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Updated: May 14, 2025
Early in September Kerensky came to the conclusion that a dictatorship was the only cure, and gave Kornilov the impression that the latter should fill the part. Another Bolshevik insurrection was brewing in Petrograd, and on the 7th Kornilov prepared to crush it, sending Krymov forward to Gatchina within twenty miles of the capital.
Elisabeth wrote a letter from Moscow and said that "here everybody is well and things look satisfactory. Food supplies in abundance. All active in building up the state." Is she sick? Who is building the state? We destroy. They speak of putting the Emperor in jail, the St. Peter and Paul Fortress. On the other hand Polenov was told that Kerensky won't tolerate any abuse to "private citizens."
But at that time, early in October, our suspicions evoked at first a storm of patriotic indignation. The Staff people were pressing us, Kerensky was impatient, for the ground under his feet had grown too hot. We, on the other hand, delayed answering. Danger undoubtedly threatened Petrograd and the question of defending the capital loomed before us in all its terrible significance.
It is true that Kerensky who was vice-president of the Council has been meanwhile deposed; that Tshcheidze had to relinquish the presidency in the Council to Trotzky long before Kerensky's downfall; but the leaders of the Council still are intellectuals, are well educated men, some of them well known writers on political and economic questions and withal very different from the masses which they lead and which they purport to represent.
On the night of the 6th, a few hours before the opening of the Congress of Soviets, the Bolsheviki struck the blow they had been so carefully planning. They were not met with the resistance they had expected for reasons which have never been satisfactorily explained. Kerensky recognized that it was useless for him to attempt to carry on the fight.
The passage is worth quoting, not only for the information it contains concerning the Kerensky régime, but also because it affords a standard by which to judge the Bolsheviki.
Tchcheidze, once a university professor, keen, cool, and as witty as George Bernard Shaw, listened to with the deference democracy always pays to intellect. Kerensky, lawyer by profession, matchless as an orator, obviously the prophet and inspirer rather than the executive type; Skobelev, blunt, direct, and practical, a man little given to romantic illusions.
They took the position too late, alas! that the will of the majority must be observed, since the only alternative was the rule of the majority by the aggressive minority. Repressive measures against the Bolsheviki were adopted by the Kerensky Cabinet with the full approval of the Committee.
The radicals were Kerensky, the Premier, who also retained the War portfolio; Terestelli, Minister of Posts and Telegraphs; Skobeliev, Minister of Education; Tchernov, Minister of Agriculture; and Pieschiehonov, Minister of Supplies.
The tragi-comedy of Brest-Litovsk, and the pitiable rôle of Trotzky, have naturally been linked together with the manner in which Lenine and his companions reached Russia with the aid of the German Government, the way in which all the well-known leaders of the Bolsheviki had deliberately weakened the morale of the troops at the front, and their persistent opposition to all the efforts of Kerensky to restore the fighting spirit of the army all these things combined have convinced many thoughtful and close observers that the Bolsheviki were in league with the Germans against the Allies.
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