Lavr Kornilov

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Lavr Kornilov
White Movement (1917–1918)
Service/branch Imperial Russian Army
Russia White Army
Years of service1892–1918
RankGeneral of the Infantry
Commands held
Battles/wars
Awards

Lavr Georgiyevich Kornilov (

dubious – discuss], but which led to Kerensky eventually having Kornilov arrested and charged with attempting a coup d'état, and ultimately undermined Kerensky's rule.[1]

Kornilov escaped from jail in November 1917 and subsequently became the military commander of the anti-Bolshevik

Ekaterinodar, the capital of the Kuban Soviet Republic
.

Pre-revolutionary career

Kornilov as a teenager

One story relates how Kornilov was originally born as a Don Cossack

Khorunzhiy Georgy Nikolayevich Kornilov, whose wife was of Kazakh origin.[2][3] But his sister wrote that he had not been adopted, had not been a Don Cossack, and that their mother had Polish and Altai Oirot descent. (Though their language was not a Kalmyk/Mongolian one, but because of their Asian race and their history in the Jungar Oirot (Kalmyk) state, Altai Oirots were called Altai Kalmyks by Russians. They were not Muslims or Kazakhs.) But Boris Shaposhnikov, who served with Pyotr Kornilov, the brother of Lavr, in 1903, mentioned the "Kyrgyz" ancestry of their mother - this name was usually used in reference to Kazakhs in 1903.[4] Kornilov's Siberian Cossack father was a friend of Potanin (1835–1920), a prominent figure in the Siberian autonomy movement.[5]

Kornilov entered military school in

St. Petersburg in 1889. In August 1892 he was assigned as a lieutenant to the Turkestan Military District, where he led several exploration missions in Eastern Turkestan, Afghanistan and Persia
, learned several Central Asian languages, and wrote detailed reports about his observations.

Kornilov returned to St. Petersburg to attend the

Nikolayev General Staff Academy and graduated as a captain in 1897. Again refusing a posting at St. Peterburg, he returned to the Turkestan Military District, where he resumed his duties as a military intelligence officer. Among his missions at this post was an attempt at traveling incognito to British India in 1904, though he was quickly discovered and subsequently kept under close surveillance.[6]

During the

Chief of staff of the 1st Infantry Brigade, and was heavily involved in the Battle of Sandepu (January 1905) and the Battle of Mukden (February/March 1905). He was awarded the Order of St. George (4th class) for bravery and promoted to the rank of colonel
.

Following the end of the war, Kornilov served as

military attache in China from 1907 to 1911. He studied the Chinese language, travelled extensively (researching data on the history, traditions and customs of the Chinese, which he intended to use as material for a book about life in contemporary China), and regularly sent detailed reports to the General Staff and Foreign Ministry. Kornilov paid much attention to the prospects of cooperation between Russia and China in the Far East and met with the future president of China, Chiang Kai-shek. In 1910 Kornilov was recalled from Beijing but remained in St. Petersburg for only five months before departing for western Mongolia and Kashgar to examine the military situation along China's border with Russia. On 2 February 1911 he became Commander of the 8th Infantry Regiment of Estonia and was later appointed commander of the 9th Siberian Rifle Division, stationed in Vladivostok
.

In 1914, at the start of

Conrad, the commander of the Austro-Hungarian Army
, made a point of meeting him in person. As a major general, he was a high-value prisoner of war, but in July 1916 Kornilov managed to escape back to Russia and return to duty.

After the abdication of

Commander-in-Chief
of the Provisional Government's armed forces.

Kornilov Affair

Main article:
Kornilov Affair
Kornilov and Deputy War Minister Boris Savinkov in Moscow on 25 August [O.S. 12 August] 1917

In the mass discontent following the July Days, the Russian populace grew highly skeptical about the Provisional Government's abilities to alleviate the economic distress and social resentment among the lower classes. Pavel Milyukov, the Kadet leader, describes the situation in Russia in late July as,

"Chaos in the army, chaos in foreign policy, chaos in industry and chaos in the nationalist questions".[1]

Kornilov, appointed commander-in-chief of the Russian army in July 1917, considered the Petrograd Soviet responsible for the breakdown in the military in recent times and believed that the Provisional Government lacked the power and confidence to dissolve the Petrograd Soviet. Following several ambiguous correspondences between Kornilov and Alexander Kerensky, Kornilov commanded an assault on the Petrograd Soviet.[1]

Because the Petrograd Soviet was able to quickly gather a powerful army of workers and soldiers in defence of the Revolution, Kornilov's coup was an abysmal failure, and he was placed under arrest. The Kornilov Affair resulted in significantly increased distrust among Russians towards the Provisional Government.[10]

Russian Civil War

Kornilov Shock Detachment flag bearer, 1917
Insignia of the Kornilov Shock Regiment

After the coup collapsed as his troops disintegrated, Kornilov and his fellow conspirators were placed under arrest in the

Mikhail Alekseev. Kornilov became the military commander of the anti-Bolshevik Volunteer Army with Alekseev as the political chief.[11]

The Kornilov Shock Detachment of the

Kuban Cossack Kornilov Horse Regiment. Kornilov's forces became recognizable for their Totenkopf
insignia, which appeared on the regiment's flags, pennants, and soldiers' sleeve patches.

Even before the Red Army was formed, Lavr Kornilov promised, "the greater the terror, the greater our victories."[13] He vowed that the goals of his forces must be fulfilled even if it was needed "to set fire to half the country and shed the blood of three-quarters of all Russians."[14] In the Don region village of Lezhanka alone, bands of Kornilov's officers killed more than 500 people.[15] On the other hand, Kornilov's adjutant recalled that the general "loved only the [Russia] itself" and served it for all his life, having no time to think about political systems. The Bolsheviks for him were dangerous traitors, who ruined Russia's unity and had to be stopped.[13]

On 24 February 1918, as

Ekaterinodar, the capital of the Kuban Soviet Republic, on 10 April. However, in the early morning of 13 April, a Soviet shell landed on his farmhouse headquarters and killed him. He was quietly buried in nearby Gnadau (modern day Dolinovskoe).[16]

Kornilov's grave, prior to its desecration by the Bolsheviks.

A few days later, when the Bolsheviks gained control of the village, they

unearthed Kornilov's coffin, dragged his corpse to the main square and burnt his remains on the local rubbish dump.[17]

Memorials

On 13 April 2013, a monument to the late General was erected in Krasnodar.[18] Commemoration ceremonies took place with local cossacks, along with Cossacks from Don, Stavropol and Taman.[19]

Honours and awards

  • Order of St. Stanislaus
    , third degree (1901), 2nd degree (1904 and 1906 with swords)
  • Order of St. Anne
    , 3rd degree (1903) and 2nd degree (6 December 1909)
  • Order of St. George, 4th degree (9 August 1905) and 3rd degree (28 April 1915)
  • Gold Sword for Bravery
    (9 May 1907)
  • Badge of the 1st Kuban (Ice) campaign (3 October 1918), issued posthumously, No.1 out of 3,689[20]

References

  1. ^ a b c "Kornilov Affair". Soviethistory.org. Archived from the original on 2014-03-30. Retrieved 2014-04-30.
  2. ^ A. L. Bauman. Governors of Saint-Petersburg. Saint-Petersburg, 2003. p. 409 Бауман А. Л. Руководители Санкт-Петербурга. стр. 409
  3. ^ "Калмык или не калмык... » Общероссийская независимая газета Южный репортер". Reporter-ufo.ru. Archived from the original on 2014-01-06. Retrieved 2014-04-30.
  4. ^ Shaposhnikov. Memoirs. 1982. p. 92 (Шапошников Б. М. Воспоминания. М., 1982, с. 92).
  5. ^ "Цветков В. Ж. Лавр Георгиевич Корнилов. Часть 1". Dk1868.ru. Retrieved 2014-04-30.
  6. ^ Marshall, Alex (2006). The Russian General Staff and Asia, 1860-1917. Routledge. p. 154.
  7. ISBN 978-80-87173-47-3
    , pages 15- 22, 36 - 39, 41 - 42, 111-112, 124–125, 128, 129, 132, 140–148, 184–199.
  8. ^ Rappaport, Four Sisters (2014), p. 295
  9. ^ Beevor, Antony (2022). Russia: Revolution and Civil War 1917-1921. Weidenfeld and Nicholson. p. 55.
  10. ^ "The Petrograd Soviet and the Kornilov affair, Revolution, The Russian Revolution, SOSE: History Year 9, NSW | Online Education Home Schooling Skwirk Australia". Skwirk.com.au. 1999-03-26. Archived from the original on 2013-04-10. Retrieved 2014-04-30.
  11. ^ Evan Mawdsley (2008) The Russian Civil War: 27
  12. ^ "Ударные части в русской армии. Article from the magazine "The New Watchman" 1994 No. 2. P. 130-140". The First World War. Retrieved 8 July 2018.
  13. ^ a b "Цветков В. Ж. Лавр Георгиевич Корнилов. Часть 1". www.dk1868.ru. Retrieved 2022-06-26.
  14. ISBN 0-691-09015-7
    .
  15. ISBN 0-713-90135-7
    .
  16. ^ "КОРНИЛОВ • Большая российская энциклопедия - электронная версия". bigenc.ru. Archived from the original on 2022-03-22. Retrieved 2021-11-17.
  17. ^ Evan Mawdsley (2008) The Russian Civil War: 29.
  18. ^ Ридус. "Памятник Корнилову открыт на Кубани". Ридус (in Russian). Retrieved 2021-11-17.
  19. ^ "В Краснодаре около 5 тысяч человек почтили память генерала Корнилова". kubnews.ru (in Russian). 13 April 2019. Retrieved 2021-11-17.
  20. ^ Gasparyan, AS. "Russians outside Russia: General Kornilov".[permanent dead link]

Bibliography

  • Asher, Harvey. "The Kornilov Affair: A Reinterpretation." Russian Review (1970) 29#3 pp: 286–300. in JSTOR
  • Grebenkin, I. N. "General L.G. Kornilov: A Rough Sketch for a Character Portrait." Russian Studies in History 56.3 (2017): 188–211.
  • Katkov, George. Russia 1917, the Kornilov Affair: Kerensky and the Break-up of the Russian Army (Longman, 1980)
  • Mawdsley, Evan. The Russian Civil War (2008)
  • Moncure, James A. ed. Research Guide to European Historical Biography: 1450-Present (4 vol 1992) 3:1082-90
  • White, James D. "The Kornilov affair—a study in counter‐revolution," Europe‐Asia Studies (1968) 20#2 pp 187–205.
  • Yang, Ho-Hwan. "Different Ways of Interpreting the Kornilov Affair: A Review of George Katkov's The Kornilov Affair: Kerensky and the Break-up of the Russian Army, London and New York: Longman, 1980" The SNU Journal of Education Research (1993) pp 17–28. online

External links

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