The Reformer
Page 36
The most notable event of the conference was the Kornilov moment, not for the content of his speech but for the theatrical effects and their apparent impact on Kerensky. Kornilov came to Moscow from the front, surrounded by his bodyguard of Tekke Turkomans dressed in red robes (he had learned various Turkic dialects while on assignment in Central Asia). His arrival at the Bolshoi and rather mundane speech received a tumultuous welcome (from the right). Kerensky later wrote that the conference persuaded him that the Provisional Government’s next threat would come from the right (the Bolsheviks had unsuccessfully attempted a coup in July). Pipes argues that this vision of a possible right-wing coup lodged itself so firmly in Kerensky’s thinking that it colored his interpretation of all later events.30
Kornilov’s clash with Kerensky over the former’s demands stirred rumors that Kornilov might attempt a coup. In a kind of sideshow to the Moscow State Conference, Kornilov and several of his representatives met a few leading Kadets (including Maklakov and Miliukov) and the Octobrist Rodzianko in the apartment of Nikolai Kishkin, a Kadet Central Committee member. Kornilov said that he would not submit to removal by the government; he would regard any removal as merely an intrigue by the Soviet. In that event he would attempt a coup, and he asked the assembled politicians if they would support him. By Maklakov’s account, the assembled Kadets indicated that they would. Kornilov departed at some point, but a discussion ensued among the Kadets in the presence of Kornilov’s representatives. Maklakov opposed such a coup—not, as he explained, because it was illegitimate but because he thought it would fail. (He appears to have regarded the whole issue of legitimacy as hopeless after Grand Duke Mikhail’s purported handoff of power to the Provisional Government.31) Maklakov later pursued the issue with Leonid Novosiltsev, a Kadet who had been with Maklakov in the Fourth Duma and was now head of the Russian Officers’ Union and among the Kornilov representatives, telling him he thought that the assurances of support were a “provocation” and that in the event of a coup attempt the Kadets would in fact take cover and provide no support.32 (In Russian usage, “provocation” commonly means laying a trap.) The 1922 memoirs of Anton Denikin, a tsarist general who was soon to be among the leaders of the White forces in the civil war, confirm Maklakov’s communication to Novosiltsev.33
Maklakov’s second effort to avert a coup took place in what is typically called a “telephone conversation,” but the technology used was quite foreign to any phone we know. The parties used a “Hughes machine,” a kind of printing telegraph. A person at one end dictates a communication to the telegraph operator, who types it in; a transcript arrives at the other end. Most critically, the persons at opposite ends of the line cannot hear each other’s voice. The effect is thus a little like a modern email. One such conversation (between Kornilov and Kerensky) triggered the Kornilov affair. A second (between Maklakov and Savinkov in Petrograd and Kornilov at Stavka) uncovered Kerensky’s misapprehension (or purported misapprehension). Both occurred during the night of August 26–27.
The Kornilov-Kerensky exchange was brought about by the activities of one of those officious intermeddlers who turn up from time to time to sow chaos. Vladimir N. Lvov (a man of “legendary stupidity,” in Maklakov’s estimation34) had been Procurator of the Holy Synod in the Provisional Government until July, when Kerensky removed him. On August 22 he met with Kerensky, claiming that several people—unidentified—asked him to pass on a message that the government needed to bring in some figures with good relations with the military. Kerensky seems not to have given the conversation another thought.
Lvov then went to Stavka and told Kornilov that Kerensky had asked him to seek out Kornilov’s views on how to assure firm government in Russia. Lvov opined that there were three options, the third being that Kornilov would become dictator, with Kerensky and Savinkov holding ministerial portfolios—presumably subordinate. Interpreting Lvov’s message as a proposal from Kerensky, Kornilov said he regarded that choice as best. Lvov then returned to Petrograd and spoke with Kerensky, claiming in essence that Kornilov was demanding to become dictator. Kerensky, at first amused but then alarmed, asked Lvov to put the “demands” in writing, which he did. Lvov also said (truthfully, it so happens) that Kornilov would like Kerensky to be at Stavka the next day. Kerensky scheduled a conversation with Kornilov over the Hughes machine, asking Lvov to be on hand at 8 p.m. Lvov was late, and Kerensky began the call at 8:30. At a critical moment he impersonated Lvov. The phone call would seem funny if it were not so tragic:
Kerensky: Prime Minister on the line. We are waiting for General Kornilov.
Kornilov: General Kornilov on the line.
Kerensky: How do you do, General. V. N. Lvov and Kerensky are on the line. We ask you to confirm that Kerensky can act in accordance with the information conveyed to him by Vladimir Nikolaevich.
Kornilov: How do you do, Aleksandr Fedorovich. How do you do, Vladimir Nikolaevich. To confirm once again the outline of the situation I believe the country and the army are in, an outline which I sketched out to Vladimir Nikolaevich with the request that he should report it to you, let me declare once more that the events of the last few days and those already in the offing make it imperative to reach a completely definite decision in the shortest possible time.
Kerensky [impersonating Lvov]: I, Vladimir Nikolaevich, am inquiring about this definite decision which has to be taken, of which you asked me to inform Aleksandr Fedorovich strictly in private. Without such confirmation from you personally, Aleksandr Fedorovich hesitates to trust me completely.
Kornilov: Yes, I confirm that I asked you to transmit my urgent request to Aleksandr Fedorovich to come to Mogilev.
Kerensky: I, Aleksandr Fedorovich, take your reply to confirm the words reported to me by Vladimir Nikolaevich. It is impossible for me to do that and leave here today, but I hope to leave tomorrow. Will Savinkov be needed?
Kornilov: I urgently request that Boris Viktorovich come along with you. What I said to Vladimir Nikolaevich applies equally to Boris Viktorovich. I would beg you most sincerely not to postpone your departure beyond tomorrow. . . .
Kerensky: Are we to come only if there are demonstrations, rumors of which are going around, or in any case?
Kornilov: In any case.
Kerensky: Goodbye. We shall meet soon.
Kornilov: Goodbye.
Kerensky’s critical move, of course, is his pretense of being Lvov and his asking Kornilov to confirm that what Lvov has told Kerensky was correct. In “confirming,” Kornilov signs a blank check, agreeing to a message that has never been specified. Interestingly, he is explicit only in “confirm[ing]” a very narrow proposition—that he would like Kerensky to come to Mogilev. Kornilov’s behavior in this exchange supports the “brains of a sheep” hypothesis. Kerensky’s impersonation of Lvov, and his failure to pick up on Kornilov’s having been specific only about the invitation to Stavka, suggest that he was far more interested in getting the goods on Kornilov than in ascertaining his position. As we’ll see, he almost immediately sent a telegram to Kornilov dismissing him.35
The part of the story that brings in Maklakov erases any doubt about Kerensky’s manipulative intent. As Maklakov records in postwar correspondence, Kerensky called him to the Winter Palace that evening. Hearing Kerensky’s account, Maklakov urged that the matter be disposed of without publicity and offered to go to Stavka to talk with Kornilov. Savinkov objected, accusing Kornilov of being two-faced and arguing for “merciless punishment.” Rejecting the idea of Maklakov’s going to Stavka, Kerensky proposed a Maklakov-Savinkov conversation with Kornilov by Hughes machine. Maklakov agreed.36
Boris Savinkov deserves a word before we turn to the phone conversation. Had he died before the February Revolution he would have gone down in history solely as a leading member of the Socialist Revolutionary Party’s terrorist wing, its “Fighting Organization.” In that role his signal achievements were the assassinations of V. K. Plehve, minister of internal affairs, and Grand Duke Sergei
Alexandrovich, Nicholas II’s uncle and, through his marriage to Alexandra’s sister, also his brother-in-law. Arrested for these killings, he escaped to France and fought in the French army in World War I. After the February Revolution he returned to Russia to fight as a Russian and was appointed deputy minister of war, the position he held at the time of the phone call. He won the admiration of Winston Churchill, who gave him a chapter in his book Great Contemporaries, calling him a “terrorist for moderate aims.”37 Churchill may have been especially taken with him because of his military activities to overthrow the Bolsheviks after their October coup, which paralleled Churchill’s own effort to “strangle Bolshevism in its cradle.” Churchill’s portrait quotes Sergei Sazonov, onetime tsarist minister of foreign affairs, reacting to a mention of Savinkov: “Savinkov. Ah, I did not expect we should work together.” Maklakov may have had similar feelings, side by side with Savinkov at the Hughes machine.
The conversation has two segments.38 In the first, Savinkov laid out several understandings (or misunderstandings). He claimed that he never proposed to Kornilov in the name of the Provisional Government any kind of political combination, and he could not have done so. (Maklakov reads this part of the pitch as Savinkov’s effort to exonerate himself from culpability for any coup attempt.) He asked if Kornilov repudiated the “demands” that he had presented to the Provisional Government through Lvov—demands that we know Kornilov never made. He warned Kornilov against attempting to impose his will on the Russian people. He closed by inviting Kornilov to return to the Hughes machine at 4 a.m. with his responses.
Kornilov answered with quite a long discourse of his own, which ended at 5:50 a.m. (no record exists of when it began). He reminded Savinkov of the government’s “firm” decision—which had in fact been passed on from Kerensky to Kornilov via Savinkov—for the transfer of a cavalry corps to Petrograd, to be completed when martial law was declared in Petrograd. (I take Kornilov to be making this point in order to remind Savinkov of the Kerensky-Kornilov cooperation in the interests of quelling unrest, and thus to undercut Savinkov’s implicit accusations against him.) He emphatically denounced the government’s vacillation in reference to the measures formerly agreed on by Kerensky, but he assured Savinkov that no matter what his opinion of Kerensky, he believed his continued participation in the government was “absolutely necessary.” He gave a succinct version of his colloquy with Lvov, saying that Lvov had presented three alternatives, and that his deepest conviction was that the third—establishment of a dictatorship at the invitation of the current government and including “you both” (presumably Savinkov and Kerensky)—was “absolutely necessary.”
At the end came Kornilov’s stunner: During the break, he had received a telegram from Kerensky—“absolutely unexpected”—dismissing him from his position. Believing, he said, that such a dismissal could have come about only through the pressure of the Soviet, and that to leave his position under such pressure would amount to going over to the enemy, he said, “I will not leave my post.” By issuing the dismissal order, while the conversation proceeded or even before, Kerensky acted as if he had no interest in clarifying Kornilov’s intent, even though he himself had proposed the conversation.
Savinkov responded, confirming the intention that a cavalry corps should go to Petrograd to put down any attempts against the Provisional Government, “regardless of where they come from.” He expressed himself against any kind of one-man rule, saying that if Kerensky announced himself dictator he “would find an enemy in me [Savinkov]. . . . “From your statement I see that Lvov has played a sad role—if not worse. . . . I fear that the misapprehension created by Lvov has played a fateful role for our country. . . . I’ve already said that it’s not for me to quarrel with you, but Maklakov is here and would like to speak with you.”
Maklakov tried to simmer down Kornilov:
This is Maklakov at the apparatus. Good day, Lavr Georgievich. In the transmission of Lvov your proposal was understood here as a desire for a violent coup d’état. I’m very glad that this is evidently a misunderstanding. You are not adequately informed of the political mood. Such an attempt would be a disaster for Russia and would lead to destruction of the army, butchery of the officers, and victory for [Kaiser] William. It’s essential to take all measures to liquidate this misunderstanding without hesitation and without publicity. You’re not up to date about what’s going on here. If I can be useful, I’m happy to go to Stavka.39
Though not backing off his intention to disregard the dismissal, Kornilov pronounced himself happy to meet at Stavka with Maklakov, Kerensky, and Savinkov. He said he thought that direct personal conversations could eliminate the misunderstanding, “only I must say that with this telegram of dismissal the grounds for a happy outcome are not favorable.”
Rushing back to the prime minister’s office to report on the conversation, Savinkov ran into Nikolai Nekrasov, a left-wing Kadet who in July had become not only minister of finance but also assistant to Kerensky. Nekrasov told Savinkov he’d sent the newspapers Kerensky’s statement charging Kornilov with treason, claiming that Kornilov had “in a direct wire conversation” confirmed making a demand for dictatorial powers; the statement claimed cabinet authority to dismiss Kornilov. The latter exploded with rage at the accusation and dismissal; he issued a statement that actually was treasonous, or close to it. His rallying cry received friendly telegrams from fellow generals but no action, and the politicians, whether confused by Kerensky’s disinformation or simply too cautious, did nothing (as predicted by Maklakov). The “rebellion” promptly petered out.40 But by rousing the left with the specter of a right-wing coup—and indeed arming it with leaders and weapons—and by showing Kerensky as a man without clear convictions, the phony Kornilov “coup” eased the path for the real Bolshevik coup in late October. Maklakov had by then arrived in Paris to take up his ambassadorial post.
In his writings after the revolution, Maklakov argued that the fate of the Provisional Government showed what a mess the liberals would have made if Nicholas II had agreed to a Kadet cabinet in 1905.41 Indeed, the liberals played their hand badly in 1917. They were quick to dismantle the old regime, even though, as shown by Maklakov’s experience in the ministry of justice at the moment of transition, many in the bureaucracy were ready to apply liberal policies. They also—and here Maklakov himself was pushing the government toward danger—were remarkably single-minded in their war policy, closing their eyes to a host of factors: German peace offers (doubtless in part manipulative), the range of possible Russian bargaining policies, and military strategies less costly in Russian blood.
But in fairness the liberals were dealt a very bad hand in 1917. To their advantage, the period from 1905 to 1917 had produced modest development of Russia’s institutions for self-government and its people’s experience at conducting affairs on a basis of mutual respect for others’ rights. But that progress was more than offset by the immediate effects of a staggeringly costly war, which by 1917 threatened the vivisection of the Russian empire, and whose conduct had inured millions of young men to indulging in almost random violence. Plus, the war plainly made it far more difficult to preserve the monarchy (and thus the constitutional structure). With all these weaknesses, and little experience in institutions for peaceful reconciliation of vehemently conflicting interests, it seems nearly inevitable that by late 1917 the choice would come down to which sort of dictatorship was least bad—right (Kornilov) or left (Bolshevik).
So 1917 does not seem a fair test for a hypothetical Kadet cabinet in 1905. At the same time, Russia’s relatively slight experience with the underpinnings of liberal society made any sudden liberal accession to power extremely risky. Stolypin’s remark, “Give Russia twenty years of internal and external peace and quiet, and it will change beyond recognition,” was probably overoptimistic, but history denied Russia the chance to find out.
V. Postlude
CHAPTER 19
Exile
AMONG DISTINGUISH
ED political figures Maklakov proved unusual in the long gap between national prominence and death—a few months short of forty years. Quite naturally he saw the years in exile as a comedown. He agreed with the observation of his friend Boris Bakhmetev, the Provisional Government’s ambassador to the United States and thus also a representative of a nonexistent country,1 that for him, too, the years in emigration were much less interesting than his former life.2 And he expressed the wish that anyone writing a biography of him cover only the years before October 1917.3
In fact, Maklakov’s activities in exile were wide-ranging and intrinsically interesting. Consistent with having come to Paris as ambassador, he tried to protect Russia’s geopolitical interests in the immediate postwar period despite Bolshevik rule. The Allies initially did not expect the Bolsheviks to hang on, and it was natural to think that their governments might take account of Russian interests, as perceived by non-Bolsheviks. He also pressed the White leaders in the Russian civil war to adopt inclusive policies, above all to take a resolute stand against the anti-Semitic pogroms that their troops allowed or even joined. And until his death in 1957, he continuously ran interference on behalf of the Russian émigrés in France (interrupted only by the Nazi occupation, including three months’ imprisonment), helping them navigate bureaucratic and other hurdles. (The French government itself supported him in these efforts, giving him an official post through which to carry them out.)
These activities seem all too relevant today. Many high-level political exiles must make trade-offs between love for country and its citizens and loathing for the country’s current rulers. Participants in civil wars have to tame the worst instincts of their partisans. Political refugees and their host countries face conflicts of interests similar to those of France and the Russian exiles. Maklakov appears to have pursued all these projects with his usual intelligence, eloquence, and diplomacy.