Lavr Kornilov

Kornilov, Lavr Georgievich

 

Born Aug. 18 (30), 1870, in what is now Karkaralinsk, Karaganda Oblast, Kazakh SSR; died Apr. 13, 1918, in Ekaterinodar, now Krasnodar. One of the leaders of the Russian counterrevolution. General of the infantry (1917). Son of a cossack officer.

Kornilov graduated from the Mikhail Artillery School in 1892 and from the Academy of the General Staff in 1898. He served in Turkestan and took part in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05. Kornilov was a military attache in China from 1907 to 1911 and commanded the 48th Infantry Division during World War I (1914-18). Kornilov was a courageous individual but did not possess the abilities of a military commander. He was taken prisoner by the Austrians in 1915 but escaped in 1916. He then commanded a corps and, subsequently, in March-April 1917, the troops of the Petrograd Military District. He was commander of the Eighth Army and the troops of the Southwestern Front from May to July 1917. Kornilov was supreme commander in chief from July 19 (Aug. 1) to Aug. 27 (Sept. 9), 1917. He introduced the death penalty at the front and tried to restrict the activity of soldiers’ committees. At the end of August, Kornilov led a revolt and moved troops on Petrograd, with the aim of establishing a counterrevolutionary military dictatorship. However, the revolt was soon crushed by revolutionary soldiers, seamen, and the Red Guards. Kornilov was arrested by the Provisional Government on September 2 (15) and imprisoned in the city of Bykhov. But with the assistance of General N. N. Dukhonin, Kornilov fled to Novocherkassk on November 19 (December 2), where together with General M. V. Alekseev he headed the White Guard Volunteer Army. Kornilov was killed during the unsuccessful assault of Ekaterinodar.