The Pact of Steel: a Short Tl

RousseauX

Donor
PoD:

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June 1st, 1917: While giving a speech before a crowd of assembled workers in Petrograd, a shot rung out, and the speaker Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov also known as "Lenin" falls over dead, hit in the side of the head. Nobody will ever conclusively determined who fired the shot.

Immediate reaction of the Bolsheviks and other left-wing parties is that he was shot by an agent of the provisional government.

June 5th, 1917: a member of the Petrograd Soviet who was in attendance at Lenin's last speech somehow slip past security detail and fires three shots at the head of Russia's provisional government: Alexander Kerensky. The first two shots miss and hit one of Kerensky's bodyguard, but the third shot hit Kerensky's shoulder but he survives. The shooter is captured and confesses to shooting Kerensky as revenge for Lenin's assassination.

June 7th, 1917: Kerensky, though previously reluctant, orders the arrest of remaining prominent Bolsheviks in the capital, and for them to be held indefinitely. Rattled by the attempted assassination and fearful of a coup by the left, he also orders many leaders of other radical left-wing parties in the capital: such as the Socialist Revolutionary (SR) party: to be arrested as well.

June 8th-June 11th 1917: News of Kerensky's orders are leaked: SR and Bolshevik leaders calls for workers and soldier's Soviets in the capital to arm themselves and defend themselves against the "the reactionary bourgeois Kerensky: now revealed in his true colors have betrayed the revolution". The call is ignored by many, but enough answer: there is now blood in streets of Petrograd as men loyal to the provisional government and those loyal to left-wing elements of the Petrograd Soviet are fighting each other...

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June 12th 1917: Sensing that his hold on the capital is slipping, with the Kadet centrists his only reliable ally and weak, and with gunfire within audible distance of the winter palace: Kerensky sends a telegram to the commander of the Petrograd Military district: Lavr Georgiyevich Kornilov....


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RousseauX

Donor
June 13-15th 1917: Kerensky pleads for Kornilov to move reliable military units into Petrograd to suppress the left-wing insurrection and to prop up his government.

Kornilov, no great lover of any of the left-wing factions in the capital, moves to obey, knowing that once troops under his command are in control of the winter palace he will have a high degree of leverage over the provisional government.

More quietly, Kerensky sends orders that the upcoming July Offensive is to be cancelled: his confidence in a Russian victory by the spirit of the revolution deeply shaken by the events of the lasts 2 weeks.

June 15th-22th 1917: Fighting continues in Petrograd, units loyal to the provisional government manages to hold on to their positions.

The rebels within the capital are in all likelihood larger in number and stronger than government forces and enjoy more popular support, but are beset by poor organization and lack of clear leadership, and by divisions between the Bolsheviks, Mensheviks, Socialist Revolutionaries (who are also split among their own left and right wings). This gives the provisional government breathing space to survive.

June 22nd 1917: Kornilov starts to move units loyal to him via rail intro the city of Petrograd itself (the city garrison itself is of course, "unreliable" at this point), he has done best to make sure that those are units without active Soviet cells within them.

Busy with fighting and split by internal divisions, and with Kerensky not quite as illegitimate as he might have being*, there is no successful attempt at a railroad strike to stop Kornilov from entering the city

*Without the July offensive and the subsequent July Days Kerensky is actually still more popular at this point than he would have being by otl Fall of 1917
 
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