Entry 7 - Kornilov Affair

Above:  Gen. Lavr Kornilov and his men, August 1917.

Note: The leader of the Provisional Government, Alexander
Kerensky, accused General Kornilov of plotting 
a counter-revolution (the Kornilov Affair) on August 24.  
The entry below refers to alleged participation of the 
Tsar in this plot, which gave Kerensky the pretext
that he and the Bolsheviks wanted to remove
the Imperial family from St. Petersburg.


Since the scandalous discovery of the plot (Mr. Kerensky took personal
care to make it scandalous -- perhaps it was not a plot, but just a
few letters of the Gr. Duchess M.P.) Tsarskoye Selo has become very
difficult to reach and to visit. 

A few days ago Maroossia came home from A. very late and so tired 
that I thought she was ill. 

The communication seems completely stopped, and soldiers were looking in
the automobile every five minutes. Once she thought they would arrest
her. Sentinels not only around the Palace, but in the garden too, with
a double chain of Reds on the streets! 

The General told Maroossia that some one explained to him that these 
difficulties and impediments were provoked by the successes of the Germans 
on the Riga front, and that they expect a serious drive on Petrograd, 
and twice insinuated about her going to Yalta, or Gurzoof, or Gagry,
--as things there rapidly were becoming complicated. 

So said the Admiral too, in his peculiar way: 

"The rats before a shipwreck usually feel the coming wreck by
instinct, and run on the decks." 

He said that was his impression in Tsarskoye. Every rat is exceedingly 
nervous and tries to disappear from the Palace under some pretext or other, 
and the Palace is deserted.

Kerensky is coming there very often, usually with his milk-fed
A.D.C.... This man wants to be generous, he wants to be square, in
fact -- he wants to be magnificent. He calls the Emperor "Colonel
Romanov," or "Nikolai Alexandrovich." Never says, "Your Majesty." He
feels sure that he is beloved in Tsarskoye, and that they speak of
him with tears of gratitude, admiring his justice and his manners. I
hardly think Kerensky realizes that they are simply frightened, and
feel with their inborn appreciation of the man, that by playing on his
exceedingly well developed self-veneration, they might be saved.

I have been told in the Club that the Government is planning to get
rid somehow of the whole family. The foxy old Polenov explained to us
after bridge that he would not be surprised if Kerensky would say to
the Lenine crowd that the Emperor should be taken somewhere in the
country on account of the German advance, and to Buchanan ... on
account of the growing strength of Lenine. "Many more people are
interested in this affair," he said, "than even Kerensky knows. If he
knew, he would have a larger field for bargaining."

Devil knows who is who now! If police officers enlist in the
communists -- what is next? Trotzky's going to a high mass?