It must be allowed, the Moscow Soviet’s Izvestia wrote, ‘that the Bolsheviks are not irresponsible groups but one of the elements of the organised revolutionary democracy behind whom stand the broad masses’.
Such grudging acknowledgement came amid an unusual degree of Menshevik–SR–Bolshevik cooperation. Not revolutionary collaboration, exactly: it might rather be described as grudging counter-counterrevolutionary collaboration. The moderate socialists were canny enough to understand that, whatever their arguments with those to their left, were the restless reactionaries to triumph in the country the Bolsheviks might be first in the firing line – and that might not even be a metaphor – but they themselves would not be spared.
The fact was that rumours about the intentions of Kornilov and the right had grown so deeply alarming that the Moscow Soviet felt obliged to form a Provisional Revolutionary Committee to defend the government and the Soviet, mobilising the vigilant grassroots. And to it, alongside two Mensheviks and two SRs, it appointed the prominent Bolsheviks Nogin and Muralov. In an astonishing acknowledgement of the limits of its persuasive power compared to theirs, it even gave the party – even so recently after the July Days – temporary access to the Moscow garrison barracks, to argue for this defence.
This was the context of political fear in which the conference set out to smooth tensions between right and left. In this it was not merely unsuccessful: it was grotesquely counterproductive.
The Moscow State Conference opened to a house literally, visibly divided. On the right of the hall, slightly numerically preponderant, were the elite – industrialists, Kadets, business people, career politicians, high-ranking soldiers. On the left were the moderate socialist intelligentsia, Menshevik lawyers and journalists, trade union organisers, lower-ranking officers and privates. And there, sitting with owlish precision exactly in the middle, was Kerensky.
‘Let everyone who has already tried to use force of arms against the power of the people know that such attempts will be crushed with blood and iron,’ he declaimed, and at that broadside against the Bolsheviks, for the first and last time, the whole hall applauded. ‘Let those who think the time is ripe to overthrow the revolutionary government with bayonets’, he continued, ‘be even more careful.’ At this warning to Kornilov, it was only the left who clapped.
For two hours, Kerensky rambled tremulously, hammy and overwrought, transporting himself. ‘He appeared to want to scare somebody and to create an impression of force and power,’ Milyukov reported in contempt. ‘He only engendered pity.’
A naive observer hopeful for social peace might see moments to strike optimism, as when Tsereteli made a point of reaching out to shake hands with the prominent industrialist Bublikov. But they were few and unconvincing. When the Kadet Maklakov demanded that the government ‘take the daring steps necessary … [because] the judgement day is approaching’, the right cheered and the left sat mute. When Chkheidze read out VTsIK’s platform, the left applauded and the right scowled. One side clapped, the other sat like stone. The other cheered, the one booed.
On the 12th, Kornilov arrived in Moscow, flanked again by his Turkmen guards. He was met at the station by a throng of military cadets, a band, and representatives from one of the Womens’ Battalions of Death. These all-female volunteer army units had been set up at Kerensky’s request under the remarkable young Novgorod soldier Maria Bochkareva, who had at the start of the war inveigled royal permission to join the army, and distinguished herself in bloody combat. Kornilov passed through the military escort into a shower of petals scattered by an ecstatic upper-class crowd.
In his welcome speech, the Kadet Rodichev entreated him: ‘Save Russia, and a thankful people will crown you.’ With heavy-handed symbolism, Kornilov’s first stop was at the Iversky shrine, where the tsars had traditionally worshipped. Among the visitors he received that day, more than one debated with him the question of an armed overthrow of the government: the rightwing business group the Society for the Economic Rehabilitation of Russia, for example, represented by Putilov and Vishnegradsky, went so far as to offer funds specifically for an authoritarian regime.
The next day, the 13th, Kornilov came to the Bolshoi to speak.
As he prepared to mount the rostrum of the packed hall of the Moscow conference, Kerensky stopped him. He pleaded with the general to confine his remarks to military matters.
‘I will give my speech’, Kornilov responded, ‘in my own way.’
Kornilov ascended. The right rose in ovation. ‘Shouts ring out,’ states the record. ‘ “Cads!” “Get up!” ’ No one on the left benches obeyed.
To Kerensky’s intense relief, Kornilov, never a confident speaker, gave a speech both inexpert and surprisingly mild. The continuing roars of rightist approval were for him qua figurehead, rather than for anything in particular that he said.
After Kornilov, speaker after speaker excoriated the revolution that had wracked Russia, and hankered loudly for the restoration of order. General Kaledin, the elected leader – ataman – of the Cossacks of the Don region, announced to the delight of the right that ‘all soviets and committees must be abolished’. A young Cossack officer, Nagaev, quickly insisted that working Cossacks disagreed with Kaledin, eliciting corresponding ecstasy on the left.
As he spoke, someone on the right interrupted with shouts of ‘German marks!’ The accusation of treachery provoked bedlam. When the heckler would not identify himself, Kerensky finally declared that ‘Lieutenant Nagaev and all the Russian people … are quite satisfied with the silence of a coward.’ It was a rare moment of good theatre left in the man once considered Russia’s hope.
Kerensky’s concluding speech, by contrast, was an almost incomprehensible, pitiful mix of longueurs and schmaltz. ‘Let my heart turn to stone, let all the chords of my faith in men fade away, let all the flowers of my dreams for man wither and die,’ he wailed. ‘I will cast away the keys to this heart that loves the people and I will think only of the state.’
From the audience, a few sentimentalists obligingly responded in kind – ‘You cannot! Your heart will not permit it!’ – but for the most part the spectacle was merely excruciating. Even one of Kerensky’s diminishing number of loyal supporters, Stepun, uneasily admitted that ‘one could hear not only the agony of his power, but also of his personality’.
Thus the slow death of the Provisional Government continued.