20 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

Balaban visited eight units with Kerenski on the 20th and eight more on the 21st. Kerenski formed each unit in a square and spoke to the men for ten minutes. He spoke out straight and told them that he insisted on discipline, that the army should be one whole with the people, etc., etc. In the Moskovski Battalion he called out the warrant officers who had been “ elected ” by the men to command companies, and asked them who had appointed them. They replied that they had been chosen by the men. “ And what have you done in the last two months ? ” One frothy-mouthed individual replied: “We have maintained and defended the liberty we have gained.” Kerenski said : “ I will make you ensigns now, but mind, you will have to work and to see that others work.” Balaban’s impression is that Kerenski’s influence is such that if he ordered a regiment to go to the front it would go at once. “ He could be dictator if he wished and if he were not a man of principle.”

Then Balaban told me of Kuzmin, the new assistant to the Commander-in-Chief of the Petrograd Military District. He served nine months as a soldier, and passed later through the Politecnique at Paris. In 1905, when a civilian, he was chosen as President of the “ Krasnoyarsk Republic.” When order was restored in Siberia, he was sentenced to be hanged, but the sentence was commuted to one of penal servitude for life. He was released after the Revolution. On May 17th he was promoted to be Second Lieutenant, and on the 18th to be Lieutenant.

Balaban says that he gives the impression of a very serious and very innocent child ; he knows nothing.

Yesterday he announced his intention of addressing the commanders of forty units at the District Staff at 8 p.m. on the subject of the domestic life of the troops in barracks, the restoration of discipline and the instruction of the men.

While I was at the Staff, Balaban told his assistants to place a long table in the room and to have tea ready for the sdance. One of them said that there were only ten glasses and that there would be at least forty officers present, and Balaban said : “ We won’t give them tea, they will leave all the sooner.”

The idea of assembling forty officers, of the rank presumably of colonel, to hear the ex-convict’s views on such subjects, is very Russian.

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