Kerensky, in his evidence before the Commission of Inquiry, explained Brussilov’s dismissal by the catastrophal condition of the Front, by the possible development of the German offensive, the absence of a firm hand at the front, and of a definite plan; by Brussilov’s inability to evaluate and forestall the complications of the military situation, and lastly, by his lack of influence over both officers and men.
Be it as it may, General Brussilov’s retirement from the pages of military history can in no wise be regarded as a simple episode of an administrative character. It marks a clear recognition by the Government of the wreck of its entire military policy.
On July 19th, by an Order of the Provisional Government, Lavr Georgievich Kornilov, General of Infantry, was appointed to the post of Supreme Commander-in-Chief.
In Chapter VII. I spoke of my meeting with Kornilov, then Commander-in-Chief of the Petrograd district. The whole meaning of his occupation of this post lay in the chance of bringing the Petrograd garrison to a sense of duty and subordination. This Kornilov failed to accomplish. A fighting General who carried fighting men with him by his courage, coolness, and contempt of death, had nothing in common with that mob of idlers and hucksters into which the Petrograd garrison had been transformed. His sombre figure, his dry speech, only at times softened by sincere feeling, and above all, its tenour so far removed from the bewildering slogans of the Revolution, so simple in its profession of a soldier’s faith—could neither fire nor inspire the Petrograd soldiery. Inexperienced in political chicanery, by profession alien to those methods of political warfare which had been developed by the joint efforts of the bureaucracy, party sectarianism, and the revolutionary underworld, Kornilov, as Commander-in-Chief of the Petrograd district, could neither influence the Government nor impress the Soviet, which, without any cause, distrusted him from the very beginning. Kornilov would have managed to suppress the Petrograd praetorians, even if he had perished in doing so, but he could not attract them to himself.
He felt that the Petrograd atmosphere did not suit him, and when on April 21st, the Executive Committee of the Soviet, after the first Bolshevist attacks, passed a resolution that no military unit could leave barracks in arms without the permission of the Committee, it was totally impossible for Kornilov to remain at a post which gave no rights and imposed enormous responsibilities.
There was yet another reason: the Commander-in-Chief of the Petrograd district was subordinated, not to the Stavka, but to the Minister of War. Gutchkov had left that post on April 30th, and Kornilov did not wish to remain under Kerensky, the vice-president of the Petrograd Soviet.
