, the Russian warships withdrew towards the mainland with a few hundred soldiers aboard, leaving the rest to their fate. Overnight, there were further negotiations, and the remaining men surrendered early on 16 October.²⁶⁴ Throughout the day, the Germans had been pressing down on the Russian forces that had tried in vain to break through to the Muhu causeway; when the Russian warships failed to reach them to lift them to safety, the last of the men surrendered. The whole of Saaremaa was in German hands.

A small bridgehead was established on Hiiumaa on 15 October, but was evacuated when it came under unexpectedly heavy Russian pressure. On 16 October, with fire support from the battleship Kaiser, a second landing took place at the southern tip of the island. Despite repeated interventions by Russian warships, the smaller German vessels repeatedly bombarded positions on Muhu and minesweepers finally completed the clearance of the Irbe Strait, allowing the German battleships to move forward, only to encounter yet another line of mines. The warships were forced to drop anchor while they were cleared. Originally, it had been the intention of the German naval commanders to use the battleships to protect transports bringing supplies from Riga to Arensburg, but the ships were now ordered to proceed as fast as possible to the Suur Strait, between Muhu and the mainland, in order to isolate the island. As they advanced, they were spotted by the British submarine C27, which fired two torpedoes at the battleship König. Both missed, but in a second attack succeeded in hitting the minesweeper support ship Indianola, which was towed to safety in Arensburg. By the end of the day, the German warships had reached the southern end of the Suur Strait. From a map that had been found aboard the destroyer Grom before it sank, the Germans knew the locations of the Russian minefields in the area and drew up their plans for the following day. The battleships would penetrate the Suur Strait, while the smaller warships would move into the channel between Muhu and Saaremaa.

Preceded by the tireless minesweepers, the German warships moved forward on 17 October. The Russian naval forces were now commanded by Admiral Mikhail Koronatovich Bachirev, and he dispatched Grashdanin and the equally elderly Slava to stop the German battleships, following a short distance behind aboard the armoured cruiser Bayan. The first shots were exchanged not long after dawn; König drove off the destroyers that accompanied the Russian battleships, while the Russian warships and coastal batteries opened fire on the German minesweepers. Shortly after, Slava opened fire on König and Kronprinz. It was a decidedly uneven contest, with Slava possessing only four elderly 12-inch guns against ten guns on each of the German warships. Nevertheless, Slava had been modified to allow her guns to be elevated sufficiently high to out-range the German ships. Despite firing several rounds, no hits were scored, and eventually Slava was forced to break off the engagement when her fore turret became jammed.

By mid-morning, the German minesweepers had cleared a large part of the Russian minefield, despite being under almost constant fire, and the two German battleships moved forward in a determined attempt to close to effective firing range. After firing for just four minutes, König scored hits on Slava below the waterline with the third salvo. Two shells penetrated the Russian ship’s armour and exploded, tearing large holes in her hull. The accompanying Grashdanin was also hit twice. Moments later Slava was hit again, and Bachirev ordered his ships to break off the engagement. The German ships pursued, scoring further hits on Slava and Bayan, leaving the latter ablaze before breaking off the engagement for fear of running into further mines. Slava was unable to keep up with the rest of the Russian ships, and Captain Vladimir Antonov was fearful that, having shipped so much water, his vessel would not be able to pass through the shallow northern part of the Suur Strait. With Bachirev’s permission, he decided to sink his ship in the channel in order to block it. Discipline aboard the battleship broke down, preventing Bachirev from manoeuvring his ship into the desired position for it to act as a blockship. A destroyer came alongside to take off the crew, and Antonov was the last to depart. Shortly after, demolition charges in the main magazine exploded; the accompanying destroyers fired six torpedoes at Slava to sink her, but only one exploded.²⁶⁵

Fighting continued until 20 October to secure Muhu and Hiiumaa, but the Russian position had become impossible. In addition to the loss of the battleship Slava and destroyer Grom, the Russians lost nearly the entire island garrison of 24,000 men. The disintegration of Russian fighting strength was clear from German casualties – only about 200 killed and a similar number wounded. For the German Navy, it was the greatest success of their surface vessels since the destruction of the British 4th Cruiser Squadron at Coronel in 1914. For the Russians, it was a further setback at the end of a calamitous year. There could be no doubt that further attempts to prolong the war would end only in greater disasters. Whatever Kerensky might feel about the need to fulfil his treaty obligations, Russia simply lacked the ability to continue fighting. On 19 October, Hoffmann recorded in his diary:

At the moment, the Russian Army is in very bad shape – more is the pity that we can’t take advantage of it. If I had not had to hand back the divisions [to Ludendorff after the fall of Riga], we would now be on the shores of Lake Peipus.²⁶⁶

Nor were Russia’s treaty obligations the only matter in which Kerensky’s wishes were increasingly irrelevant. He may have succeeded in exploiting Lvov’s crass intervention to remove Kornilov, but he was effectively powerless. Just as Kornilov proved to be unable to achieve anything without the support of the army’s troops, so Kerensky lacked any means of asserting his will. Even the generals confined to prison in September could not be detained, largely due to the sympathies of their jailers; both Kornilov and Denikin were able to escape and played leading roles in the civil war that broke out shortly after. What remained of the army after its mass desertions was loyal to the Soviet or the Bolsheviks rather than the Provisional Government, as were the armed workers who had prepared to defend Petrograd against III Cavalry Corps. Whilst Kerensky might have removed the figurehead of the right-wing factions in Russia, those factions remained alive and powerful, increasingly convinced that they would have to use force to prevent Russia from falling into the hands of the Bolsheviks; and the Bolsheviks enjoyed a resurgence in power and influence after the setbacks of July, not least because so many leading figures were released from prison. The pieces were in place for civil war – all that was needed was a trigger to ignite the fire.