11 May 1917. Alfred Knox

Non-fiction

Project 1917 is a series of events that took place a hundred years ago as described by those involved. It is composed only of diaries, letters, memoirs, newspapers and other documents

Alfred Knox

Petrograd, Russian Empire

Colonel Balaban told me on May 12th that it was considered that General Kornilov had

proved a failure and that his removal had been decided upon. He blamed the General’s “

tactless attitude ” towards the Executive Committee of the Sovyet. Another officer, and a true

prophet, said that in any case the Executive Committee had little power, and that it would be

swept away as soon as its ideas ceased to coincide with the progressively wild ideas of the

majority of the garrison.

Kornilov complained of the interference of the Committee and of the weakness of the

Provisional Government, who should have forced the Committee to cancel its instructions

forbidding units to parade without its own written orders.

An unofficial meeting, at which apparently Balaban presided, decided that Major-General

Polovtsev, lately a Colonel of the Caucasian Native Division, was the only man to command

the district.

Balaban also said that the Sovyet wanted to get rid of MM. Milyukov and Guchkov, and that

Tereshchenko was thought of as Milyukov’s successor, “ as he would be more likely to work

in with the United States, to whose policy Russia would incline more willingly than to the

revengeful and grabbing policy of the other Allies.

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