WI - Kornilov's Military Dictatorship?

What if Lavr Kornilov had established a military dictatorship to replace Kerensky's Provisional Government? How would this effect Russia's role in the Great War? What effects would there be outside of Russia?
 

RousseauX

Donor
What if Lavr Kornilov had established a military dictatorship to replace Kerensky's Provisional Government? How would this effect Russia's role in the Great War? What effects would there be outside of Russia?
I'm trying to write this exact tl

If he shoots Lenin/the Bolshevik leadership when he takes over the October revolution doesn't happen. If the "reds" start off the revolution with much less control over the core areas of Russia like Moscow and Petrograd than they did otl they might just flat out lose the civil war even if it happens.

Russia 1917-1919 is when of those times when a different set of personality could have really changed history. Emerging from it might have being a right-wing dictatorship which would have enormous consequences for Europe and the world in interbellum era.
 
I'm trying to write this exact tl

If he shoots Lenin/the Bolshevik leadership when he takes over the October revolution doesn't happen. If the "reds" start off the revolution with much less control over the core areas of Russia like Moscow and Petrograd than they did otl they might just flat out lose the civil war even if it happens.
Damn, you stole my idea :D!

Wouldn't the October Revolution (or something like it) occur anyway if Lenin was shot?
 

RousseauX

Donor
Damn, you stole my idea :D!

Wouldn't the October Revolution (or something like it) occur anyway if Lenin was shot?
Something like it? Maybe but the October revolution was pushed by Lenin when the rest of the Bolshevik leadership (as well as the leaders of other socialist parties) thought the time wasn't ripe yet. It's quite possible an uprising fails or is pushed off without Lenin.
 
Something like it? Maybe but the October revolution was pushed by Lenin when the rest of the Bolshevik leadership (as well as the leaders of other socialist parties) thought the time wasn't ripe yet. It's quite possible an uprising fails or is pushed off without Lenin.
Would it be headed by Trotsky or Stalin?
 
Trotsky, probably; he was ahead in leadership over Stalin at this time, IIRC...

BTW, waiting for more on your Ethiopia TL...
 
It would unite the Bolsheviks and SR’s together, Kerensky and Lenin would fight side by side instead of against each other, so the end result would be a very left wing democracy
 
Wouldn't the October Revolution (or something like it) occur anyway if Lenin was shot?

Almost certainly not.

The October Revolution was very much driven by Lenin and his view of how the revolution should work. If Lenin misses his moment, things go VERY differently.

Would it be headed by Trotsky or Stalin?

Stalin wouldn't be leading any October Revolution-alike. Stalin had been working for some months before Lenin arrived back in Russia to build bridges with the SRs and the Mensheviks with the aim to take power with a broad-based democratic coalition.

I'm not sure exactly where Trotsky was at this point, his political opinions moved towards and away from Lenin's positions several times over the years.

But what I am sure about is that no-one in the Bolshevik party agreed that it was time to strike in October 1917. Lenin persuaded them all to his view.

Who'd win in this Russian Civil War?

I'd bet on some sort of socialist coalition winning the Civil War in the atl. People forget that most of the opposition the Bolsheviks faced in the Civil War was from other socialist parties and nationalist parties (who had cause to hate and fear the whites even more than the various varieties of "reds"), not from Russian conservatives.

Of course, it may not be the Bolsheviks that come out on top, or indeed any single-party socialism. We could end up with a SR-Russia, a SR-Menshevik-Russia, or any number of other outcomes.

fasquardon
 
Kornilov's own appraisal of what would happen doesn't sound entirely cheerful:

"Kerensky warned him of the dangers of a military dictatorship, which would have to contend with a general strike and a massacre of officers. Kronilov was not intimidated: "I foresee that possibility, but at least those who are left alive will have the soldiers in hand."
https://books.google.com/books?id=fOxopOa4ogUC&pg=PA250

But even that was IMO too "optimistic." Kornilov was definitely for continuing the War: "The Provisional Government, under the pressure of the Bolshevik majority in the Soviets, acts in full agreement with the plans of the German General Staff . . . I cannot betray Russia into the hands of its historic enemy, the German tribe, and make the Russian people slaves of the Germans." https://books.google.com/books?id=kdQFBAAAQBAJ&pg=PA107 I just don't see the ordinary soldiers, sick of the war, worked on by socialist agitators, anxious to go home and seize the landowners' land, following Kornilov. It was too late to re-establish military discipline six months after Order No. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petrograd_Soviet_Order_No._1

There is incidentally some dispute as to whether Kornilov originally intended a "coup" or whether he believed that he had Kerensky's support, and that if Kerensky got cold feet at the last minute, it was only because he was a captive of the soviets. But I don't think that matters--with or without Kerensky's support, Kornilov could not succeed.

Brusilov's characterization of Kornilov as a "man with the heart of a lion and the brains of a lamb" was not really fair, but all the same, people who see Kornilov as a potential saviour of Russia from the Bolsheviks do IMO overrate the man and his prospects.
 
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