Alexander Kerensky, leader of Russia's Cadet party and a member of the Provisional government in 1917 as Minister of Justice, War, and Prime Minister. From 'The War of the Nations Portfolio in Rotogravure Etchings Compiled from the Mid-Week Pictorial Published by the New York Times Co. New York City N.Y.' © Copyrighted 1919 by the New York Times Company 1914 - 1919
Alexander Kerensky, who was head of the Russian Government when the Russian front collapsed.
"The events of the next few days can be related very quickly. On September 12 [1917] General Krymov, the commander of the Third Cavalry Corps, was arrested by his soldiers and handed over to the government in Petrograd. He committed suicide almost at once. Kerensky, meanwhile, elevated himself to the rank of Commander-in-Chief of the army, and ordered Alexeiev to arrest the rebel Kornilov. On the 12th Alexeiev reluctantly and politely carried out these instructions, and Kornilov, in a state of high fever, was taken off to imprisonment in a monastery near Bikhov. Kerensky now formed a five-man 'directory,' with himself at the head. . . . As a further sop to the socialists Russia was proclaimed a republic. By the 18th Alexeiev had resigned and many of the other Kornilovist generals had been dismissed or imprisoned, and with this, the Kornilov affair can be said to be finally ended."
Russian General Lavr Kornilov had been made Supreme Commander of the Russian Army on July 31, 1917. Although claiming to support the Russian Revolution, he opposed many of its reforms, and wanted to bring back the death penalty for deserters from the army, many of whom had simply left the front. He had begun planning a coup with conservative officers, financiers, and industrialists in the first days of the revolution. Russian Prime Minister Alexander Kerensky had already held the titles of Justice Minister and War Minister when he asked the government to hand him power to deal with Kornilov. Petrograd was the seat of the Russian government and center of revolutionary activity. In preparing to defend the city from an attack by Kornilov, the government freed and armed the Bolsheviks who would overthrow it in October.
The Russian Revolution by Alan Moorehead, pp. 224–225, copyright © 1958 by Time, Inc., publisher: Carroll and Graf, publication date: 1989
1917-09-13, 1917, September
