followers who doubted it would succeed. The skeptics were
vindicated in July 1917 when a putsch led by the Bolsheviks badly
misfired. They were near success when the government released
information on Lenin's dealings with the Germans, which caused
angry troops to disperse the rebels and end the uprising.
Abandoning his followers, Lenin sought refuge in Finland.
After the abortive Bolshevik July rising the chairmanship of the
provisional government passed to Kerensky. A Socialist
Revolutionary lawyer and Duma deputy, Kerensky was the best-known
radical in the country owing to his defense of political prisoners
and fiery antigovernment rhetoric. A superb speaker, he lacked the
political judgment to realize his political ambitions. Aware that
such power as he had rested on the support of the All-Russian
Soviet, Kerensky decided that the only threat Russian democracy
faced came from the right. By this he meant conservative civilian
and military elements, whose most visible symbol was General Lavr
Kornilov, a patriotic officer whom he had appointed commander in
chief but soon came to see as a rival. To win the support of the
Soviet, still dominated by Socialists Revolutionaries and
Mensheviks, Kerensky did not prosecute the Bolsheviks for the July
putsch and allowed them to emerge unscathed from the debacle.
Антибольшевистский путч и его последствия.
By general consent the decisive event in the history of the
provisional government was Kerensky's conflict with Kornilov,
which broke into the open in August (September, New Style).
Although many aspects of the "Kornilov affair" remain obscure to
this day, it appears that Kerensky deliberately provoked the
confrontation in order to be rid of a suspected competitor and
emerge as the saviour of the Revolution. The prime minister
confidentially informed Kornilov that the Bolsheviks were planning
another coup in Petrograd in early September (which was not, in
fact, true) and requested him to send troops to suppress it. When
Kornilov did as ordered, Kerensky charged him with wanting to
topple the government. Accused of high treason, Kornilov mutinied.
The mutiny was easily crushed.
It was a Pyrrhic victory for Kerensky. His action alienated the
officer corps, whose support he needed in the looming conflict
with the Bolsheviks. It also vindicated the Bolshevik claim that
the provisional government was ineffective and that the soviets
should assume full and undivided authority. In late September and
October the Bolsheviks began to win majorities in the soviets:
Leon Trotsky, a recent convert to Bolshevism, became chairman of
the Petrograd Soviet, the country's most important, and
immediately turned it into a vehicle for the seizure of power.
Эпидемия большевистских путчей перекинулась из России в Германию.
The extreme left, led by Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht,
wished to organize a revolutionary party and founded the Communist
Party of Germany. When younger extremists, overruling Luxemburg
and Liebknecht, organized a left-wing Putsch early in 1919, they