Aleksandr Kerenskii, The Catastrophe. 1917
In reply to the question of Prince L’vov as to whom, among the civilians available, the high command would recommend for the War Ministry, General Alekseev replied: “The first candidate of the high command is Kerenskii.”
The task placed upon me as War Minister by the Provisional Government was in brief this: restoration by all means at hand of the fighting capacity of the army. To accomplish this I was to move the army to an offensive, sparing no efforts.
Of course my task would have been quite impossible if at that time, in the middle of May, there had not appeared in the masses the marked evidences of the deep psychological change produced by the Stokhod experience [a local German offensive]. The resolutions of various Soviets, army committees and the declarations of delegations arriving in Petrograd from the front, all spoke of but one thing: the imperative need of restoring the fighting capacity of the army and the productive capacity of the workers, as essential prerequisites to the defense of the country …
On assuming my duties at the War Ministry, I first of all issued an order to the sulking members of the commanding corps forbidding the resignation of any officers of the army in the field. This measure nipped in the bud the intention of certain high commanders to resign by way of protest against the official publication of the “Declaration of the Rights of Soldiers.” I believed that discipline was to be demanded first from people who by virtue of their position should have served as models of the performance of duty. Moreover, it was quite impossible to stop publication of the notorious declaration, first, because it had already long been published by the Izvestiia of the Petrograd Soviet, and second, because Polivanov and Guchkov had made the official and categorical promise to the Soviet and army committees that the declaration would be put into effect, stating that the delay in doing so was due entirely to causes of a technical nature.
After putting a stop to the sulking attitude of the generals, I immediately published the “Declaration of the Rights of Soldiers.” But, under my revision of it, the declaration received an interpretation which prompted Lenin, in the Pravda, to term it the “Declaration of the Lack of Rights of Soldiers” and to begin a mad campaign against the new war minister. The fourteenth point of the declaration, excluded originally by General Polivanov, on the demand of the Soviet, but restored by me, declared:
“At times of action the commander has the right to apply any measures, including the use of armed force, against subordinates who fail to obey his orders.”
This point was the first move towards restoration of the power and authority of commanders. But even the most courageous officers did not for a long time venture to use this power. In addition to this fundamental change, the eighteenth point of the revised declaration placed the right of appointment and removal exclusively in the hands of commanders, and omitted the clause of the Polivanov original which vested the army committees with the right of recommendation and rejection of appointees. Thus I did away with the right of subordinates to participate in the appointment of their superiors …
At first glance my “conservatism,” coming upon the “radicalism” of Guchkov, may appear paradoxical. As a representative of the Left, the normal procedure would have been for me to pursue a radical policy. But what may appear abnormal under normal conditions, becomes in the abnormal revolutionary situation but a normal development of events. My entrance into the War Ministry marked the end of the period of destruction and the beginning of the period of construction, not only in the army, but in the country as a whole.
All my initial measures were undertaken merely with the object of clearing the field for my basic activity, the bringing about of a sharp change in the attitude and sentiment of the army. This required my presence at the front and not in Petrograd. From the first day of my appointment as Minister of War and up to my assumption of the premiership, after the first Bolshevist uprising, July sixteenth to twentieth [3rd to 7th, old style], I spent the greater part of my time on various parts of the front, taking no part, on my brief returns to Petrograd, in the work of the Provisional Government so far as internal matters were concerned …
We no longer find to-day the unanimity of opinion concerning our offensive of July, 1917, that prevailed then both in Russia and among the Allies. Due apparently to a misconception, some even consider that offensive as the last blow that killed the Russian army. Others believe that the operation was determined not by the interests of Russia but was “dictated” to us by our Allies. A third group is inclined to see in it a particular manifestation of “light-headed-ness” and irresponsibility on the part of the government in having permitted itself to be carried away by love of rhetoric.
The last opinion deserves no reply. The fact is that the resumption of active operations by the Russian army after two months of paralysis was dictated absolutely by the inner development of events in Russia. To be sure, the representatives of the Allies insisted on the execution by Russia, at least in part, of the strategic plan adopted at the Inter-Allied conference in Petrograd, in February, 1917. But the insistence of the Allies would have been of no avail if the necessity for the offensive had not been dictated by our own political considerations. The insistence of the Allies (France and England) played no part, if only because they no longer considered themselves bound by any obligations to Russia after the Revolution. As I have already said, the German General Staff having stopped, according to plan, all active operations on the Russian Front, there ensued a condition of virtual armistice. It was the plan of the German High Command that this armistice be followed by a separate peace and the exit of Russia from the War. Berlin’s efforts to come to a direct agreement with Russia were begun as early as April. Of course, these efforts failed to make any impression on the Provisional Government and the whole Russian democracy, which were determined on peace as quickly as possible, but a general, not a separate peace …
It was not possible to rely upon a new blow from Germany that would definitely bring the Russian democracy, dreaming of peace, to the realization of the bitter facts of the situation. It was necessary to make a choice-to accept the consequences of the virtual demobilization of the Russian army and capitulate to Germany, or to assume the initiative in military operations. Having rejected the idea of a separate peace, which is always a misfortune for the country concluding it, the return to a new action became unavoidable. For no army can remain in indefinite idleness. An army may not always be in a position to fight, but the expectancy, at all times, of impending action constitutes the fundamental condition of its existence. To say to an army in the midst of war that under no circumstances would it be compelled to fight is tantamount to transforming the troops into a meaningless mob, useless, restless, irritable and, therefore capable of all sorts of excesses. For this reason and to preserve the interior of the country from the grave wave of anarchy threatening from the front it was incumbent upon us, before embarking upon the main problem of army reorganization and systematic reduction and readjustment of its regular formations, to make of it once more an army, i.e., to bring it back to the psychology of action, or of impending action …
On the first day of the battle we captured 10,000 prisoners and several cannon, but failed to break through the line towards Brzezany. Indecisive also were the battles on our right flank, where the eleventh army was in action. Guns, prisoners, but not a step forward!
There where last year Brusilov attacked the Austrian Slavs were now only German and Hungarian divisions, with an admixture of Turks.
But on the left flank, where the eighth army was in action, our troops in a few days achieved a brilliant success. After breaking through the Austrian Front at Kalush, the troops of General Kornilov and General Cheremisov broke through deep into the enemy lines, capturing, on July tenth, the old city of Galich.
The success at Kalush was facilitated by the fact that on this part of the front there were many Slavs in the enemy’s ranks. In addition, our command had succeeded in obtaining, a few days before the battle, all the necessary information concerning the disposition of the enemy troops and the plans of the enemy’s command.
The offensive of the Russian troops occurred exactly four months after the outbreak of the Revolution, midway between March [February] and November [October].
The operations begun by us in Galicia were later extended to the Western Front commanded by General Denikin and to the Northern Front. Very soon they lost their offensive character and became purely defensive actions. The failures of the Russian armies thereupon became one of the sharpest and most poisonous weapons in the struggle against the Provisional Government conducted by the leaders of the Kornilov military conspiracy, which matured in September [August]. But this utilization for political purposes of the restoration of the fighting capacity of the Russian army cannot, looked at objectively, belittle its historical significance …
After the first moments of military weakening, Russia after the Revolution continued to hold the enemy on her front, in numbers at least equal to the pre-revolutionary period. Thanks to the psychological influence exerted by the Russian Revolution on the populations of the Central Empires, to which I have already referred, Ludendorff was compelled to concentrate purely German divisions on the Russian Front in numbers yet unprecedented during the entire period of the War.
The strategic task on the Russian Front in the year 1917 was carried out in full: the liquidation of the War through German victory, pending the entrance of the United States into active operations, became impossible.
Original Source: The Catastrophe: Kerensky’s Own Story of the Russian Revolution (1927)