If Bolsheviks come to power but are defeated by Whites, what would the position of Romanovs be?
What could prevent Bolsheviks coming to power? What about successful Kornilov coup, September 1917?
In this formulation, the question sounds a lot more realistic. All our discussions upon a possible course of events shall be abstract and fantastic until we define a rigorous framework of a
situational analysis used in the academic case studies - say, in teaching young diplomats.
I say students: well, imagine yourself a British ambassador in Petrograd in a middle of July, 1917. The Bolsheviks went underground again. Edition of their newspapers is closed, leaflets seized, violators are arrested and imprisoned. Lenin emigrated again; pretending to be a grass mower, he sits in a hut of hay and writes another great theoretical work. It is Trotsky who manages all the levers of real power in the Bolsheviks party: he commands the armed Red Guards, he has a steady money supply from American bankers…
What could prevent Bolsheviks coming to power? What about successful Kornilov coup, September 1917?
So this is a
very good question in these circumstances. What were the options for the Western diplomats (including ones of Entente allies) in Petrograd? When you have a wide spectrum of local political forces and none of them is predominant, the first thing you must consider is a political future of this country. And you must measure the optional consequences against the national geopolitical intererets of your own country.
Were the European powers interested in preserving the Russian Empire within the borders of 1914? Or were they interested in its split into several independent states warring among themselves? The Germany was steadily coming to its defeat, so there was no necessity for Europeans to keep Russia in 1917 as a strong nation, as a potential geopolitical threat.
As for
Lavr Georgievich Kornilov, he obviously lacked a political weight in Russia. The only power he posessed was a rude, bloody power of his troops - a so-called '
Wild Division', staffed with Chechens and other non-christian nationalities. They had much less constraining moral factors in the cases they received orders to shed blood of civilians (mostly Christians and Jews). The 'Wild Division' was a mere repressive force, nothing more.
Also, not only Bolsheviks (and in a broader context, social-democrats) were to be afraid of Kornilov. Many representatives of 'educated middle class' (Russian 'intelligentsiya') were set up democratically and against the monarchy. At least, against tyranny, for the atrocities of Stolypin (as well as Jewish 'pogroms') were still alive in their memory, and they did not want to repeat it again.
Its widely known that one cannot sit on a bayonnet for a long time. Kornilov could be used to help
somebody to restore 'the civil obey' — but for whom? The history sometimes repeats itself; Kornilov has certain parallels to the General Lebed’ in USSR of 1990s — both of them failed to
settle in politics being in a saddle of a horse or on a tank turret. Such personalities need somebody else besides them — albeit weaker 'physically', but stronger politically.
If Bolsheviks come to power but are defeated by Whites, what would the position of Romanovs be?
I think the same, as in September 1917. Nice and pleasant to talk to upon cultural subjects, an advanced amateur photographer, a chain-smoker
colonel Romanov and his family. Nothing more. No noble titles: I must remind that after WWI they were abolished in Austro-Hungary and Germany. Of course, afterwards the tzar's daughters may have married brilliant and resplendent representatives of ex Russian nobility — but that would be 'j
ouer avec eux-mêmes', playing with themselves a game, each year and decade seeming more and more strange to the non-European civilization.