1898 map of St. Petersburg, the Russian capital, from a German atlas. Central St Petersburg, or Petrograd, is on the Neva River. Key landmarks include the Peter and Paul Fortress, which served as a prison, Nevski Prospect, a primary boulevard south of the Fortress, the Finland Train Station, east of the Fortress, where Lenin made his triumphal return, the Tauride (Taurisches) Palace, which housed the Duma and later the Petrograd Soviet.
St Petersburg (Petrograd); Neva River, Peter and Paul Fortress; Nevski Prospect, Finland Bahnhof (Train Station); Taurisches (Tauride) Palace
"[Kornilov] wanted the right to shoot deserters and mutineers, and he proposed a far more rigid control of the political commissars and soldiers' committees at the front. In the rear he wanted to exercise military discipline on the railways, the arsenals and the munition factories: and there is no doubt he was justified in urging reforms. When Kerensky hesitated the general proceeded to Petrograd to have the matter out, and everything in the capital, even Kerensky himself, filled him with anger and disgust. On his return to his headquarters at Mogilev on August 17 he declared to his staff that the only way to clean things up was to hang Lenin and disperse the Soviets before they could engineer another rising."
Alexander Kerensky, already War Minister, became Prime Minister on July 20, 1917 even as his offensive, launched on July 1, was ending in defeat and retreat. Alexsei Brusilov, commander in chief of the Russian armies, was replaced by General Lavr Kornilov. Kronilov had supported Russia's February Revolution earlier in the year, but insisted on abolishing some of the reforms the Revolution had implemented, such as the abolishment of the death penalty for desertion. He also wanted to restrict the power of the soviets among the soldiers. In August, after a government attack on the Bolsheviks, their leader Vladimir Lenin had fled Petrograd and was in hiding in Russia's semi-autonomous region of Finland.
The Russian Revolution by Alan Moorehead, page 217, copyright © 1958 by Time, Inc., publisher: Carroll and Graf, publication date: 1989
1917-08-17, 1917, August, Kornilov, Kerensky, Lenin, Petrograd, Nevski Prospect
